Daoism

Abstract

There are six schools of classical Chinese philosophy and all of them arose during the Warring States period in ancient China. This was a period of several hundred years when China was divided by a number of states that were constantly at war, and which only came to and end with the victory of the state of Qin (pronounced Chin) in 221 BCE that led to the first unified Chinese empire. It was a time of constant warfare and thus great social distress. It should not be surprising that thinkers would emerge concerned with the disorder of the time to wonder how their society had lost its way and who might be concerned to understand how it might find a way out of such a time. Understandably, then, the six schools of classical Chinese philosophy developed in a dispute about the Dao, most often translated as "way" or "path" but perhaps better translated as “way-making” since the Chinese character expresses more of an unfolding event rather than a fixed, unchanging thing. Classical Chinese philosophy begins with Confucius (551–479 BCE). A learned scholar and cultured gentleman, Confucius travelled around China teaching about the dao, trying to encourage the rulers of the warring states to be better rulers through understanding the dao. Eventually, the way of Confucius would be challenged by other thinkers, and thus during this period of the Warring States six schools of philosophy developed. In the painting above of six philosophers, perhaps representative of the six schools, it would not be hard to guess the Daoist philosopher, as Daoism is distinguished from the other schools by attempting to find the way through attuning human beings to the broader course of ‘nature’ or the ‘cosmos,’ expressed 道