About Genesis of Chinese Philosophy

Abstract

The article discusses the processes that at the turn of the VI–V centuries B.C. were evolving to give rise to the authentic philosophical tradition in China. The author considers the formation of a community of people who keep themselves within the framework of certain reflective practices as the hallmark of this rise. The evolution set off during the “Iron Age Cold Epoch” that occurred on the planet in the early 1st millennium B.C. The civilizational response to this cool­ing in China was the extensive development of agriculture, which, in turn, led to demographic growth, the enhancement of the socio-political structure of society and the emergence of demand for competent managers. The social base for them turned out to be the lowest nobility – the “officers” shi. Unlike the aristocrats zhuhou at the highest tier of power, the “officers” shi were interested in main­taining the moral status of the “noble person” junzi. The existential space of this status could only be maintained through permanent reflection. The criterion for maintaining one’s moral status was not only social behavior in accordance with this status, but also its existential experience, devotion not to external factors, but to an internal idea, responsibility to oneself. The Confucian effort to compre­hend and to pass on those reflective practices became the beginning of Chinese philosophy