Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

Note: there a quiz next week on Tuesday, which we will review for a little bit on Thursday in class.

Warring States Period (478 - 221 BCE)

These dates aren’t meaning except that we call this the warring states period. These dates are not significant, except that Confucius may have died around 478, and the Qin dynasty is founded at 221. But, there’s a certain artificiality to the period. However, there are changes from the Spring & Autumn period, which saw the increase of the scope of war and the breakdown of nobility. Now, instead of lots of competing smaller states, at the start of 5th century BC you find conglomerations of larger states. Comparing to the Zhou King, who had a lot of symbolic power, had to spread his power diffused through the network of feudal ties, and is only real power in that the players in the game agree that symbolic power is real power. But, the warring states see rules who find new ways to create new administrative forums where they don’t have to divide their power among family but through appointed officials.

The Chinese invented bureaucracy, with more complexity until 17th century Europe. How do you govern your territories? Not like the Zhou did, sending out their relatives to rule them, thus creating competition for yourself. Instead, you hire bureaucrats you can dismiss on whim. Each of these minor cogs can be dispensed with or kept at the ruler’s will, thus consolidating power. However, this change took a long time. There is still patriarchal transmission of power as fathers in office found easier appointments in their sons.

Move from Aristocracy to Meritocracy

This matches the Confucian desire to evaluate men based on their inherent virtue, and not on their birthline. So now with the emergence of bureaucracy, rulers were looking for men of merit to bring into positions of power.

“100 Schools of Thought:”

• Confucianism: A group of people using rituals to train themselves to become moral and sagelike.
• Mohism: A competing school to Confucianism, but they disagreed with Confucians on grading concern for people based on familial hierarchies. I.e., I should be more concerned about my child than his classmate, or his classmate than a random student. The Mohists believed you should love all people universally; the Confucians believed this was ridiculous. Very influential, they argued against overspending on state festivals, rather wanting to give the money to the poor.
• Daoism: Not a school proper, because there were no students formal. Best defined by mystical interspection and physical meditative practices. They sit quietly and breathe, much like yoga. It seems to be that the Chinese came up with this before India. There is a set of physiological responses that can be mapped when you sit still for days and empty your mind and concentrate on your breathing, that you know the secrets of the universe. Zhuangzi would say that you can eat your granola or stick it in your nose–it doesn’t matter, just leave me alone! 1) There are text that obviously talk about breathing techniques and 2) In the eastern Han there is a religious form of Taoism with meditation that can only be explained by early Daoist principles.
• Legalism: Han Feizi, at the end of the Warring States period invents legalism by looking back to statesman and intellectuals and finding elements in them that contribute to his vision of statecraft. His point was you a ruler of the state, but you can’t trust anyone–the Confucians, your family–only yourself. You should become an omniscient ruler sitting on top of the machine of the state, but keep everyone under you relatively stupid except at the specific function they perform. The ruler should be completely mysterious, to prevent undue influence. This is vaguely similar to Machiavellian politics: all that matters is pure political power.

Everyone has already adopted legalism before Han Feizi writes down its rulers on paper, so Han Feizi is simply synthesizing the facts of the world around him and producing a summary.

Move to Centralization & a more complex form of Bureaucracy
Emergence of rational, orderly vision of cosmos

For the western Zhou thinkers, the universe was a moral place, for the Shang the universe could be approached through rituals and divination, but in this period it’s harder to believe that the universe operates in a moral or ritual fashion. In fact, people who do bad things often do well and people who do good sometimes suffer misfortune.

There are advances in proto-sciences that lead people to see that the cosmos is orderly and natural, that continue whether the sacrifices are performed or not. By the time of Xunzi, he himself embraces this notion, writing an “Essay on heaven” that says “if it’s going to rain, it will rain. If it’s not going to rain, and you perform rain rituals, it’s still not going to rain.” Every now and again, he says, there are storms which are part of the natural order of things.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 at 6:14 pm and is tagged with warring states period, zhou king, qin dynasty, autumn period, birthline, symbolic power, artificiality, confucian, confucianism, cogs, confucius, aristocracy, bce, bureaucrats, nobility, whim, 17th century, rituals, new ways, bureaucracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

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