Legalism, Taoism, and Confucianism in Ancient China

China is a very influential world power and has been for many years. The Classical and Post-Classical years in China were a time of achievement and advancement, especially in the religious movement. Post-Classical and Classical China were very important historical periods, and their religions, and the effect of them on the world around them highlighted that importance.

Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism were the three main philosophies in ancient China for a form of government. I state that Daoism is the most effective form of government because it is based around balance: balance in nature and opposites of the universe. Daoism has the highest number of followers at around 20 million people among the three philosophies. Daoism is concerned with helping people live in harmony with their self.

The idea of ruling a powerful government based on the principle of using two conflicting ideologies at the same time appeared foreign to most dynasties of early China. In early Chinese times, after the Period of the Warring States, two ideologies emerged: Legalism and Confucianism. Legalism stressed a strong central government that expressed harsh laws while Confucianism had a decentralized government, placing trust in conscientious and learned individuals to work together to solve political issues. These two schools of thought were in stark contrast to each other and, up until the Han dynasty, had never been combined with each other through government policy. The Qin dynasty, for example implemented a strict Legalist government while the

Confucianism is based on the teachings of Confucius (also known as Kongzi). In these teachings Confucius talks

Ancient China has three philosophies: Confucianism, Legalism, and Daoism. These three philosophies explain how people should behave and how the government should rule the people. The philosophies were guidelines to the people. Confucianism, Legalism, and Daoism have different values, beliefs, and ideas of what is important and expected, but the main goal is to work towards peace and harmony. These cultures are the same way in being rewarded due to their actions, but different in government regulation because of the people in command.

Confucianism is based upon the teaching of the Chinese philosopher Confucius. This idea focuses on bettering people and the society, educating people to be

Chinese philosophies, like Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism, were brought in by the Chinese to help implement a strong and fair governing system in order to keep the citizens of China. They would use the different ideologies and find a similarity in all of them in order to keep together the empire. With Daoism, the government would put their trust in the people to self govern themselves and thought that political involvement and education were not needed. Confucianism would revolve around family values and order in the empire. Finally, Legalism would use fear to keep the people in check with harsh laws.

During the fall of the Zhou Dynasty, violence and chaos were soaring in China. In an attempt to achieve justice, various philosophers offered solutions in order to restore social and political order. From these efforts, three significant ethical systems were founded. These three major schools of philosophy, Legalism, Confucianism, and Daoism, are creations of unique views that portray their ideas of adequate societies as well as their perspectives on how one should govern.

Amidst the chaos of political instability and constant warring of the Zhou era, arose many intellectual thinkers that brought such a profound impact in the fields of politics, religion, and philosophy. Even to this day, their influence can be seen on the many matters of China. Confucianism became the paramount school of thinking and later significant philosophies such as Daoism and Legalism gained immense recognition as well. Each party had their own proposals for creating an idealistic political society where the many problems they faced in their everyday lives could be eliminated. All three approaches were very distinct but at the same time, they contained similarities as well. In my reasoning, I find that Confucianism and Daoism

Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism, are three Chinese ideologies in Classic China that held influence on how society should be, how to achieve order and what made government strong. Anyone that was a practitioner of these three philosophies would have had no idea how the Roman Republic or Empire worked in those regards. It would not be surprising if a Confucian, a Daoist and a Legalist had praise and dislike for how Rome was ran.

Confucian culture, also known as Confucianism, was founded by Confucius during the Spring and Autumn Period, which was developed gradually after the Han Dynasty with benevolence as the core. Since the Han Dynasty, Confucianism was the official ideology and the basis of mainstream ideology in the vast majority of historical periods of China, and it also influenced many southeast Asian countries in history. After a variety of shocks, Confucianism was still the core values of China's social public, and represented the Chinese culture and national tradition in the world (Littlejohn, 2010). In the contemporary society, the Confucian culture in China increasingly spread, at the

For this paper, I will be discussing two opposing ideologies, Confucianism and Legalism. Towards the later part of ancient China (e.g Han dynasty), states started to adopt a mixture of Confucianism and Legalistic ideology. Why did Legalism and Confucianism fall off?

The religion of Confucianism begins, of course, with Confucius whose Chinese name was Kong Qui and who lived from 551 B.C. to 479 B.C. Surprisingly Confucius was merely a low level government worker. He did not exactly view himself as the founder of a school of thought. Regardless, Confucianism is the most influential belief system in Chinese culture. It provides the rules which govern the social behavior of the individual. The basic teachings of Confucius are grounded in the Five Constant Virtues: humanity, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faithfulness. Confucius went on to define five basic human relations and

In Chinese history, there were three main philosophies: Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism. These beliefs helped shape Chinese culture as well as Chinese history. Not only did people believe in these ideas, but the three helped to govern the mighty Chinese dynasties. These dynasties all provided an impact to each doctrine; the philosophy that had the greatest impact was legalism because it ended the Warring States Period, provided structure, and strengthened agriculture, and the military of China. Although Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism had a few things in common and at times tried to resolve the same problem, they were very different from each other in their beliefs, character, and ways of life.

Confucius was born in an impoverished family. Throughout his childhood he was very eager to learn so his mother fostered that. He had several small positions in government in his home state, Lu. He was the first ever teacher/educationalist in the history of China. His teachings found in the Analects, discusses ethical modules family, politics, economy, and more. In his teachings he promotes humanness (ren), ritual propriety (li), and the developing of exemplary persons (Junzi). (Li pg. 87)