Chinese philosophy is the dominant philosophical thought in China and other countries within the sinosphere, including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

Even though this period-known in its earlier part as the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period-in its latter part was fraught with chaos and bloody battles, it is also known as the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy because a broad range of thoughts and ideas were developed and discussed freely.

The Chinese School of Agrarianism was a philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism.

Chinese astrology has a close relation with Chinese philosophy ( theory of the three harmonies: heaven, earth and man ) and uses concepts such as yin and yang, the Five phases, the 10 Celestial stems, the 12 Earthly Branches, and shichen ( 時辰 a form of timekeeping used for religious purposes ).

The system of Chinese astrology was elaborated during the Zhou dynasty ( 1046 – 256 BC ) and flourished during the Han Dynasty ( 2nd century BC to 2nd century AD ), during which all the familiar elements of traditional Chinese culture – the Yin-Yang philosophy, theory of the 5 elements, Heaven and Earth, Confucian morality – were brought together to formalise the philosophical principles of Chinese medicine and divination, astrology and alchemy.

* Love ( aì, 愛 ) or " universal love " ( jiān ài ) in the philosophy of Chinese teacher Mozi

Category: Chinese philosophy

Within philosophy familiar names include Daniel Dennett who writes from a computational systems perspective, John Searle known for his controversial Chinese room, Jerry Fodor who advocates functionalism, and Douglas Hofstadter, famous for writing Gödel, Escher, Bach, which questions the nature of words and thought.

Much of Chinese culture, literature and philosophy further developed during the Zhou Dynasty ( 1045 – 256 BC ).

The Hundred Schools of Thought of Chinese philosophy blossomed during this period, and such influential intellectual movements as Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism and Mohism were founded, partly in response to the changing political world.

By the mid-to-late 13th century, the Chinese had adopted the dogma of Neo-Confucian philosophy formulated by Zhu Xi.

The discrediting of liberal Western philosophy amongst Chinese intellectuals was followed by the adoption of more radical lines of thought.

Category: Chinese philosophy

The majority of traditional Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States eras, during a period known as the " Hundred Schools of Thought ", which was characterized by significant intellectual and cultural developments.

Although much of Chinese philosophy begins in the Warring States period, elements of Chinese philosophy have existed for several thousand years ; some can be found in the Yi Jing ( the Book of Changes ), an ancient compendium of divination, which dates back to at least 672 BCE.

Legalism as a coherent philosophy disappeared largely due to its relationship with the unpopular authoritarian rule of Qin Shi Huang, however, many of its ideas and institutions would continue to influence Chinese philosophy until the end of Imperial rule during the Xinhai Revolution.

By the time of the Tang Dynasty five-hundred years after Buddhisms arrival into China, it had transformed into a thoroughly Chinese religious philosophy dominated by the school of Zen Buddhism.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Chinese philosophy integrated concepts from Western philosophy.

The concept of the Middle Kingdom at peace, strong and united under a forceful ruler, which had been only a longed-for ideal in the time of the Warring States, was finally realized by the establishment of a Chinese Empire under the Ch'in dynasty ( 221-207 B.C. ).

The tremendous emphasis on the 5 in the Lo Shu square -- for purely mathematical reasons -- and the fact that this number so neatly symbolized the heart and center of the universe, could well explain why the Old Chinese seem to have so revered the number 5, and why they put so much stress on the concept of Centrality.

Another possible source of the suanpan is Chinese counting rods, which operated with a decimal system but lacked the concept of zero as a place holder.

The zero was probably introduced to the Chinese in the Tang Dynasty ( 618-907 AD ) when travel in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East would have provided direct contact with India, allowing them to acquire the concept of zero and the decimal point from Indian merchants and mathematicians.

Notably, Chinese philosophy never developed the concept of rights, let alone human rights, so that classical Chinese lacked words for them.

Martin had to invent the word quanli to translate the Western concept of " rights " in the process of translating Henry Wheaton's Elements of International Law into classical Chinese.

Nevertheless, the ancient Chinese concept of Qi or chi is believed to be close to that of air.

Qi (; spelled qì in Pinyin romanization and ch ' i4 in Wade-Giles ) or ki ( in Japanese romanization ), is a fundamental concept of traditional Chinese culture.

However, his ancestral home, a concept important in Chinese society, was the town of Heqiao ( 和橋鎮 ) in Yixing, Wuxi, Jiangsu ( approximately southwest of downtown Wuxi, and from the shores of Lake Tai ).

Thus rta bears a resemblance to the ancient Chinese concept of tao and the Heraclitan, Stoic or Christian conceptions of the logos.

Similarly, the Chinese concept of Mandate of Heaven required that the emperor properly carry out the proper rituals, consult his ministers, and made it extremely difficult to undo any acts carried out by an ancestor.

The English sinologist Cullen emphasizes the point that there was no concept of a round Earth in ancient Chinese astronomy:

The Chinese fire lance was the direct predecessor to the modern concept of the firearm.

: For the Chinese concept with a similar name, see Harmonious society.

The concept of Ai ( 愛 ) was developed by the Chinese philosopher Mozi in the 4th century BC in reaction to Confucianism's benevolent love.

Mozi tried to replace what he considered to be the long-entrenched Chinese over-attachment to family and clan structures with the concept of " universal love " ( jiān ' ài, 兼愛 ).

In contemporary Chinese, Ai ( 愛 ) is often used as the equivalent of the Western concept of love.

Historical Chinese culture has not recognized a concept of sexual orientation, or a framework to divide people based on their same-sex or opposite-sex attractions.

It had been during this period that Mao had first learned of the imported western concept of socialism from a newspaper article, and intrigued, he read several pamphlets by Jiang Kanghu ( 1883 – 1954 ), a student who had founded the Chinese Socialist Party in November 1911.

" The ancient Chinese scientist Shen Kuo ( 1031 – 1095 ) was the first person to write of the magnetic needle compass and that it improved the accuracy of navigation by employing the astronomical concept of true north ( Dream Pool Essays, AD 1088 ), and by the 12th century the Chinese were known to use the lodestone compass for navigation.

The concept originates at least by the 6th century BC, when it was advocated by the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who " invented the notion that those who govern should do so because of merit, not of inherited status.

China covers a large geographic area and uses the concept of " Zhonghua minzu " or Chinese nationality, in the sense of ethnic groups, but it also officially recognizes the majority Han ethnic group which accounts for over 90 % of the population, and no fewer than 55 ethnic national minorities.

Philosophical conceptions of qi from the earliest records of Chinese philosophy ( 5th century BCE ) correspond to Western notions of humours and the ancient Hindu yogic concept of prana, meaning " life force " in Sanskrit.