Concept
Warring States period
Overview
The Warring States period in Chinese history (c. 475 – 221 BC) comprises the final centuries of the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046 – 256 BC), which were characterized by warfare, bureaucratic and military reform, and political consolidation. It followed the Spring and Autumn period and concluded with the wars of conquest that saw the state of Qin annex each of the other contender states by 221 BC and found the Qin dynasty, the first imperial dynastic state in East Asian history. It saw developments in philosophy, commerce, agriculture, the arts, and society at large.
While scholars have identified several different dates as marking the beginning of the Warring States period, Sima Qian's choice of 475 BC is the most often cited. The era largely corresponds to the second half of the Eastern Zhou period, when the king of Zhou formally ruled as Chinese sovereign, but had lost political power and functioned in practice as a figurehead. This dynamic served as the backdrop for the machinations of the eponymous Warring States. The term "Warring States period" comes from the Record of the Warring States, a work of history compiled during the early Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). It was also named such because of how the scale of warfare exploded during this period.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The period of their zenith and, more particularly, the period in which they possessed a fair degree of stability, coincided absolutely with the time at which deity myth was at its height. In the age of a waning deity belief, it was only the influence of numerous elements of secular culture, combined with a high degree of adaptability to the conditions of individual States, such as the Roman mind acquired under the…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Close in meaning to Warring States period; the term itself is not named.
Nor does China with its long-settled political organization, its elaborate and precise conventions, and its unprogressive literature, fail to exemplify the same truth. The successive phases of our own and neighbouring societies, furnish facts somewhat different in kind but similar in meaning. After our leading class-divisions had become tolerably well-established, it was long before they acquired their full…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Warring States period is.
FIRST PERIOD, SECOND DIVISION: FROM THE SOPHISTS TO THE SOCRATICS. IN this second division we have first to consider more particularly the Sophists, secondly Socrates, and thirdly the Socratics, while we distinguish from these Plato, and take him along with Aristotle in the third division. The _νοῦς_, which is at first only grasped in a very subjective manner as end, that is to say as that which is end to men…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
Close in meaning to Warring States period; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Warring States period
- Hui Shi
- Zhuang Zhou
- Zhuangzi (book)
- Mozi
- Mencius
- Gongsun Long
- Shen Buhai
- Shang Yang
- Li Si
- Confucius
- Xunzi (philosopher)
- Han Fei
- Laozi
- Zou Yan
- Yang Zhu
- Hu Shih
- Lie Yukou
- Yin Wen
- Gaozi
Related ideas
- Lu (state)
- Shaanxi
- Zhuang Zhou
- Luoyang
- Spring and Autumn period
- Nuclear family
- Mozi
- Mencius
- Changsha
- Mohism
- Mandate of Heaven
- Legalism (Chinese philosophy)
- Qin's wars of unification
- Sima Qian
- Hundred Schools of Thought
- Analects
- Taoism
- Spring and Autumn Annals
- Shen Buhai
- Shen Dao
- Yan (state)
- Shang Yang
- Qin (state)
- Qi (state)
Place in the tradition
Part of Agriculturalism.