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Yangism

Yangism
The original uploader was Magnus Manske at English Wikipedia. Later versions were uploaded by Optimager at en.wikipedia. · Public domain · source

Overview

Yangism (Chinese: 楊朱學派; pinyin: Yángzhūxuépài) was a philosophical school founded by Yang Zhu, extant during the Warring States period (475 BCE – 221 BCE), that believed that human actions are and should be based on self-interest. The school has been described by sinologists as an early form of psychological and ethical egoism. The main focus of the Yangists was on the concept of xing (性), or human nature, a term later incorporated by Mencius into Confucianism.

No documents directly authored by the Yangists have been discovered yet, and all that is known of the school comes from the comments of rival philosophers, specifically in the Chinese texts Huainanzi, Lüshi Chunqiu, Mengzi, and possibly the Liezi and Zhuangzi. The philosopher Mencius claimed that Yangism once rivaled Confucianism and Mohism, although the veracity of this claim remains controversial among sinologists. Because Yangism had largely faded into obscurity by the time that Sima Qian compiled his Shiji, the school was not included as one of the Hundred Schools of Thought.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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  1. But in the universities of Europe, where philosophy was taught only as subservient to theology, it was natural to dwell longer upon these two chapters than upon any other of the science. They were gradually more and more extended, and were divided into many inferior chapters; till at last the doctrine of spirits, of which so little can be known, came to take up as much room in the system of philosophy as the…

    Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

    States what Yangism is.

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  2. Such was ancient hylozoism, a half-hearted and even contradictory hypothesis, which left matter its extensity although attributing to it real conscious states, and which spread the qualities of matter throughout extensity while treating these qualities as inner i.e. simple states. It was reserved for Leibniz to do away with this contradiction and to show that, if the succession of external qualities or phenomena is…

    Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will

    States what Yangism is.

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  3. 87. Into this controversy of theologians on the origin of the human soul has entered the philosophic dispute on _the origin of forms._ Aristotle and scholastic philosophy after him called _Form_ that which is a [170] principle of action and is found in that which acts. This inward principle is either substantial, being then termed 'Soul', when it is in an organic body, or accidental, and customarily termed 'Quality'.

    Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil

    States what Yangism is.

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Philosophers who discussed Yangism

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Outline of philosophy.

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