From Expo to Chinese philosophy

I just spent two days at the Shanghai 2010 Expo, enjoying not only cool weather, but also the intense debate on the world in the midst of crisis and the G20 Summit in Toronto.

At the airport, I bought the latest book by Yi Zhongtian, arguably the most popular narrator of Chinese philosophy of this generation. His new book The Stone of My Hill is a conversational but important narrative of how the pre-Qin philosophers, Taoist, Confucius, Mozi and the Legalist schools of thought competed to explain the chaotic period during the Warring States (BC 480-221) and what solutions they brought to bear to save the times. Of course, the Taoist felt that the whole system was wrong and that after chaos, things will return to their natural order. Being a conservative, Confucius felt that things should return to the old Zhou feudalistic order where people respected their social rituals and respective place in society. Mozi was the most daring, asking for a socialist society of equals. All these three schools were rejected by the political elite who were grabbing power from the dying Zhou empire and readily adopted the Legalist philosophy, which advocated the realpolitik idea of the concentration of power to final unification under the Qin Dynasty (BC 221-206). But by being ruthlessly successful as the Qin Dynasty was cruel, the Legalist school was rejected as immoral for adoption by popular sentiment. It is the irony of history that Confucian philosophy was not successful in its time, but was adopted as the basic moral foundation of Chinese culture, whereas Chinese officialdom has practiced Legalism.

What I found most interesting about Yi Zhongtian's explanation of complex philosophy was the use of modern but simple example of a holding company (kingdom), the leading subsidiaries (feudal lords), second tier subsidiaries (bureaucrats) and then the people, who had little say in the pre-Qin period on their own political and economic future. The debate during the Warring States period was whether there should be more decentralization (flattening of the social order) or greater centralization. In the end, centralization won under the First Emperor, but quickly collapsed and was again unified under the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD).