Confucianism as many would know is the predominant philosophy of China from interpersonal relationships through customs rituals and ethics all aspects of Chinese civilization is steeped in Confucian philosophy but 2,000 years ago before Confucianism reign supreme it had to fight in the ideological prong against hundreds of other philosophies and schools of thoughts in the intellectual jungle of pre Imperial China in a struggle called the contention of a hundred schools of thought this is the story of the great war of ideas and how Confucianism managed to feed all the others to rise to the top despite having all the odds stacked against them during the spring and autumn and the warring States era China had a flourishing free marketplace of ideas school of thoughts such as Confucianism Taoism legalism mohism and many others were adjusting for influence in the courts of various rulers of the land influencing the masses is one thing but winning over rulers is the jackpot man they are collectively called the hundred schools of thought even though there are plenty more than a hundred schools but hey hundred is a pretty nice sounding drum number a school of thought is not necessarily if the loss of II like Confucianism or Taoism it could also be based on technical skills like the school of military and school of diplomacy it could even be a combination of the two like mo Isom which combines their philosophy of impartial care and defensive siege warfare but out of the hundreds of schools out there there are only ten which the historian banku considered to be major schools Confucianism is a philosophy and governing system that advocates for treating others with kindness and respect it encourages rulers to treat their subjects with humane 'less and in return the subject will show deference to their ruler this school of thought was started by Confucius but he did not really invent the whole idea he was really just espousing for the adoption of the traditional values of the ancient lords and kings of the Zhou Dynasty and earlier so he's really just a traditionalist who wants to bring back the values of the nobles and extend it to the masses Taoism is a philosophy and religion and sometimes also a political theory it encourages living in accordance with the Tao Tao or the way is a concept that's akin to the natural law of the universe instead of creating rigid rules like Confucianism Taoism and practice the principle of way or action through the liberabit in action because sometimes things can work much better with less interference and less bureaucracy this school of thought like most others was only categorised later in the Han Dynasty prior to this how as philosophers like Lao Tzu Chuang Tzu and theater were just doing their own things but they were grouped into the school of Taoism because their work covered similar topics the only school of thoughts that had some form of organization during the warning space was Confucianism and mohism the Mogis were the real kick-ass hippies of ancient China they think Lovings one own family and friends is not enough so they preach impartial care you should care for everyone equally even strangers they are pacifists but they are not stupid when you are living in an era of war just because you don't attack others it doesn't mean that the others won't attack you so they also became experts in defensive siege warfare and their agents often rush to help other smaller states to defend against invasions pretty cool huh but for some reason they hate music will though logicians as the name suggests studies logic semantics and related subjects they are the equivalent of the well actual a guy on Twitter one of their most famous argument is the white horse discourse they argue that a why horse is not the same as a horse because a horse does not necessarily have the property of being white as a white horse does smart asses and you wonder why their school got mostly wiped out despite their differences these various schools are not ideological purists various schools feed off each other by exchanging criticism and even grow by borrowing concepts from each other his point the school of yin yang and Taoism the concept of the Five Element and yin-yang was developed by the former but now ism incorporated some of the ideas into their own philosophy and absorb the school later in history the school of diplomacy is also known as the school of vertical and horizontal alliances the name comes from the policies of two very famous warring States diplomats suchen and Zhang Yi both of them were students of grey coats or master of the ghost valley su Qing was a proponent of the vertical alliance he lobbied for various smaller states to form an alliance so that they can oppose larger states like chin Changi on the other hand is the proponent of the horizontal alliance he lobbied to break the alliance of smaller states so that they can be picked off individually by a larger one these guys make great negotiators the school of agriculture these folks just want everyone to go back to farming and build society based on the idealized ancient agrarian structure where the rulers work side by side in the field with the people and wasn't very popular the school of syncretism just copied other people's work they just pick whatever is useful from various other schools and combine them into their own work lü buwei who commissioned a tons of scholars to write a book in his name was a practitioner of this is the school of small talk sometimes mistranslated as novelists are not really writers of fiction but they might as well be because their job was to go up and collect information from the people of the streets and alley whether it be news rumours history legend their job is to report it to the ABS period they are like the private journalists of Lourdes and they are prone to embellishing their subjects ancient fake news the historian banku said that there were nine stars and ten schools he considered the school of small talk to be one of the ten major schools but he did not think of them highly enough to consider it its own style among the ten schools legalism look like the one that had the greatest chance to succeed it was tough and had a winning backer jin-sook one is the first emperor of China this school of thought is a great fit for his personal ideology it emphasizes on the Plutonian use of rules and laws to achieve certain goals in his case it was unifying China once he did that in 221 BCE he made legalism the official state philosophy of his empire and tried to wipe out all the other schools by burning their books including Confucianism obviously he did not succeed completely as many classics were reconstructed later in history but many books from lesser schools did not survive the devastation it was remembered as one of the greatest literary tragedy in Chinese history for a time during the Qin Dynasty it looked as if legalism was poised to become the predominant philosophy of China but things changed quickly because the draconian rules of legalism led to the rise of multiple popular revolts combined with the weak leadership of Qin su Kwong successor the Qin Dynasty lasted for only a short 15 years period when the Han Dynasty took over in two hundred or two BCE Confucianism gained a little crown as it became a competing philosophy in the Han Court along with legalism and Huang law style Taoism but it was nowhere as influential as the two others and the first emperor of the Han Dynasty hated the Confucian so much he would pee in their hats so they had to work hard to gain influence eventually during the reign of the six emperor of the Han Dynasty the great Han moody they succeeded a Confucian scholars essay impressed the Emperor so much he made Confucianism the state philosophy and banned all other schools of thought from then on Confucianism gained primacy and became a theme predominant philosophy of the Chinese civilization effectively it won the great war of ideas against all the other schools merely by being tenacious enough to keep on surviving until it could get lucky which means that it's victory is mostly a fluke have other schools of thought won this great war of idea China today could have been a completely different society could you imagine a logician based hyper rationalist China or a hippy Maoist technocracy China so what do you think which school of thought do you think would make a great setting for a story about an alternate history China comment below by the way if you are entertained by this video give it a thumbs up and if you like history from Asia and other parts of the world then you should subscribe because we release at least one video a week until next time stay cool my bros [Music]