"Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals" Is the Greatest Synthesizer of the Ideas of the Pre-Qin Schools of Philosophy

Abstract

During the Warring States period a hundred schools of thought contended and there was much clashing of ideas among the many schools. Within this active intellectual battle, the ideas of the many schools continued to evolve and move apart from one another while at the same time some continued to be synthesized. The ideas of Xun Zi belonged to the Confucian school, in particular, to the Zi Gong branch of that school. He criticized all the schools of the time, even including the better parts of Confucian thinking, but also absorbed from Daoism its naturalism and dialectical way of thought, and from the ideas of the Legalists some other elements, resulting in bringing to the Confucian concept of li (rites) new substances. Han Fei was Xun Zi's pupil and yet he was a Legalist. He inherited Xun Zi's primitive materialist concept of nature and openly made the connection between the ideas of Daoism and those of the Legalists. He brought together the ideas of law (fa), technique (shu), and position (shi) and thus became the grand synthesizer of Legalist ideas. He, like Xun Zi, refuted and criticized the opinions of many other schools. The characteristic and dominant trends in the intellectual circles of the time were precisely this—conflict and separation, on the one hand, and mutual penetration and synthesis, on the other.