The Debate Between the Confucianists and the Legalists Over the Question of Ancient History During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period

Abstract

"Whenever one intends to overturn a political power, one must first create a general view and begin working from an ideological basis. The revolutionaries are like this. The counterrevolutionaries are also like this." [1] During the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, the Legalists, who represented the newly rising landlord class, and the Confucianists, who represented the slave-owning class, engaged in an intense ideological struggle around the central issue of seizing or opposing the seizure of power, restoring or opposing the restoration of the ancient ways. The field of the study of history, which is an organic part of ideology, became an important line of struggle for the Confucianists and the Legalists.