School · 551 BCE–208 BCE
Early Chinese thought
Competing teachers and lineages in early China asked how ritual, cultivated character, political authority, language, and patterned nature could sustain an ordered life.
Shared questions
- How can cultivated conduct make political and family relationships humane?
Internal disagreements
- Whether order begins in ritual inheritance, moral dispositions, impartial care, law, or spontaneous alignment with the Way.
Key texts
- Yijing — A composite classic and commentary tradition represented as a text rather than an invented author.