The period from the birth of Confucius (551–479 BC) in the middle of the sixth century BC to the closing of the Warring States period in 221 BC is usually designated as the “Age of Philosophers.” Despite the ceaseless military conflicts staged by the large territorial states (analyzed in Chapter 9), China had at the same time also seen unprecedented intellectual developments with the Shi (discussed in Chapter 8) at the center of the stage. Those Shi who were able to systematically develop their theses, usually represented by a core group of texts, and in turn had them passed on to their disciples through the medium of private education were then remembered in history as the philosophers. The fundamental philosophical ideas developed by these late Spring and Autumn and Warring States period masters have since dominated the skyline of the Chinese intellectual life, and became the defining features of Chinese civilization over the next two millennia.

The phenomenon is interesting within the context of Chinese history and is also important for understanding the early development of the humanities in a global context. For this reason perhaps, the subject of early Chinese philosophy has always been at the heart of Western sinology. And this trend has only been increased with the discovery of critically important new philosophical texts from Warring States tombs, mainly in South China, over the past thirty years. It is obviously impossible to offer here a full discussion of the various propositions endorsed by the numerous philosophers and to trace the lines of their discourses across the extremely rich literature of the Warring States period, for which purpose good introductions have already been written. Instead, as a unit of a concise survey of early Chinese civilization the present chapter will focus on the process of formation of a few main philosophical traditions as a social and cultural phenomenon, along with the introduction of some fundamental concepts as their responses to the problems of their time and society. In this way, the chapter will also discuss some recent discoveries of philosophical texts and the significant new light they shed on the development of the early Chinese intellectual traditions.