In the history of philosophy, there is an age of little more than half a millennium, from 800 to 200 BC, called the "Axial Period", where much of early philosophical thinking manifested.

This was the age of the Buddha and other Indian philosophers, of the great Greek thinkers and the Hebrew prophets, and possibly of the Persian Zarathustra.

All over the old world, in small, unstable and war-threatened states, traditions of thinking about humanity, society and the world began to emerge.

Turmoil, War and Development

More than thousand years BC, the Zhou clan usurped the power in China from the Shang Dynasty, under the pretext that just kings were granted their mandate to rule from Heaven, and that Heaven had turned away from the undeserving Shang.

The new dynasty founded a feudal state where fiefs and positions were given to hereditary noble families, usually from the Zhou clan, and where loyalty and family relations were the glue holding the state together. As the centuries passed, these families gathered power and wealth and family ties weakened.

In the end, their fiefs resembled independent states, though they recognised the overlordship of the king of Zhou, at least in name.

As these new powers grew during the Spring and Autumn period, (770 to 475 BC), the inter-state competition became ever more fierce, and the hereditary rulers, fief holders and officials looked for advantages against their neighbours.

By the mid 5th century BC, we are in what has aptly been dubbed the Warring States period, when small states were conquered by stronger ones, until at last China was unified under the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC.

This age of increasing competition fostered a fertile setting for invention and improvement. Advances were made in agriculture, administration and the science of war. Early during Zhou's rule, nobles fought each other with bows and arrows and bronze spears, from chariots of war.

By the end of the period, massive peasant armies were sent to slaughter one another, armed with crossbows and with the support of cavalry.

Professional Civil Servants

The Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period are collectively known as the “The Hundred Schools of Thought” (诸子百家) due to the many and diverse philosophical traditions that developed then.

The strong inter-state competition opened up for meritocracy, official positions were granted to capable advisers, teachers, strategist, clerks and assistants, rather than to hereditary nobles. Often these new men were uprooted members of the elite of conquered or destroyed states.

They offered new ideas and advice on how rulers should rule and mange their lands. They disputed with each other and developed the arts of logic, strategy and rhetoric. Books were written, compiling the thoughts and ideas of the masters, giving new generations food for thought, and the possibilities of building on, or refuting, older ideas.

Confucius, also known as Kongzi was one of the earliest of these men that we know about from texts. He spent a long time visiting lords to find someone who would take his advice on statesmanship and the role of rulers.

As he searched, he also worked as a teacher of the ritual and culture of the golden age of Zhou, to disciples who came to learn. He linked ritual, convention and social structure to morality, claiming that good statesmanship stemmed from right behaviour based on tradition and good moral.

Kongzi would give his name to the school of Confucianism which would later grow to dominate the empire's officialdom. Laozi whether he was real or not, is considered the father of Daoism (also written Taoism), which, with time, would develop mystic aspects and be strongly influenced by Buddhism.

While other influential schools include the Mohist (pragmatic and for the people), the Yangists (defenders of "the self"), the Sophist, or Logicians who lived for rhetoric disputes, and the cynical and efficient Legalists, aiming for a strong state.

Kongzi, his contemporaries, and their descendants were less concerned with finding out things like "What is the Truth?", and more concerned with "How should the state and private life be ordered?" These discussions were to continue for centuries, inside and between the philosophical traditions.

The thinkers themselves were, or were trying to become, members of the class of officials appointed by the rulers.

This made the question of how to rule a state, or how to defend one's own private life, a topic for reflection. The importance of their own relations to the rulers led them to ask when is it morally right to serve a ruler, who is deserving of an appointment from the ruler, and when is private life more important than striving for positions in the state.

The most famous Chinese philosopher is Confucius or Kongzi, living about 551 to 479 BC. However, during the following two-and-a-half centuries, Chinese states produced countless thinkers of renown, such as, Laozi, Mozi, Mencius or Mengzi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Fei and many more. 

These men and their followers would lay the foundation for Chinese philosophical traditions and help shape the Chinese culture. They were the creators of the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy, but they themselves were products of their own times, and formed by history.

As the warring states ended in the reunification of China under the Qin dynasty, the Legalist tradition gained dominance. Other schools were either absorbed by the new state-orthodoxy, or outlawed and their texts destroyed, as the first emperor strove to build a strong and lasting dynasty.

But as Qin was replaced by the Han Dynasty, the Legalists were to see Confucianism rise to become China's dominating tradition.