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Zhou Dynasty周朝
c. 1046 – 256 BC
The longest dynasty; its Spring and Autumn and Warring States phases produced the great philosophers.
Historical Figures
- Confucius Confucius, 551 – 479 BC · Teacher of Lu, founder of the Ru tradition Confucius (551–479 BC), born Kong Qiu in the small state of Lu, was a teacher and thinker who never held high office for long yet reshaped Chinese civilization for the next two thousand years. Teaching that character is formed by ritual, learning, and humaneness, he gathered a circle of disciples whose record of his words, the Analects, became the foundation of a tradition he himself never knew he had founded.
- Mencius Mengzi, c. 372 – 289 BC · The second sage of Confucianism Mencius (Meng Ke, c. 372–289 BC) was a teacher from the small state of Zou who spent some twenty years walking the warring courts offering a government rooted in human goodness, was admired by every ruler and followed by none, and went home to write a book. A thousand years after his death the Song dynasty crowned him the Second Sage of Confucianism, raising his claim that human nature is good and that a ruler who abandons the people forfeits the right to rule into the curriculum of an empire.
- Laozi Lao Dan, c. 6th – 5th century BC · The keeper of the Zhou archives who wrote five thousand characters and vanished Laozi, "the Old Master," was the Zhou court's keeper of archives whom the tradition calls the author of a book of five thousand characters -- and who then rode west through the frontier pass and was never seen again. Whether he existed at all was doubted by Sima Qian himself, who wrote the earliest life of him and quietly listed three different men as candidates; the book attributed to him survived anyway, to become the most translated text in Chinese and the seed of the Daoist religion.
- Jiang Ziya Jiang Ziya (Lü Shang), c. 1128 – 1015 BC · The architect of the Zhou conquest, founder of the state of Qi, and the deified Martial Sage of China Jiang Ziya (Lü Shang, c. 1128–1015 BC) was a poor late-blooming counselor of the fallen eastern aristocracy who met the rising lord of Zhou in old age, planned the conquest that ended the Shang dynasty in 1046 BC, and was enfeoffed as the founding duke of Qi on the Shandong coast.
- Sun Wu Sun Wu, fl. late 6th century BC · The strategist of Wu who wrote the world's shortest great book on war Sun Wu, "Master Sun" -- known in the West as Sun Tzu -- is the name attached to the Art of War, thirteen short chapters that made him the most influential writer on strategy in any language, read by generals, emperors, revolutionaries, and executives for twenty-five centuries.