Hundred Schools of Thought

The Hundred Schools of Thought (Chinese: 諸子百家; pinyin: zhūzǐ bǎijiā) were philosophers and schools that flourished from the 6th century to 221 BC, during the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period of ancient China.

An era of great cultural and intellectual expansion in China, it was fraught with chaos and bloody battles, but it was also known as the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy because a broad range of thoughts and ideas were developed and discussed freely. This phenomenon has been called the Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought (百家爭鳴/百家争鸣; bǎijiā zhēngmíng; pai-chia cheng-ming; "hundred schools contend"). The thoughts and ideas discussed and refined during this period have profoundly influenced lifestyles and social consciousness up to the present day in East Asian countries and the East Asian diaspora around the world. The intellectual society of this era was characterized by itinerant scholars, who were often employed by various state rulers as advisers on the methods of government, war, and diplomacy.

School of thought

A school of thought (or intellectual tradition) is a collection or group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social movement, economics, cultural movement, or art movement.

Schools are often characterized by their currency, and thus classified into "new" and "old" schools. There is a convention, in political and philosophical fields of thought, to have "modern", and "classical" schools of thought. An example is the modern and classical liberals. This dichotomy is often a component of paradigm shift. However, it is rarely the case that there are only two schools in any given field.

Schools are often named after their founders such as the "Rinzai school" of Zen named after Linji Yixuan and the Asharite school of early Muslim philosophy named after Abu l'Hasan al-Ashari. They are often also named after their places of origin, such as the Ionian School of philosophy that originated in Ionia and the Chicago school of architecture that originated in Chicago, Illinois and the Prague School of linguistics, named after a linguistic circle found in Prague, or Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School whose representatives lived in Tartu and Moscow.