Thinkers Timeline

Mencius was a Chinese philosopher. His Chinese name was Meng Ke, which means 'Master Meng'. Later Chinese tradition called him the 'Second Sage', meaning second only to Confucius himself. The Latin name 'Mencius' was given to him by European Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century. He was born around 371 BCE in the small state of Zou, in what is now Shandong province in eastern China. This was the same region where Confucius had lived over a century earlier. Mencius's father died when he was three years old. His mother raised him alone. Stories about her wisdom became famous in China. In one story, she moved house three times to find a place where her son would have good influences around him. The story of 'Mencius's Mother's Three Moves' is still told in China today. Mencius lived during the Warring States Period. This was a violent time. Several Chinese kingdoms fought each other constantly. Armies swept across the land. Ordinary people suffered terribly from war, high taxes, and harsh rulers. Mencius spent much of his adult life travelling from one kingdom to another, offering advice to their rulers. He wanted them to govern more humanely. Some listened for a while. Most did not take his advice seriously. In the end, he retired from public life, disappointed. His students collected his conversations and teachings in a book. It is called simply the Mencius. The book is long and often funny. Mencius argues with rulers, other philosophers, and his own students. He is sharp, stubborn, and clear. He died around 289 BCE, aged about 82. Nearly 1500 years later, the Mencius became one of the 'Four Books' that every educated Chinese person had to study. His ideas shaped China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam for centuries.

Zhuangzi was a Chinese philosopher of the 4th century BCE. His name means 'Master Zhuang'. His personal name was Zhuang Zhou. He lived during a period called the Warring States, when several Chinese kingdoms fought each other constantly. This was a violent and unstable time. It was also a golden age of Chinese thought. Many of China's most important thinkers lived then: Confucius had lived a generation earlier, Mencius and Laozi were also writing in this period. We know very little for certain about Zhuangzi's life. The historian Sima Qian, writing about 150 years after his death, says he was a minor official in a place called Qiyuan, in what is now Henan province. He was offered a high position by the king of the state of Chu but turned it down. He preferred to live simply. He married and had children. He died in peace, probably in his sixties. The book known as the Zhuangzi is named after him. It has 33 chapters and is one of the great works of world literature. Modern scholars think Zhuangzi himself wrote only the first seven chapters, sometimes called the 'Inner Chapters'. These contain the most famous and powerful writing. The rest of the book was written by his students and later followers over several generations. The Zhuangzi is, along with the Daodejing, the foundation of Daoist philosophy. Together the two books form the core of the Daoist tradition. Unlike most philosophers of his time, Zhuangzi wrote mostly in stories. His book is full of talking animals, wise cooks, strange encounters, and dream sequences. He is one of the first great storytellers in world philosophy. His influence on Chinese literature, art, and humour has been enormous.

Zhu Xi was a Chinese philosopher, teacher, and government official of the Southern Song dynasty. He was born on 18 October 1130 in Youxi, in Fujian province. His father was a minor official who lost his job shortly before Zhu Xi was born. The family was not rich, but his father valued education and taught his son the Confucian classics. Zhu Xi was a gifted student. He passed the highest civil service exam, called the jinshi, at age eighteen. Most people who passed this exam did so around age thirty-five. As a young man, he studied Buddhism and Daoism as well as Confucianism. In his late twenties he met a teacher named Li Tong, who convinced him to commit fully to Confucianism. Li Tong came from a new wave of Chinese thinkers called the Neo-Confucians. Zhu Xi absorbed their ideas and went much further, producing a grand philosophical system that would shape Chinese thought for centuries. He held government posts only for about nine years in total. He preferred teaching and writing. He rebuilt and taught at the famous White Deer Hollow Academy. He edited and wrote commentaries on classical texts. His sharp criticism of corrupt officials earned him enemies. In 1196, his opponents attacked his teachings as 'false learning' and stripped him of his posts. He died on 23 April 1200, aged 69, still in political disgrace. Several thousand people braved official disapproval to attend his funeral. Within a few decades of his death, his teachings were rehabilitated. They then became the official philosophy of China for more than 600 years.

Wang Yangming was a Chinese philosopher, scholar, and military general. He is one of the most important Confucian thinkers of the second millennium CE. His ideas about knowledge, action, and the human mind shaped Chinese, Japanese, and Korean thought for centuries. He was born in 1472 in what is now Zhejiang province, in eastern China. He died in 1529, aged 56. His full name was Wang Shouren. 'Yangming' is a name he later took from a place where he lived for some years. He came from a scholarly family. His father had passed the highest level of the imperial civil service examinations. Wang Yangming was clever from childhood. He passed the highest examinations himself in 1499. For most of his career he served as an official in the Ming dynasty government. He was sometimes successful, sometimes in trouble. In 1506 he protested against a corrupt eunuch official at court. He was beaten with bamboo rods and exiled to a remote post in southwestern China. The exile lasted three years. During this time, in a bamboo hut in the mountains, he had what is sometimes called his philosophical awakening. He understood, he said later, that the principles of right action were already inside the human mind. They did not need to be sought outside, in books or in the external world. After his return from exile, he continued government service. He became a respected military commander. He put down major rebellions in the Ming Empire. Despite this success, he had political enemies. He was repeatedly given difficult assignments and then attacked when they were not perfectly resolved. He died in 1529 from illness, far from home, on his way back from another military campaign. His philosophy survived him and reshaped East Asian thought.