Abstract

Ths historical legacy inherited by thinkers of the Ch'un-ch'iu period comprised, briefly speaking: a religious world outlook characterized by ancestor worship; the ethical concept of filial piety and brotherliness, which was linked to ancestor worship, or derived therefrom; the concept of a ritual system; the conditions of aristocratic politics and scholar bureaucracy. These were things shaped on the basis of the blood ties in a patriarchal and racial society, and they were passive, from the standpoint of progress, being the obstacle that hindered people from making big strides forward. Next, there were the tendency toward simple materialism and dialectics, which was born from the bowels of religious world outlook; the materialist philosophy of complaint against and hatred and cursing of Heaven; the belief in things and in laws; and Shih Po's doctrine of "Things are produced when matter combines." These were positive things, especially the last three, which emerged at a time when the slave system had begun to collapse, and which formed the premise of their ideological advance. Who among the thinkers of the Ch'un-ch'iu period would inherit and develop these things, what questions would be raised, probed, discussed, or argued on the common basis of their traditional thought, and what specific forms would be used to answer these questions had to be determined by their class stand and by the characteristics of the period in which they lived