ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces basic aspects of the political thought of the Warring States period. This thought developed in response to a severe systemic crisis of the preceding aristocratic age. Their rivalries aside, the competing thinkers sought a common goal of restoring peace and stability. Most of them shared basic fundamental premises – e.g., the ideal of political unity of All-under-Heaven, the insistence on the monarchic principle of rule, the meritocratic idea of staffing the government with the ablest men disregarding their pedigree, and the notion that the commoners deserve decent economic well-being but are not supposed to take active part in policy making. But how exactly should these ideas and ideals be realized? This became a focus of intense ideological contention, which contributed to remarkable intellectual creativity and pluralism of the age under discussion. The long-term impact of this age is even more remarkable. It may be surmised that the ideas of rival thinkers formed an ideological framework within which the Chinese empire functioned from its inception until its very last decades.
