The Yang Zhu School: A Starter for the Contention and Flourishing of Various Schools of Thought with a Discussion of the Times of Several Chapters of Zhuangzi  

Zhang Hao

Abstract: People today often hold bias in understanding historical phenomenon due to the difference between ancient and modern perspectives. Through textual research of the rise and fall of the Yang Zhu School from the objective evidences such as the literature over that period, it can be proved that the school had once been one of the most influential schools of thought in China. The flourishing of the school also opened the prologue of the contention of various schools of thought. After a brief resplendence, the Yang Zhu School had been in decline during the late Warring States period. Following the contradiction among relevant literature, we can also find that the reason why there appeared “Yang Zhu and Mozi” and “Confucianism and Mohism” in Zhuangzi lied in the sequence of forming times. The chapter “Cutting Open Satchels (Qu Qie)” and some others are not the writings of later periods; instead, they are likely to be the earliest chapters of the book, and even the masterpieces of Zhuangzi.