The Hundred Schools of Thought (Ancient Chinese Philosophies) Research Paper

The Hundred Schools of Thought (Ancient Chinese Philosophies) - Research Paper Example The phenomenon has remained in the history books of the Chinese nation and given the title â€Å"Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought†. The ideas and thoughts refined and discussed in this period have since then intensely influenced the social consciousness and the lifestyles of the people up to the modern days not just in China but the whole of East Asia . The intellectual part of the society during this time was characteristic of itinerant scholars who were employed by several state rulers most of the time as advisers of the war, government and diplomacy methods. This memorable period in history ended with the coming of the Qin Dynasty together with purge of dissent that flowed after. The major philosophies and characters/tenets of this era include Legalism, Confucianism, Maoism, Taoism, logicians and the school of Ying-yang. The philosophies and characters are believed to have had great impacts in influencing the lifestyles, culture and the social atmosphere in Chines e history. Confucianism Confucianism or â€Å"School of scholars’ was the philosophical body that most people believe had the most lasting impacts on the life of Chinese people. The legacy of this line of thought has been written on the Confucian Classics that was later made the traditional society foundation. The Confucianism took place between 551-479 BC, the period being referred to as the Kongzi of the master king2. The philosophy was named after the main founder called Confucius. Confucianism reflects back to the Zhou dynasty early days in order to come up with a political-social order that is ideal. Confucius believed that an effective government system should play a big role in necessitating each individuals prescribed relationships. He insisted that the government system should be in such a way that it ensures the ruler is given his role of ruling and the subject remains a subject. To him, for a king to rule properly, he had to be virtuous. According to Confucianism, social stratifications and the government functions were life facts that had to be sustained by the use of ethical values. To Confucius, his ideal human being went by the title ‘junzi’, meaning a superior person or a gentleman. Mencius or Mengzi (371-289) BC come up with philosophical teaching formulated directly to respond to Confucius work. The impact of the combined Confucius work who served as an interpreter and codifier of an ethical behavior based on relationship system and the emergence of Mencius, who came out as being a developer and synthesizer of Confucianism thoughts, provided the Chinese society with a framework that was comprehensive by which every life aspect was virtually ordered. Many accretions came out of Confucian thoughts immediately and after many years coming from within or without his school. The interpretations that were adapted and made use in the contemporary society gave room for Confucianism flexibility, allowing the essential system of beh avior that had been modeled from ancient literature to constitute its philosophical core3. Completely different from Mencius work with reference to the nature of human beings was Xunzi interpretation that took place between c. 300-237 BC. This was another follower of Confucian. Xunzi argued that man cannot be innately good; he believed that goodness

The Connection Between Urbanisation And Pollution Essay

The Connection Between Urbanisation And Pollution - Essay Example In fact, humans have become too dependent on technology as life uncovers day by day. Due to high capacity of human to think and because of their growing needs as population also increases, major places on earth have become so congested and it further resulted to unnecessary processes with major impacts for the society in general. In this paper, the proponent tries to examine the link between urbanisation and pollution. In doing so, the proponent tries to define first the basic concepts of urbanisation and pollution. What is urbanisation? The presented classic definition of urbanisation is a process by which people and their increasing population densely occupy urban areas or towns (Ohngren, 1981). Urbnisation therefore is a process that tries to consider the need of the society for development based on the human standard and needs. Witherick (1999) emphasises that urbanisation is a process but it constitutes some important changes particularly in line with the economy, population dis tribution, change of the way of life, settlement’s sizes and character change. This only emphasises the fact that there are major changes and shift from an ordinary way of living to another level. This is what concerns the population in general because behind all these changes are impacts that require substantial considerations. What is pollution? The vast changes on earth which some of them resulted to pollution are eventually products of human activities (Hill, 2010). Hill focused on environmental pollutions as eventual results of human activities on earth. Pollution comes in wide range and faces. However, when one hears about pollution what comes to mind first are results of human activities since nature by itself is capable of maintaining the needed balance. However, all those activities done by humans are responsible for the destruction of such balance in nature and which eventually result at some point to environmental pollution. This is what Hill would like to emphasiz e that humans are capable of destroying the balance of nature in order to obtain the needs and wants of the society as in line with the contexts of political, economical, social, technological, legal and environmental considerations. Pollution is everywhere around the globe and it can be in different forms. It can be classified as air, water or land pollution. These pollutions are of varying degrees and most of them are results of industrial revolution from the past and at recent sophistication of our time. The use of technology finds ways for its further development and such also results to creation of things that pave way to environmental pollution. The global warming is said to be an impact of industrial revolution since such is said to be due to the polluted atmosphere with green house gases emitted by technologically advanced society. Pollution such as emission of green house gases is said to be on its fast pace especially in highly industrialised or developed countries. The Un ited States for instance is said to be among of the major countries with high contribution of emitted green house gases such as carbon dioxide due to the nature of its industry. This therefore has an important implication that cities are among of the top contributors of pollution on earth. Thus, this leads to further understanding of the existing relationship between the incident of pollution and urbanisation. These two are processes but at some point, the former is said to be the result of the latter. Pollution as an impact of urbanisation Political, social and economic aspects of a nation are interrelated to its physical environment because of the presence of potential human actions in every day (Middleton, 2008). One of the most important connections