The Hundred Schools of Thought 诸子百家

The Hundred Schools of Thought 诸子百家; literally "all philosophers hundred schools", were philosophers and schools that flourished from 770 to 221 BC, an era of great cultural and intellectual expansion in China.

Even though this period - known in its earlier part as the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period - in its latter part was fraught with chaos and bloody battles, it is also known as the Golden Age of Chinese philosophy because a broad range of thoughts and ideas were developed and discussed freely.

This phenomenon has been called the Contention of a Hundred Schools of Though. The thoughts and ideas discussed and refined during this period have profoundly influenced lifestyles and social consciousness up to the present day in East Asian countries.

The intellectual society of this era was characterized by itinerant scholars, who were often employed by various state rulers as advisers on the methods of government, war, and diplomacy. This period ended with the rise of the Qin dynasty and the subsequent purge of dissent.

If the Qin purged dissent, they only admitted the Legalist School, the Han, the dynasty which followed Qin, implemented Confucianism as official doctrine of the Empire and so it stayed for 2000 years until the last Chinese dynasty in the XX century.

The existence of a number of contending states give way to free speech if allowed by a common language; the most active philosophical epochs in Europe was Greeks time, where many city-states coexisted, and even free thinking and speech was supported and promoted in Athens, and this was the case in protestant Germany, where free interpretation and discussion of the Bible was allowed by Protestantism. Strong states, however, have forged unity many times by expelling or purging people of other believes as Moors or Jews in imperial Spain, etc. etc.