What are the six schools of thought

The Yin-Yang School, Confucianism, Mohism, the School of Names, the School of Law, and the School of Ethics. The first person to try to categorize the Hundred Schools was Sima Tan (d. 10 B.C.), who was the father of Sima Qian, the author of the Records of the Grand Historian. An article by Sima Tan, entitled On the Six Schools of Thought, is quoted in the last article of the Records of the Grand Historian.

The Six Schools are the Yin-Yang School, the Confucian School, the Mohist School, the Famous School, the Legal School, and the Moral School. The first person to try to categorize the Hundred Schools was Sima Tan (d. 10 BCE), who was the father of Sima Qian, the author of the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian). An article by Sima Tan entitled On the Six Schools of Thought is quoted in the last article of the Records of the Grand Historian.

Introduction to the Six Schools:

The first is the Yin-Yang School. They speak of a theory of cosmogenesis. It gets its name from Yin and Yang. In Chinese thought, Yin and Yang are the two main principles of the theory of cosmogenesis. The Chinese believe that the combination and interplay of yin and yang produce all cosmic phenomena.

The second is Confucianism. This family is known in Western literature as the Confucian school. But the word Confucian means scribe or scholar, so it is not quite accurate to call it the Confucius school in the West because it does not indicate that all the people of this family were scholars as well as thinkers. They, unlike those of other schools, were teachers of ancient texts and thus preservers of the ancient cultural heritage. As for Confucius, it is true that he was the leader of this family, and it is correct to say that he was its founder. But the word Confucian is not confined to people of Confucius' school; it has a wider meaning.

The third is the Mohists. This family, under the leadership of Mozi, was closely organized and strictly disciplined. Its disciples have practically called themselves Mohists. So the name of this family was not new to Sima Tan; some of the names of the other families were new to him.

The fourth is the Famous Family. The interest of this family lies in what they call the discrimination between name and reality.

The fifth is the Legalists. The meaning of the Chinese character Fa is French, law. This family originated from a group of politicians. They argued that good government must be based on a written code of law, not on the moral conventions emphasized by the Confucians.

Sixth is the moralists. This family centralized its metaphysical and social philosophy around a single concept, that of nothing, or the Tao. The Tao is centralized in the individual as the natural virtue of man, which is virtue, translated into English as virtue, and best interpreted as the power that is embedded in any individual thing. This family, which Sima Tan called the moralists, was later shortened to Taoism. As noted in Chapter 1, the distinction between it and Taoism should be noted.