Did you know Chinese Philosophers

How Influential are Chinese philosophizers?

Ryan Grondine, Staff Writer

Confucius (Encyclopedia Britannica)

If I was to ask you to list some of the most inspirational people in the world, there are common names that would pop up like Albert Einstein, MLK, Gandhi, but most people never seem to say any of the big Chinese philosophers like Lao Zi, Confucius, Sun Tzu, or Mozi.

If there was one person I expected people to know even if it was just his name then it would be Confucius or Lao ZI, as they are some of if not the most influential people in Chinese history. Lao Zi was the person who founded Taoism and Taoism is considered the first religion in china, followed by, Confucianism which was founded by Confucius.

The next two Chinese philosophers I would like to talk about are Sun Tzu and Mozi. The reason these two are next is because Sun Tzu wrote the most famous military book in China which is The Art of War, and Mozi is widely considered to rival Confucius’s and his follower’s intellect. 

The second reason why I think that they should be more well talked about is because they have written some of the most well known books in China. These became the book of a religion in the Tao Te Ching which Lao Zi wrote and was then turned into Taoism, Confucius who wrote The Analects which is

Laozi (TM Blog)

Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War which is one of the most famous military strategy books in the world and is where a lot of modern strategies are based off of, and historically Mozi’s intellect was compared to Confucius and his follower’s intellect.

Sun Tzu (Alma Books)

The third reason why I think that these people should be more well known is because of the different myths that have been made about them. The one person that I want to focus on for this point is because Sun Tzu has the most amount of myths about him and his book.

The first myth that I would like to look at is if Sun Tzu taught us how to use military weapons and the reason why this is a myth is because The Art of War is a book about military strategies not using any weapons beside the human mind.

The second myth I would like to bring up is that Sun Tzu taught people how to win at any cost when in reality it was the opposite as he taught the secret to success is from the person that pays less as war is expensive.

The third and final myth is that he taught people that war was an art when it is only perceived that way as of bad translation because Sun Tzu thought of war as a scientific system that includes systems, procedures, and skills.

To end this I would like to ask you why don’t you know these four great thinkers and how much of them do you think have indirectly influenced modern philosophies and what you chose to live by.