Assuming that you were a member of imperial China’s ruling class. And you lived during the Western Han period (206 BCE – 9 CE) and thus had a wide variety of intellectual schools to choose from (Confucianism, legalism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Mo-ism, you need to discuss the first three at least) for the purposes of both state political development AND personal moral cultivation (the focus of your analysis should be on official political ideology). Which one(s) would you select and why? In other words, you will also have to explain why you find the other schools less satisfying to you politically, intellectually, and morally. Think about the following questions while preparing for this paper:
1. How did different philosophers from different intellectual schools diagnose and seek to treat the problems of Eastern Zhou dynasty? How did their responses differ from each other?
2. What tensions or contradictions might there be in adopting those ideologies as the state orthodoxy in Western Han dynasty? How were these tensions resolved in actual practice?
3. What were the key challenges for Western Han rulers? What were the key issues for the major thinkers and advisers of the period? What different kinds of worlds were they hoping to create?
4. Compare their views on human nature and their political implications.
5. What were the differences between their ideals/goals and their techniques of government?
6. Identify the characteristics of the ideal ruler according to different intellectual traditions. What (dis)advantages did they offer to the emperor? The officials? The masses?
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