Ancient World: China

HUMANITIES 124: The Ancient World


1.

Ancient China based individual and community well-being in natural order. Confucius developed this idea in his teachings, stressing that ones place within society is determined by individual’s character, not by birth or god’s pronouncements.
Based in this main point, the ruler or the governor must have had manifested clear character due to thecharge he occupies in the society. Starting from the investigation of the things, extending their knowledge, cultivating their own mind and their own family, finally could regulate and bring order to an entire state.
Ruler’s image takes a special status in it; Confucius said “If a ruler is himself upright, his people will do their duty without orders; but if he himself be not upright, although hemay order they will not obey”(7:13:6). It highlights the ruler’s moral capacity and emphatic ability as the road way of his citizens over the intelligence and self-interest.
Based on the principle of the natural society order, their extended knowledge, noble character, and a whole equilibrium, would position them in society’s maximum status and would not need advisors.
This mainpoint makes allusion to those wise men seeking for employment from kingdom to kingdom. This virtue should raise them to the upper position of the political system of the time and ensure a high responsiveness due to their ability of distinguishing goodness. These wise men seeking for employment should had been rulers and main symbols of the kingdom instead of hidden advisors, natural order’s forcewould put them there. Although, Confucius’ socio-historical context faces his thoughts. After Zhou dynasty’s decay, China was divided in feudal states. Values and beliefs decayed at the same time and starve and survival gave way to patricides.
Checking the reality, kings were designated by patriarchal family birth criterions, so character strength and moral sense was not ensured in them.Advisors had to beg employment even though their knowledge and competence were so much better than the king’s ones. To be hired, philosophers had to explain their philosophy to the monarchs and make it in the way that the king liked it.
In conclusion, we could figure out that survival sense sometimes gained the moral sense of the thinkers and had to shape their thoughts in order to make italike the king’s ones. Employment wouldn’t be much in hands of the thinkers’ philosophy and moral strength as in ruler’s character and fancy. It is these factors which would determine the difficulty of hiring as a king advisor.
2.
The Pharaoh, the main ruler of the Egyptian Civilization, performed two main functions: Sekhem - he would achieve tranquility through force and violence. By usingthe control and the police power, he would get over the chaos and impose the order. Heka, on the other hand, was the political equivalent of the divine creative force. It was presented as Pharaoh’s administrative set that allowed the govern of a land, respecting the assortment of custom, language, culture and beliefs.
In the case of Mesopotamia, the geographic situation and fertility ofthis land made it vulnerable to conquerors and foreign warriors. Governors had to defend the boundaries of their territory, using armed force for this purpose. Furthermore, when a city-state gained structure, the next step was to become proactively aggressive in order to conquer other city-states. This social need gave way to the creation of the military institution and the consequent establishmentof a social hierarchy. Military power was taken as a security source among external threats and expansion chances, so it became the upper class of the social pyramid.
This fact has been reflected in many ways in Mesopotamian arts such as painting, sculpture or literature. The most important figure of a warrior would be Gilgamesh, literary composition written in cuneiform Akkadian around...