Quietly Thinking Of The River - National Thought Of The Warring States Period

From the period of Spring and Autumn, political units in China experienced a process of state formation. In the period of Warring States, there emerged seven states that had complete formation. Four principles can be used to judge whether a state has complete formation. The firs is "acquirement of security", which is the prerequisite of state formation. The second is "effective formation and mobilization of economic resources", which will lay solid foundation for stated formation. The third is "establishment of law", which can make state formation more rational. The most important principle is "the centralization of power", which will bring a balanced power system of monarch and rational bureaucracy. According to these principles, there were no fundamental differences between the seven major states in the period of Warring States. We can only judge whether their formation of state was complete or incomplete. The following history should be that, because of the development of economy and the increasing of frontier pressure, state with complete formation would integrate states with incomplete formations. Such integration is normal and rational. But there was an abnormal process happened in the state of Qin. The rational power configuration was broken up and the power was flowed into one man's hands. Finally, because of the First Emperor of Qin's personal influences, the State of Qin was changed abnormally into an absolute monarchic empire, which changed Chinese history fundamentally. The Empire of Qin was an irrational and abnormal formation of state.We can regard state as a historical discourse. Discourse needs representation. In the period of Warring States, there were two representation groups. The first comprised (forming) monarch, important minister and thinkers that played important role in the process of power centralization. Their representation was the cognizance of power centralization and to put forward a solution of realizing it. The second group was composed of thinkers that participated real politics but had a contradictory thinking on politics, and thinkers that seldom or never participated politics. Their representation was a particular discourse that belonged to the realm of thought. Thus, there were two totally different historical discourses of state. One was in the realm of thought, and the other was in the realm of history. The discourse in history could not decide the discourse in thought. Thought was not a mere mirror of history. In other words, there was a discontinuity (or rupture) between though and history. Such differentiation will help us to reveal the reality of history of thought.