Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism

These readings really caused me to reflect on my own education about early China. I was really only taught about China in my World History class in high school, and even then China only got a cursory mention before we started to analyze the Renaissance. When we would talk about world religions, we were typically only taught about Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hindu. Confucianism or Daoism sometimes got a brief mention, but it was always one or the other. So in doing this reading I thought it was especially fascinating to actually go into depth in what those belief systems really meant, especially to the Chinese people. I also saw the themes from Confucius’ teachings especially in the poems from the Tao Te Ching book as well. I also found the bit about Legalism especially interesting since I had never learned about it before. I thought it was interesting especially when the book started talking about the integral way that Legalism remained within the laws of China for a while, and it made me more surprised that I hadn’t heard about it before.