Ch hinese Ph hilosophy y: Yin an nd Yang 7 B.C.-9 A.D D.) devoted itself to regaaining the saame Thee early Han dynasty (207 lev vel of centrall governmen nt as the Ch'inn (221 B.C.--207 B.C.) aand the Legaalists had d so ruthlessly accomplisshed. This iddeology of ccentral goverrnment, alonng witth the Legaliists' attemptss to standarddize Chinese culture and Chinese phiilosophy, led d thinkers off the Han to aattempt to unnify all the rrival schoolss of Chinese though ht and philossophy that haad developed over the previous three hun ndred years. Thee Legalists attempted a to standardize Chinese thoought by burrning the boooks of rival r schoolss and by mak king it a cappital crime too speak of Coonfucius, Laao Tzu u, or Mo Tzu u. The Han thinkers, t whho thoroughlyy despised thhe Legalists and theeir methods while w adoptin ng many of their goals, ttook a differrent approacch; rath her than rejeect alternate ways of thinnking, they toook a syncreetic approachh and atteempted to fu use all the riv val schools oof thought innto a single ssystem. Thiss syncreticc project of th he early Han n is known as a the Han syynthesis. The Han philosopherrs concentratted specificaally on the Fiive Classics, attemptingg to derive froom them, parrticularly thee I ching , orr Book of Ch hanges, the pprinciple of tthe workings of the univverse, or Tao. This T new theory of the un niverse they appended too the I chingg ; this appenndix explainss the metaphyssical workin ngs of the enttire universee and is the oorigin of whaat is called thhe yinyang or Five F Agentss school of Chinese C thou ught.
ntials of the yin-yang school are as follows: f the universe is rrun by a singgle principlee, the The essen Tao, or Great G Ultimaate. This prin nciple is diviided into twoo opposite prrinciples, or two principples which op ppose one an nother in theiir actions, yiin and yang. All the opposites one perceives in tthe universe can be reducced to one of the oppositte forces. Thhe yin and yaang accomplish changess in the univeerse through the five matterial agents, or wu hsingg , which booth produce oone another and overcome one anotheer. All chang ge in the univ verse can bee explained bby the workiings of yin annd d the progresss of the fivee material agents as they either produuce one anotther or overccome yang and one anoth her. Yin-yan ng and the fiv ve agents aree, I need to sstress, a univversal explaanatory principlee. All phenomena can bee understood d using yin-yyang and thee five agents:: the movem ments of the staars, the work kings of the body, b the natture of foodss, the qualitiies of music,, the ethical qualities of humans, the progresss of time, thee operations of government, and eveen the nature of ow this order so that all tthings can bbe related to one another in historicall change. All things follo some way: one can use u the stars to t determinee what kind oof policy to pursue in goovernment, ffor instance. The yin and a yang rep present all th he opposite principles p onne finds in thhe universe. U Under yang are the principles of maleeness, the su un, creation, heat, light, H Heaven, dom minance, andd so on, and under yin n are the prin nciples of fem maleness, th he moon, com mpletion, coold, darknesss, material foorms, submission, and so on. Each of th hese opposittes produce tthe other: Heeaven createes the ideas oof things un nder yang, th he earth prod duces their material m form ms under yin,, and vice veersa; creationn occurs un nder the prin nciple of yan ng, the completion of thee created thinng occurs unnder yin, andd vice
versa, and so on. This production of yin from yang and yang from yin occurs cyclically and constantly, so that no one principle continually dominates the other or determines the other. All opposites that one experiences—health and sickness, wealth and poverty, power and submission—can be explained in reference to the temporary dominance of one principle over the other. Since no one principle dominates eternally, that means that all conditions are subject to change into their opposites. This cyclical nature of yin and yang, the opposing forces of change in the universe, mean several things. First, that all phenomena change into their opposites in an eternal cycle of reversal. Second, since the one principle produces the other, all phenomena have within them the seeds of their opposite state, that is, sickness has the seeds of health, health contains the seeds of sickness, wealth contains the seeds of poverty, etc. Third, even though an opposite may not be seen to be present, since one principle produces the other, no phenomenon is completely devoid of its opposite state. One is never really healthy since health contains the principle of its opposite, sickness. This is called "presence in absence." The thinkers of the early Han dynasty attempted to fuse many of the strains of Chinese thought to come up with a syncretic and systematic explanation of the universe, the changes that occur in the universe, and the relation of the human world to the physical and divine worlds. Their thought focused on two inventions, both designed to explain the changing world in much the same way Aristotle's four causes were designed as a universal explanatory framework for explaining change. The first of these inventions, the principles of yin and yang, opposite forces of change which complement and cyclically give rise to one another, operated through the physical mechanism of "the five material agents," or wu-hsing . Richard Hooker Richard Hooker, “Chinese Philosophy: Yin and Yang,” http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/CHPHIL/YINYANG.HTM accessed 14 October 2010.