Xu Xing (; c. 372 – c. 289 BC) was a
Chinese philosopher
Chinese philosophy (simplified Chinese: 中国哲学; traditional Chinese: 中國哲學) refers to the philosophical traditions that originated and developed within the historical and cultural context of China. It encompasses systematic reflec ...
and one of the most notable advocates of the egalitarian political philosophy of
agriculturalism
Agriculturalism, also known as the School of Agrarianism, the School of Agronomists, the School of Tillers, and in Chinese as the ''Nongjia'' (), was an early Agrarianism, agrarian Chinese philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism and ...
. With a group of followers he settled in the state of
Teng in about 315 BC. A disciple of his visited the Confucian philosopher
Mencius
Mencius (孟子, ''Mèngzǐ'', ; ) was a Chinese Confucian philosopher, often described as the Second Sage () to reflect his traditional esteem relative to Confucius himself. He was part of Confucius's fourth generation of disciples, inheriting ...
, and a short report of their conversation discussing Xu Xing's philosophy survives.
References
4th-century BC Chinese philosophers
Agriculturalism
Chinese political philosophers
Philosophers from Shandong
Zhou dynasty philosophers
370s BC births
280s BC deaths
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