Classical Chinese philosophy developed within the timeframe for its significance in the history of mankind, Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, a period between the VIIIth and II. C., which also met Buddha, the Jewish prophets, Zarathustra and the Greek philosophers.

Despite the diversity of states and political systems have emerged since then, we continue to live with authoritarian regimes and wondering how you could create and ensure a decent human society. This is precisely the central question of classical Chinese philosophy: how to live consciously and successfully correct, whether in family, in society and within a State or withdrawing from all these institutions to impose their rules and obligations on the individual. It is, therefore, a highly practical philosophy.

Roetz Schleichert and offer a succinct and clear presentation, a text accessible to the lay reader in the field. They review the historical period known as the "hundred schools", paying particular attention to Confucianism, the alternatives to it raised by Mo Di and Yang Zhu, Daoism, legalism, the peak representing Xunzi and the School of names as well as the further development of philosophy in China. The reader is holding a work which, since its first publication in German, has become a reference text.