“My purpose is to consider the creative and original stage of Chinese thought, that is, the time of its autochthonous intellectual development (770-221 B.C.) prior to the irruption of Buddhism in China (from the first century A.D. .). The three thinkers that I present, Confucius, Chuang Tzu, Mozi, form a strange triangle, Confucius at the vertex and the other two opposed to each other. They are the three slopes, or if you like, the main currents from which the whole of Chinese thought derives. Although they have points of agreement, they take clearly different positions on the same problems: government, study, rites or etiquette, music and poetry. Each one of the three challenges us today, from a time that seems remote but is not. They build a faceted eye, three approaches and three ways of living.
It is refreshing to note that the Chinese did not put their thinking on dogmatic grounds. Neither revelation nor metaphysics nor theology. Approaching China here implies thinking the unthinkable: thinking from traditions that have not spoken of "being" and that seem to ignore the figure of a "god." How does a reflection work without the theoretical assumptions that have been fundamental for the West? Reading China is not presenting the exotic and foreign, but going back to the constructive elements of thought”. Roberto Echavarren.