ABSTRACT
YANG CHU (420-360 B.C.): The Chinese Taoist philosopher whose doctrine of egoism angered Mencius, Yang Chu declared: “Every man for himself.” Selfpreservation was the basic principle, even to the point of not plucking out a single hair though we would benefit the entire world by so doing:
If everyone would refrain from sacrificing even one single hair, and if everyone would refrain from benefiting the world, the world would be in order. (—the “Yang Chu Chapter” of the Lieh Tzŭ (the Ch’ung-hsü chih-te chen-
ching, Pure Classic of the Perfect Virtue of Simplicity and Vacuity), Chapter 7.)
Yang Chu (Yang-Tse, Yang-Sheng, or Yang Tschu) was a naturalist and a hedonist. If a city were in danger, he said, he would not enter it. If the army were about to fight, he would leave the army. Even an empire, once lost, may some day be regained, but once dead, one can never live again.
