Jixia Academy

A state-sponsored intellectual center in Linzi, capital of Qi. Thinkers of every school debated here under royal patronage. Xunzi served as its head. The closest thing the ancient world had to a university.

The Jixia Academy was less a school than a state-funded argument. The rulers of Qi gathered scholars at the Ji Gate of their capital, paid them stipends and honorary rank, and asked nothing except that they think and dispute in public. Confucians, Daoists, Legalists, and cosmologists worked in the same compound for over a century. Mencius visited, Xunzi presided three times, and Zou Yan developed his cycles of the five phases here. Almost nothing written at Jixia survives whole.