Confucius and the Confucian tradition
A teacher in the state of Lu develops a moral philosophy of family duty, learning and humane government that becomes the backbone of Chinese civilisation.
- Confucius — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries — Edward Slingerland (trans.), Hackett (2003)
- The Cambridge Illustrated History of China — Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Cambridge University Press (1996)
- China: A New History (2nd enlarged edition) — John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2006)
Kong Qiu, known in Chinese as Kongzi or Kong Fuzi (“Master Kong”) and in the West as Confucius, lived in the small state of Lu in what is now Shandong province. He sought office with little success and spent much of his life teaching. His disciples recorded his sayings in what became the Analects.
- Confucius — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries — Edward Slingerland (trans.), Hackett (2003)
His teaching was less a religion than a way to live and govern. Society is held together by relationships, ruler and subject, parent and child, husband and wife, elder and younger, friend and friend, each with duties. The highest virtue is ren, humaneness. Filial piety (xiao), respect for parents and ancestors, is its root. Ritual (li), proper conduct and courtesy, shapes character. Rulers should govern by moral example rather than force.
- Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries — Edward Slingerland (trans.), Hackett (2003)
- Confucius — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
Under the Han dynasty Confucian learning became state orthodoxy. From the Sui and Tang dynasties, and especially from the Song, officials were chosen through imperial examinations on the Confucian classics, a system that lasted until 1905. It made education the path to status and helped create the deep reverence for learning that runs through Chinese family life today.
- The Cambridge Illustrated History of China — Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Cambridge University Press (1996)
- China: A New History (2nd enlarged edition) — John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2006)
In the twentieth century reformers blamed Confucianism for China’s weakness, and during the Cultural Revolution Red Guards attacked Confucius’s temple and graveyard in Qufu. Since the 1990s he has been rehabilitated, and his ideas of harmony and order are invoked by the state and by ordinary families alike.
- Mao's Last Revolution — Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2006)
- Confucius — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
Why it matters today
Even people who have never read the Analects live by ideas traced to Confucius: respect for parents and elders, the huge value placed on education and exams, and the expectation that rulers should be moral and look after the people. The Party, which once denounced him, now promotes him abroad through Confucius Institutes.