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Confucius Koˇ ngzıˇ ᄨᄤ 551–479 bce—Spring and Autumn period thinker Alternate names: Koˇ ng Qiuˉ ᄨϬ; courtesy name: Zhòng Ní ӆሐ; offi cial title: Ko˘ngzı˘ ᄨᄤ (Master Kong) or Ko˘ngfuˉzı˘ ᄨ໿ᄤ (Reverend Master Kong) Summary onfucius is perhaps the most infl u- Confucius was an early philosopher C ential Chinese person ever to have whose considerable infl uence on intel- lived. This remains true even if, as some lectual and social history has extended recent scholarship suggests, he actually • well beyond the boundaries of China. may never have lived at all but instead ᄨᄤ The legacy of Confucius survives was a kind of literary trope created by • through his teachings, recorded in the both classical Chinese scholars and early text known as the Analects. A sym- Western discoverers of Chinese tradi- bolic and controversial fi gure, his tion, such as sixteenth-century Jesuit philosophy is primarily moral and po- missionaries. Said to have been a low- litical in nature. Confucius claimed ranking member of the ancient Chinese that moral order is based upon Heav- social class known as shì ຿ (knights or en’s will, but that moralSample order must retainers who served higher-ranking aris- be brought about by human action. tocrats), Confucius apparently traveled Modern educational institutions, re- widely in the area that is now northeast- acting to the decimation of traditional ern China, teaching the sons of nobility values throughout most of the twenti- about antiquarian matters of ceremony eth century, have begun to reintroduce and literature as well as moral philoso- Confucian curricula for the purpose phies for ordering personal and social of moral instruction. After a century of life. He was not famous during his life- anti-Confucian campaigns, China seems time and never fulfi lled his ambition of poised once again to become the world’s becoming the cherished advisor to a most Confucian society. great ruler. In this respect, later depictions • 44 • www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing grouP, all rights reserved. • Spring and Autumn & Warring States Periods • 770–476 bce & 475–221 bce • of Confucius as a powerful fi gure in the heart or mind, which sages could dis- events of his time and a well-known fi g- cover and wise men could understand. ure in early Chinese history are not faith- For Confucius, the dao was that of ful to the historical record. Confucius’s the Western Zhˉou ਼ dynasty (1045–771 teachings became widely known only bce), which he idealized as an alterna- after his death in the fi fth century bce, at tive to his own Spring and Autumn ᯹⾟ which time his disciples began to collect period (770–476 bce), a time of increas- and record them—a process that re- ing social disorder. Confucius saw quired centuries to complete, and one himself as a guardian of Western Zhou during which many elements that may traditions that could still have value in not have been part of the historical vi- his own time. He challenged his disci- sion of Confucius entered into what ples, most of who hoped to gain offi cial would become Confucian scripture. positions with various feudal states, to Confucius’s teachings are presented emulate the sages of the past and restore in the text known as the Analects (Lúnyuˇ the moral integrity of society. Most of 䆎䇁 or Collected Sayings). According to his ideas, as described in the Analects, Analects 7.1, Confucius “transmitted, have to do with Tiaˉn ໽ (Heaven, which but did not innovate.” What Confucius the ancient Chinese regarded as a deity • Confucius claimed to transmit was the dào 䘧 (the rather than as a destination in the after- Way), a concept shared by all early life), morality, and politics. These ideas, Chinese thinkers, although some may in turn, form the basis of what is popu- believe this to be more closely associat- larly considered Confucian thought. ed with Daoist (Taoist) traditions. In During his lifetime, however, neither early Chinese thought, dao signifi ed the Confucius nor his ideas were well Way in the sense of “the way things known. His disciples and their follow- a term originally) ۦ ought to be” in any arena of life. Wood- ers, known as rú carvers learned the dao of woodcarving used to describe ritual specialists at and thus came to understandSample the poten- early Chinese courts), preserved, ex- tial within a piece of wood, as well as to panded, and transmitted his teachings accept its limitations; rulers strove to for several hundred years after his master the dao of rulership, which was death, despite being ignored or perse- said to bring both prosperity to a people cuted by various regimes, including the and power to their ruler. By Confucius’s short-lived Qín ⾺ dynasty (221–206 bce). time, the concept of dao encompassed Confucius had aspirations for soci- these practical applications as well as a ety’s renewal on the appearance of a more abstract sense of dao as a funda- sage-ruler who would combine political mental cosmic pattern embroidered in power with moral wisdom, unify the both the natural world and the human fractured empire, and usher in a new • 45 • www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing grouP, all rights reserved. • Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography • Volume 1 • Pages from the Analects. age of harmony and prosperity. Accord- contemporaries understood in terms of • ing to Confucius, “One who rules by conquest and coercion—as expressions ᄨᄤ morality may be compared to the North of a dao that relied on moral suasion and • Star—it occupies its place and all the instilled moral purpose in order to bring stars pay homage to it.” (Analects 2.1) unity out of division. But while Confu- Indeed, since the worship of both Tian cius’s disciples challenged rulers of and its predecessor, Shàngdì ϞᏱ, have feuding states to emulate the legendary their roots in the ancient Chinese cult of sage-kings of the Western Zhou and the North Star, Confucius may be said restore the moral integrity of the state, to have envisioned the idealSample ruler as one most of their contemporaries were in- who acted as a celestial deity on Earth. different to, or even sharply critical of, In his own time, the North Star was the Confucian vision. worshipped primarily by those who Since the teaching that claims him as sought its protection from violent death its founder fi rst gained state support in in battle and other hazards of life dur- 136 bce, when Confucianism became the ing the Spring and Autumn period and offi cial ideology of the Hàn ∝ dynasty later during the Warring States ៬೑ pe- (206 bce–220 ce), Confucius has come to riod (475–221 bce). Confucius evidently stand for many things, some of which sought to redefi ne both rulership contradict each other, both in China and and godhood—which most of his beyond. In the sixteenth century, Jesuits • 46 • www.berkshirepublishing.com © 2014 Berkshire Publishing grouP, all rights reserved. • Spring and Autumn & Warring States Periods • 770–476 bce & 475–221 bce • steeped in Renaissance humanism saw than about Confucius himself (Creel him as an ancient humanist; in the seven- 1949, 8). teenth and eighteenth centuries, German And yet the story of Confucius also thinkers such as Gottfried Wilhelm is the story of China itself, and thus Leibniz (1646–1716) or Christian Wolff it can tell us a great deal about how (1679–1754) praised him as an Enlighten- China has developed into a unifi ed, if ment sage (Kanemori 1997; Perkins 2004). diverse, culture that largely bears a (For this reason, perhaps, Confucius is Confucian stamp. Indeed, one measure included among the nine lawgivers of of Confucius’s infl uence—or the infl u- the pre-Christian era who are memorial- ence attributed to him—is the extent to ized in marble on the south wall of the which ideas, institutions, and practices US Supreme Court’s hearing room.) originally advocated by Confucius or In the nineteenth century, the German his disciples have come to be indistin- philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) guishable from Chinese culture in gen- condemned Confucius for exemplifying eral. To be Chinese, at least for the past those whom he saw as “the people thousand years, and for much of the without history.” Reformers and revolu- millennium before, is to be a child of tionaries in the twentieth century, such as Confucius, in some very deep sense. As • Confucius *Luˇ Xùn 剕䖙 (1881–1936) and *Máo China greets the twenty-fi rst century Zédoˉng ↯⋑ϰ (1893–1976), castigated with both renewed national confi dence Confucius for, they claimed, imprisoning as well as a creeping sense of cultural China in a cage of feudal archaism and crisis, the equation of China with Con- oppression. Each of these commentators fucius seems stronger than ever. remade Confucius in his own image and for his own ends—a process that contin- ues throughout the modern era, creating Early Life great heat and little light where the his- According to the earliest biographies of torical Confucius himselfSample is concerned. Confucius (which were not written un- Each mythologizer has seen Confucius til the fi rst century bce), Confucius was as a symbol of whatever he loves or born in the mid-sixth century bce to the hates about China. As the US sinologist Koˇng ᄨ family in the state of Luˇ 剕 (in and philosopher H. G. Creel has stated, what now is central and southwestern once a fi gure like Confucius has become Shandong Province). Han dynasty com- a cultural hero, stories about him tell mentators emphasized the belief that us more about the values of the storytellers the family name Kong derives from the characters fú ᄮ (to brood eggs) and yàn ➩ *People marked with an asterisk have entries in this (the migratory dark swallow said to dictionary.

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