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Confucius ( Chinese: pinyin: kong fuz; wade-giles: K’ung-fu-tzu), lit. “Master kung<” September 28, 551 BCE – 479 BCE) was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced chines, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese thought and life,

His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, jutice and sincerity. These values gained prominence in China over other doctrines, such as Legalism or Taoism during the Han Dynasty (206 BC220 AD). Confucius’ thoughts have been developed into a system of philosophy known as Confucianism. It was introduced to Europe by the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who was the first to Latinise the name as “Confucius.”

His teachings may be found in the Analects of Confucius, a collection of “brief aphoristic fragments”, which was compiled many years after his death. Modern historians do not believe that any specific documents can be said to have been written by Confucius, but for nearly 2,000 year he was though to be the editor or author of all the five classics such as the classic of rites (editor), and the  Spring and Autumn Annals (author);

Philosophy

Although Confucianism is often followed in religious manner by the Chinese, arguments continue over whether it is a religion. Confucianism lack an afterlife, its te4xts express complex and ambivalent views concerning deities, and it is relatively unconcerned with some spiritual matters often considered essential to religious thought, such as the nature of the soul.

Confucius’ principles gained wide acceptance primarily because of their basis in common Chinese tradition and belief. He championed strong familial loyalty, ancestor worship, respect of elders by their children ( and, according to later interpreters, of husbands by their), and the family as a basis for an ideal government. He expressed the well-known principle, “Don not do to others what you do not want done to yourself” (similar to the Golden Rule). He also looked nostalgically upon earlier days, and urged the Chinese, particularly those with political power, to model themselves on earlier examples. “the superior man seeks for it in himself. The petty man seeks for its in others”

Because no texts survive that are demonstrably authored by Confucius, and the ideas associated with him most closely were elaborated in writings that accrued over the period between his death and the foundation of the first Chinese empire in 221 BCE many scholars are very cautious about attributing specific assertion to Confucius himself

Teachings

In the analects, Confucius presents himself as a “transmitter who invented nothing”. He put ht greatest emphases on the importance of study, and it is ht Chinese character for study (or learning) that opens the txt. In this respect, hi is seen by Chinese people as the Greatest Master. Far from trying ot build a systematic theory of life an society of establish a formalism of rites, he wanted his disciples to think deeply for themselves and relentlessly study the outside world, mostly through the old scriptures and by relating the moral problems of the present of past political events (like the Annals) or past expressions of feelings by common people and reflective members of the elite (preserved in the poems of the Book of Odes)

In times of division, chaos, and endless wars between feudal states, he wanted to restore the Mandate of Heaven “??” that could unify the “world” (i.e. China) and bestow peace and prosperity on the people. Because his vision of personal and social perfections was framed as a revival of the ordered society of earlier times, Confucius is often considered a great proponent of conservatism, but a closer look at what he proposes often shows that he used (and perhaps twisted) past institutions and rites to push a new political agenda of his own: a revival of a unified royal state, whose rulers devoted to their parentage; these would be rulers devoted to their people, reaching for personal and social perfection. Such a ruler would spread his won virtues to the people instead of imposing proper behavior with laws and rules.