Confucius (551-479 BC): The Life and Teachings of Kong Qiu

Confucius, born Kong Qiu in the small state of Lu in 551 BC and died there in 479 BC, was a teacher and would-be statesman whose ideas became the foundation of Chinese ethics and government. He failed to win lasting political office, but his disciples recorded his sayings in the Analects, and his teaching on humaneness, ritual, learning and good government shaped China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam for more than two thousand years.

The world of Confucius

Confucius lived in the late Spring and Autumn period, centuries after the fall of the Western Zhou had left the Zhou kings with little real power. The regional states fought one another, and within many states the ruling dukes had lost control to great ministerial families. In Lu, three branches of the ducal house, the Jisun, Mengsun and Shusun, held most of the land and armies.

To Confucius this disorder showed that the moral and ritual order created by the founders of the Zhou, above all the Duke of Zhou, had broken down. He saw his life’s task as recovering and passing on that tradition.

Early life

Most of what we know about Confucius’s life comes from the Analects and from a biography in Sima Qian’s Shiji, written around 100 BC and mixing reliable material with legend. Confucius was born in Zou, near Qufu, into a family of the lower aristocracy. His father, Shuliang He, was an old soldier who died when Confucius was a small child, and he was raised by his mother, Yan Zhengzai, in modest circumstances.

As a young man he held minor posts, said to include keeping the granaries and looking after livestock. In the Analects he remembers that at fifteen he set his heart on learning. He married at about nineteen and had a son, Kong Li, and at least one daughter. By his thirties he had a reputation as an expert in ritual and the classics and had begun to take students.

Office in Lu and years of travel

Confucius wanted to serve a ruler who would put his ideas into practice. Around 500 BC, in his early fifties, he is said to have reached high office in Lu, traditionally as minister of crime. Sources credit him with defending Lu’s interests at a meeting with the powerful state of Qi at Jiagu in 500 BC.

In about 498 BC he backed a plan to dismantle the walled strongholds of the three great families, to restore the authority of the duke. The plan only partly succeeded, and Confucius’s position became difficult. Around 497 BC he left Lu. Later tradition blamed a gift of dancing girls from Qi, which distracted the ruler of Lu from government, but the deeper problem was the opposition of the powerful families.

For roughly fourteen years Confucius travelled with a group of disciples through neighbouring states, including Wey, Song, Chen and Cai, looking for a ruler who would employ him. The journeys were often uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous. The sources mention that he was mistaken for an enemy and surrounded at Kuang, threatened by an official named Huan Tui in Song, and left short of food between Chen and Cai.

Confucius’s disciples remembered these years as a test of character. When followers complained of hunger and danger, he told them that the exemplary person stays firm in hardship, while the petty person loses all restraint. Some rulers received him with respect and asked his advice, but none was willing to hand real authority to a man who demanded that power be used for moral ends.

No ruler gave him real power. In 484 BC, aged about 67, he was invited back to Lu, where he spent his last years teaching and, according to tradition, studying and editing the old texts.

Teacher and disciples

Confucius was one of the first people in China known to have taught as a private teacher rather than as an official tutor to a noble household, and he accepted students from humble backgrounds as well as aristocrats. Later tradition says he had about 3,000 students, of whom 72 mastered his teaching; the numbers are symbolic, but the Analects names dozens of disciples.

Among the best known were Yan Hui, his favourite, whose early death left him grief-stricken; Zilu, a bold former soldier who was killed in a coup in Wey in 480 BC; and Zigong, an able diplomat and merchant. Confucius died in 479 BC and was buried north of Qufu. His disciples are said to have mourned at the grave for three years, and Zigong for six.

Key ideas

Confucius did not set out a formal system, and his views must be pieced together from short conversations. Several ideas stand out.

• Ren (humaneness): the central virtue of goodness towards others. Asked for a single rule to live by, he answered with what is often called the Silver Rule: do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.
• Li (ritual propriety): the rites, manners and customs that give shape to social life, from sacrifices to the ancestors to everyday courtesy. Practised sincerely, they train character.
• The junzi (exemplary person): originally a “lord’s son”, the term was turned by Confucius into a moral ideal, a person noble in conduct rather than by birth.
• Filial piety (xiao): respect and care for parents and elders, the root of a well-ordered society.
• Government by virtue: rulers should lead by moral example, so that people follow willingly, rather than relying on laws and punishments.
• Rectification of names: titles must match reality, so that a ruler acts as a ruler and a father as a father.
• Learning: constant study of the past and reflection on one’s own conduct, which Confucius saw as the path to self-improvement.

These ideas were closely connected. For Confucius, a person became good not through a sudden revelation but through years of practice: learning the rites, reflecting on the past, serving parents and treating others with respect. Good government grew from the same root, since a ruler who cultivated himself would inspire his ministers and people to do the same.

The Analects

The Lunyu, known in English as the Analects, is a collection of about 500 short passages arranged in 20 books. It was assembled after Confucius’s death by disciples and later followers, and scholars believe different books date from different periods, possibly over a century or more. It was one of several versions in circulation in the Han dynasty before a standard text was established.

Later tradition also credited Confucius with editing the Five Classics, including the Book of Songs and the Book of Documents, and with writing the Spring and Autumn Annals of Lu. Modern historians doubt most of these claims, though he clearly taught from the older texts.

Myths and facts

Myth: Confucius founded a new religion. Fact: he presented himself as a transmitter of older traditions rather than an innovator, and he said little about gods or the afterlife. The cult of Confucius developed long after his death.

Myth: Confucius wrote the Analects and other books. Fact: no surviving work can be shown to have been written by him. The Analects was compiled by others.

Myth: the jokey sayings beginning “Confucius say” in English are his. Fact: these are modern Western inventions with no connection to Chinese sources.

Myth: Confucius met and debated Laozi. Fact: stories of a meeting appear in later texts, including the Shiji and the Zhuangzi, but historians regard them as legend; even Laozi’s own historicity is uncertain.

Timeline

• 551 BC: Kong Qiu is born at Zou, near Qufu, in the state of Lu.
• c. 532 BC: he marries; his son Kong Li is born soon afterwards.
• c. 501-498 BC: he holds office in Lu, reportedly as minister of crime.
• 500 BC: meeting of Lu and Qi at Jiagu.
• c. 497 BC: he leaves Lu and begins about fourteen years of travel.
• 484 BC: he returns to Lu and devotes himself to teaching.
• c. 481 BC: death of his favourite disciple Yan Hui.
• 479 BC: Confucius dies and is buried north of Qufu.
• 136 BC: under Emperor Wu of Han, official posts are created for scholars of the Five Classics.

Legacy

During the Warring States period Confucius’s followers were one school among many. Mencius argued that human nature is good, while Xunzi stressed the need for education and ritual to correct it. Under the Qin they were persecuted, but under the Han dynasty, especially Emperor Wu (reigned 141-87 BC), Confucian learning became the basis of state education. The Sui dynasty founded the imperial examinations, traditionally dated to AD 605, which tested candidates largely on the Confucian classics and continued until 1905.

The Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200) gave the tradition a new metaphysical framework, now called Neo-Confucianism, and grouped the Analects with three other texts as the Four Books, the core of education for centuries. Confucian ideas spread to Korea, Japan and Vietnam, where they shaped government, family life and education.

In Europe, Jesuit missionaries translated Confucian texts into Latin, most famously in Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, published in Paris in 1687, and Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire admired Confucius as a moral philosopher without revealed religion. In 20th-century China he was attacked by reformers of the May Fourth Movement and again during the Cultural Revolution, especially in the campaign to “Criticise Lin Biao, Criticise Confucius” of 1973-1974. Since the 1980s his reputation in China has largely recovered.

Why it matters

Few individuals have influenced so many people for so long. Confucius’s picture of a society held together by family duty, mutual respect, education and moral leadership became the backbone of the Chinese state and of East Asian culture, and it remains part of debates about ethics and government today.