Philosopher · Iron Age · China

Confucius

c. 551–479 BC

Teacher of ritual and judgment in the state of Lu in the late Spring and Autumn period. The Analects are layered school texts, not a stenograph of one life.

Facts

Life: Conventional dates about 551 to 479 BC, state of Lu. Year-by-year biography is later tradition.; Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Confucius
Names: Kong Qiu; courtesy name Zhongni; Kongzi; Latinized Confucius from Kong Fuzi.; Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Confucius
Core text: The Analects (Lunyu), compiled by disciples and later schools.; Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Confucius

The record

Kong Qiu taught in Lu when Zhou kings still claimed the Mandate of Heaven and local ministers held real power. Sima Qian's continuous life story is a Han construction; early scraps in the Zuozhuan and Mencius are thinner.

The Analects praise learning, virtue in government, reciprocity, and the rectification of names. They also place kinship concealment over public accusation in the sheep-stealing case, and contain passages later readers found harsh toward women and servants.

Empires later made him orthodoxy; twentieth-century radicals smashed that orthodoxy; modern states again invoked harmony. A filing page keeps the teacher small enough to be historical.

Images

Quiet courtyard with ritual bronzes and rolled bamboo slips on a low table — transmission and order, not an imperial cult statue.

Connected

Links in both directions: what this page points to, and what points here.

CountryChina

Articles

Desk pieces that belong with this record.

2026-10-06ConfuciusThe man most empires needed was hardest to pin down while he lived. Kong Qiu of Lu, known as Zhongni to those who used his courtesy name, as Kongzi to his disciples and later ages, and as Confucius only after Jesuits Latinized Kong Fuzi, taught ritual and judgment in a world where Zhou kings still…Read

Comments

Loading comments…