Confucianism is an ancient Chinese philosophy that emphasizes social harmony which is achieved through everyone fulfilling their roles and responsibilities. Confucius taught that individuals stand in five relationships to others as sovereign-subject, father-son, elder-younger brother, husband-wife, and friend-friend. Central concepts in Confucianism include ren (humaneness), filial piety, ritual, and the ideal of the perfect gentleman who cultivates virtue and humaneness. Confucius advocated for meritocracy and taught students of all classes.

1. CONFUCIANISM
A LVA R E Z , J E A N N E I S A B E L L E C .
C O R T E Z , L E X T E R I VA N S .
D E C A S T R O , K R I S T I N E J O Y D.
D E M E S A , S H E R I M A E .
O L I V E T T I , T R I S H A M A E
R O D I L L O , M E N A R D A .
H U M S S 1 - A S A P P H I R E

2. CONFUCIUS
• Confucius, also known as Kong Qui or K’ung Fu-
tzu, was born probably in 551 B.C. (lunar
calendar) in present-day Qufu, Shandong
Province, China. Little is known of his
childhood. Records of the Historian, written by
Ssu-ma Chi’en (born 145 B.C.; died 86 B.C.)
offers the most detailed account of Confucius’
life. However, some contemporary historians are
skeptical as to the record’s accuracy, regarding
it as myth, not fact. According to Records of the
Historian, Confucius was born into a royal family
of the Chou Dynasty. Other accounts describe
him as being born into poverty. What is
undisputed about Confucius’ life is that he
existed during a time of ideological crisis in

3. CONFUCIANISM
• Confucianism, also known as Ruism, is described as tradition, a
philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of
governing, or simply a way of life. Confucianism developed from what
was later called the Hundred Schools of Thought from the teachings of
the Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 BCE), who considered
himself a retransmitter of the values of the Zhou dynasty golden age of
several centuries before. In the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE),
Confucian approaches edged out the "proto-Taoist" Huang-Lao, as the
official ideology while the emperors mixed both with the realist
techniques of Legalism. The disintegration of the Han political order in
the second century CE opened the way for the doctrines
of Buddhism and Neo-Taoism, which offered spiritual
explanations lacking in Confucianism.

4. Confucianism, the teachings of Confucius during 500 BC, has
played an important role in forming Chinese character,
behavior and way of living. (Eliot 2001; Guo 1995) Its primary
purpose is to achieve harmony, the most important social
value.
Confucianism strongly emphsizes:
• Mercy
• Social order
• Fulfillment of Responsibilities
This is achieved by everyone having well defined roles and
acting towards others in a proper way.

5. Central Ethical Principal
“Ren” is the central ethical principle, and is equivalent to the concepts love,
mercy, and humanity. It is best explicated by Confucius in the following statement: “Do
not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.” This ethical principle is further
strengthened by the Buddhist tradition that merit is accumulated by doing merciful
which leads to a better next life through reincarnation.
Five Cardinal Relations
• There are five cardinal relations (“wu lun”):
• Sovereign-Subject
• Father-Son
• Elder-Younger Brother
• Husband-Wife
• Friend-Friend
These bonds are
categorized in ways that
show respect and
obedience from one group
to the next. It is greatly
emphasized that family is
the center of everything and
comes before the individual
person.

6. Core Confucian Texts
The development of Confucianism is traced through the development of its canon. It is therefore
helpful to first list the main Confucian texts. The orthodox canon of Confucian texts, as eventually formulated
Zhu Xi, is the so-called "Four Books and Five Classics". These are:
The Four Books
• The Great Learning (Chinese: 大學; Pinyin: Dà xúe)
• The Doctrine of the Mean (Chinese: 中庸; Pinyin: Zhōngyōng)
• The Analects of Confucius (Chinese: 論語; Pinyin: Lùnyǔ)
• The Mencius (Chinese: 孟子; Pinyin: Mèngzǐ)
The Five Classics
• The Classic of Poetry (Chinese: 詩經; Pinyin: Shījīng)
• The Classic of History (Chinese: 書經; Pinyin: Shūjīng)
• The Classic of Rites (Chinese: 禮經; Pinyin: Lǐjīng)
• The Classic of Changes (Chinese: 易經; Pinyin: Yìjīng; I Ching)
• The Spring and Autumn Annals (Chinese: 春秋; Pinyin: Chūnqīu)
A sixth book, the Classic of Music (Chinese: 樂經; Pinyin: Yùejīng), is referred to but was lost by the time of
Han Dynasty.
There is a further canon known as the Thirteen Classics (Chinese: 十三經; Pinyin: ShÃsānjīng).

7. • There is considerable debate about which, if any, of these books were directly written
by Confucius himself. The main source of his quotations, the Analects, was not written
by him. As with many other spiritual leaders such as Siddhartha Gautama, Jesus, or
Socrates, our main source of Confucius' thought, the Analects, was written down by his
disciples. Some of the core canon is argued to have been written by Confucius himself,
such as the Spring and Autumn Annals. There is considerable debate about this,
however.
This factor is further complicated by the "Burning of the Books and Burying of the
Scholars", a massive suppression of dissenting thought during the Qin Dynasty, more
than two centuries after Confucius' death. The emperor Qin Shi Huang destroyed a
great number of books, possibly destroying other books written by Confucius or his
disciples in the process.
The current canon of Four Books and Five Classics was formulated by Zhu Xi. Many
versions contain his extensive commentaries on the books. The fact that his specific
version of the Confucian canon became the core canon can be seen as an example of
his influence in Confucianism. Other books are not included in the current canon but
once were. The major example is the Xun Zi.

8. CORE CONCEPTS
Rites
• Lead the people with administrative injunctions and put them in their place with penal
and they will avoid punishments but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with
excellence and put them in their place through roles and ritual practices, and in addition
developing a sense of shame, they will order themselves harmoniously. (Analects II, 3)
Relationships
• One theme central to Confucianism is that of relationships, and the differing duties arising
from the different status one held in relation to others. Individuals are held to
simultaneously stand in different degrees of relationship with different people, namely, as
junior in relation to their parents and elders, and as a senior in relation to their children,
younger siblings, students, and others. While juniors are considered in Confucianism to
strong duties of reverence and service to their seniors, seniors also have duties of
benevolence and concern toward juniors. This theme consistently manifests itself in many
aspects of East Asian culture even to this day, with extensive filial duties on the part of
children toward parents and elders, and great concern of parents toward their children.

9. CORE CONCEPTS
Filial Piety
• Filial piety, filiality, or filial devotion (xià o, 孝) is considered among the greatest of virtues
and must be shown towards both the living and the dead. The term "filial", meaning "of a
child", denotes the respect and obedience that a child, originally a son, should show to
parents, especially to his father. This relationship was extended by analogy to a series of
relationships or five cardinal relationships (五伦 Wǔlún):
Loyalty
• Loyalty is the equivalent of filial piety on a different plane, between ruler and minister. It
was particularly relevant for the social class to which most of Confucius' students
because the only way for an ambitious young scholar to make his way in the Confucian
Chinese world was to enter a ruler's civil service. Like filial piety, however, loyalty was often
subverted by the autocratic regimes of China. Confucius had advocated a sensitivity to
realpolitik of the class relations that existed in his time; he did not propose that "might
makes right", but that a superior who had received the "Mandate of Heaven" should be
obeyed because of his moral rectitude.
In later ages, however, emphasis was placed more on the obligations of the ruled to the
ruler, and less on the ruler's obligations to the ruled.

10. CORE CONCEPTS
Humaneness
• Confucius was concerned with people's individual development, which he maintained
place within the context of human relationships. Ritual and filial piety are the ways in
one should act towards others from an underlying attitude of humaneness. Confucius'
concept of humanenes is probably best expressed in the Confucian version of the Golden
Rule phrased in the negative: "Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to
you".
The Perfect Gentleman
• The term "Jūnzǐ" (君子) is a term crucial to classical Confucianism. Literally meaning "son
a ruler", "prince", or "noble", the ideal of a "gentleman," "proper man," or "perfect man" is
that for which Confucianism exhorts all people to strive. A succinct description of the
"perfect man" is one who "combine(s) the qualities of saint, scholar, and gentleman" (CE).
(In modern times, the masculine bias in Confucianism may have weakened, but the same
term is still used; the masculine translation in English is also traditional and still frequently
used.) A hereditary elitism was bound up with the concept, and gentlemen were
to act as moral guides to the rest of society. They were to:
– cultivate themselves morally;
– participate in the correct performance of ritual;
– show filial piety and loyalty where these are due; and
– cultivate humaneness.

11. CORE CONCEPTS
Governing
• "To govern by virtue, let us compare it to the North Star: it stays in its place, while the
myriad stars wait upon it." (Analects II, 1)
Another key Confucian concept is that in order to govern others one must first govern
oneself. When developed sufficiently, the king's personal virtue spreads beneficent
influence throughout the kingdom. This idea is developed further in the Great Learning
and is tightly linked with the Taoist concept of wu wei: the less the king does, the more
that is done. By being the "calm center" around which the kingdom turns, the king
allows everything to function smoothly and avoids having to tamper with the individual
parts of the whole.
This idea may be traced back to early shamanistic beliefs, such as that of the king
(wang, 王) being the axle between the sky, human beings and the Earth. (The character
itself shows the three levels of the universe, united by a single line.) Another
complementary view is that this idea may have been used by ministers and counselors
to deter aristocratic whims that would otherwise be to the detriment of the population.

12. CORE CONCEPTS
• Meritocracy
• "In teaching, there should be no distinction of classes."
-(Analects XV, 39)
• Although Confucius claimed that he never invented anything but was only
transmitting ancient knowledge, he did produce a number of new ideas. Many
western admirers such as Voltaire and H.G. Creel point to the (then) revolutionary
idea of replacing the nobility of blood with one of virtue. Jūnzǐ (君子), which had
meant "noble man" before Confucius' work, slowly assumed a new connotation in the
course of his writings, rather as "gentleman" did in English. A virtuous plebeian who
cultivates his qualities can be a "gentleman", while a shameless son of the king is only
a "small man". That he allowed students of different classes to be his disciples is a
clear demonstration that he fought against the feudal structures in Chinese society.