551-479 BC
Sometimes viewed as a philosophy and sometimes as a religion.
Core question: how should we live together?
main guy: Confucius
Chinese tradition
- Confucianism teaches you how to live well in society.
- Daoism teaches you how to remain at peace beyond society.
Main works: - The Analects
Ren (Humaneness)
Li (Ritual / Proper Conduct)
Junzi (The Noble Person)
History:
Confucius may have initiated a cultural process known in the West as Confucianism, but he and those who followed him considered themselves part of a tradition, later identified by Chinese historians as the rujia, “scholarly tradition,” that had its origins two millennia previously, when the legendary sages Yao and Shun created a civilized world through moral persuasion.
Quotes:
“It is these things that cause me concern: failure to cultivate virtue, failure to go deeply into what I have learned, inability to move up to what I have heard to be right, and inability to reform myself when I have defects.”
To him, learning not only broadened his knowledge and deepened his self-awareness but also defined who he was.
what a person does in the confines of his home is politically significantw. That maxim is based on the Confucian conviction that cultivation of the self is the root of social order and that social order is the basis for political stability and enduring peace.