Confucius

Chinese teacher of virtue and ritual — ren, li and the junzi

State of Lu · China (State of Lu) · d. 28 September 551 BC (traditional date; Zou, State of Lu) — 479 BC (Qufu, State of Lu)

A teacher of the State of Lu, known in the West by the Latinised form of Kong Qiu or Kongzi, who tried to renew a collapsing social order through personal virtue rather than force. He taught ren (humaneness), li (ritual propriety) and the ideal of the junzi, the cultivated person. He left no book of his own; the Analects was compiled by followers after his death. His ethics have shaped East Asian life for over two millennia.

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Record

Life: 28 September 551 BC (traditional date; Zou, State of Lu) — 479 BC (Qufu, State of Lu)
Country: China (State of Lu)
Period: Ancient
Affiliation: State of Lu
Areas: Ethics, Political philosophy, Philosophy of education
Major works: The Analects / Lunyu (compiled by followers, c. 5th century BC)
Spring and Autumn Annals / Chunqiu (traditionally attributed, c. 5th century BC)
Classic of Poetry / Shijing (traditionally edited)
Book of Documents / Shujing (traditionally edited)
Book of Rites / Liji (traditional attribution)
Classic of Changes / Yijing (commentaries traditionally attributed)
Key concepts: Ren (humaneness), Li (ritual propriety), Junzi (the exemplary person), Xiao (filial piety), Yi (righteousness), Zhengming (rectification of names)
Influenced by: The Duke of Zhou, the early Zhou ritual tradition, the Book of Documents and Book of Poetry, the sage-kings Yao and Shun
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Confucius
Encyclopædia Britannica, Confucius
Wikipedia, Confucius

Stories

Conferences

Seoul, Qufu, Nizhny Novgorod, Saitama, Naples, Paris: a diary of philosophy's other October

Six meetings from the first half of October, five of them outside the Anglophone circuit: a Korean alumni body fighting to revive a closed Indian philosophy department, Confucians on artificial intelligence at Qufu, 450 Russian scholars on the university's mission, a German philosopher on sex and silence near Tokyo, Naples's free autumn seminars and a French stocktaking of environmental philosophy.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Confucius

Newsroom9 October 2026

This Day in Philosophy

Confucius

Record

Stories

Seoul, Qufu, Nizhny Novgorod, Saitama, Naples, Paris: a diary of philosophy's other October

Matteo Ricci, who carried Euclid to Beijing and Confucius to Rome: 6 October

Germany's philosophers open the Nazi file; China orders an 'autonomous' philosophy

Confucius: how a good person is formed and a good society built