At different times in Chinese history, Confucius (trad. 551–479BCE) has been portrayed as a teacher, advisor, editor, philosopher,reformer, and prophet. The name Confucius, a Latinized combination ofthe surname Kong 孔 with an honorific suffix“Master” (fuzi 夫子), has also cometo be used as a global metonym for different aspects of traditionalEast Asian society. This association of Confucius with many of thefoundational concepts and cultural practices in East Asia, and hiscasting as a progenitor of “Eastern” thought in EarlyModern Europe, make him arguably the most significant thinker in EastAsian history. Yet while early sources preserve biographical detailsabout Master Kong, dialogues and stories about him in early texts liketheAnalects (Lunyu 論語) reflect adiversity of representations and concerns, strands of which were laterdifferentially selected and woven together by interpreters intent onappropriating or condemning particular associated views andtraditions. This means that the philosophy of Confucius ishistorically underdetermined, and it is possible to trace multiplesets of coherent doctrines back to the early period, each grounded indifferent sets of classical sources and schools of interpretationlinked to his name. After introducing key texts and interpreters,then, this entry explores three principal interconnected areas ofconcern: a psychology of ritual that describes how ideal social formsregulate individuals, an ethics rooted in the cultivation of a set ofpersonal virtues, and a theory of society and politics based onnormative views of the family and the state.

Each of these areas has unique features that were developed by laterthinkers, some of whom have been identified as“Confucians”, even though that term is not well-defined.The Chinese termRu (儒) predates Confucius, andconnoted specialists in ritual and music, and later experts inClassical Studies.Ru is routinely translated into English as“Confucian”. Yet “Confucian” is also sometimesused in English to refer to the sage kings of antiquity who werecredited with key cultural innovations by theRu, tosacrificial practices at temples dedicated to Confucius and relatedfigures, and to traditional features of East Asian social organizationlike the “bureaucracy” or “meritocracy”. Forthis reason, the term Confucian will be avoided in this entry, whichwill focus on the philosophical aspects of the thought of Confucius(the Latinization used for “Master Kong” following theEnglish-language convention) primarily, but not exclusively, throughthe lens of theAnalects.

• 1. Confucius as Chinese Philosopher and Symbol of Traditional Culture
• 2. Sources for Confucius’s Life and Thought
• 3. Ritual Psychology and Social Values
• 4. Virtues and Character Formation
• 5. The Family and the State
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Confucius as Chinese Philosopher and Symbol of Traditional Culture

Because of the wide range of texts and traditions identified with him,choices about which version of Confucius is authoritative have changedover time, reflecting particular political and social priorities. Theportrait of Confucius as philosopher is, in part, the product of aseries of modern cross-cultural interactions. In Imperial China,Confucius was identified with interpretations of the classics andmoral guidelines for administrators, and therefore also with trainingthe scholar-officials that populated the bureaucracy. At the sametime, he was closely associated with the transmission of the ancientsacrificial system, and he himself received ritual offerings intemples found in all major cities. By the Han (202 BCE–220 CE),Confucius was already an authoritative figure in a number of differentcultural domains, and the early commentaries show that reading textsassociated with him about history, ritual, and proper behavior wasimportant to rulers. The first commentaries to theAnalectswere written by tutors to the crown prince (e.g., Zhang Yu張禹, d. 5 BCE), and select experts in the “FiveClassics” (Wujing 五經) were givenscholastic positions in the government. The authority of Confucius wassuch that during the late Han and the following period of disunity,his imprimatur was used to validate commentaries to the classics,encoded political prophecies, and esoteric doctrines.

By the Song period (960–1279), the post-Buddhist revival knownas “Neo-Confucianism” anchored readings of the dialoguesof Confucius to a dualism between “cosmic pattern”(li 理) and “pneumas” (qi氣), a distinctive moral cosmology that marked the tradition offfrom those of Buddhism and Daoism. The Neo-Confucian interpretation oftheAnalects by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200)integrated the study of theAnalects into a curriculum basedon the “Four Books” (Sishu 四書) thatbecame widely influential in China, Korea, and Japan. The pre-modernConfucius was closely associated with good government, moraleducation, proper ritual performance, and the reciprocal obligationsthat people in different roles owed each other in such contexts.

When Confucius became a character in the intellectual debates ofeighteenth century Europe, he became identified as China’s firstphilosopher. Jesuit missionaries in China sent back accounts ofancient China that portrayed Confucius as inspired by Natural Theologyto pursue the good, which they considered a marked contrast with the“idolatries” of Buddhism and Daoism. Back in Europe,intellectuals read missionary descriptions and translations of Chineseliterature, and writers like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz(1646–1716) and Nicolas-Gabriel Clerc (1726–1798) praisedConfucius for his discovery of universal natural laws through reason.Enlightenment writers celebrated the moral philosophy of Confucius forits independence from the dogmatic influence of the Church. While attimes he was criticized as an atheist or an advocate of despotism,many Europeans viewed Confucius as a moral philosopher whose approachwas in line with rationalism and humanism.

Today, many descriptions combine these several ways of positioningConfucius, but the modern interpretation of his views has beencomplicated by a tendency to look back on him as an emblem of the“traditional culture” of China. In the eyes of some latenineteenth and twentieth century reformers who sought to fortify Chinaagainst foreign influence, the moral teachings of Confucius had thepotential to play the same role that they perceived Christianity haddone in the modernization of Europe and America, or serve as the basisof a more secular spiritual renewal that would transform thepopulation into citizens of a modern nation-state. In the twentiethcentury, the pursuit of modernization also led to the rejection ofConfucius by some reformers in the May Fourth and New Culturemovements, as well as by many in the Communist Party, who identifiedthe traditional hierarchies implicit in his social and politicalphilosophy with the social and economic inequalities that they soughtto eliminate. In these modern debates, it is not just the status ofConfucius in traditional China that made him such a potent symbol. Hisspecific association with the curriculum of the system of education ofscholar-officials in the imperial government, and of traditional moralvalues more generally, connected him to the aspects of tradition worthpreserving, or the things that held China back from modernization,depending on one’s point of view.

As legacies of Confucius tied to traditional ritual roles and thepre-modern social structure were criticized by modernizers, a view ofConfucius as a moral philosopher, already common in European readings,gained ascendancy in East Asia. The American-educated historian Hu Shi胡適 (1891–1962) wrote an early influential historyof Chinese philosophy, beginning with Laozi 老子 andConfucius, explicitly on the model of existing histories of Westernphilosophy. In it, Hu compared what he called the conservative aspectof the philosophy of Confucius to Socrates and Plato. Since at leastthat time, Confucius has been central to most histories of Chinesephilosophy.

2. Sources for Confucius’s Life and Thought

Biographical treatments of Confucius, beginning with the“Hereditary House of Confucius” (Kongzi shijia孔子世家), a chapter of Sima Qian’s司馬遷 (c.145–c.86 BCE)Records of theGrand Historian (Shiji 史記), were initiallybased on information from compilations of independently circulatingdialogues and prose accounts. Tying particular elements of hisphilosophy to the life experiences of Confucius is a risky andpotentially circular exercise, since many of the details of hisbiography were first recorded in instructive anecdotes linked to theexpression of didactic messages. Nevertheless, since Sima Qian’stime, the biography of Confucius has been intimately linked with theinterpretation of his philosophy, and so this section begins with abrief treatment of traditional tropes about his family background,official career, and teaching of 72 disciples, before turning to thedialogue and prose accounts upon which early biographers like SimaQian drew.

Confucius was born in the domain of Zou, in modern Shandong Province,south of the larger kingdom of Lu. A date of 551 BCE is given for hisbirth in theGongyang Commentary (Gongyang zhuan公羊傳) to the classicSpring and AutumnAnnals (Chunqiu 春秋), which places him inthe period when the influence of the Zhou polity was declining, andregional domains were becoming independent states. His father, whocame from Lu, was descended from a noble clan that included, in SimaQian’s telling, several people known for their modesty andritual mastery. His father died when Confucius was a small child,leaving the family poor but with some social status, and as a youngman Confucius became known for expertise in the classical ritual andceremonial forms of the Zhou. In adulthood, Confucius travelled to Luand began a career as an official in the employ of aristocraticfamilies.

Different sources identify Confucius as having held a large number ofdifferent offices in Lu. Entries in theZuo Commentary(Zuozhuan 左傳) to theSpring and AutumnAnnals for 509 and 500 BCE identify him as Director ofCorrections (Sikou 司寇), and say he was chargedwith assisting the ruler with the rituals surrounding a visitingdignitary from the state of Qi, respectively. TheMencius(Mengzi 孟子), a text centered on a figuregenerally regarded as the most important early developer of thethought of Confucius, Mencius (trad. 372–289 BCE), saysConfucius was Foodstuffs Scribe (Weili 委吏) andScribe in the Field (Chengtian 乘田), involvedwith managing the accounting at the granary and keeping the books onthe pasturing of different animals (11.14).^[1] In the first biography, Sima Qian mentions these offices, but thenadds a second set of more powerful positions in Lu including Steward(Zai 宰) managing an estate in the district of Zhongdu,Minister of Works (Sikong 司空), and even actingChancellor (Xiang 相). Following his departure from Lu,different stories place Confucius in the kingdoms of Wei, Song, Chen,Cai, and Chu. Sima Qian crafted these stories into a serial narrativeof rulers failing to appreciate the moral worth of Confucius, whosehigh standards forced him to continue to travel in search of anincorrupt ruler.

Late in life, Confucius left service and turned to teaching. In SimaQian’s time, the sheer number of independently circulating textscentering on dialogues that Confucius had with his disciples led thebiographer to include a separate chapter on “The arrangedtraditions of the disciples of Confucius” (Zhong Ni diziliezhuan 仲尼弟子列傳). Hisaccount identifies 77 direct disciples, whom Sima Qian says Confuciustrained in ritual practice and theClassic of Odes(Shijing 詩經),Classic of Documents(Shujing 書經, also calledDocuments of thePredecessors orShangshu 尚書),Recordsof Ritual (Liji 禮記) andClassic ofMusic (Yuejing 樂經). Altogether, some 3000students received some form of this training regimen. SimaQian’s editorial practice in systematizing dialogues wasinclusive, and the fact that he was able to collect so muchinformation some three centuries after the death of Confuciustestifies to the latter’s importance in the Han period. Lookedat in a different way, the prodigious numbers of direct disciples andstudents of Confucius, and the inconsistent accounts of the offices inwhich he served, may also be due to a proliferation of textsassociating the increasingly authoritative figure of Confucius withdivergent regional or interpretive traditions during those interveningcenturies.

The many sources of quotations and dialogues of Confucius, bothtransmitted and recently excavated, provide a wealth of materialsabout the philosophy of Confucius, but an incomplete sense of whichmaterials are authoritative. The last millennium has seen thedevelopment of a conventional view that materials preserved in thetwenty chapters of the transmittedAnalects most accuratelyrepresent Confucius’s original teachings. This derives in partfrom a second century CE account by Ban Gu 班固(39–92 CE) of the composition of theAnalects thatdescribes the work as having been compiled by first and secondgeneration disciples of Confucius and then transmitted privately forcenturies, making it arguably the oldest stratum of extant Confuciussources. In the centuries since, some scholars have come up withvariations on this basic account, such as Liu Baonan’s劉寳楠 (1791–1855) view inCorrectedMeanings of the Analects (Lunyu zhengyi論語正義) that each chapter was written by adifferent disciple. Recently, several centuries of doubts aboutinternal inconsistencies in the text and a lack of references to thetitle in early sources were marshaled by classicist Zhu Weizheng朱維錚 in an influential 1986 article which arguedthat the lack of attributed quotations from theAnalects, andof explicit references to it, prior to the second century BCE, meantthat its traditional status as the oldest stratum of the teachings ofConfucius was undeserved. Since then a number of historians, includingMichael J. Hunter, have systematically shown that writers started todemonstrate an acute interest in theAnalects only in thelate second and first centuries BCE, suggesting that otherConfucius-related records from those centuries should also beconsidered as potentially authoritative sources. Some have suggestedthis critical approach to sources is an attack on the historicity ofConfucius, but a more reasonable description is that it is an attackon the authoritativeness of theAnalects that broadens anddiversifies the sources that may be used to reconstruct the historicalConfucius.

Expanding the corpus of Confucius quotations and dialogues beyond theAnalects, then, requires attention to three additional typesof sources. First, dialogues preserved in transmitted sources like theRecords of Ritual, theElder Dai’s Records ofRitual (DaDai Liji 大戴禮記),and Han collections like theFamily Discussions of Confucius(Kongzi jiayu 孔子家語) contain alarge number of diverse teachings. Second, quotations attached to theinterpretation of passages in the classics preserved in works like theZuo Commentary to theSpring and Autumn Annals, orHan’s Intertextual Commentary on the Odes (Han Shiwaizhuan 韓詩外傳) are particularly richsources for readings of history and poetry. Finally, a number ofrecently archaeologically recovered texts from the Han period andbefore have also expanded the corpus.

Newly discovered sources include three recently excavated versions oftexts with parallel to the transmittedAnalects. These arethe 1973 excavation at the Dingzhou site in Hebei Province dating to55 BCE; the 1990’s excavation of a partial parallel version atJongbaekdong in Pyongyang, North Korea, dating to between 62 and 45BCE; and most recently the 2011–2015 excavation of the tomb ofthe Marquis of Haihun in Jiangxi Province dating to 59 BCE. The Haihunexcavation is particularly important because it is thought to containthe two lost chapters of what Han period sources identify as a22-chapter version of theAnalects that circulated in thestate of Qi, the titles of which appear to be “Understanding theWay” (Zhi dao 智道) and “Questionsabout Jade” (Wen yu 問玉). While the HaihunAnalects has yet to be published, the content of the lostchapters overlaps with a handful of fragments dating to the late firstcentury BCE that were found at the Jianshui Jinguan site in Jintacounty in Gansu Province in 1973. All in all, these finds confirm thesudden wide circulation of theAnalects in the middle of thefirst century BCE.

Previously unknown Confucius dialogues and quotations have also beenunearthed. The Dingzhou site also yielded texts given the titles“Sayings of the Ru” (Rujiazhe yan儒家者言) and “Duke Ai asked about thefive kinds of righteousness” (Aigong wen wuyi哀公問五義). A significantly differenttext also given the name “Sayings of the Ru” was found in1977 in a Han tomb at Fuyang in Anhui Province. Several texts datingto 168 BCE recording statements by Confucius about theClassic ofChanges (Yijing 易經) were excavated fromthe Mawangdui site in Hunan Province in 1973. Additionally, a numberof Warring States period dialogical texts centered on particulardisciples, and a text with interpretative comments by Confucius on theClassic of Poetry given the name “Confucius discussestheOdes” (Kongzi shilun孔子詩論), were looted from tombs in the1990s, sold on the black market, and made their way to the ShanghaiMuseum. The 59 BCE tomb of the Marquis of Haihun also contains anumber of previously unknown Confucius dialogues and quotations onritual and filial piety, along with materials that overlap withsections of transmitted texts including theAnalects,Records of Ritual and theElder Dai’s Records ofRitual. Another unprovenanced manuscript, now curated by AnhuiUniversity, “Zhong Ni said” (Zhong Ni yue仲尼曰) has around two dozen sayings, seven of whichoverlap with the modernAnalects. Most recently, initialreports about a 2021 excavation at Wangjiazui 王家嘴in Hubei province of an unknown number of sayings entitled“Kongzi said,” (Kongzi yue孔子曰) indicate it only partially overlaps with theAnalects. These new finds suggest that a larger number ofsayings attributed to Kongzi once circulated together, with certainones being selected out for inclusion in works like theRecords ofRitual and theAnalects.

Some excavated texts, like the pre-Han period “Thicket ofSayings” (Yucong 語叢) apothegms excavatedat the Guodian site in Hubei Province in 1993, contain fragments oftheAnalects in circulation without attribution to Confucius.Transmitted materials also show some of the quotations attributed toConfucius in theAnalects in the mouths of other historicalfigures. The fluidity and diversity of Confucius-related materials incirculation prior to the fixing of theAnalects text in thesecond century BCE, suggest that theAnalects itself, withits keen interest in ritual, personal ethics, and politics, may wellhave been in part a topical selection from a larger and more diverseset of available Confucius-related materials. In other words, therewere already multiple topical foci prior to any horizon by which wecan definitively deem any single focus to be authoritative. It is forthis reason that the essential core of the teachings of Confucius ishistorically underdetermined, and the correct identification of thecore teachings is still avidly debated. The following sections treatthree key aspects of the philosophy of Confucius, each different butall interrelated, found throughout many of these diverse sets ofsources: a theory of how ritual and musical performance functioned topromote unselfishness and train emotions, advice on how to inculcate aset of personal virtues to prepare people to behave morally indifferent domains of their lives, and a social and politicalphilosophy that abstracted classical ideals of proper conduct infamily and official contexts to apply to more general contexts.

3. Ritual Psychology and Social Values

TheRecords of Ritual, theAnalects, and numerousHan collections portray Confucius as being deeply concerned with theproper performance of ritual and music. In such works, the descriptionof the attitudes and affect of the performer became the foundation ofa ritual psychology in which proper performance was key to reformingdesires and beginning to develop moral dispositions. Confucius soughtto preserve the Zhou ritual system, and theorized about how ritual andmusic inculcated social roles, limited desires and transformedcharacter.

Many biographies begin their description of his life with a story ofConfucius at an early age performing rituals, reflecting accounts andstatements that demonstrate his prodigious mastery of ritual andmusic. The archaeological record shows that one legacy of the Zhouperiod into which Confucius was born was a system of sumptuaryregulations that encoded social status. Another of these legacies wasancestral sacrifice, a means to demonstrate people’s reverencefor their ancestors while also providing a way to ask the spirits toassist them or to guarantee them protection from harm. TheAnalects describes the ritual mastery of Confucius inreceiving guests at a noble’s home (10.3), and in carrying outsacrifices (10.8, 15.1). He plays the stone chimes (14.39),distinguishes between proper and improper music (15.11, 17.18), andextols and explains theClassic of Odes to his disciples(1.15, 2.2, 8.3, 16.13, 17.9). This mastery of classical ritual andmusical forms is an important reason Confucius said he “followedZhou” (3.14). While he might alter a detail of a ritual out offrugality (9.3), Confucius insists on adherence to the letter of therites, as when his disciple Zi Gong 子貢 sought tosubstitute another animal for a sheep in a seasonal sacrifice, saying“though you care about the sheep, I care about the ritual”(3.17). It was in large part this adherence to Zhou period culturalforms, or to what Confucius reconstructed them to be, that has ledmany in the modern period to label him a traditionalist.

Where Confucius clearly innovated was in his rationale for performingthe rites and music. Historian Yan Buke 閻步克 hasargued that the early Confucian (Ru) tradition began from theoffice of the “Music master” (Yueshi樂師) described in theRitual of Zhou (ZhouLi 周禮). Yan’s view is that since theseofficials were responsible for teaching the rites, music, and theClassic of Odes, it was their combined expertise thatdeveloped into the particular vocation that shaped the outlook ofConfucius. Early discussions of ritual in the Zhou classics oftenexplained ritual in terms of ado ut des view of makingofferings to receive benefits. By contrast, early discussions betweenConfucius and his disciples described benefits of ritual performancethat went beyond the propitiation of spirits, rewards from theancestors, or the maintenance of the social or cosmic order. Insteadof emphasizing goods that were external to the performer, these worksstressed the value of the associated interior psychological states ofthe practitioner. InAnalects 3.26, Confucius condemns theperformance of ritual without reverence (jing 敬). Healso condemns views of ritual that focus only on the offerings, orviews of music that focus only on the instruments (17.11). Passagesfrom theRecords of Ritual explain that Confucius wouldrather have an excess of reverence than an excess of ritual(“Tangong, shang” 檀弓上), andthat reverence is the most important aspect of mourning rites(“Zaji, xia” 雜記下). Thisemphasis on the importance of an attitude of reverence became thesalient distinction between performing ritual in a rote manner, andperforming it in the proper affective state. Another passage from theRecords of Ritual says the difference between how an idealgentleman and a lesser person cares for a parent is that the gentlemanis reverent when he does it (“Fangji”坊記, cf.Analects 2.7). In contexts concerningboth ritual and filial piety (xiao 孝), the affectivestate behind the action is arguably more important than theaction’s consequences. As Philip J. Ivanhoe has written, ritualand music are not just an indicator of values in the sense that theseexamples show, but also an inculcator of them.

In this ritual psychology, the performance of ritual and musicrestricts desires because it alters the performer’s affectivestates, and place limits on appetitive desires. TheRecords ofRitual illustrates desirable affective states, describing how theZhou founder King Wen 文 was moved to joy when making offeringsto his deceased parents, but then to grief once the ritual ended(“Jiyi” 祭義). A collectionassociated with the third century BCE philosopher Xunzi荀子 contains a Confucius quotation that associatesdifferent parts of a ruler’s day with particular emotions.Entering the ancestral temple to make offerings and maintain aconnection to those who are no longer living leads the ruler toreflect on sorrow, while wearing a cap to hear legal cases leads himto reflect on worry (“Aigong” 哀公).These are examples of the way that ritual fosters the development ofparticular emotional responses, part of a sophisticated understandingof affective states and the ways that performance channels them inparticular directions. More generally, the social conventions implicitin ritual hierarchies restrict people’s latitude to pursue theirdesires, as the master explains in theRecords of Ritual:

The way of the gentleman may be compared to an embankment dam,bolstering those areas where ordinary people are deficient(“Fangji”).

Blocking the overflow of desires by adhering to these social normspreserves psychological space to reflect and reform one’sreactions.

Descriptions of the early community depict Confucius creating asubculture in which ritual provided an alternate source of value,effectively training his disciples to opt out of conventional modes ofexchange. In theAnalects, when Confucius says he wouldinstruct any person who presented him with “a bundle of driedmeat” (7.7), he is highlighting how his standards of valuederive from the sacrificial system, eschewing currency or luxuryitems. Gifts valuable in ordinary situations might be worth little bysuch standards: “Even if a friend gave him a gift of a carriageand horses, if it was not dried meat, he did not bow” (10.15).The Han period biographical materials inRecords of theHistorian describe how a high official of the state of Lu did notcome to court for three days after the state of Qi made him a gift offemale entertainers. When, additionally, the high official failed toproperly offer gifts of sacrificial meats, Confucius departed Lu forthe state of Wei (47, cf.Analects 18.4). Confuciusrepeatedly rejected conventional values of wealth and position,choosing instead to rely on ritual standards of value. In some ways,these stories are similar to ones in the late Warring States and Hanperiod compilationMaster Zhuang (Zhuangzi莊子) that explore the way that things that areconventionally belittled for their lack of utility are useful by anunconventional standard. However, here the standard that gives suchobjects currency is ritual importance rather than longevity, divorcingConfucius from conventional materialistic or hedonistic pursuits. Thisis a second way that ritual allows one to direct more effort intocharacter formation.

Once, when speaking of cultivating benevolence, Confucius explainedhow ritual value was connected to the ideal way of the gentleman,which should always take precedence over the pursuit of conventionalvalues:

Wealth and high social status are what others covet. If I cannotprosper by following the way, I will not dwell in them. Poverty andlow social status are what others shun. If I cannot prosper byfollowing the way, I will not avoid them. (4.5)

The argument that ritual performance has internal benefits underliesthe ritual psychology laid out by Confucius, one that explains howperforming ritual and music controls desires and sets the stage forfurther moral development.

4. Virtues and Character Formation

Many of the short passages from theAnalects, and the“Thicket of Sayings” passages excavated at Guodian,describe the development of set of ideal behaviors associated with themoral ideal of the “way” (dao 道) of the“gentleman” (junzi 君子). Based onthe analogy between the way of Confucius and character ethics systemsderiving from Aristotle, these patterns of behavior are today oftendescribed using the Latinate term “virtue”. In the secondpassage in theAnalects, the disciple You Ruo有若 says a person who behaves with filial piety toparents and siblings (xiao anddi 弟), and whoavoids going against superiors, will rarely disorder society. Itrelates this correlation to a more general picture of how patterns ofgood behavior effectively open up the possibility of following the wayof the gentleman: “The gentleman works at the roots. Once theroots are established, the way comes to life” (1.2). The way ofthe gentleman is a distillation of the exemplary behaviors of theselfless culture heroes of the past, and is available to all who arewilling to “work at the roots”. In this way, the virtuesthat Confucius taught were not original to him, but represented hisadaptations of existing cultural ideals, to which he continuallyreturned in order to clarify their proper expressions in differentsituations. Five behaviors of the gentleman most central to theAnalects are benevolence (ren 仁),righteousness (yi 義), ritual propriety (li禮), wisdom (zhi 智), and trustworthiness(xin 信).

The virtue of benevolence entails interacting with others guided by asense of what is good from their perspectives. Sometimes theAnalects defines benevolence generally as “caring forothers” (12.22), but in certain contexts it is associated withmore specific behaviors. Examples of contextual definitions ofbenevolence include treating people on the street as important guestsand common people as if they were attendants at a sacrifice (12.2),being reticent in speaking (12.3) and rejecting the use of cleverspeech (1.3), and being respectful where one dwells, reverent whereone works, and loyal where one deals with others (13.19). It is thebroadest of the virtues, yet a gentleman would rather die thancompromise it (15.9). Benevolence entails a kind of unselfishness, or,as David Hall and Roger Ames suggest, it involves forming moraljudgments from a combined perspective of self and others.

Later writers developed accounts of the sources of benevolentbehavior, most famously in the context of the discussion of humannature (xing 性) in the centuries after Confucius.Mencius (fourth century BCE) argued that benevolence grows out of thecultivation of an affective disposition to compassion (ceyin惻隱) in the face of another’s distress. Theanonymous author of the late Warring States period excavated text“Five Kinds of Action” (Wu xing 五行)describes it as building from the affection one feels for close familymembers, through successive stages to finally develop into a moreuniversal, fully-fledged virtue. In theAnalects, however,one comment on human nature emphasizes the importance of nurture:“By nature people are close, by habituation they are milesapart” (17.2), a sentiment that suggests the importance oftraining one’s dispositions through ritual and the classics in amanner closer to the program of Xunzi (third century BCE). TheAnalects, however, discusses the incubation of benevolentbehavior in family and ritual contexts. You Ruo winds up hisdiscussion of the roots of the way of the gentleman with therhetorical question: “Is not behaving with filial piety toone’s parents and siblings the root of benevolence?”(1.2). Confucius tells his disciple Yan Yuan 顏淵 thatbenevolence is a matter of “overcoming oneself and returning toritual propriety” (12.1). These connections between benevolenceand other virtues underscore the way in which benevolent behavior doesnot entail creating novel social forms or relationships, but isgrounded in traditional familial and ritual networks.

The second virtue, righteousness, is often described in theAnalects relative to situations involving publicresponsibility. In contexts where standards of fairness and integrityare valuable, such as acting as the steward of an estate as some ofthe disciples of Confucius did, righteousness is what keeps a personuncorrupted. Confucius wrote that a gentleman “thinks ofrighteousness when faced with gain” (16.10, 19.10), or“when faced with profit” (14.12). Confucius says that oneshould ignore the wealth and rank one might attain by acting againstrighteousness, even if it means eating coarse rice, drinking water,and sleeping using one’s bent arm as a pillow (7.16). Laterwriters like Xunzi celebrated Confucius for his righteousness inoffice, which he stressed was all the more impressive becauseConfucius was extremely poor (“Wangba”王霸). This behavior is particularly relevant in officialinteractions with ordinary people, such as when “employingcommon people” (5.16), and if a social superior has mastered it,“the common people will all comply” (13.4). Likebenevolence, righteousness also entails unselfishness, but instead ofcoming out of consideration for the needs of others, it is rooted insteadfastness in the face of temptation.

The perspective needed to act in a righteous way is sometimes relatedto an attitude to personal profit that recalls the previoussection’s discussion of how Confucius taught his disciples torecalibrate their sense of value based on their immersion in thesacrificial system. More specifically, evaluating things based ontheir ritual significance can put one at odds with conventionalhierarchies of value. This is defined as the root of righteousbehavior in a story from the late Warring States period textMaster Fei of Han (Han Feizi韓非子). The tale relates how at court, Confuciuswas given a plate with a peach and a pile of millet grains with whichto scrub the fruit clean. After the attendants laughed at Confuciusfor proceeding to eat the millet first, Confucius explained to themthat in sacrifices to the Former Kings, millet itself is the mostvalued offering. Therefore, cleaning a ritually base peach withmillet:

would be obstructing righteousness, and so I dared not put [the peach]above what fills the vessels in the ancestral shrine.(“Waichu shuo, zuo shang”外儲說左上)

While such stories may have been told to mock his fastidiousness, forConfucius the essence of righteousness was internalizing a system ofvalue that he would breach for neither convenience nor profit.

At times, the phrase “benevolence and righteousness” isused metonymically for all the virtues, but in some later texts, abenevolent impulse to compassion and a righteous steadfastness areseen as potentially contradictory. In theAnalects,portrayals of Confucius do not recognize a tension between benevolenceand righteousness, perhaps because each is usually described assalient in a different set of contexts. In ritual contexts like courtsor shrines, one ideally acts like one might act out of familialaffection in a personal context, the paradigm that is key tobenevolence. In the performance of official duties, one ideally actsout of the responsibilities felt to inferiors and superiors, with aresistance to temptation by corrupt gain that is key to righteousness.TheRecords of Ritual distinguishes between the domains ofthese two virtues:

In regulating one’s household, kindness overrules righteousness.Outside of one’s house, righteousness cuts off kindness. Whatone undertakes in serving one’s father, one also does in servingone’s lord, because one’s reverence for both is the same.Treating nobility in a noble way and the honorable in an honorableway, is the height of righteousness. (“Sangfusizhi” 喪服四制)

While it is not the case that righteousness is benevolence by othermeans, this passage underlines how in different contexts, differentvirtues may push people toward participation in particular sharedcultural practices constitutive of the good life.

While the virtues of benevolence and righteousness might impel agentleman to adhere to ritual norms in particular situations or areasof life, a third virtue of “ritual propriety” expresses asensitivity to one’s social place, and willingness to play allof one’s multiple ritual roles. The termli translatedhere as “ritual propriety” has a particularly wide rangeof connotations, and additionally connotes both the conventions ofritual and etiquette. In theAnalects, Confucius is depictedboth teaching and conducting the rites in the manner that he believedthey were conducted in antiquity. Detailed restrictions such as“the gentleman avoids wearing garments with red-blacktrim” (10.6), which the poet Ezra Pound disparaged as“verses re: length of the night-gown and the predilection forginger” (Pound 1951: 191), were by no means trivial toConfucius. His imperative, “Do not look or listen, speak ormove, unless it is in accordance with the rites” (12.1), inanswer to a question about benevolence, illustrates how the symbolicconventions of the ritual system played a role in the cultivation ofthe virtues. We have seen how ritual shapes values by restrictingdesires, thereby allowing reflection and the cultivation of moraldispositions. Yet without the proper affective state, a person is notproperly performing ritual. In theAnalects, Confucius sayshe cannot tolerate “ritual without reverence, or mourningwithout grief,” (3.26). When asked about the root of ritualpropriety, he says that in funerals, the mourners’ distress ismore important than the formalities (3.4). Knowing the details ofritual protocols is important, but is not a substitute for sincereaffect in performing them. Together, they are necessary conditions forthe gentleman’s training, and are also essential tounderstanding the social context in which Confucius taught hisdisciples.

The mastery that “ritual propriety” signaled was part of acurriculum associated with the training of rulers and officials, andproper ritual performance at court could also serve as a kind ofpolitical legitimation. Confucius summarized the different prongs ofthe education in ritual and music involved in the training of hisfollowers:

Raise yourself up with theClassic of Odes. Establishyourself with ritual. Complete yourself with music. (8.8)

On one occasion, Boyu 伯魚, the son of Confucius,explained that when he asked his father to teach him, his father toldhim to study theClassic of Odes in order to have a means tospeak with others, and to study ritual to establish himself (16.13).That Confucius insists that his son master classical literature andpractices underscores the values of these cultural products as a meansof transmitting the way from one generation to the next. He tells hisdisciples that the study of theClassic of Odes prepares themfor different aspects of life, providing them with a capacity to:

at home serve one’s father, away from it serve one’s lord,as well as increase one’s knowledge of the names of birds,animals, plants and trees. (17.9)

This valuation of knowledge of both the cultural and natural worlds isone reason why the figure of Confucius has traditionally beenidentified with schooling, and why today his birthday is celebrated as“Teacher’s Day” in some parts of Asia. In theancient world, this kind of education also qualified Confucius and hisdisciples for employment on estates and at courts.

The fourth virtue, wisdom, is related to appraising people andsituations. In theAnalects, wisdom allows a gentleman todiscern crooked and straight behavior in others (12.22), anddiscriminate between those who may be reformed and those who may not(15.8). In the former dialogue, Confucius explains the virtue ofwisdom as “knowing others”. The “Thicket ofSayings” excavated at Guodian indicates that this knowledge isthe basis for properly “selecting” others, defining wisdomas the virtue that is the basis for selection. But it is also aboutappraising situations correctly, as suggested by the master’srhetorical question: “How can a person be considered wise ifthat person does not dwell in benevolence?” (4.1). Onewell-known passage often cited to imply Confucius is agnostic aboutthe world of the spirits is more literally about how wisdom allows anoutsider to present himself in a way appropriate to the people onwhose behalf he is working:

When working for what is right for the common people, to showreverence for the ghosts and spirits while maintaining one’sdistance may be deemed wisdom. (6.22)

The context for this sort of appraisal is usually official service,and wisdom is often attributed to valued ministers or advisors to sagerulers.

In certain dialogues, wisdom also connotes a moral discernment thatallows the gentleman to be confident of the appropriateness of goodactions. In theAnalects, Confucius tells his disciple Zi Lu子路 that wisdom recognizes knowing a thing as knowing it,and ignorance of a thing as ignorance of it (2.17). In soliloquiesabout several virtues, Confucius describes a wise person as neverconfused (9.28, 14.28). While comparative philosophers have noted thatChinese thought has nothing clearly analogous to the role of the willin pre-modern European philosophy, the moral discernment that is partof wisdom does provide actors with confidence that the moral actionsthey have taken are correct.

The virtue of trustworthiness qualifies a gentleman to give advice toa ruler, and a ruler or official to manage others. In theAnalects, Confucius explains it succinctly: “if one istrustworthy, others will give one responsibilities” (17.6, cf.20.1). While trustworthiness may be rooted in the proper expression offriendship between those of the same status (1.4, 5.26), it is alsovaluable in interactions with those of different status. The discipleZi Xia 子夏 explains its effect on superiors andsubordinates: when advising a ruler, without trustworthiness, theruler will think a gentleman is engaged in slander, and whenadministering a state, without trustworthiness, people will think agentleman is exploiting them (19.10). The implication is that asincerely public-minded official would be ineffective without thetrust that this quality inspires. In a dialogue with a ruler fromchapter four ofHan’s Intertextual Commentary the Odes,Confucius explains that in employing someone, trustworthiness issuperior to strength, ability to flatter, or eloquence. Being able torely on someone is so important to Confucius that, when asked aboutgood government, he explained that trustworthiness was superior toeither food or weapons, concluding: “If the people do not findthe ruler trustworthy, the state will not stand” (12.7).

By the Han period, benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety,wisdom and trustworthiness began to be considered as a complete set ofhuman virtues, corresponding with other quintets of phenomena used todescribe the natural world. Some texts described a level of moralperfection, as with the sages of antiquity, as unifying all thesevirtues. Prior to this, it is unclear whether the possession of aparticular virtue entailed having all the others, although benevolencewas sometimes used as a more general term for a combination of one ormore of the other virtues (e.g.,Analects 17.6). At othertimes, Confucius presented individual virtues as expressions ofgoodness in particular domains of life. Early Confucius dialogues areembedded in concrete situations, and so resist attempts to distillthem into more abstract principles of morality. As a result,descriptions of the virtues are embedded in anecdotes about theexemplary individuals whose character traits the dialogues encouragetheir audience to develop. Confucius taught that the measure of a goodaction was whether it was an expression of the actor’s virtue,something his lessons share with those of philosophies likeAristotle’s that are generally described as “virtueethics”. A modern evaluation of the teachings of Confucius as a“virtue ethics” is articulated in Bryan W. VanNorden’sVirtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early ChinesePhilosophy, which pays particular attention to analogies betweenthe way of Confucius and Aristotle’s “good life”.The nature of the available source materials about Confucius, however,means that the diverse texts from early China lack the systematizationof a work like Aristotle’sNicomachean Ethics.

The five virtues described above are not the only ones of whichConfucius spoke. He discussed loyalty (zhong 忠), whichat one point is described as the minister’s behavior toward aritually proper ruler (3.19). He said that courage (yong勇) is what compels one to act once one has seen whererighteousness lies (2.24). Another term sometimes translated as“virtue” (de 德), is usually used todescribe the authority of a ruler that grows out of goodness or favorto others, and is a key term in many of the social and political worksdiscussed in the following section. Yet going through a list of allthe virtues in the early sources is not sufficient to describe theentirety of the moral universe associated with Confucius.

The presence of themes in theAnalects like the ruler’sexceptional influence as a moral exemplar, the importance of judgingpeople by their deeds rather than their words (1.3, 2.10, 5.10), oreven the protection of the culture of Zhou by higher powers (9.5), allhighlight the unsystematic nature of the text and underscore thatteaching others how to cultivate the virtues is a key aspect, but onlya part, of the ethical ideal of Confucius. Yet there is also aconundrum inherent in any attempt to derive abstract moral rules fromthe mostly dialogical form of theAnalects, that is, theproblem of whether the situational context and conversation partner isintegral to evaluating the statements of Confucius. A historicallynotable example of an attempt to find a generalized moral rule in theAnalects is the reading of a pair of passages that use aformulation similar to that of the “Golden Rule” of theChristian Bible (Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31) to describe benevolence:“Do not impose upon others those things that you yourself do notdesire” (12.2, cf. 5.12, 15.24). Read as axiomatic moralimperatives, these passages differ from the kind of exemplar-based andsituational conversations about morality usually found in theAnalects. For this reason, some scholars, including E. BruceBrooks, believe these passages to be interpolations. While they arenot wholly inconsistent with the way that benevolence is described inearly texts, their interpretation as abstract principles has beeninfluenced by their perceived similarity to the Biblical examples. IntheRecords of Ritual, a slightly different formulation of arule about self and others is presented as not universal in its scope,but rather as descriptive of how the exemplary ruler influences thepeople. In common with other early texts, theAnalectsdescribes how the moral transformation of society relies on thepositive example of the ruler, comparing the influence of thegentleman on the people to the way the wind blows on the grass,forcing it to bend (12.19). In a similar vein, after discussing howthe personal qualities of rulers of the past determined whether or nottheir subjects could morally transform, theRecords of Ritualexpresses its principle of reflexivity:

That is why the gentleman only seeks things in others that he or shepersonally possesses. [The gentleman] only condemns things in othersthat he or she personally lacks. (“Daxue”大學)

This is a point about the efficacy of moral suasion, saying that aruler cannot expect to reform society solely by command since it isonly the ruler’s personal example that can transform others. Forthis reason, the ruler should not compel behaviors from his subjectsto which he or she would not personally assent, something ratherdifferent from the “Golden Rule”. Historically, however,views that Confucius was inspired by the same Natural Theology asChristians, or that philosophers are naturally concerned with thegeneralization of moral imperatives, have argued in favor of a closeridentification with the “Golden Rule,” a fact thatillustrates the interpretative conundrum arising from the formalaspects of theAnalects.

5. The Family and the State

Early Zhou political philosophy as represented in theClassic ofOdes and theClassic of Documents centered on moraljustification for political authority based on the doctrine of the“Mandate of Heaven” (tianming 天命).This view was that the sage’s virtue (de) attracted theattention of the anthropomorphized cosmic power usually translated as“Heaven” (tian 天), which supported thesage’s rise to political authority. These canonical texts arguedthat political success or failure is a function of moral quality,evidenced by actions such as proper ritual performance, on the part ofthe ruler. Confucius drew on these classics and adapted the classicalview of moral authority in important ways, connecting it to anormative picture of society. Positing a parallel between the natureof reciprocal responsibilities of individuals in different roles intwo domains of social organization, in theAnalects Confuciuslinked filial piety in the family to loyalty in the political realm:

It is rare for a person who is filially pious to his parents and oldersiblings to be inclined to rebel against his superiors… Filialpiety to parents and elder siblings may be considered the root of aperson. (1.2)

This section examines Confucius’s social and politicalphilosophy, beginning with the central role of his analysis of thetraditional norm of filial piety.

Just as Confucius analyzed the psychology of ritual performance andrelated it to individual moral development, his discussion of filialpiety was another example of the development and adaptation of aparticular classical cultural pattern to a wider philosophical contextand set of concerns. Originally limited to descriptions of sacrificeto ancestors in the context of hereditary kinship groups, a moreextended meaning of “filial piety” was used to describethe sage king Shun’s 舜 (trad. r. 2256–2205 BCE)treatment of his living father in theClassic of Documents.Despite humble origins, Shun’s filial piety was recognized as aquality that signaled he would be a suitable successor for the sageking Yao 堯 (trad. r. 2357–2256 BCE). Confucius in theAnalects praised the ancient sage kings at great length, andthe sage king Yu 禹 for his filial piety in the context ofsacrifice (8.21). However, he used the term filial piety to mean bothsacrificial mastery and behaving appropriately to one’s parents.In a conversation with one of his disciples he explains that filialpiety meant “not contesting”, and that it entailed:

while one’s parents were alive, serving them in a rituallyproper way, and after one’s parents died, burying them andsacrificing to them in a ritually proper way. (2.5)

In rationalizing the moral content of legacies of the past like thethree-year mourning period after the death of a parent, Confuciusreasoned that for three years a filially pious child should not altera parent’s way (4.20, cf. 19.18), and explains the origin oflength of the three-year mourning period to be the length of time thatthe parents had given their infant child support (17.21). Thisadaptation of filial piety to connote the proper way for a gentlemanto behave both inside and outside the home was a generalization of apattern of behavior that had once been specific to the family.

Intellectual historian Chen Lai 陈来 has identified twosets of ideal traits that became hybridized in the late Warring Statesperiod. The first set of qualities describes the virtue of the rulercoming out of politically-oriented descriptions of figures like KingWen of Zhou, including uprightness (zhi 直) andfortitude (gang 剛). The second set of qualities isbased on bonds specific to kinship groups, including filial piety andkindness (ci 慈). As kinship groups were subordinatedto larger political units, texts began to exhibit hybrid lists ofideal qualities that drew from both sets. Consequently, Confucius hadto effectively integrate clan priorities and state priorities, aconciliation illustrated inHan’s Intertextual Commentarythe Odes by his insistence that filial piety is not simplydeference to elders. When his disciple Zengzi 曾子submitted to a severe beating from his father’s staff inpunishment for an offense, Confucius chastises Zengzi, saying thateven the sage king Shun would not have submitted to a beating sosevere. He goes on to explain that a child has a dual set of duties,to both a father and ruler, the former filial piety and the otherloyalty. Therefore, protecting one’s body is a duty to the rulerand a counterweight to a duty to submit to one’s parent (8). IntheClassic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing孝經), similar reasoning is applied to a redefinition offilial piety that rejects behaviors like such extreme submissionbecause protecting one’s body is a duty to one’s parents.This sort of qualification suggests that as filial piety moved furtheroutside its original family context, it had to be qualified to beintegrated into a view that valorized multiple character traits.

Since filial piety was based on a fundamental relationship definedwithin the family, one’s family role and state role couldconflict. AClassic of Documents text spells out the possibleconflict between loyalty to a ruler and filial piety toward a father(“Cai Zhong zhi ming”蔡仲之命), a trade-off similar to a story intheAnalects about a man named Zhi Gong 直躬(Upright Gong) who testified that his father stole a sheep. AlthoughConfucius acknowledged that theft injures social order, he judgedUpright Gong to have failed to be truly “upright” in asense that balances the imperative to testify with specialconsideration for members of his kinship group:

In my circle, being upright differs from this. A father would concealsuch a thing on behalf of his son, and a son would conceal it onbehalf of his father. Uprightness is found in this. (13.18)

In this way, too, Confucius was adapting filial piety to a widermanifold of moral behaviors, honing his answer to the question of howa child balances responsibility to family and loyalty to the state.While these two traits may conflict with one and other, SociologistRobert Bellah, in his study of Tokugawa and modern Japan, noted howthe structural similarity between loyalty and filial piety led totheir both being promoted by the state as interlinked ideals thatlocated each person in dual networks of responsibility. Confucius wasmaking this claim when he connected filial piety to the propensity tobe loyal to superiors (1.2). Statements like “filial piety isthe root of virtuous action” from theClassic of FilialPiety connect loyalty and the kind of action that signals thepersonal virtue that justifies political authority, as in thehistorical precedent of the sage king Shun.

Of the classical sources from which Confucius drew, two wereparticularly influential in discussions of political legitimation. TheClassic of Odes consists of 305 Zhou period regulated lyrics(hence the several translations “songs”,“odes”, or “poems”) and became numbered as oneof the Five Classics (Wujing) in the Han dynasty. Critical toa number of these lyrics is the celebration of King Wen ofZhou’s overthrow of the Shang, which is an example of a virtuousperson seizing the “Mandate of Heaven”:

This King Wen of ours, his prudent heart was well-ordered. He shone inserving the High God, and thus enjoyed much good fortune. Unswervingin his virtue, he came to hold the domains all around.(“Daming” 大明)

The Zhou political theory expressed in this passage is based on theidea of a limited moral universe that may not reward a virtuous personin isolation, but in which the High God (Shangdi上帝,Di 帝) or Heaven will intercede toreplace a bad ruler with a person of exceptional virtue. TheClassic of Documents is a collection that includes orationsattributed to the sage rulers of the past and their ministers, and itsarguments often concern moral authority with a focus on the methodsand character of exemplary rulers of the past. The chapter“Announcement of Kang” (“Kanggao”康誥) is addressed to one of the sons of King Wen, andprovides him with a guide for behaving as sage ruler as well as withmethods that had been empirically proven successful by those rulers.When it comes to the mandate inherited from King Wen, the chapterinsists that the mandate is not unchanging, and so as ruler the sonmust always be mindful of it when deciding how to act. Further, it isnot always possible to understand Heaven, but the “feelings ofthe people are visible”, and so the ruler must care for hissubjects. The Zhou political view that Confucius inherited was basedon supernatural intercession to place a person with personal virtue incharge of the state, but over time the emphasis shifted to the waythat the effects of good government could be viewed as proof of acontinuing moral justification for that placement.

Confucius himself arguably served as a historical counterexample tothe classical “Mandate of Heaven” theory, calling intoquestion the direct nature of the support given by Heaven to theperson with virtue. The Han periodRecords of the Historianbiography of Confucius described him as possessing all the personalqualities needed to govern well, but wandering from state to statebecause those qualities had not been recognized. When his favoritedisciple died, theAnalects records Confucius saying that“Heaven has forsaken me!” (11.9). Wang Chong’s王充 (27–c.97 CE)Balanced Discussions(Lunheng 論衡) uses the phrase “uncrownedking” (suwang 素王) to describe the tragicsituation: “Confucius did not rule as king, but his work asuncrowned king may be seen in theSpring and AutumnAnnals” (80). The view that through his writings Confuciuscould prepare the world for the government of a future sage kingbecame a central part of Confucius lore that has colored the receptionof his writings since, especially in works related to theSpringand Autumn Annals and itsGongyang Commentary. Thebiography of Confucius reinforced the tragic cosmological picture thatpersonal virtue did not always guarantee success. Even whenHeaven’s support is cited in theAnalects, it is not amatter of direct intercession, but expressed through personal virtueor cultural patterns: “Heaven gave birth to the virtue in me, sowhat can Huan Tui 桓魋 do to me?” (7.23, cf. 9.5).As Robert Eno has pointed out, the concept of Heaven also came to beincreasingly naturalized in passages like “what need does Heavenhave to speak?” (17.19). Changing views of the scope ofHeaven’s activity and the ways human beings may have knowledgeof that activity fostered a change in the role of Heaven in politicaltheory.

Most often, in dialogues with the rulers of his time, references toHeaven were occasions for Confucius to encourage rulers to remainattentive to their personal moral development and treat their subjectsfairly. In integrating the classical legacy of the “Mandate ofHeaven” that applied specifically to the ruler or “Son ofHeaven” (tianzi 天子), with moral teachingsthat were directed to a wider audience, the nature of Heaven’sintercession came to be understood differently. In theAnalects and writings like those attributed to Mencius,descriptions of virtue were often adapted to contexts such as theconduct of lesser officials and the navigation of everyday life.Kwong-Loi Shun notes that in such contexts, the influence of Heavenremained as an explanation of both what happened outside of humancontrol, like political success or lifespan, and of the source of theethical ideal. In theAnalects, the gentleman’s awe ofHeaven is combined with an awe of the words of the sages (16.8), andwhen Confucius explains the Zhou theory of the “mandate ofHeaven” in theElder Dai’s Records of Ritual, hedoes so in order to explain how the signs of a well-ordered societydemonstrate that the ruler’s “virtue matches Heaven”(“Shaojian” 少閒). Heaven is stillubiquitous in the responses of Confucius to questions from rulers, butthe focus of the responses was not on Heaven’s directintercession but rather the ruler’s demonstration of hispersonal moral qualities.

In this way, personal qualities of modesty, filial piety or respectfor the elders were seen as proof of fitness to serve in an officialcapacity. Qualification to rule was demonstrated by proper behavior inthe social roles defined by the “five relationships”(wulun 五倫), a formulation seen in the writingsof Mencius that became a key feature of the interpretation of worksassociated with Confucius in the Han dynasty. The Western Han emperorswere members of the Liu clan, and works like theGuliangCommentary (Guliang zhuan 穀梁傳) totheSpring and Autumn Annals emphasized normative familybehavior grounded in the five relationships, which were (here, adaptedto include mothers and sisters): ruler and subject, parent and child,husband and wife, siblings, and friends. Writing with particularreference to theClassic of Filial Piety, Henry Rosemont andRoger Ames argue that prescribed social roles are a definingcharacteristic of the “Confucian tradition”, and that suchroles were normative guides to appropriate conduct. They contrast thiswith the “virtue ethics” approach they say requiresrational calculation to determine moral conduct, while filial piety issimply a matter of meeting one’s family obligations. Just as thefive virtues were placed at the center of later theories of moraldevelopment, once social roles became systematized in this way,selected situational teachings of Confucius consistent with them couldbecome the basis of more abstract, systematic moral theories. Yet thiscould not have happened without the adaptation of the abstractclassical political theory of “Heaven’s mandate”, adoctrine that originally supported the ruling clan, to argue thatHeaven’s influence was expressed through particular concreteexpressions of individual virtue. As a result of this adaptation inwritings associated with Confucius, the ruler’s conduct ofimperial rituals, performance of filial piety, or other demonstrationsof personal virtue provided proof of moral fitness that legitimatedhis political authority. As with the rituals and the virtues, filialpiety and the mandate of Heaven were transformed as they wereintegrated with the classics through the voices of Confucius and therulers and disciples of his era.

Earlier, the usage of “Confucius” as a metonym for Chinesetraditional culture was introduced as a feature of the modern period.Yet the complexity of the philosophical views associated withConfucius—encompassing ethical ideals developed out of asophisticated view of the effects of ritual and music on theperformer’s psychology, robust descriptions of the attitudes oftraditional exemplars across diverse life contexts, and theabstraction of normative behaviors in the family and state—isdue in part to the fact that this metonymic usage was to some degreealready the case in the Han period. By that time, the teachings ofConfucius had gone through several centuries of gestation, anddialogues and quotations fashioned at different points over that timecirculated and mixed. Put slightly differently, Confucius read thetraditional culture of the halcyon Zhou period in a particular way,but this reading was continuously reflected and refracted throughdifferent lenses during the Pre-Imperial period, prior to the resultsbeing fixed in diverse early Imperial period sources like theAnalects, theRecords of Ritual, and theRecordsof the Historian. What remains is the work of the hand ofConfucius, but also of his “school”, and even sometimes ofhis opponents during the centuries that his philosophy underwentelaboration and drift. This process of accretion and elaboration isnot uncommon for pre-modern writings, and the resulting breadth anddepth explains, at least in part, why the voice of Confucius retainedprimacy in pre-modern Chinese philosophical conversations as well asin many modern debates about the role of traditional East Asianculture.

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