Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
- AFE - The Chinese Cosmos - Confucius and the "Confucian Tradition"*
- United Religions Initiative - Confucianism
- Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology - Confucianism Introduction
- University of Central Arkansas - Confucianism as Humanism
- Teach Democracy - The Development of Confucianism in Ancient China
- National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - How Does Confucianism Influence Health Behaviors, Health Outcomes and Medical Decisions? A Scoping Review
- Pace Digital Repository - The Compatibility of Confucianism and Law (PDF)
- Asia Society - Center for Global Education - Confucianism
- ABC listen - God Forbid - Confucianism's Chinese comeback
- Ancient History Encyclopedia - Confucianism
- Brigham Young University - Religious Studies Center - Confucianism (PDF)
- Raider Digital Publishing - Chinese Culture - Confucius and Confucianism
- Florida State College at Jacksonville Pressbooks - Confucianism
- Chemistry LibreTexts - Confucianism: An Overview
- Harvard University - The Pluralism Project - Confucianism
- DigitalCommons at University of Nebraska - Lincoln - Confucianism in Chinese Academia
- Hartford Institute for Religion Research - Encyclopedia of Religion and Society - Confucianism
Confucianism
What is Confucianism?
Does Confucianism have a god?
There is no deity worshipped in Confucianism, though the worship of ancestors and ofConfucius himself as a sage master and teacher are practiced.
Where does Confucianism come from?
ThoughConfucius is sometimes credited with founding Confucianism, he said that he was interpreting the philosophy ofZhougong, the duke of Zhou, rather than creating new doctrine. Zhougong was said to have helped consolidate, expand, and refine the “feudal” ritual system. This system depended on blood ties, marriage alliances, and old covenants as well as on newly negotiated contracts.
How did Confucianism spread?
Confucianism was not successfully spread byConfucius. Instead, the scholarMencius, who was born more than a century after Confucius died, adapted his philosophy and preached in different states. At first the Chinese people embraced Confucianism more readily than the ruling class did, but Confucianism was revived and popularized by theHan dynasty, from 206 BCE to 220 CE.
Confucianism, the way of lifepropagated byConfucius in the 6th–5th centurybce and followed by the Chinese people for more than two millennia. Although transformed over time, it is still the substance of learning, the source of values, and the social code of the Chinese. Its influence has also extended to other countries, particularlyKorea,Japan, andVietnam.
Confucianism, a Western term that has no counterpart inChinese, is a worldview, a socialethic, apolitical ideology, a scholarly tradition, and a way of life. Sometimes viewed as aphilosophy and sometimes as areligion, Confucianism may be understood as an all-encompassing way of thinking and living that entails ancestor reverence and a profound human-centred religiousness. East Asians may profess themselves to beShintōists,Daoists,Buddhists,Muslims, orChristians, but, by announcing their religious affiliations, seldom do they cease to be Confucians.
Although often grouped with the major historical religions, Confucianism differs from them by not being an organized religion. Nonetheless, it spread to other East Asian countries under the influence of Chinese literateculture and has exerted a profound influence on spiritual and political life. Both the theory and practice of Confucianism have indelibly marked the patterns ofgovernment, society,education, andfamily ofEast Asia. Although it is an exaggeration to characterize traditional Chinese life and culture as Confucian, Confucianethical values have for well over 2,000 years served as the source of inspiration as well as the court of appeal for human interaction between individuals,communities, and nations in the Sinitic world.
The thought of Confucius
The story of Confucianism does not begin with Confucius. Nor was Confucius the founder of Confucianism in the sense that theBuddha was the founder ofBuddhism andJesus Christ the founder ofChristianity. Rather, Confucius considered himself a transmitter who consciously tried to reanimate the old in order to attain the new. He proposed revitalizing the meaning of the past by advocating a ritualized life. Confucius’s love of antiquity was motivated by his strong desire to understand why certain life forms and institutions, such as reverence for ancestors, human-centred religious practices, and mourning ceremonies, had survived for centuries. His journey into the past was a search for roots, which he perceived as grounded in humanity’s deepest needs for belonging and communicating. He hadfaith in thecumulative power ofculture. The fact that traditional ways had lost vitality did not, for him, diminish their potential for regeneration in the future. In fact, Confucius’s sense of history was so strong that he saw himself as a conservationist responsible for thecontinuity of the cultural values and the social norms that had worked so well for the idealized civilization of the WesternZhou dynasty.
The historical context
The scholarly traditionenvisioned by Confucius can be traced to the sage-kings of antiquity. Although the earliestdynasty confirmed byarchaeology is theShang dynasty (18th–12th centurybce), the historical period that Confucius claimed as relevant was much earlier. 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 therujia, “scholarly tradition,” that had its origins two millennia previously, when the legendary sagesYao andShun created a civilized world throughmoral persuasion.
Confucius’s hero wasZhougong, or the duke of Zhou (fl. 11th centurybce), who was said to have helped consolidate, expand, and refine the “feudal”ritual system. This elaborate system of mutual dependence was based on blood ties, marriage alliances, and oldcovenants as well as on newly negotiated contracts. The appeal tocultural values and social norms for the maintenance of interstate as well as domestic order waspredicated on a shared political vision, namely, that authority lies in universal kingship, heavily invested withethical and religious power by the “mandate of heaven” (tianming), and that social solidarity is achieved not by legal constraint but by ritual observance. Its implementation enabled the Western Zhou dynasty to survive in relative peace and prosperity for more than five centuries.
Inspired by the statesmanship of Zhougong, Confucius harboured a lifelong dream to be in a position to emulate the duke by putting into practice the political ideas that he had learned from the ancient sages and worthies. Although Confucius never realized his political dream, hisconception of politics asmoral persuasion became more and more influential.
The concept of “heaven” (tian), unique in Zhoucosmology, was compatible with that of the Lord on High (Shangdi) in theShang dynasty. Lord on High may have referred to the ancestral progenitor of the Shang royal lineage, but heaven to theZhou kings, although also ancestral, was a more-generalizedanthropomorphic god. The Zhoubelief in themandate of heaven (the functional equivalent of the will of the Lord on High) differed from thedivine right of kings in that there was no guarantee that the descendants of the Zhou royal house would be entrusted with kingship, for, as written in theShujing (“Classic of History”), “heaven sees as the people see [and] hears as the people hear”; thus, the virtues of the kings were essential for the maintenance of their power and authority. This emphasis onbenevolent rulership, expressed in numerous bronze inscriptions, was both a reaction to the collapse of the Shang dynasty and an affirmation of a deep-rooted worldview.
Partly because of the vitality of the feudal ritual system and partly because of the strength of the royal household itself, the Zhou kings were able to control their kingdom for several centuries. In 771bce, however, they were forced to move their capital eastward to present-day Luoyang to avoid barbarian attacks fromCentral Asia. Real power thereafter passed into the hands of feudal lords. Since the surviving line of the Zhou kings continued to be recognized in name, they still managed to exercise some measure of symbolic control. By Confucius’s time, however, the feudal ritual system had been so fundamentally undermined that the political crises also precipitated a profound sense of moral decline: the centre of symbolic control could no longer hold the kingdom, which had devolved from centuries of civilwar into 14 feudal states.
- Key People:
- Confucius
- Xunzi
- Zhu Xi
- Mencius
- Kang Youwei
- Related Topics:
- ren
- gewu
- siduan
- Neo-Confucianism
- Old Text school
- On the Web:
- Raider Digital Publishing - Chinese Culture - Confucius and Confucianism (Feb. 14, 2026)
Confucius’s response was to address himself to the issue of learning to behuman. In so doing he attempted to redefine and revitalize the institutions that for centuries had been vital to political stability and social order: the family, the school, the localcommunity, the state, and the kingdom. Confucius did not accept the status quo, which held that wealth and power spoke the loudest. He felt thatvirtue (de), both as a personal quality and as a requirement for leadership, was essential for individual dignity, communal solidarity, and political order.