Confucius

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Confucius asked a single question when he came home from court and learned that the stables had burned down. He said, "Was anyone hurt?" He did not ask about the horses. The man behind that question was born Kong Qiu, around 551 BCE, in a town called Zou. He died around 479 BCE, and yet much of the shared cultural heritage of the Sinosphere traces back to his teachings. He insisted he invented nothing. He called himself a transmitter, a man passing along the wisdom of earlier ages he believed his own time had thrown away. So how did a poor boy who lost his father at three years old become the figure traditionally honored as the paragon of Chinese sages? Why did a humble tomb on a riverbank grow into a cemetery of more than 100,000 graves? And how does a family tree first recorded at his death still reach into its 83rd generation today? The answers run through politics, music, exile, and a name that a group of Jesuit missionaries coined more than two thousand years after he was gone.

• 2. The Boy From Zou

  ›

  Kong He, also called Shuliang He, was an elderly commandant of the local Lu garrison when his son was born. He died when Confucius was only three years old. His mother, Yan Zhengzai, raised the boy in poverty, and she herself died at less than 40 years of age. The family claimed descent through the dukes of Song back to the Shang dynasty, though not all modern scholars accept that noble lineage. Educated at schools for commoners, the young Confucius studied the Six Arts. He was born into the class of shi, a rank wedged between the aristocracy and the common people. He worked early government jobs in his early twenties, kept books, and tended sheep and horses. The proceeds went toward giving his mother a proper burial. At 19 he married, and a year later came a son, Kong Li. He and his wife later had two daughters, one of them named Kong Jiao. When his mother died, Confucius, then 23, is said to have mourned for three years, as tradition demanded. His courtesy name was Zhongni, the "Zhong" marking him as the second son in his family.

• 3. Minister Of Crime

  ›

  Yang Hu, a retainer of the Ji family, seized power in a rebellion before the three hereditary families drove him out. By then Confucius had built a considerable reputation through his teaching, and the families came to value proper conduct and righteousness. He was appointed governor of a town, then rose to become Minister of Crime. The Xunzi records that once in the post he ordered the execution of Shaozheng Mao, a rival scholar accused of five crimes including concealed evilness and eloquent duplicity. Confucius wanted to return real authority to the duke. His plan was to dismantle the fortifications of the cities held by the three families, the Ji, the Meng, and the Shu. He had no army. He relied solely on diplomacy. Over a year and a half he and his disciples convinced the Shu family to raze the walls of Hou, the Ji family the walls of Bi, and they pressed toward the walls of Cheng. When Gongshan Furao revolted and stormed the capital, Confucius ordered two officers to lead an assault, and the rebels were pursued and defeated at Gu. The Meng family governor refused to tear down Cheng, warning it would leave the city exposed to Qi. Duke Ding of Lu marched on Cheng himself and failed. Confucius had made powerful enemies, especially Viscount Ji Huan, and the reforms he wanted slipped out of reach.

• 4. The Wandering Years

  ›

  One hundred good horses and 80 beautiful dancing girls arrived from the neighboring Qi state, sent, the Shiji says, to sabotage Lu's reforms. The duke indulged himself and ignored official duties for three days. Confucius wanted to leave but knew that an immediate departure would publicly shame the ruler he served. So he waited for a smaller pretext. When the duke neglected to send him his customary portion of sacrificial meat, Confucius seized on it and left both his post and the state. He never formally resigned, remaining in self-exile as long as Viscount Ji Huan lived. For years he traveled the principality states of north-east and central China, among them Wey, Song, Zheng, Cao, Chu, Qi, Chen, and Cai. At court after court he laid out his political beliefs, and saw none of them put into practice. He came home to Lu at 68, invited back by Ji Kangzi, the chief minister. In his final years he taught and worked on transmitting the old wisdom through the Five Classics. Burdened by the loss of his son and his favorite disciples, he died at the age of 71 or 72 from natural causes, and was buried on the bank of the Sishui River north of Qufu.

• 5. Rites And Benevolence

  ›

  "Do not do unto others what you do not want done to yourself." This is the Silver Rule, the negative form of the Golden Rule, and one of the deepest currents in Confucius's thought. When his disciple Zi Gong asked for a single word to guide a life, the Master answered with reciprocity, telling him never to impose on others what he would not choose for himself. Confucius taught self-cultivation over rigid rules, and his ethics work through allusion and indirection rather than reasoned argument. At the center sits li, the ritual order that runs from sacrifices to ancestors, to social institutions, to the etiquette of daily behavior. Bound up with li is yi, righteousness, the choice to do what is ethically best rather than what is merely profitable. Above these stands ren, made of five virtues: seriousness, generosity, sincerity, diligence, and kindness. Translator Arthur Waley called ren "Goodness" with a capital G. Confucius held that virtue is a mean between extremes, so the truly generous person gives the right amount, not too much and not too little. He advocated filial piety, family loyalty, and the respect of elders, and he called a robust family unit the cornerstone of an ideal government.

• 6. Ruling By Virtue

  ›

  "If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame." In that line from the Analects, Confucius set his politics against rule by force. Lead people by virtue and the rules of propriety, he argued, and they will gain a sense of shame and become good. He looked nostalgically on earlier days and urged those with power to model themselves on the past. In an age of division and endless wars between feudal states, he wanted to restore the Mandate of Heaven and unify all under Heaven. Yet his appeal to the past concealed a new agenda. He pushed for rulers who succeeded to power through moral merit rather than lineage, role models who spread their virtue to the people instead of imposing it by law. He insisted that subordinates must advise superiors taking a wrong course. Confucianism, in his hands, prioritized a harmonious society over the ruler's own interests, opposing material incentives and harsh punishments alike.

• 7. Music And The Six Arts

  ›

  Music sat among the six arts every student had to master, alongside archery, charioteering, mathematics, calligraphy, and the rituals it partnered. "Music is that which moves man from the internal; rites are that which affects man on the external. Music brings about harmony. Rites ensure obedience." Unlike philosophers elsewhere, Confucius saw music not as mere art but as something woven into the rites that structured a person. He believed music created the focus that could unite and harmonize people. "Music is the harmonization of heaven and earth; the rites is the order of heaven and earth," he said, and the scholar Li Zehou argued that Confucianism rests on the idea of rites. One musical classic was said to be the sixth Confucian classic until it was lost during the Han dynasty. Later Confucians grew wary of foreign musical influences, and some preached against sentimental tendencies from the Persians, the Greco-Bactrians, and the Mongols.

• 8. The Unbroken Line

  ›

  Thirty-five times since Gaozu of the Han dynasty, Confucius's descendants were honored with the rank of marquis, and 42 times from the Tang to the Qing they were promoted to duke. Emperor Xuanzong of Tang first bestowed the title "Duke Wenxuan" on a 35th-generation heir, and in 1055 Emperor Renzong of Song created the title "Duke Yansheng." During the Southern Song, the line split. One Duke Yansheng fled south to Quzhou while a brother stayed in Qufu, leaving two dukes at once, north and south. The southern branch in Quzhou alone now numbers 30,000. The Nationalist government abolished the ducal title in 1935, and the last holder, Kung Te-cheng of the 77th generation, became Sacrificial Official to Confucius. He died in October 2008. His great-grandson, Kung Yu-jen, the 80th lineal descendant, was born in Taipei on the 1st of January 2006. The Kong family holds the longest recorded extant pedigree in the world, now in its 83rd generation. The Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee counts two million registered descendants, with an estimated three million in all, and its fifth edition, unveiled at Qufu on the 24th of September 2009, included women for the first time. A DNA test in 2013 found that multiple families claiming descent shared the same Y chromosome, a thread of biology echoing a thread of memory two and a half thousand years long.