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Confucius
Confucius
(551-479 BCE), according to Chinese tradition, was
a thinker, political
figure,
educator,
and
founder
of
the
Ru
School
of
Chinese
thought.
His
teachings,
preserved
in
the
Analects,
form
the
foundation
of
much
of
subsequent
Chinese
speculation on the education and
comportment of the ideal man, how such an
individual
should live his life and
interact with others, and the forms of society and
government in
which he should
participate. Fung Yu-lan, one of the great 20th
century authorities on
the history of
Chinese thought, compares
Confucius
’
influence on
Chinese history with
that of Socrates
in the West.
1.
Confucius
’
Life
The sources for Confu-
cius
’
life are later and do
not carefully separate fiction and
fact. Thus it is wise to regard much of
what is known of him as legendary. Many of the
legends surrounding Confucius at the
end of the 2nd century BCE were included by the
Han dynasty court historian, Sima Qian,
in his well-known and often-quoted Records of
the
Grand
Historian
(Shiji).
This
collection
of
tales
opens
by
identifying
Confucius
’
ancestors
as
members
of
the
Royal
State
of
Song.
It
notes
as
well
that
his
great
grandfather, fleeing the turmoil in his
native Song, had moved to Lu, somewhere near
the
present
town
of
Qufu
in
southeastern
Shandong,
where
the
family
became
impoverished.
Confucius
is
described,
by
Sima
Qian
and
other
sources,
as
having
endured
a
poverty-stricken
and
humiliating
youth
and
been
forced,
upon
reaching
manhood,
to
undertake
such
petty
jobs
as
accounting
and
caring
for
livestock.
Sima
Qian
’
s account
includes the tale of how Confucius was born in
answer to his parents
’
prayers at a sacred hill (qiu) called
Ni. Confucius
’
surname Kong
(which means literally
an utterance of
thankfulness when prayers have been answered), his
tabooed given name
Qiu, and
his social name Zhongni, all appear connected to
the miraculous circumstances
of
his
birth.
This
casts
doubt,
then,
on
Confucius
’
royal
genealogy
as
found
in
Sima
Qian. Similarly,
Confucius
’
recorded age at
death,
‘
seventy-
two,
’
is a
‘
magic
number
’
with
far-reaching
significance
in
early
Chinese
literature.
We
do
not
know
how
Confucius
himself
was
educated,
but
tradition
has
it
that
he
studied
ritual
with
the
Daoist
Master
Lao
Dan,
music
with
Chang
Hong,
and
the
lute
with
Music
—
master
Xiang. In his middle
age Confucius is supposed to have gathered about
him a group of
disciples whom he taught
and also to have devoted himself to political
matters in
Lu.
The number of
Confucius
’
disciples has
been greatly exaggerated, with Sima Qian and
other sources claiming that there were
as many as three thousand of them. Sima Qian
goes on to say that,
“
Those who, in their own
person, became conversant with the Six
Disciplines
[taught
by
Confucius],
numbered
seventy-
two.
”
The
4th
century
BCE
Mencius and some other early works give
their number as seventy. Perhaps seventy or
seventy-two
were
a
maximum,
though
both
of
these
numbers
are
suspicious
given
Confucius
’
supposed age at death.
At
the age of fifty,
when Duke Ding of
Lu
was on the throne,
Confucius
’
talents
were recognized and he was appointed
Minister of Public Works and then Minister of
Crime. But Confucius apparently
offended members of the Lu nobility who were vying
with Duke Ding for power (or was it the
duke himself that Confucius had rubbed the
wrong way?) and he was
subsequently
forced to
leave office and go into exile. As in
other ancient cultures, exile and
suffering are common themes in the lives of the
heroes
of the early Chinese tradition.
In the company
of his
disciples, Confucius
left
Lu and
traveled in the
states of Wei, Song, Chen, Cai, and Chu,
purportedly looking for a ruler
who
might employ him but meeting instead with
indifference and, occasionally, severe
hardship and danger. Several of these
episodes, as preserved in the Records of the Grand
Historian,
appear
to
be
little
more
than
prose
retellings
of
songs
found
in
the
ancient
Chinese Book of Songs,
Confucius
’
life is thus
rendered a re-enactment of the suffering
and alienation of the personas of the
poems.
In
any
case,
by
most
traditional
accounts,
Confucius
returned
to
Lu
in
484
BCE
and
spent the remainder of his life
teaching, putting in order the Book of Songs, the
Book of
Documents, and other ancient
classics, as well as editing the Spring and Autumn
Annals,
the court chronicle of Lu. Sima
Qian
’
s account also provides
background on Confucius
’
connection to the early canonical texts
on ritual and on music (the latter of which was
lost at an early date). Sima Qian
claims, moreover, that,
“
In
his later years Confucius
delighted
in
the
Yi
”
—
the
famous,
some
might
say
infamous,
divination
manual
popular to
this day in
China and in
the West.
The Analects
passage which appears to
corroborate
Sima
Qian
’
s
claim
seems
corrupt
and
hence
unreliable
on
this
point.
Confucius
’
traditional
association
with
these
works
led
them
and
related
texts
to
be
revered as the
“
Confucian
Classics
”
and
made Confucius himself the spiritual ancestor
of later teachers, historians, moral
philosophers, literary scholars, and countless
others
whose lives and works
figure prominently in Chinese intellectual
history.
Book
X
of
the
Analects
consists
of
personal
observations
of
how
Confucius
comported
himself
as
a
thinker,
teacher,
and
official.
Some
have
argued
that
these
passages were
originally more general prescriptions on how a
gentleman should dress
and behave that
were relabeled as descriptions of Confucius.
Traditionally, Book X has
been
regarded
as
providing
an
intimate
portrait
of
Confucius
and
has
been
read
as
a
biographical
sketch. The following passages provide a few
examples.
Confucius, at
home in his native village, was simple and
unassuming in manner, as
though he did
not trust himself to speak. But when in the
ancestral temple or at Court he
speaks
readily, though always choosing his words with due
caution. (Lunyu 10.1)
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