Confucianism

Confucius

孔子 · 孔丘 · 仲尼 · 孔夫子

551 BCE – 479 BCEHistorically documented person

Teacher, frustrated official and editor of tradition, Kong Qiu (551–479 BCE) is the best-documented figure of ancient Chinese thought and the most influential. He did not write the Analects: his disciples and their disciples compiled them. He taught that the order of the world springs from humaneness (ren) cultivated through ritual (li) and study, and that the gentleman is made, not born. For two millennia he was the "Teacher of ten thousand generations"; his historical figure, beneath layers of hagiography and state ideology, still calls for caution.

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works: 11works
editions: 33editions
quotes: 12quotes
videos: 14videos
images: 9images

Retrato de Confucio por Kanō Sansetsu · CC BY 4.0

In their words

«Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application? Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?»

Analectas 1.1 (trad. inglesa de Legge, 1861)

To begin, one work

Analects (Lunyu)

Read the full text

Their central idea

Ren (humaneness, benevolence): Ren is the central virtue of the Analects and the one that most resists definition: the Master answers each disciple who asks about it differently.

See in context

Biography

5 min read

A man of Lu

Unlike Laozi, Confucius has a biography. We know that he was called Kong Qiu, that his courtesy name was Zhongni, that he was born at Zou, in the small state of Lu—present-day Qufu, in Shandong—and that he died there in 479 BCE, in the sixteenth year of Duke Ai, as the chronicle of Lu, the Chunqiu, records and as its commentary, the Zuozhuan, glosses. His father, Shuliang He, an officer of minor rank, died when the boy was three; his mother, Yan Zhengzai, raised him in poverty. "When I was young I was of humble station," he will say himself in the Analects (9.6), "that is why I can do many menial things." The first posts tradition attributes to him—keeper of granaries, overseer of herds—have the same tone: a man of a family in decline, belonging to the class of the shi, the lowest-ranking scholar-warriors who in the sixth century BCE were beginning to live by their competence rather than their birth.

That competence was, in his case, knowledge of the rites and texts of the old Zhou dynasty, whose order Lu preserved better than other states. Confucius made of that knowledge a vocation and, later, a school. He accepted disciples without asking about their origin—"I have never refused instruction to anyone who brought me a bundle of dried meat" (7.7)—and trained them in the six arts, the rites, music, poetry and, above all, in a way of being. Tradition speaks of three thousand students and seventy-two who attained mastery; the Analects preserve the names and characters of some two dozen, from the impetuous Zilu to the silent Yan Hui, the beloved disciple whose early death made him cry out that Heaven was destroying him.

The official and the exile

Confucius wanted to govern. Around the age of fifty he obtained in Lu offices of some importance: tradition makes him steward of Zhongdu and then minister of works and of justice (sikou). The Zuozhuan shows him in 500 BCE assisting Duke Ding at the Jiagu meeting with the powerful state of Qi, where his ritual firmness is said to have forced Qi to return usurped territories. Two years later he tried to dismantle the fortresses of the three families who in fact ruled Lu; the project half failed and, around 497, he left the state. Thus began an exile of fourteen years through Wei, Song, Chen, Cai and the borders of Chu, seeking a prince who would put the Way into practice. He did not find one. He was threatened at Kuang, went hungry between Chen and Cai, was likened to "the dog of a house in mourning" and heard the hermits of the south mock his persistence. "Is that the one who knows it cannot be done and yet keeps trying?" a gatekeeper said of him (14.38). He returned to Lu in 484 BCE, aged sixty-eight, summoned by the minister Ji Kangzi, and devoted his last years to teaching and to putting the ancient texts in order. He lost his son Kong Li, then Yan Hui, then Zilu, killed in a revolt in Wei. He died in 479 BCE and was buried by the river Si, north of Qufu, where his tomb, the Kong Forest, still receives visitors.

What he said and what he was made to say

The essence of his thought lies in the Analects (Lunyu), a collection of some five hundred sayings and brief dialogues gathered by his disciples and their disciples over several generations. The twenty books are not homogeneous: modern philology, from the Qing scholars to Bruce and Taeko Brooks, distinguishes strata, and the Dingzhou manuscripts (1st century BCE) and those from the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun show that the text still circulated in different versions under the Han. But the core is coherent and its voice unmistakable. Confucius presents himself as "a transmitter, not a maker" (7.1): what he teaches is the order of the ancient kings. His innovation, however, is radical: he shifts the centre of that order from ritual as protocol to the inner disposition that animates it, ren—humaneness, benevolence—which he defines with a negative golden rule: "do not do to others what you do not want for yourself" (15.24). The gentleman (junzi), formerly a rank of blood, becomes a moral achievement open to whoever studies and cultivates himself. Heaven has entrusted him with a mission, but as for the spirits he prefers "to respect them and keep them at a distance" (6.22): "if you do not yet understand life, how will you understand death?" (11.12).

Layers were soon added to that core. Tradition attributed to him the editing of the Five Classics—the Book of Songs, the Book of Documents, the Rites, the Book of Changes with its "ten wings" and, above all, the Chunqiu annals, whose subtleties were said to hide a moral judgement on every prince. Mencius, a century and a half later, raised him to a sage without a throne; Sima Qian, around 94 BCE, devoted to him a "hereditary house" as if he were a sovereign and gathered in it everything that was told of him, miracles and farewells included. The Han made Confucianism state doctrine in 136 BCE; Emperor Ping gave him in 1 CE his first posthumous title; under the Song, Zhu Xi's Four Books became the syllabus of the imperial examinations and would remain so until 1905. In 1687 the Jesuits of Beijing presented him to Europe as Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, and from their Latinisation—Kong Fuzi, "Master Kong"—comes the name by which we know him.

Caveats

Separating the man from the monument is the historian's task. Almost everything told of his life with colour and detail comes from the Shiji, four centuries later, and from the Kongzi jiayu, later still; what can be sustained from nearby sources—the Zuozhuan, the Analects themselves, the Mencius—is far more sober: a teacher from Lu, a brief passage through power, a long unsuccessful journey, a school that survived. Even his birth date wavers between 552 and 551 BCE depending on which commentary on the Chunqiu one follows. That sobriety does not diminish the figure: what remains documented of him—a voice that teaches how to be human through study, ritual and affection for others—is enough to explain why, two and a half thousand years later, he is still the teacher of a quarter of humankind.

Sources: Sima Qian. Shiji (Memorias históricas), juan 47, «Kongzi shijia» (Casa hereditaria de Confucio), c. 94 a. C. Ed. Zhonghua shuju, Pekín, 1959. Trad. francesa: Chavannes, Les Mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien, vol. 5, 1905; trad. inglesa en Nienhauser (ed.), The Grand Scribe's Records, vol. 5.1, Indiana University Press, 2006. · Legge, James (trad.). The Chinese Classics, vol. 1: Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean. Trübner, Londres, 1861; 2.ª ed. Clarendon Press, 1893. Project Gutenberg nº 4094. · Slingerland, Edward (trad.). Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianápolis, 2003. ISBN 9780872206359. · Lau, D. C. (trad.). Confucius: The Analects (Lun yü). Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1979. ISBN 9780140443486. · Cheng, Anne (trad.). Entretiens de Confucius. Éditions du Seuil (Points Sagesses), París, 1981. ISBN 9782020057752. Y Cheng, Anne. Histoire de la pensée chinoise. Seuil, París, 1997.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

551 BCE533 BCE515 BCE497 BCE479 BCE

551 BCEage 0Zou, estado de Lu (hoy Qufu, Shandong)

Birth

Kong Qiu is born, son of Shuliang He and Yan Zhengzai. The Zuozhuan and Shiji give 551 BCE; the Gongyang commentary, 552. The traditional date of 28 September is a late convention. Years BCE are expressed as negative numbers.

ProbableSima Qian. Shiji (Memorias históricas), juan 47, «Kongzi shijia» (Casa hereditaria de Confucio), c. 94 a. C. Ed. Zhonghua shuju, Pekín, 1959. Trad. francesa: Chavannes, Les Mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien, vol. 5, 1905; trad. inglesa en Nienhauser (ed.), The Grand Scribe's Records, vol. 5.1, Indiana University Press, 2006.

After their death

136 BCEThe Five Classics become state doctrine
1 BCEFirst posthumous title
1313The Four Books become the imperial examination syllabus
1687Confucius Sinarum Philosophus
2011 – 2016The Analects of the Marquis of Haihun

551 BCE · age 0
Birth
Kong Qiu is born, son of Shuliang He and Yan Zhengzai. The Zuozhuan and Shiji give 551 BCE; the Gongyang commentary, 552. The traditional date of 28 September is a late convention. Years BCE are expressed as negative numbers.
Probable
c. 549 BCE · age 3
Death of his father
Shuliang He dies when the boy is about three; his mother raises him in humble conditions, as he himself would recall (Analects 9.6).
Tradition
c. 533 BCE · age 19
Marriage and birth of his son
He marries at about nineteen; the following year his son Kong Li, called Boyu ("Fish"), is born, according to the Shiji and the Kongzi jiayu.
Tradition
517 BCE · age 34
Follows Duke Zhao to Qi
After Duke Zhao's expulsion from Lu by the three families, Confucius goes to Qi. There, according to the Analects (7.14), he hears the Shao music and "for three months did not know the taste of meat".
Probable
500 BCE · age 51
The Jiagu meeting
He assists Duke Ding of Lu at his meeting with Duke Jing of Qi. According to the Zuozhuan (Ding 10), his firmness in protocol foils an intimidation by Qi and obtains the return of territories. It is the best-attested political episode of his life.
Probable
498 BCE · age 53
Minister of justice; attempt to dismantle the three fortresses
As sikou (minister of justice) he promotes, with Zilu, the demolition of the walls of the cities of the Ji, Shu and Meng families, who dominate Lu. Two fall; the third resists and the project fails (Zuozhuan, Ding 12).
Probable
497 BCE – 484 BCE · age 54
Fourteen years of travel through the states
He leaves Lu and travels the neighbouring states with his disciples seeking a prince who will adopt his Way: Wei (where he is received by Nanzi), Song (where Huan Tui tries to kill him), Chen and Cai (where he goes hungry), as far as the border of Chu.
Probable
484 BCE · age 67
Return to Lu
Summoned by Ji Kangzi, he returns to Lu (Zuozhuan, Ai 11). He receives no office; he devotes himself to teaching and to putting the Songs, the Documents and the rites in order.
Documented
481 BCE · age 70
Death of Yan Hui; capture of the lin
Yan Hui, the favourite disciple, dies ("Heaven is destroying me!", Analects 11.9). The same year a hunt captures a lin, an auspicious beast; tradition has the Chunqiu annals end there.
Tradition
480 BCE · age 71
Death of Zilu
Zilu dies in a revolt in Wei, straightening his cap before falling (Zuozhuan, Ai 15). On learning of it, Confucius has the pickled meat removed from his table.
Probable
479 BCE · age 72
Death
He dies in the fourth month of the sixteenth year of Duke Ai, according to the Chunqiu and Zuozhuan (Ai 16). He is buried by the river Si; his disciples keep three years of mourning, Zigong six.
Documented
136 BCE
The Five Classics become state doctrine
Emperor Wu of the Han establishes the Erudites of the Five Classics: Confucianism becomes the orthodoxy of the empire.
Documented
1 BCE
First posthumous title
Emperor Ping grants him the title Duke Baocheng Xuanni, the start of a long series of honours culminating in 1530 with "Supreme Sage and First Teacher".
Documented
1313
The Four Books become the imperial examination syllabus
The Yuan dynasty restores the examinations with the Four Books as annotated by Zhu Xi as their basis; the Analects would remain a set text until the system's abolition in 1905.
Documented
1687
Confucius Sinarum Philosophus
The Jesuits Couplet, Intorcetta, Herdtrich and Rougemont publish in Paris the first Latin translation of the Analects, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean: Europe meets "Confucius".
Documented
2011 – 2016
The Analects of the Marquis of Haihun
The excavation of the tomb of Liu He, Marquis of Haihun (d. 59 BCE), brings to light bamboo slips of the Analects with a chapter, "Zhi dao", that tradition held lost with the Qi version.
Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Later compilation · c. 400 BCE

Analects (Lunyu)

論語

Twenty books of brief sayings, dialogues with disciples and princes, and notes on the Master's conduct. Without systematic order, they set out an ethic of self-cultivation: humaneness (ren) as the central virtue, ritual (li) as its form, study and the rectification of names as method, and the gentleman (junzi) as ideal. Three versions circulated under the Han (Lu, Qi and the "old text"); Zheng Xuan's recension and He Yan's commentary fixed the text, and Zhu Xi's (1190) made it the first of the Four Books. It is the main, and almost the only reliable, source on Confucius's thought.

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18 editions · amazon.com

Confucius

Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu)

The Conscious Library

Traditional attribution · c. 481 BCE

Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu)

春秋

Terse year-by-year annals of twelve dukes of Lu, in just over sixteen thousand characters. The Confucian tradition read into their laconism a system of "praise and blame" encoded in the choice of each word, and on that reading three canonical commentaries were built: the Zuozhuan, the Gongyang and the Guliang. It is the only one of the Five Classics whose composition tradition attributes directly to Confucius.

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2 editions · amazon.com

Later compilation · 1190

The Four Books (Sishu)

四書

The Neo-Confucian synthesis that for six centuries was the syllabus of the imperial examinations and therefore the basic education of the whole Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese elite. Its reading order—Daxue, Analects, Mencius, Zhongyong—encodes a pedagogy of self-cultivation running from the individual to the order of the world.

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2 editions · amazon.es

Complete works (11)

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

Is it not pleasant to learn with a constant perseverance and application? Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?

學而時習之，不亦說乎？有朋自遠方來，不亦樂乎？

VerifiedAnalectas 1.1 (trad. inglesa de Legge, 1861)

1 / 12

Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (3)

«Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.»
Found neither in the Analects nor in any ancient source. It is a maxim of twentieth-century American motivational literature, attributed to Confucius since the 1980s.
«Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.»
No literal correspondence in the Analects. The phrase derives from Oliver Goldsmith (The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766: "our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall"). The closest in Confucius is 15.30 on correcting faults.
«Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.»
Not found in the Analects or the Shiji; documented in English only from the twentieth century, with no identifiable Chinese source.

Last words

Traditional attribution

«The great mountain crumbles! The main beam breaks! The wise man withers away!»

太山壞乎！梁柱摧乎！哲人萎乎！

According to Sima Qian (Shiji 47), seven days before his death Confucius rose early, walked before his door with his hands behind his back and sang these lines; then he told Zigong, who came on hearing him, "The world has long been without the Way and no one has been able to follow me," recounted a dream in which he saw himself seated between two pillars, as in the funerals of the Yin dynasty from which he descended, and took to his bed ill until he died. The Liji ("Tangong") transmits the same scene. It is a traditional account, four centuries after the events, not a testimony; the Analects record no words from his last days.

Source: Sima Qian. Shiji (Memorias históricas), juan 47, «Kongzi shijia» (Casa hereditaria de Confucio), c. 94 a. C. Ed. Zhonghua shuju, Pekín, 1959. Trad. francesa: Chavannes, Les Mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien, vol. 5, 1905; trad. inglesa en Nienhauser (ed.), The Grand Scribe's Records, vol. 5.1, Indiana University Press, 2006.

Ask

What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?
He acknowledges Heaven but does not speculate on spirits: conduct is what is urgent
Reserve before the transcendentStated explicitly
Confucius, as transmitted in the Analects, does not deny a transcendent order: he speaks of Heaven (tian) as the power that entrusted virtue to him and that cannot be deceived, and in moments of danger he appeals to it. But his interest is deliberately directed elsewhere. The disciples record that the Master did not speak of prodigies, force, disorder or spirits, and one of them admits he never heard him discourse on human nature and the way of Heaven. He advises respecting the spirits while keeping them at a distance, and understands ritual as a way of ordering human life rather than as a theory of the divine. The Absolute, for him, is acknowledged without being defined; what calls for attention is virtue (de), humaneness (ren) and right relationship between persons.
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Who am I? Is there a true self?
One becomes a person by overcoming oneself and returning to ritual
A self cultivated in relationshipInferred from their doctrine
The Analects do not speculate on the nature of the self, but all their teaching concerns how it is formed. When Yan Hui asks about humaneness (ren), Confucius replies that it consists in overcoming oneself and returning to ritual, and that a single day of doing so would turn the whole world towards humaneness. Whoever wishes to establish himself establishes others; whoever wishes to succeed helps others to succeed. Confucius summarises his own life as a staged apprenticeship, from setting his heart on learning at fifteen to being able, at seventy, to follow his heart's desires without overstepping the measure. The self here is not a substance to be discovered but something cultivated in relationships — parents, ruler, friends — and in the ritual forms that order them.
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Why do we suffer?
Let the ruler be ruler and the father father: without order there is no peace
Social and moral disorderInferred from their doctrine
Confucius does not elaborate an explanation of suffering, but the Analects show where he sees its origin: in the breakdown of the order that makes common life possible. To Duke Jing of Qi he answers that good government consists in the ruler being ruler, the minister minister, the father father and the son son. If the people are led by laws and punishments they will avoid punishment but feel no shame; if guided by virtue and ritual, they will have a sense of shame and correct themselves. One lacking humaneness (ren), he says, cannot long endure hardship nor long enjoy prosperity. He lived in an age of wars between states and saw in that chaos the consequence of abandoning the rites of the ancient kings. Collective pain arises from moral and social disorder; the remedy is rectification.
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What happens after death?
If one does not yet know life, how can one know death?
Silence or reserveStated explicitly
Confucius expressly refuses to speculate about the beyond. When his disciple Zilu asks him about death, he answers with another question: while you do not yet know life, how can you know death? In the same passage he declines to speak of serving the spirits while one does not yet know how to serve men. The Analects add that the Master did not speak of prodigies or spirits, and define wisdom as devoting oneself to what is right for the people while keeping the spirits at a respectful distance. This reserve is not indifference: Confucius requires the funeral rites and the sacrifices to the ancestors to be performed with full sincerity, as if they were present. What survives death, in his horizon, is the continuity of lineage, rite and transmitted virtue; on the fate of the dead he keeps a deliberate silence.
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How is liberation or salvation attained?
Not liberation from the world but perfection within it, through humaneness and ritual
Through virtue and harmonyInferred from their doctrine
Confucius does not frame the question in terms of salvation: in the Analects there is no beyond to reach and no condition to escape. His horizon is self-cultivation until one becomes a junzi, an exemplary person. When Yan Hui asks him about humaneness (ren), he answers that it consists in overcoming oneself and returning to ritual (12.1). The Way is travelled by studying, practising what one has learned and correcting one's faults, and it is a lifelong task: in 2.4 Confucius sums up his own course up to seventy, when he could follow his heart's desires without transgressing the norm. The closest thing to fulfilment is that coincidence of desire and order, lived out in human relationships.
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Is a teacher necessary?
One learns from the ancients, from the rites and from anyone walking beside you
Community and traditionStated explicitly
Confucius was above all a teacher, and the Analects are largely a record of his teaching to a circle of disciples. Yet he presented himself as a transmitter, not a creator: he trusted the ancients and loved them (7.1). For him, authority lies in the living tradition, the classical texts and the rites, and the teacher is the one who keeps and renews it, as 2.11 indicates: whoever reviews the old and discovers the new can be a teacher. Moreover, learning does not depend on a single figure: when three people walk together, there is surely a teacher among them, whose good to learn from and whose faults to correct in oneself (7.22). Transmission is communal and continuous.
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Is the world real?
Heaven does not speak: the seasons follow their course and all things are born
Natural order in transformationInferred from their doctrine
Confucius does not speculate on the nature of the world or its ultimate reality, and his disciples noted that he hardly spoke of human nature or the Way of Heaven. But the Analects reveal an assumption: the world is a real order that works by itself. When he wishes to stop speaking, he explains that Heaven does not speak either and yet the four seasons follow their course and all things are born (17.19). Beside a river he remarks that everything passes like this, ceasing neither day nor night (9.17). The human task is not to question that order but to reflect it in conduct, in the rites and in government.
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What is love?
Ren is loving others, beginning with one's parents and with measure
Ordered benevolenceStated explicitly
For Confucius the central virtue is ren, usually translated as humaneness or benevolence. When Fan Chi asks him what ren is, he answers: to love others. That love has an order: the Analects present filial piety and fraternal respect as the root of ren, and from the family it extends to friends, to the community and to the state. Its practical rule is reciprocity (shu): what you do not want for yourself, do not do to others. Confucius rejects, however, an undifferentiated or naive love: asked whether one should repay injury with kindness, he replies that then with what would one repay kindness, and proposes answering injury with uprightness and kindness with kindness. Confucian love is expressed in ritual, which gives form and measure to the affections, and in government by virtue.
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Are we free, or is everything determined?
There is a mandate of Heaven to know, but virtue depends on oneself alone
Destiny and responsibilityStated explicitly
The *Analects* hold two things at once that Confucius did not experience as contradictory. There is a *ming*, a mandate or destiny of Heaven: whether his teaching prevails, the length of a life or a disciple's ruin are not in human hands (14.36), and one who does not know the mandate cannot be a noble person (20.3). He says he came to know the mandate of Heaven at fifty (2.4). Yet virtue does not depend on destiny: «Is humaneness far away? If I desire it, it is already here» (7.30). The *junzi* accepts what he does not control —fortune, recognition— and answers wholly for what he does: his conduct, his study, his uprightness in ritual.
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Why meditate or pray?
Thinking without study is useless: practice is rite, study and conduct
Ritual and self-cultivationStated explicitly
The *Analects* know neither meditation in the Indian sense nor prayer as petition; what takes their place is self-cultivation through ritual (*li*), study and conduct. Confucius recounts that he once spent a whole day without eating and a night without sleeping in order to think, and it was of no use: better to study (15.31). When he fell ill and his disciple Zilu proposed praying for him, he replied that he had been praying for a long time (7.35), usually read as meaning that his whole life was his prayer. Of sacrifice he says it should be offered as if the spirits were present (3.12): what matters is the attitude of reverence. Mastering oneself and returning to ritual is humaneness (12.1).
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Can reason know the ultimate?
Learning without thought is lost; thought without learning is perilous
Study and learningStated explicitly
The *Analects* make study the path of wisdom while keeping reserve about the ultimate. Confucius says of himself that he was not born knowing but loved antiquity and sought knowledge diligently (7.20), and he states the balance between study and reflection: learning without thinking leads to confusion, and thinking without learning is perilous (2.15). Intellectual honesty is part of that knowledge: to know that one knows what one knows and does not know what one does not know (2.17). On human nature and the Way of Heaven, according to his disciple Zigong, he was not heard to speak (5.13). Reason, cultivated in texts and rites, is directed to human life; what exceeds it is not speculated upon.
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Withdraw from the world or transform it?
One cannot live among birds and beasts: the sage belongs in society
Order societyStated explicitly
Confucius devoted his life to seeking a ruler who would put his doctrine into practice and expressly rejected withdrawal. In the Analects, two hermits working the fields criticise his disciples for following a man who goes from court to court in a disordered world; Confucius replies that one cannot live in the company of birds and beasts, that if not with men he does not know with whom to be, and that if the world followed the Way he would not need to try to change it. His political ideal is government by virtue, which draws the people as the pole star orders the others, and the rectification of names: that the prince be a prince, the minister a minister, the father a father and the son a son. Wisdom is realised in ritual, the family and public service.
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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Thinks most like

Thinks most unlike

They clash onFundamental disagreement

Confucius · Laozi

Two orders for a world at war: ritual that gives form and the Way that removes it

Both seek order and both locate wisdom in government, not in withdrawal: Confucius answers the hermits that one cannot live with birds and beasts (Analects 18.6), and the Daodejing wants a ruler whose existence the people barely notice (ch. 17). But the remedy is opposite. Confucius orders through virtue, ritual and the rectification of names: let the prince be a prince and the father a father (12.11). The Daodejing sees those very virtues as symptoms of the illness: when the great Dao is abandoned, humaneness and righteousness appear (ch. 18), and ritual is the husk of loyalty and the beginning of disorder (ch. 38). One adds cultivated form; the other removes it until the natural course of things restores itself.

Why: The conflict is real and polemical, though between texts and schools rather than persons. The Daodejing names and discredits the central Confucian concepts, humaneness, righteousness and ritual, which suggests it was composed, at least in part, against that school. The meeting between Confucius and Laozi recounted by Sima Qian in the Records of the Grand Historian (ch. 63) belongs to legend and is not considered historical. The underlying difference is anthropological: Confucius trusts that cultivated form educates human nature; the Daodejing suspects that every imposed form falsifies it. Chinese culture eventually read them as complementary, one for public office and the other for retirement.

They agree on

Confucius · Jesus of Nazareth

The golden rule in two languages, and the exact point where they part

The Analects sum up conduct in reciprocity: what you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others (15.24); the Gospels state the same rule positively: treat others as you would have them treat you (Mt 7:12; Lk 6:31). For both, love of the other is the centre of moral life: asked what humaneness is, Confucius answers that it is to love others (12.22); asked about the first commandment, Jesus joins love of God and of neighbour (Mk 12:28–34). Both demand that this love become concrete conduct. But they part before the enemy: Confucius rejects repaying evil with good and proposes answering offence with uprightness (14.34); Jesus asks his hearers to love the enemy and pray for the persecutor (Mt 5:43–48).

Why: There was no contact between them; the convergence comes from a widespread moral intuition, reciprocity, found in very diverse traditions. The divergence before the enemy is explained by each one's framework. Confucius thinks of a society ordered by graded relationships, beginning with the family, where love has measure and justice requires that each act receive its due. Jesus speaks from the imminence of the Kingdom of God and from the imitation of a Father who loves all without distinction, which breaks every measure. One seeks the harmony of the city; the other announces a justice that overflows it.

They agree on

Confucius · Hildegard of Bingen

Ritual and music as the form of the soul: the master of Lu and the abbess of the Rhine

Neither understands the inner life as solitary meditation. For Confucius practice is ritual, study and conduct: to master oneself and return to ritual is humaneness (Analects 12.1), and sacrifice must be offered as if the spirits were present (3.12). For Hildegard it is the divine office sung seven times a day: in her letter to the prelates of Mainz (1178–1179) she maintains that sung praise restores to human beings the angelic voice Adam had before the fall, and she writes the Symphonia and the Ordo Virtutum from that conviction. In both, shared, repeated and beautiful form educates the affections, orders the community and brings the human being into harmony with a greater order, that of Heaven or of the created cosmos.

Why: The affinity is purely comparative and rests on a shared ancient intuition: music and ritual do not adorn moral life, they constitute it, because body and voice are educated before ideas. The Confucian tradition joined ritual and music very early as instruments of government and self-cultivation; Benedictine liturgy made the singing of psalms the axis of the monastic day. The difference is theological: Confucian ritual looks to human conduct and keeps the spirits at a distance, whereas Hildegard's chant is addressed to a personal God and is participation in the praise of the angels. They agree on pedagogy, not on the addressee.

They clash onFundamental disagreement

Confucius · Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

Filial piety as the root, or leaving home as open air

For Confucius filial piety and fraternal respect are the root of humaneness (Analects 1.2), and the sage does not withdraw: one cannot live with birds and beasts (18.6); wisdom is realised in the family, in ritual and in public service. The Pali canon shows the Buddha leaving home, wife and son, and repeats that household life is a dusty path while the wandering life is like open air (Samaññaphala Sutta, DN 2); the monastic community renounces the home. Both, however, teach an ethics for the householder: the Buddha devotes the Sigalovada Sutta (DN 31) to duties towards parents, teachers, wife and workers. What separates them is where the highest is fulfilled: in well-ordered relationships, for one; outside them, for the other.

Why: The contradiction is real and had historical consequences: when Buddhism reached China, Confucian scholars reproached it for centuries because monks abandoned their parents and left no descendants, and Chinese Buddhists answered by stressing the filial duties found in the canon. The two masters never met; the clash arises from their aims. Confucius seeks the harmony of a society at war and sees in the family the model of the state. The Buddha seeks the end of suffering, which arises from attachment, and sees in domestic ties one more attachment. Neither despises what the other values: one leaves renunciation as an exception; the other, the household as a stage.

They agree on

Confucius · The 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)

An ethics that needs no metaphysics: humaneness and universal responsibility

Confucius acknowledges Heaven but does not speculate about spirits or prodigies (Analects 7.21; 6.22) and concentrates attention on conduct: humaneness is to love others (12.22), and his practical rule is not to do to others what one does not wish for oneself (15.24). The Dalai Lama, a monk of a tradition without a creator God, proposes in Ethics for the New Millennium a secular ethics valid for believers and non-believers alike, grounded in everyone's wish to be happy and avoid suffering, and translates it into universal responsibility towards others, future generations and the planet. Both deliberately separate moral life from disputes about the ultimate, place it in relationships with others and measure it by its effects on community and government.

Why: The convergence is comparative and responds to similar situations: Confucius teaches in a China divided by war between states, and the Dalai Lama in a plural, secularised world, as the leader of a people in exile. Both seek a moral basis that can be shared without requiring a common faith. They differ, however, in the scope of love. Confucius wants it graded, beginning with parents, and rejects repaying evil with good (14.34); the Dalai Lama, from Buddhist compassion, extends it to all beings equally, the enemy included. One orders affection; the other universalises it. And ritual, central in Confucius, carries little weight in the Dalai Lama's secular ethics.

Anecdotes and stories

Oral traditionc. 496–484 a. C.

The dog of a house in mourning

During the years of travel, in the state of Zheng, Confucius became separated from his disciples and stood alone by the eastern gate of the city wall. Zigong asked after him, and a townsman replied: "At the east gate there is a man with the forehead of Yao, the neck of Gao Yao and the shoulders of Zichan, though from the waist down he is three inches shorter than Yu. He has the dejected look of a dog from a house in mourning." When Zigong reported this, Confucius laughed and said: "The appearance is the least of it. But the dog from a house in mourning—that is true, very true!" The scene, recorded by Sima Qian, condenses like no other the wandering Confucius: a man who has lost his master—the prince who should have employed him—and knows it. The expression "dog of a house in mourning" (sangjia zhi gou) became proverbial, and in 2007 it gave its title to an essay by the sinologist Li Ling that sparked in China a debate on the human figure of the Master versus his official version.

Origin of the story: Shiji 47, "Hereditary House of Confucius". Not in the Analects. Reworked in the Kongzi jiayu.

Documentedc. 489 a. C.

Hunger between Chen and Cai

At the lowest point of his exile, the Master and his disciples ran out of provisions in the strip between the states of Chen and Cai. The Analects tell it drily: "In Chen the provisions ran out. The followers fell ill and could not rise. Zilu, indignant, went to see him: 'Does the gentleman too suffer want?' The Master said: 'The gentleman stands firm in want; the small man, when in want, overflows'" (15.2). Sima Qian expands the scene into a narrative of several days: Confucius keeps playing the zither and singing; he questions Zilu, Zigong and Yan Hui one by one with the same question—"we are neither rhinoceroses nor tigers, why do we roam the wilderness? Is my Way mistaken?"—and only Yan Hui answers to his liking: that the Way is no less great because the world does not accept it. The Zhuangzi, for its part, turns the episode into a parable of the imperturbable sage. The core is ancient and probably real; the dialogues are school construction.

Origin of the story: Analects 15.2 (core); Shiji 47 (expansion); Zhuangzi, chs. 14, 17, 20 and 28 (Taoist versions).

Source: Legge, James (trad.). The Chinese Classics, vol. 1: Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean. Trübner, Londres, 1861; 2.ª ed. Clarendon Press, 1893. Project Gutenberg nº 4094.

Documentedfinales del s. VI – principios del V a. C.

The stable fire

It is one of the shortest sentences in the Analects and one of the most commented upon. "The stable burned down. The Master, on withdrawing from court, asked: 'Was anyone hurt?' He did not ask about the horses" (10.17). In a society where a good horse was worth more than a stable boy, the question marked a hierarchy: people before property. Commentators of every age saw in it ren, humaneness, in action—not a doctrine but a reflex. The sentence has also had a curious philological life: since the Tang some readers have proposed punctuating it differently ("Was anyone hurt? No. He asked about the horses") so as not to leave animals outside the Master's compassion, a reading most reject. Documented in the oldest stratum of the text, it is a portrait in miniature.

Origin of the story: Analects 10.17 (10.12 in Legge's numbering). Commentary on the alternative punctuation in Slingerland (2003), ad loc.

Documentedc. 496 a. C.

The visit to Nanzi

In Wei, Confucius agreed to be received by Nanzi, wife of Duke Ling, a woman of scandalous reputation and great influence at court. The Analects record the reaction of the most outspoken disciple: "The Master saw Nanzi. Zilu was displeased. The Master swore: 'If I have done anything improper, may Heaven reject me, may Heaven reject me!'" (6.28). Sima Qian adds the details: the audience behind a gauze curtain, the tinkling of the lady's jewels as she returned the bow, and, shortly after, the duke and Nanzi riding out in a carriage with Confucius behind in another, which drew from him the complaint "I have never seen anyone who loves virtue as he loves beauty" and decided him to leave Wei. The episode has served for centuries to debate how far the sage's accommodation with power should go; and it is rare in the Analects for showing the Master defending himself against his own.

Origin of the story: Analects 6.28 (6.26 in Legge); expansion in Shiji 47. The saying on virtue and beauty also appears in Analects 9.18 and 15.13 without context.

Documented500 a. C.

The Jiagu meeting

In 500 BCE Duke Ding of Lu met at Jiagu with Duke Jing of Qi, the most powerful state in the region, and Confucius acted as master of ceremonies for Lu. According to the Zuozhuan, when Qi sent forward armed dancers of the Lai tribe to intimidate the Duke of Lu, Confucius mounted the steps of the platform and demanded their withdrawal, invoking the protocol between princes: "Barbarians must not disturb the Xia; weapons must not approach a covenant." The Duke of Qi, ashamed, ordered them withdrawn, and at the end of the meeting returned to Lu the lands of Yun, Huan and Guiyin. Sima Qian adds a crueller episode—Confucius has some jesters of Qi executed for mocking before the princes—which the Zuozhuan does not contain and which historians regard as amplification. It is the only political action of Confucius recorded in a source close to the events, and it shows what ritual meant to him: not ceremony, but the order that protects the weak against the strong.

Origin of the story: Zuozhuan, Duke Ding, year 10; Guliang zhuan, Ding 10; Shiji 47 (with the execution of the jesters, absent from the Zuozhuan).

Source: Zuozhuan (Zuo Tradition), años Ding 10, Ding 12, Ai 11, Ai 15 y Ai 16. Trad. Durrant, Stephen; Li, Wai-yee; Schaberg, David. Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan: Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2016.

Documentedc. 481 a. C.

The death of Yan Hui

Yan Hui, the poor disciple who "with a bowl of rice and a ladle of water, in a mean alley" did not lose his joy (6.11), was the only one in whom the Master recognised perfect humaneness for months at a time. He died young, around 481 BCE. The Analects preserve Confucius's reaction in four consecutive entries: "Alas! Heaven is destroying me, Heaven is destroying me!" (11.9); and when the disciples reproach him for his excessive grief: "Excessive? If I do not grieve for him, for whom shall I grieve?" (11.10). When Yan Hui's father, Yan Lu, asks for the Master's carriage to pay for an outer coffin, Confucius refuses: his own son Li also died without an outer coffin, and he, as a former dignitary, cannot go on foot (11.8). And when the disciples bury him with pomp, he protests: "Hui treated me as a father, and I have not been able to treat him as a son" (11.11). The whole is one of the oldest documents of personal grief in Chinese literature and shows the Master subject to the same ritual rules he teaches.

Origin of the story: Analects 11.8–11.11 (11.7–11.10 in Legge) and 6.11. The date comes from Shiji 47 and the traditional chronology; some place it earlier.

Hagiographic account481 a. C.

The capture of the lin

In the spring of the fourteenth year of Duke Ai (481 BCE), according to the annals of Lu, a hunting party in the west captured a lin, a fabulous creature—the "Chinese unicorn"—that appears only when a sage reigns. The Gongyang commentary relates that Confucius, seeing it wounded by hunters who did not recognise it, turned away and wept: "Why has it come? Why has it come?", and that there he ended his writing of the Chunqiu, since the sage's sign had arrived in a world without a sage. Sima Qian adds that the Master saw in it the announcement of his own death, which came two years later. The story is a portent narrative, built by tradition to give the annals a meaningful close and their supposed author a prophet's ending; modern scholarship grants it no historical value, but it explains why for two thousand years the reading of the Chunqiu was inseparable from Confucius's life and why the lin is, with the phoenix, the Master's emblem.

Origin of the story: Chunqiu, Ai 14 (one line); Gongyang zhuan, Ai 14 (the weeping and the end of the annals); Shiji 47 (the premonition).

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

Ren (humaneness, benevolence)ren

Ren is the central virtue of the Analects and the one that most resists definition: the Master answers each disciple who asks about it differently. To Fan Chi he says "to love people" (12.22); to Yan Hui, "to master oneself and return to ritual" (12.1); to Zhonggong, "do not do to others what you would not want for yourself" (12.2); to Zizhang, five qualities—respect, generosity, sincerity, diligence, kindness. The character combines "person" and "two": ren is what makes a human being human in relation to another. It is not a feeling but a cultivated disposition, difficult and rare—Confucius scarcely recognises it in anyone living—yet within reach of the will: "Is humaneness far away? If I desire it, here it is" (7.30). Mencius would ground it in an innate sprout of compassion; Neo-Confucianism would raise it to the cosmic principle of life. Translations range from "benevolence", "humaneness" and "goodness" to "perfect virtue" (Legge).

Ethical core of Confucianism; contested by the Daodejing (ch. 18) as a symptom of decline; central in Mencius, Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming.

Source: Slingerland, Edward (trad.). Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianápolis, 2003. ISBN 9780872206359.

Li (ritual, proper form)li

Li originally designated the sacrifices and ceremonies of the Zhou nobility; Confucius broadens the word to cover all formalised conduct: greeting, mourning, how to sit, how to address the prince or serve one's parents. Ritual without inner disposition is empty—"if a man is not humane, what has he to do with ritual?" (3.3)—but disposition without form is blind: "deference without ritual is weariness; caution without ritual, timidity; courage without ritual, disorder" (8.2). Li is thus the grammar that makes humaneness legible and effective, and the means by which it is learned: to master oneself and return to ritual is the very definition of ren (12.1). Its political value is immense: the prince who governs by ritual instead of punishments obtains a people with a sense of shame (2.3). Xunzi would make li a creation of the sages to order desires; the Han would codify it in the Liji; in everyday East Asian life it still names courtesy.

Inherits Zhou ritual culture; systematised by Xunzi and the Liji; criticised by Mohists, Legalists and Taoists.

Source: Slingerland, Edward (trad.). Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianápolis, 2003. ISBN 9780872206359.

Junzi (the gentleman, the exemplary person)junzi

Junzi literally means "son of a lord" and designated the noble by birth. Confucius's operation consists in emptying the word of blood and filling it with character: the junzi is whoever behaves as a noble ought to, whatever his origin, and his opposite, the xiaoren ("small man"), is he who looks only to his own advantage. The Analects draw him by contrast: "the gentleman understands what is right; the small man understands profit" (4.16); "the gentleman makes demands on himself; the small man, on others" (15.21); "the gentleman is harmonious without being conformist" (13.23). He is not a sage (shengren), an almost unattainable category, but a practicable ideal: he studies, corrects himself, attends to ritual, is loyal and reliable, and, if he governs, governs by example. The idea that moral excellence is an achievement open to all is the most democratic in Confucianism and the basis of the examination system that, for thirteen centuries, selected officials by their learning and not their birth.

Ideal shared by the whole Confucian tradition; rough equivalents: the Aristotelian spoudaios, the honnête homme of seventeenth-century Europe.

Source: Slingerland, Edward (trad.). Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianápolis, 2003. ISBN 9780872206359.

Xiao (filial piety)xiao

Xiao is the respect, care and obedience owed to parents in life and the mourning and sacrifices owed after their death. For Confucius it is the root of humaneness: "filial piety and fraternal respect are the root of ren" (1.2), because the family is where one learns to feel and act for another. It is not mere maintenance—"even dogs and horses are fed; without reverence, what is the difference?" (2.7)—nor blind obedience: the son must remonstrate gently with his parents and, if they do not listen, respect them while still dissenting (4.18). From the household it extends to the state: a good son will be a good subject, which is why the Classic of Filial Piety makes it a principle of government. Imperial Confucianism codified it to extremes the Analects do not know; its critique was one of the banners of the May Fourth Movement (1919). It remains, in East Asia, the most recognisable virtue of the Confucian legacy.

A Zhou-culture virtue systematised by Confucius; central in the Xiaojing, the Liji and imperial law.

Source: Slingerland, Edward (trad.). Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianápolis, 2003. ISBN 9780872206359.

Zhengming (rectification of names)zhengming

Asked by Zilu what he would do first if he governed Wei, Confucius answers: "rectify the names" (13.3). If names are not correct, speech does not accord with things; if it does not accord, affairs are not accomplished; if they are not accomplished, rites and music do not flourish; if they do not flourish, punishments and penalties miss their mark, and the people do not know where to put hand or foot. The most famous formula is that given to Duke Jing of Qi: "let the prince be prince, the minister minister, the father father and the son son" (12.11). This is not linguistics but political ethics: each name—father, prince, son—carries an implicit duty, and the crisis of the age consists in names being used without fulfilling what they demand. Passage 13.3 belongs to a late stratum of the Analects and some consider it foreign to Confucius; but the idea is in the spirit of his reading of the Chunqiu, where every word judges. Xunzi would devote a treatise to it and the Legalists would turn it into a technique of administrative control.

Developed by Xunzi ("Zhengming") and the Legalists; debated in Chinese philosophy of language (Mohists, School of Names).

Source: Slingerland, Edward (trad.). Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianápolis, 2003. ISBN 9780872206359.

Shu (reciprocity) and zhong (doing one's utmost)shu

When Zigong asks for a single word to serve as a guide for one's whole life, the Master answers: "Is it not shu? What you do not desire for yourself, do not do to others" (15.24). Shu—"putting oneself in the other's place", "reciprocity"—is the practical method of humaneness: to infer, from what one wants and does not want, what one owes to others. Zengzi sums up the Master's Way in two words, zhong and shu (4.15): zhong, doing all one can, giving one's best in what one undertakes; shu, measuring the other by oneself. Together they form what tradition called "the one thread running through everything." The negative formulation of the golden rule—not doing, rather than doing—has been much discussed: it is more modest and more respectful of difference than its positive version, though the Analects also know the latter ("wishing to establish himself, he establishes others", 6.30). It is the point where Confucianism converses most naturally with other ethics of the world.

The Confucian golden rule; parallels in Judaism (Hillel), Christianity (Mt 7:12) and Buddhism.

Source: Slingerland, Edward (trad.). Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianápolis, 2003. ISBN 9780872206359.

Xue (study, learning)xue

The Analects begin with the word "to learn" (xue), and not by chance: Confucius describes himself not as a sage nor as a man of humaneness but as someone who "loves learning" more than anyone (5.28) and who "at fifteen set his will on learning" (2.4). To study is not to accumulate information but to transform oneself: it involves reviewing what one has learned (1.1), reflecting—"to study without thinking is useless; to think without studying is dangerous" (2.15)—asking without shame and, above all, practising. The objects are the Songs, the Documents, the rites and music, but the end is character: "the ancients studied for themselves; those of today, for others" (14.24). Like the junzi, learning is open to all—"in teaching there is no distinction of classes" (15.39)—and it is the only road to humaneness, since without it each virtue degenerates into its vice (17.8). This faith in education as the means of moral perfection and social advancement is the most enduring feature of Confucian civilisation.

Foundation of the imperial examination system and of Neo-Confucian pedagogy (Zhu Xi, "Articles of the White Deer Grotto Academy").

Source: Slingerland, Edward (trad.). Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianápolis, 2003. ISBN 9780872206359.

Retreats

Retreats and centres

Places and gatherings linked to their teaching. We put you in touch with the organisers.

Qufu, provincia de Shandong · China
Qufu: Temple, Cemetery and Mansion of Confucius
Patrimonio Mundial de la UNESCO (ficha oficial)
Qufu, Confucius's home town, preserves the three sites UNESCO inscribed as World Heritage in 1994: the temple raised in his memory shortly after his death and enlarged over the centuries into one of China's great architectural complexes; the cemetery where he and thousands of his descendants lie; and the mansion of the Kong family, home of his direct heirs. It is the pilgrimage site par excellence of Confucianism and the setting for annual ceremonies in his honour. The UNESCO website sometimes rejects automated requests, but it is the official listing.
Request information

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Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

Who was Confucius? — Bryan W. Van Norden
Analysis· EN· 2015· 5 min
TED-EdOfficial channel
¿Quién fue Confucio? — Bryan W. Van Norden
Analysis· ES· 5 min
Sé Curioso — TED-EdOfficial channel
Who Was Confucius? And What Did He Really Say?
Lecture· EN· 62 min
Bryan Van Norden
Confucius on Language: How NOT to Rectify Names
Lecture· EN· 66 min
Bryan Van Norden
The Analects of Confucius, read by Jing Li (LibriVox)
Third-party recording· EN· 212 min
LibriVox AudiobooksOfficial channel
《孔子》Confucius — 半部论语治天下 (CCTV纪录)
Documentary· ZH· 90 min
CCTV纪录 (CCTV Documentary)Official channel
如果国宝会说话 — 孔子见老子画像石 (El relieve «Confucio visita a Laozi»)
Documentary· ZH· 5 min
CCTV纪录Official channel
Confucio. «El Maestro de Diez Mil Siglos»
Documentary· ES· 21 min
UNED DocumentosOfficial channel
Confucio — Analectas «Lún Yǔ» (audiolibro completo en español)
Third-party recording· ES· 261 min
AMA Audiolibros
Professor Michael Puett on Zhuangzi in Relation to Confucius
Lecture· EN· 44 min
China X (HarvardX)Official channel
Views of Nature in the Analects with Annping Chin
Interview· EN· 4 min
Yale Forum on Religion and EcologyOfficial channel
Confucian Analects in the Modern World: Five Generations
Lecture· EN· 68 min
UC Berkeley EventsOfficial channel
Confucius, 551 BC: Ancient China's Philosopher Who Changed The World
Documentary· EN· 89 min
Timeline — World History Documentaries
Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism: Chinese Popular Religion
Analysis· EN· 13 min
CrashCourseOfficial channel

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

ZH · Escritura de los escribas (lishu) de los Han occidentales · Anterior a 55 a. C. (año de la muerte de Liu Xiu, príncipe Huai de Zhongshan, en cuya tumba se halló)
定州漢墓竹簡《論語》
Surviving witness
620 tablillas de bambú, unos 7.576 caracteres, aproximadamente la mitad del texto recibido; dañadas por un incendio antiguo y por el terremoto de Tangshan (1976)
Custodian
Instituto Provincial de Reliquias Culturales de Hebei (Hebei sheng wenwu yanjiusuo), Shijiazhuang
ZH · Escritura de los escribas (lishu) de los Han occidentales · Anterior a 59 a. C. (muerte de Liu He, marqués de Haihun, antiguo emperador depuesto)
海昏侯墓竹簡《論語》
Surviving witness
Más de 500 tablillas de bambú identificadas como Analectas, en curso de restauración y publicación
Custodian
Instituto Provincial de Reliquias Culturales y Arqueología de Jiangxi; Museo del Sitio de Haihunhou, Nanchang
ZH · Escritura de los escribas (lishu) de los Han occidentales · c. 45 a. C. (fecha de un registro censal hallado en la misma tumba)
平壤貞柏洞364號墓《論語》竹簡
Surviving witness
39 tablillas de bambú con los capítulos «Xianjin» y «Yan Yuan»
Custodian
Instituciones de la República Popular Democrática de Corea (Pyongyang); custodio concreto no confirmado
ZH · Escritura regular (kaishu) de la dinastía Tang · Grabado entre 833 y 837 (era Kaicheng)
開成石經《論語》
Surviving witness
Texto íntegro de las Analectas en estelas de piedra, parte de los Doce Clásicos de Kaicheng (114 estelas, más de 650.000 caracteres)
Custodian
Museo del Bosque de Estelas (Beilin), Xi'an

Manuscripts →

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

Met
Laozi
Tradition (Shiji 47 and 63, Liji, Zhuangzi) relates that Confucius consulted Laozi on the rites. A school narrative, unverifiable; recorded as undocumented.
Similarity identified by analysis
Influenced
Zhuangzi
The Zhuangzi (4th–3rd c. BCE) makes Confucius a recurring character, sometimes mocked and sometimes spokesman for Taoist doctrine itself: an influence by contrast, documented in the text.
Documented relation
Contemporary of
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha
Approximate contemporaries according to traditional chronologies (6th–5th c. BCE), with no contact whatsoever. The comparison is a commonplace of the history of religions (Jaspers's "Axial Age").
Similarity identified by analysis
Ideas akin to
Jesus of Nazareth
The negative golden rule of Analects 15.24 and 12.2 is routinely compared with the positive one of Mt 7:12; no historical relation.
Similarity identified by analysis

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

Wikidata, entidad Q4604 «Confucius» (P31=Q5; 313 enlaces entre wikis). Nombre nativo 孔夫子; nacimiento registrado en 552/551 a. C.; lugar de nacimiento Q210287 (Zou/Qufu).
Sima Qian. Shiji (Memorias históricas), juan 47, «Kongzi shijia» (Casa hereditaria de Confucio), c. 94 a. C. Ed. Zhonghua shuju, Pekín, 1959. Trad. francesa: Chavannes, Les Mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien, vol. 5, 1905; trad. inglesa en Nienhauser (ed.), The Grand Scribe's Records, vol. 5.1, Indiana University Press, 2006.
Legge, James (trad.). The Chinese Classics, vol. 1: Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean. Trübner, Londres, 1861; 2.ª ed. Clarendon Press, 1893. Project Gutenberg nº 4094.
Slingerland, Edward (trad.). Confucius: Analects, with Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianápolis, 2003. ISBN 9780872206359.
Lau, D. C. (trad.). Confucius: The Analects (Lun yü). Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1979. ISBN 9780140443486.
Cheng, Anne (trad.). Entretiens de Confucius. Éditions du Seuil (Points Sagesses), París, 1981. ISBN 9782020057752. Y Cheng, Anne. Histoire de la pensée chinoise. Seuil, París, 1997.
Nylan, Michael y Wilson, Thomas. Lives of Confucius: Civilization's Greatest Sage Through the Ages. Doubleday, Nueva York, 2010.
Hunter, Michael. Confucius Beyond the Analects. Brill, Leiden, 2017.
Zuozhuan (Zuo Tradition), años Ding 10, Ding 12, Ai 11, Ai 15 y Ai 16. Trad. Durrant, Stephen; Li, Wai-yee; Schaberg, David. Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan: Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2016.
Liji, «Tangong» (cap. 3). Trad. Legge, James. The Lî Kî. Sacred Books of the East, vols. XXVII–XXVIII. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1885.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mark. «Confucius». The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. Edward N. Zalta).
Meynard, Thierry (ed.). Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687): The First Translation of the Confucian Classics. Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Roma, 2011. ISBN 9788870412062.
Zhuangzi (莊子), caps. 4, 5, 6, 14, 20, 28 y 31. Chinese Text Project.
Jiangxi sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo y otros. «Nanchang shi Xi Han Haihunhou mu» (La tumba del marqués de Haihun, de los Han occidentales, en Nanchang). Kaogu, 2016, nº 7, pp. 45–62.
Hebei sheng wenwu yanjiusuo Dingzhou Han mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu (ed.). Dingzhou Han mu zhujian Lunyu. Wenwu chubanshe, Pekín, 1997.
Kim, Kyung-ho. «A Study of Excavated Bamboo and Wooden-strip Analects: The Spread of Confucianism and Chinese Script». Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 11, nº 1 (2011), pp. 59–88.
Chinese Text Project. «The Analects» (論語), texto chino con traducción de James Legge en paralelo.
Suárez Girard, Anne-Hélène (trad.). Confucio. Lun Yu. Reflexiones y enseñanzas. Editorial Kairós, Barcelona, 1997. ISBN 9788472453661.
Pérez Arroyo, Joaquín (trad.). Confucio y Mencio. Los cuatro libros. Ediciones Paidós (Paidós Orientalia), Barcelona, 2002. ISBN 9788449312076.
Brooks, E. Bruce y Brooks, A. Taeko. The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors. Columbia University Press, Nueva York, 1998. ISBN 9780231104302 (tela); 9780231104319 (rústica).
Ma Chengyuan (ed.). Shanghai bowuguan cang Zhanguo Chu zhushu (上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書), vol. 1. Shanghai guji chubanshe, Shanghái, diciembre de 2001. Incluye la primera edición del manuscrito «Kongzi shilun» (孔子詩論).

Rights holder: Obra en dominio público; cada traducción pertenece a su traductor o editorial

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

No se ha localizado ninguna edición de las Analectas de Joaquín Pérez Arroyo en Alianza ni en Kairós (el encargo las mencionaba): su traducción es Los cuatro libros (Alfaguara 1981; Paidós 2002); la de Kairós es de Anne-Hélène Suárez Girard; la de Alianza (2021) es una selección de García-Noblejas y Torres Marín. Confirmar en la BNE si existió una edición suelta.
ISBN pendientes de ver en catálogo: Waley (reediciones Vintage/Routledge), Durrant–Li–Schaberg (Zuozhuan, 2016), Gardner (Four Books, Hackett 2007), Kramers (Kongzi jiayu, 1950). Se han dejado en null.
La traducción de la edición de Herder (2020, ISBN 9788425443886) no figura en el catálogo consultado; identificar traductor.
No se han encontrado en Open Library ediciones en ruso, hindi ni árabe con ISBN fiable.
Custodio concreto de las tablillas de Pyongyang (tumba 364 de Jeongbaek-dong): no confirmado; se conocen solo por fotografías publicadas en Corea del Sur.
La fecha de las pinturas 孔子燕居像 y 孔子爲魯司寇像 (Museo de Confucio de Qufu) no consta en las fichas de Commons; datarlas con el catálogo del museo.
Programas de afiliación: no se ha verificado ninguno; lista vacía.
Fecha de nacimiento: 551 a. C. (Zuozhuan/Shiji) frente a 552 (Gongyang); se adopta 551 con precisión «year». El día tradicional (28 de septiembre) no se registra por ser convención tardía.
Sala de lectura: no se ha localizado en Gutenberg, Wikisource ni Internet Archive una traducción española de las Analectas en dominio público con texto completo.
Sala de lectura: las traducciones de Legge del Shujing, del Liji y de los apéndices del Yijing (Sacred Books of the East, vols. III, XVI, XXVII–XXVIII) están en Wikisource en subpáginas anidadas (Parte/Libro/Sección) que el ingestor ordena mal; no se registran hasta poder ordenarlas. Tampoco hay en línea una edición separada de dominio público del Daxue en inglés (la de Legge va dentro del vol. 1 de The Chinese Classics) ni del Chunqiu sin el Zuozhuan.
Sala de lectura: el Xiaojing de Legge en Wikisource intercala las tres secciones de su introducción entre los capítulos al ordenarlos por número; revisar el orden tras la ingesta. La versión de Ivan Chên (Gutenberg #75878, 1908) no se registra por no haberse podido acreditar la fecha de muerte del traductor.
Obras: ISBN de la edición de Shanghai guji (2001) del Kongzi shilun no verificado. El Zhongyong no se registra como obra de Confucio: la tradición lo atribuye a su nieto Zisi.

Researched on 2026-10-22

Biography

A man of Lu

The official and the exile

What he said and what he was made to say

Caveats

A life, year by year

Birth

Essential works

Analects (Lunyu)

Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu)

The Four Books (Sishu)

Complete works (11)

What their work answers

Affinities and tensions

Thinks most like

Thinks most unlike

Anecdotes and stories

The dog of a house in mourning

Hunger between Chen and Cai

The stable fire

The visit to Nanzi

The Jiagu meeting

The death of Yan Hui

The capture of the lin

Teachings

Retreats and centres

Qufu: Temple, Cemetery and Mansion of Confucius

Videos

Gallery

Manuscripts

定州漢墓竹簡《論語》

海昏侯墓竹簡《論語》

平壤貞柏洞364號墓《論語》竹簡

開成石經《論語》

Connections

Sources