THE MORAL COMPASS
Confucius 551–479 BC
If there was a competition for most famous Chinese person in history, Confucius would surely come out on top. He was the philosopher and ethicist who gave China a significant part of its cultural DNA. Not bad for a figure who, in his lifetime, was not exactly a roaring success in his chosen calling.
Kong Qiu (later Romanised to Confucius, ‘the master Kong’) was born into poverty in modern Shandong province in eastern China. His father died when he was young and Confucius grew up under his mother’s influence, studying hard and later earning a place at the local royal court.
Confucius lived during a period of immense political turmoil, and turned his mind to thinking about how the country could be made calmer and more prosperous. Instead of advocating force, he stressed the importance of rituals and ethical behaviour. It was important to behave in an ordered way; subjects should obey rulers, wives their husbands, children their parents. But this was not just about power: those who had dominant positions in the hierarchy were expected to show benevolence to those below and work hard for their welfare. If they did not, they would forfeit their right to demand obedience.
In his own time, Confucius didn’t have much luck in propagating his thought. He died as a minor official at court. But over the next few centuries, respect for his work grew. By the time of the Han dynasty (206 BC to AD 220), the government was drawing on his precepts to underpin ideas of stable and ethical government. For the next 2,000 years, Confucian thought would dominate Chinese statecraft. Even today, when the Chinese Communist party is in charge, there are frequent references in contemporary China to ideas such as ‘harmony’ – which would have seemed very familiar to the sage from Shandong.