Confucius

A teacher and philosopher of the state of Lu, in present day Shandong province, whose sayings and conversations were compiled by his students into the Analects after his death. Confucius did not present himself as an innovator but as a transmitter of the moral and ritual order of the early Zhou dynasty, which he regarded as a golden age of good government. His teaching centers on ren, usually translated as benevolence or humaneness, and on li, the rituals and norms of propriety that structure relationships between ruler and subject, parent and child, and friend and friend. He held that moral cultivation begins in the family and radiates outward, so that a well ordered state is, at bottom, an extension of well ordered households. His ideas were systematized by later thinkers, especially Mencius, into what came to be called Confucianism, which shaped Chinese government, education, and family life for over two thousand years.