Profiles in History: Confucius

Hey, let's get another one of these things going.

Confucius or K'ung-fu-tzu, was a Chinese Philospher whose views on politics and wise proverbs still affect many countries and billions of people. He preached a family based government and how to act correctly, and his views, labeled Confucianism, eventually overtook Legalism and Taoism as the primary political view.

Confucius was born in 551 BCE into a lower-middle class family, called Shi, who are a group of commoners that rose up through the ranks because of skills and talents, and are ranked just below nobles. However, Confucius's family was in the lower strata of that social level, and that situation definitely did not improve when he lost his father at the age of three. His mother raised the family during this time of poverty and died when Confucius was 23.

Confucius worked many odd jobs such as herding and accounting until he attained a position in the Lu government as a Justice Minister at the age of 53. He stayed at this position until he felt that Lu was not the place to be and traveled all over China, preaching his philosophical views and trying to get a job as a government official. It's kind of funny how jobs were hard to come by back then too. Anyways, back to Confucius.

What Confucius preached was basically the same unified government format as the old days, but with a few key changes. One of the main changes was that the rulers would be chosen by morals, ability, and merit instead of who their parents were. By choosing people such as this to rule, the people could learn from their proper morals, instead of having proper behavior forced onto them with laws. Other things that Confucius proposed was to develop the self through self-reflection, learning about the World, and proper morals. He was also a big supporter of the Golden Rule, Don't do unto others what you don't want others to do unto you.

As he traveled, Confucius explained his ideas to the royalty, but none of his ideas were placed into effect in his lifetime. Disappointed by the lack of work, Confucius moved back to Lu at sixty-eight and began to teach his philosophy to disciples and students. There are no texts anywhere that are proven to be written by Confucius himself, but his students and followers recorded much of his teachings and collected them in The Analects. At the age of seventy-three, Confucius died and left behind a legacy that still affects us today.

If you want to find out more about Confucius, feel free to click on this link.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/confucius/

Thanks for reading this all the way, and if you skip/skim it, that's cool too.