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He was China’s most famous philosopher and political thinker and lived between 552 and 479 BC His real name was Ch’iu K’ung, but he became known as Master K’ung. Depending on the ideograms used, this expression could be spelled in Chinese in different ways: K’ung-fu-tzu, K’ung-tzu, Kongfuzi or Kongzi, which explains why the European Jesuits Latinized the name of the sage to Confucius by around the 16th and 17th centuries. Born in northern China, as a teenager he already attracted attention as an exemplary student. Afterwards, he pursued a brilliant teaching career, demonstrating great knowledge in the most varied areas, from history and arithmetic to poetry, music and calligraphy. Unfortunately, Confucius left no written works, but his disciples collected little proverbs from the master, as well as dialogues with him, and gathered them in a text entitled Lun Yu (“The Analects”).
In any case, the legacy that the philosopher left for the Eastern world goes far beyond that. “Confucianism is the foundation of Japanese business ethics. Also in some of the so-called Asian Tigers, such as South Korea and Singapore, it is promoted as a philosophical system to encourage economic development”, says historian Ricardo Gonçalves, from USP. This is because Confucius’ thoughts preached, for example, the importance of education to improve society, with emphasis on character building and not just the accumulation of knowledge. He also created training programs for potential leaders. “His objective was to form perfect men, who, becoming members of the state bureaucracy, would help build the ideal state”, says Ricardo. Some people consider Confucianism a religion.
The Chinese master really preached certain rituals in honor of ancestors, but his teachings represent much more a system of ethics and politics than a religion, as one of his maxims makes clear: “If you can’t even relate correctly with the living, why bother? Are you concerned about spirit worship?”