Confucius

**Later portrait of Confucius from the provincial museum of Shandong, China** **Confucius' main interest was to figure out ways for the government to do a better job of taking care of the people. He lived in China during the [|500s BC], under the [|Eastern Chou] dynasty. Confucius (conn-FYU-shuss) is what English speakers call him now, but when he was a child his name was Kong Qiu. In Chinese, Confucius is Kung Fu Tzu. He was born in 551 [|BC], and his parents were poor, although his family had once been rich. They had gotten into trouble with the emperor, and he had taken away their money and their land.**

**Confucius, people say, was a smart and hard-working child, and when he grew up people said he was fair, and polite, and loved to learn things, and so his family sent him to the big city, to Zhou, where the Chou emperor lived, to go to school. While he was in Zhou, Confucius may have gotten to know Lao Zu, who was later on the creator of the philosophy of [|Taoism] .**  **When Confucius finished school, he went back to his home in Lu and became a teacher there. When he was 35 years old, he tried to get involved in politics, and maybe get the Duke of Lu to give him some land and money, but when this idea didn't work out Confucius went back to being a teacher. He did work for a while as a city magistrate and then as a chief minister of his city, Lu, when he was about fifty, but when he saw that the Duke of Lu was not doing a good job, Confucius quit and left his city.**  **Confucius spent the rest of his life travelling from town to town around China with his students and friends, giving advice to different rulers wherever he went. Often they didn't like his advice: once he was thrown in jail for five days! When he was 67, Confucius went back to Lu and settled down there, and he died there when he was 72 years old.**

**His main idea was that people could achieve peace by doing their duty, and cooperating with society. If people rebelled, and everyone tried to do his or her own thing, then the world would be full of fighting and unhappiness.** **So people should obey the law, and do what the [|emperor] and government officials told them to do. Also, people should do their duty to their [|parents] and take good care of their children, and people should do their duty to their [|ancestors] /and to the [|gods] .** **At the same time, the government should do its duty to the people, and not abuse them or ask too much of them. The [|emperor] should be cooperative and helpful to the people, just as the people were helpful and cooperative to him.** **Because Confucius wanted to make government officials behave better, the Chinese government did not like him while he was alive. But after Confucius died, later emperors of China did use many of his ideas. Of course they mainly liked the idea that people should obey the government, and they weren't so interested in the idea that the government should help the people!** **Here's an example of a story people told about Confucius:** **Zi Lu, they say, asked Confucius, "When we hear a good idea, should we start to do it right away?" Confucius told him no. "First, you should always ask someone with more experience." Later on, Ran You asked Confucius the same question. But this time Confucius said, "Yes, of course you should do it right away." There was another student who had heard both of these conversations and was very confused. He asked Confucius why he had answered the same question in two different ways?** **"Ran You has a hard time making a decision," Confucius said. "So I encouraged him to be bolder. Zi Lu sometimes decides things too quickly. So I reminded him to be careful. Naturally different people should get different answers. "**

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