| Confucius (孔子), whose personal name was Kong Qiu (孔丘) and courtesy name Zhong-ni (仲尼), is the towering figure of Chinese educational thought and has been honored for more than two thousand years as the first great teacher in Chinese history. The name by which he is known in the West is a Latinization of "Kong Fu-zi" (孔夫子), combining his surname Kong with the honorific Fu-zi, or "Master." Born in the state of Lu at Qu Fu (曲阜) in present-day Shandong Province into a declining noble clan, Confucius came of age in the chaos of the late Spring and Autumn period, when the Zhou ritual order was collapsing into inter-state warfare. He received a formal if difficult education, mastered the classical canon, and became an accomplished musician who played the stone chimes, the se, and the guqin. His career as a teacher unfolded in three phases: beginning in his thirties he took on disciples and taught them about the cultivation of the person and the ordering of society; between the ages of 50 and 68 he travelled through the states of Qi, Chu, Jin, Qin, Chen, and Wu as his fame spread and students came to him from far beyond Lu; and in his last years he returned to Lu and devoted himself entirely to teaching, editing, and writing. He is said to have taught some three thousand students in his lifetime, seventy-two of whom mastered the six arts and became eminent across the kingdoms. His sayings, recorded after his death by his disciples in The Analects (论语), seeded the philosophical tradition known in Chinese as Rujia (儒家), the "School of Scholars," which became the dominant political philosophy of the Chinese imperial state and the defining framework of education across China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Within [[cai_yuanpei|Cai Yuanpei]]'s New Culture generation his authority was sharply contested, but even the contestation confirmed his centrality: Chinese modernity has continued to argue with, rather than around, the Master. | Confucius (孔子), whose personal name was Kong Qiu (孔丘) and courtesy name Zhong-ni (仲尼), is the towering figure of Chinese educational thought and has been honored for more than two thousand years as the first great teacher in Chinese history. The name by which he is known in the West is a Latinization of "Kong Fu-zi" (孔夫子), combining his surname Kong with the honorific Fu-zi, or "Master." Born in the state of Lu at Qu Fu (曲阜) in present-day Shandong Province into a declining noble clan, Confucius came of age in the chaos of the late Spring and Autumn period, when the Zhou ritual order was collapsing into inter-state warfare. He received a formal if difficult education, mastered the classical canon, and became an accomplished musician who played the stone chimes, the se, and the guqin. His career as a teacher unfolded in three phases: beginning in his thirties he took on disciples and taught them about the cultivation of the person and the ordering of society; between the ages of 50 and 68 he travelled through the states of Qi, Chu, Jin, Qin, Chen, and Wu as his fame spread and students came to him from far beyond Lu; and in his last years he returned to Lu and devoted himself entirely to teaching, editing, and writing. He is said to have taught some three thousand students in his lifetime, seventy-two of whom mastered the six arts and became eminent across the kingdoms. His sayings, recorded after his death by his disciples in The Analects (论语), seeded the philosophical tradition known in Chinese as Rujia (儒家), the "School of Scholars," which became the dominant political philosophy of the Chinese imperial state and the defining framework of education across China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Within [[Cai Yuan Pei|Cai Yuanpei]] (Thái Nguyên Bồi, 蔡元培)'s New Culture generation his authority was sharply contested, but even the contestation confirmed his centrality: Chinese modernity has continued to argue with, rather than around, the Master. |
