When was Confucius born?
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Confucius (孔夫子 "Kǒng Fūzǐ", lit. "Master Kong") is generally thought to have been born in 551 BCE and raised by his mother following the death of his father when Confucius was three years old. The Latinized name "Confucius" by which most Westerners recognize him is derived from ""Kong Fuzi"", probably first coined by 16th-century Jesuit missionaries to China. The Analects, or "Lunyu" (論語; lit."Selected Sayings"), a collection of sayings and ideas attributed to the Chinese philosopher and his contemporaries, is believed to have been written by Confucius' followers during the Warring States period (475 BC – 221 BC), achieving its final form during the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). Confucius was born into the class of "shi" (士), between the aristocracy and the common people. His public life included marriage at the age of 19 that produced a son and a variety of occupations as a farm worker, clerk and book-keeper. In his private life he studied and reflected on righteousness, proper conduct and the nature of government such that by the age of 50 he had established a reputation. This regard, however was insufficient for his success in advocating for a strong central government and the use of diplomacy over warfare as the ideal for international relationships. He is said to have spent his last years teaching an ardent group of followers of the values to be appreciated in a collection of ancient writings loosely identified as the Five Classics. Confucius is thought to have died in 479 BCE.
Korean Confucianism
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It is generally thought that Confucius was born on September 28, 551 BC. His birthplace was in Zou, Lu state (near present-day Qufu, Shandong Province).
Kong He
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Confucius (551–479 BCE) appeared in this period of political decadence and spiritual questioning. He was educated in Shang-Zhou theology, which he contributed to transmit and reformulate giving centrality to self-cultivation and human agency, and the educational power of the self-established individual in assisting others to establish themselves (the principle of 愛人 "àirén", "loving others"). As the Zhou reign collapsed, traditional values were abandoned resulting in a period of moral decline. Confucius saw an opportunity to reinforce values of compassion and tradition into society. Disillusioned with the widespread vulgarisation of the rituals to access Tian, he began to preach an ethical interpretation of traditional Zhou religion. In his view, the power of Tian is immanent, and responds positively to the sincere heart driven by humaneness and rightness, decency and altruism. Confucius conceived these qualities as the foundation needed to restore socio-political harmony. Like many contemporaries, Confucius saw ritual practices as efficacious ways to access Tian, but he thought that the crucial knot was the state of meditation that participants enter prior to engage in the ritual acts. Confucius amended and recodified the classical books inherited from the Xia-Shang-Zhou dynasties, and composed the "Spring and Autumn Annals".
Religion in China
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Confucius was born into the class of "shi" (士), between the aristocracy and the common people. He is said to have worked in various government jobs during his early 20s, and as a bookkeeper and a caretaker of sheep and horses, using the proceeds to give his mother a proper burial. When his mother died, Confucius (aged 23) is said to have mourned for three years, as was the tradition.
Confucius
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The name "Confucius" is a Latinized form of the Mandarin Chinese "Kǒng Fūzǐ" (, meaning "Master Kǒng"), and was coined in the late 16th century by the early Jesuit missionaries to China. Confucius's clan name was "Kǒng" (; Old Chinese: ), and his given name was "Qiū" (; OC: ). His "capping name", given upon reaching adulthood and by which he would have been known to all but his older family members, was "Zhòngní" (), the "Zhòng" indicating that he was the second son in his family.
It is thought that Confucius was born on September 28, 551BC, in the district of Zou () near present-day Qufu, China. The area was notionally controlled by the kings of Zhou but effectively independent under the local lords of Lu. His father Kong He (or Shuliang He) was an elderly commandant of the local Lu garrison. His ancestry traced back through the dukes of Song to the Shang dynasty which had preceded the Zhou. Traditional accounts of Confucius's life relate that Kong He's grandfather had migrated the family from Song to Lu.
Confucius
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The first Confucius Institute (CI) opened on 21 November 2004 in Seoul, South Korea, after establishing a pilot institute in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in June 2004. The CI in South Korea is no longer active. The second Confucius Institute was opened on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park, also in November 2004. Hundreds more have opened since in dozens of countries around the world, with the highest concentration of Institutes in the United States, Japan, and South Korea. In April 2007, the first research-based Confucius Institute opened in Waseda University in Japan. In partnership with Peking University, the program promotes research activities of graduate students studying Chinese. As of 2014, there were over 480 Confucius Institutes in dozens of countries on six continents. The Ministry of Education estimates that 100 million people overseas may be learning Chinese by 2010 and the program is expanding rapidly in order to keep up. Hanban aims to establish 1,000 Confucius Institutes by 2020.
Confucius Institute
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Followers of Confucianism have a tradition of holding spectacular memorial ceremonies of Confucius () every year, using ceremonies that supposedly derived from Zhou Li () as recorded by Confucius, on the date of Confucius's birth. In the 20th century, this tradition was interrupted for several decades in mainland China, where the official stance of the Communist Party and the State was that Confucius and Confucianism represented reactionary feudalist beliefs which held that the subservience of the people to the aristocracy is a part of the natural order. All such ceremonies and rites were therefore banned. Only after the 1990s did the ceremony resume. As it is now considered a veneration of Chinese history and tradition, even Communist Party members may be found in attendance.
Confucius
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The statue was dedicated at Hermann Park as a gift from China to Houston on September 26, 2009, commemorating the 2,560th anniversary of the Confucius' birth and the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States. Ceremony attendees included Houston City Councilwoman Wanda Adams, Minister Liu Guangyuan of the Embassy of China to the United States, Mayor Pro Tem of Houston Sue Lovell, Wang, First Lady of Houston Andrea White, Consul General Gao Yanping, and representatives from Friends of Confucius Sculpture for Hermann Park and Houston Parks and Recreation. Nearly 600 people from the Chinese Consulate General in Houston, the city government, consular corps, and Chinese community were also in attendance.
Confucius (sculpture)
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During the Song dynasty, the scholar Zhu Xi (AD 1130–1200) added ideas from Daoism and Buddhism into Confucianism. In his life, Zhu Xi was largely ignored, but not long after his death, his ideas became the new orthodox view of what Confucian texts actually meant. Modern historians view Zhu Xi as having created something rather different and call his way of thinking "Neo-Confucianism". Neo-Confucianism held sway in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam until the 19th century.
The works of Confucius were first translated into European languages by Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century during the late Ming dynasty. The first known effort was by Michele Ruggieri, who returned to Italy in 1588 and carried on his translations while residing in Salerno. Matteo Ricci started to report on the thoughts of Confucius, and a team of Jesuits—Prospero Intorcetta, Philippe Couplet, and two others—published a translation of several Confucian works and an overview of Chinese history in Paris in 1687. François Noël, after failing to persuade ClementXI that Chinese veneration of ancestors and Confucius did not constitute idolatry, completed the Confucian canon at Prague in 1711, with more scholarly treatments of the other works and the first translation of the collected works of Mencius. It is thought that such works had considerable importance on European thinkers of the period, particularly among the Deists and other philosophical groups of the Enlightenment who were interested by the integration of the system of morality of Confucius into Western civilization.
Confucius
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Within two years after the death of Confucius, his former house in Qufu was already consecrated as a temple by the Prince of Lu. In 205 BC, Emperor Gao of the Han Dynasty was the first emperor to offer sacrifices to the memory of Confucius in Qufu. He set an example for many emperors and high officials to follow. Later, emperors would visit Qufu after their enthronement or on important occasions such as a successful war. In total, 12 different emperors paid 20 personal visits to Qufu to worship Confucius. About 100 others sent their deputies for 196 official visits. The original three-room house of Confucius was removed from the temple complex during a rebuilding undertaken in 611 AD. In 1012 and in 1094, during the Song Dynasty, the temple was extended into a design with three sections and four courtyards, around which eventually more than 400 rooms were arranged. Fire and vandalism destroyed the temple in 1214, during the Jin Dynasty. It was restored to its former extent by the year 1302 during the Yuan Dynasty. Shortly thereafter, in 1331, the temple was framed in an enclosure wall modelled on the Imperial palace.
Temple of Confucius, Qufu