Confucius
A failed official teaches that order comes from character rather than punishment.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 72 years
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
Kongzi, born 551 BCE, spends his life seeking a ruler who will employ his ideas and largely failing. He argues that a society is held together by ritual propriety, family obligation and the cultivation of virtue in those who govern, and that rule by punishment produces people who avoid punishment rather than people who are good. His students record his conversations in the Analects. His thought becomes the organising framework of Chinese government, education and family life for two millennia.