Confucius

Confucius, whose personal name was Qiu and whose courtesy name was Zhongni, was a native of Zou in the State of Lu (present-day Qufu, Shandong) in the late Spring and Autumn period. He was a celebrated thinker, educator and statesman in ancient China and the founder of the Confucian school. He pioneered private teaching and is traditionally said to have had three thousand disciples, seventy-two of them outstanding; in his later years he compiled and edited the Six Classics. His sayings and deeds were recorded by his disciples and their followers in the Analects, which embodies his ideas on benevolence, ritual propriety, self-cultivation and governance. His teachings, transmitted and developed over more than two thousand years, have deeply influenced China and East Asia and remain an important resource for understanding Eastern philosophy and ethical traditions. This library holds twenty-nine related works, mostly centered on the text of the Analects, commonly classified under Eastern philosophy and parenting, showing that his thought attracts attention both in classical study and in character education. Because of the great antiquity, public information on the specific details of his life is limited; readers may grasp his core ideas through the texts themselves.