Confucius derives from the Latinisation Confucius of the appellation Kong Fu Zi. Zi means "child", but also, curiously and significantly, "teacher" and "philosopher": thus, since in China the surname precedes the given name, the Master Fu of the Kong family.

What we know of him is the sum of the anecdotes that concern him; although tradition attempts to attribute to him a generous dozen texts, nothing written in his own hand has come down to us.

The life of Confucius

Confucius's is the story of a man born in 551 BC, left fatherless at the age of 3, who at 40 claimed to have become wise, since he "had no more doubts". Poor in his youth as the result of a family misfortune, he rebuilt his life through a ministerial career that began at 19 and ended thirty years later, when he embarked on a wandering from court to court in search of — fruitlessly — a lord who would put his political counsel into practice.

This voluntary exile of his is recounted in the Shiji, or "Records of the Grand Historian", a masterpiece of historiography by Sima Qian, dated to the 2nd–1st century BC: the adversaries of a neighbouring state, alarmed by Kong's successes as prime minister, sent his sovereign a bevy of irresistible dancing girls, with the result of drawing him away from affairs of court. Incensed, Confucius set out to preach his ideas across China, followed by a throng of young and not-so-young followers who had already adopted him as their guiding figure and accompanied him on his travels. Returning to his native land, he died there three years later. Tradition holds that the year was 479 BC.

His thought

His philosophy, aimed at the eradication of violence, is very simple: to attain Jen, perfect virtue, one must follow the positive precept of conscientiousness towards others, known as Chung, and the negative one called Shu; in plain terms, "do unto others what you wish to be done unto you" and "do not do unto others what you do not wish to be done unto you".

He believed in and "surrendered" to Ming, variously translated as fate, destiny, the will of heaven, and which he seems to have regarded simply as the totality of the conditions and forces existing throughout the entire universe. He was regarded as a teacher, the Teacher, the spiritual king, or even a living God until the 1st century BC; today he is considered one of many wise teachers.