CONFUCIUSHIS LIFE	

Confucius was believed to have been born in 551 BC., in the state of Lu, known
today as the Shandong province.  His parents, who died while he was a child,
named him Kong Qui. Confucius was derived from the Latin word Kongfuzi which
means Great Master Kong.  Confucius was the most influential and respected
philosopher in Chinese history.  His ideas were the single strongest influence on
Chinese society from around 100 BC. to the AD. 1900's.  The Chinese
government made his ideas the official state philosophy and many nearby
countries honored his beliefs.  	Confucius wanted to gain the position as an
adviser to a wise ruler, but he failed.  He hoped to do this in order to be able to
employ his ideas for reforming society.  If it wasn't for the disciples of Confucius
his teachings would have never been spread around China, and he would have
never been made known.  His teachings were never written down by him, but his
conversations and sayings were written down by his disciples in the analects 
.CONFUCIANISM 	Confucianism was the single most  important thing in
Chinese life.  It affected everything in China; education, government, and
attitudes toward behavior in public and private life.  Confucianism is not a religion,
but it is more a philosophy and a guide to morality and good government.  At the
time Confucius was born, China was in a constant state of war, and rapid political
change altered the structure of Chinese society so much that people no longer
respected the established behavioral guidelines.   Confucius stated that the ideal
person was one of good moral character.  The ideal person was also truly
reverent in worship and sincerely respected his father and his ruler.  He was
expected to think for himself, guided by definite rules of conduct.  As Confucius
said, he was expected to take "as much trouble to discover what was right as
lesser men take to discover what will pay".  Confucius believed that this type of
behavior by rulers had a greater effect on the people than did laws or codes of
punishment.  So when these types of people were rulers, their moral example
would inspire the people to lead good lives.  	Confucius died sometime around
479 B.C., and his philosophy was not very well known.  If it weren't for his
disciples his ideas would probably still be unknown.  Confucius never wrote
anything down himself; his disciples wrote all of his sayings down in a collection
of books called the Analects.  These contain all that modern day man knows
about Confucius.  	There existed two important Confucian philosophers-
Mencius (390-305 BC) and Xunzi (mid 200's B.C.).  They held  beliefs similar to
Confucius but they were somewhat different.  Mencius's viewpoint was that
people were born good, and that they had to "preserve the natural compassion of
the heart".  Xunzi opposed this by saying that people could be good and live
peacefully only if their minds were shaped by education and conduct.  Both of
these ideas parallel Confucius's, in that they both state that people can be
good.		Confucianism was concerned primarily with the needs of society,
and unlike Buddhism and Taoism, not the ability for a person to live in harmony
with nature. Beginning in the 200's B.C. Buddhism and Taoism began to affect
and reshape the standards of Confucianism, and things such as nature came into
play.  Around A.D. 200 to 600, there was a rapid decline in the Confucian Beliefs
in China.  This was partly because Confucianism now had to compete with
Buddhism and Taoism, which were developed around this time.  These religions
were to Confucianism as night is to day, in other words, they were exact
opposites.  Buddhism and Taoism were largely concerned with the meaning of
suffering and death, while Confucianism largely ignored these.  	The revival
of Confucianism began around the 600's and was fully revived by the 700's.  In
the 1100's, there was a movement lead by Zhu-Xi called the Neo-Confucianism
movement.  He developed a branch of this movement known as the rational-wing,
it dealt with the study of Li, the relationship between humans and nature.  Another
branch was called the intuitional-wing and it dealt mostly with enlightenment by a
combination of meditation and moral action.	In the 1900's there was a clash
between Confucianism and Western beliefs such as Communism.  For many
years after the Communist change in China, the Government greatly opposed
Confucianism because it tended to look into the past rather than to the future. 
However, all government opposition ended in 1977.  