Confucius (551-479 BC) was a thinker, political figure, educator, and founder of the Ru School of Chinese thought. His teachings, preserved in the “Lun Yu” (“Analects”), formed the foundation of much of subsequent Chinese speculation on the education and comportment of the ideal man, how such an individual should live his live and interact with others, and the forms of society and government in which he should participate.
Many of the legends surrounding Confucius were included by the Han dynasty court historian, Sima Qian (145-c.85 BCE), in his well-known and often-quoted “Records of the Grand Historian” (“Shi Ji”) at the end of the 2nd century BC. According to this collection of tales, Confucius' ancestors were members of the Royal State of Song. His great grandfather, fleeing the turmoil in his native Song, had moved to Lu, somewhere near the present town of Qufu in southeastern Shandong, where the family became impoverished.
Confucius was described, by Sima Qian and other sources, as having endured a poverty-stricken and humiliating youth and been forced, upon reaching manhood, to undertake such petty jobs as accounting and caring for livestock. Sima Qian's account included the tale of how Confucius was born in answer to his parents' prayers at a sacred hill (qiu) called Ni. Confucius' surname Kong (which means literally an utterance of thankfulness when prayers have been answered), his tabooed given name Qiu, and his social name Zhongni, all appeared connected to the miraculous circumstances of his birth.
We do not know how Confucius himself was educated, but tradition has it that he studied ritual with the Daoist Master Lao Dan, music with Chang Hong, and the lute with Music-master Xiang. In his middle age Confucius is supposed to have gathered about him a group of disciples whom he taught. Sima Qian and other sources recorded that there were as many as three thousand of them. He also devoted himself to political matters in Lu. Sima Qian said, “Those who, in their own person, became conversant with the Six Disciplines taught by Confucius, numbered seventy-two.”
At the age of fifty, when Duke Ding of Lu was on the throne, Confucius' talents were recognized and he was appointed Minister of Public Works and then Minister of Crime. But Confucius apparently offended members of the Lu nobility who were vying with Duke Ding for power and he was subsequently forced to leave office and go into exile.
In the company of his disciples, Confucius left Lu and traveled in the states of Wei, Song, Chen, Cai, and Chu, purportedly looking for a ruler who might employ him but meeting instead with indifference and, occasionally, severe hardship and danger.
Confucius returned to Lu in 484 BC and spent the remainder of his life teaching, putting in order the “Book of Songs”, the “Book of Documents”, and other ancient classics, as well as editing the “Spring and Autumn Annals”, the court chronicle of Lu. Confucius' traditional association with these works led them and related texts to be revered as the “Confucian Classics” and made Confucius himself the spiritual ancestor of later teachers, historians, moral philosophers, literary scholars, and countless others whose lives and works figure prominently in Chinese intellectual history.
By the 4th century BC, Confucius was recognized as a unique figure. At the end of the 4th century, Mencius said of Confucius: “Ever since man came into this world, there has never been one greater than Confucius.” And in two passages Mencius implied that Confucius was one of the great sage kings who, according to his reckoning, arose every 500 years.