About 2,500 years ago, a man was born to a once aristocratic family in a small state called Lu in East China. During his lifetime, the man endeavoured to work ‘towards a goal the realisation of which he knows to be hopeless’ (Lunyu, 14: 38), carrying forward the old tradition in a chaotic environment and opening up a new horizon in a dark age. By the time he died at the age of seventy-three, his teachings had spread throughout the state and beyond. His disciples and students compared him to the sun and moon, while his rivals considered him a man ‘who does not work with his arms and legs and who does not know how to distinguish between different kinds of grain’ (Lunyu, 18: 7). But there was one thing that neither side knew: that Chinese culture, and to some extent, East Asian culture, would be forever linked with his name, and that the tradition he loved and transmitted would rank with the greatest in the world. This tradition is known in the West as ‘Confucianism’.

‘Confucianism’ and ru

The origin of the English word ‘Confucianism’ may be traced back to the Jesuits of the sixteenth century: