Confucius, Way of DAo

Confucius (551-479 BCE), according to Chinese tradition, was a thinker, political figure, educator, and founder of the Ru School of Chinese thought. His teachings, preserved in the Analects, which is a collection of thoughtful perceptions attributed to him, were apparently recorded and compiled by disciples of his disciples. Because these collections are brief, unelaborated, unorganized and writing in ideographic form, their exact meaning is not always clear (Spodek 206). Due to this, there exist two different major lines of interpretation. According to one group of interpretations, the key to understanding the Analects is passage 4.15, in which a disciple says that 'loyalty' and 'reciprocity' together make up the 'one thread' of the Master's teachings. More recently, some interpreters have emphasized passage 13.3, which discusses 'correcting names': bringing words and things into proper alignment. According the ¡§The Dao of Kongzi¡¨ by Bryan W. Van Norden, both approaches can be m...