子曰﹕學而時習之，不亦說乎？

Zǐ yuē, “xué ér shí xí zhī, bù yì yuè hū?”

The Master said, ‘Is it not a pleasure, having learned something, to try it out at due intervals?’ (The Analects, I.1)

One would be hard pressed to identify a more readily recognizable figure in Chinese history than Confucius—his ideas, as transmitted in the Analects and some other documents and then later elaborated upon by other philosophers (such as Mencius and Xunzi), have profoundly shaped Chinese civilization and culture. Given his imposing stature in Chinese history, it is somewhat ironic how little verifiable information is actually known to historians and scholars about the historical Confucius; much of what is commonly presumed about Confucius in the public imagination is distorted by centuries of accumulated legend, veneration, and iconography. The spring 2010 China Institute exhibition, Confucius: His Life and Legacy in Art, assembles a collection of visual representations of Confucius informed by such veneration as well as presenting objects related to the state cult that grew up around him. These exhibition-related web pages are designed to give audiences a brief introduction to five different thematic approaches to studying Confucius in order to help answer some essential questions:

· What do we know about Confucius, the man?

· What was the social and political context that shaped him and that his ideas respond to?

· What did he do in life, and how has that subsequently been recorded, appreciated, and criticized in art and literature?

The name “Confucius” is a Latinization of Kongfuzi (孔夫子), or “Master Kong.”  His given name is Qiu Zhongni (邱仲尼) and he lived in the small state of Lu between 551-479 BCE (the area of Lu is in today’s province of Shandong).  What in the west goes by the name “Confucianism” is really a doctrinal tradition that in Chinese is called “rujia” (儒家) or “rujiao” (儒教), the school or tradition of scholars.  Confucius was a scholar who studied the past in order to find meanings for promoting social harmony in a society increasingly fractured by warfare and factionalism.

The material provided here on China360 aims to provide a brief introduction to Confucius and his times in order to better appreciate the art featured in the China Institute Gallery Spring 2010 exhibition, Confucius: His Life and Legacy in Art. We hope the information provided here will be the springboard for further investigation into one of humanity’s most influential thinkers. There is much scholarship and debate around Confucius and Confucianism that simply cannot be covered in these pages, but we provide suggested resources for continued study of Confucius and invite you to post comments and other suggestions as well. As The Analects itself opens with, “is it not a pleasure, having learned something, to try it out at due intervals? (I.1)” We hope you agree and enjoy learning more about Confucius, his times, and his legacy, and to deploy that learning in due time.