Confucius

Life and ideas

Confucius, whose name was Kong Qiu, lived in a period when China's old order was breaking up into warring states. He taught, travelled and briefly held office, and his followers recorded his sayings in the Analects. He did not write a theory of law. His view of government was moral: a ruler who is himself good, who honours ritual (li) and who treats officials and subjects as members of one family will be followed willingly, while rule by punishment makes people avoid wrongdoing without feeling shame. Disputes were better settled by mediation and by the example of respected elders than in court. Later, Confucian scholars rose to power, and from the Han dynasty onward Confucian ideas were joined with the Legalist system of codes, so that the imperial legal tradition combined firm written law with the language of virtue and family duty.