Confucianism
Order in the state begins with cultivating the noble person and respect for elders
Key ideas
- Humaneness (ren) is the chief virtue
- Ritual (li) and filial piety
- The "noble person" improves through study
- A ruler governs by example, not fear
- Mencius: human nature is good; Xunzi: it must be reformed
Key thinkers
- Confucius (founder) — Chinese philosopher, 551 BC–479 BC
- Mencius — Chinese Confucian philosopher, 372 BC–289 BC
- Xunzi — Chinese Confucian philosopher, 310 BC–235 BC
What grew out of it
- Mohism c. 430 BC – 221 BC · Asia
- Legalism c. 400 BC – 206 BC · Asia
- Neo-Confucianism c. 1000 – 1900 · Asia
Meanwhile elsewhere
- Milesian school Middle East
- Pythagoreanism Europe
- Eleatics Europe
- Sophists Europe
- Ancient atomism Europe
- Cynicism Europe
- Platonic Academy Europe
- Peripatetic school Europe
- Pyrrhonism Europe
- Epicureanism Europe
- Stoicism Europe
- Patristics Africa
- Neoplatonism Europe
- Kalam Middle East
- Falsafa Middle East
- Nominalism Europe
- Scholasticism Europe
- Renaissance humanism Europe
- British empiricism Europe
- Continental rationalism Europe
- The Enlightenment Europe
- German idealism Europe
- Utilitarianism Europe
- Positivism Europe
- American transcendentalism Americas
- Russian religious philosophy Eastern Europe & Russia
- Existentialism Europe
- Marxism Europe
- Pragmatism Americas
- Russian cosmism Eastern Europe & Russia
- Phenomenology Europe
- Analytic philosophy Europe
- Structuralism Europe
- Logical positivism Europe
- Négritude Africa
- Postmodern philosophy Europe