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Anonymous Chinese painter of the Western Han period  · Public domain

Figure East Asian traditions

Confucius

孔子 zh 공자 ko

5th-century BCE Chinese philosopher and politician

  • Child of Shuliang He and Yan Zhengzai
  • Married to Qiguan Shi
  • Dated c. 551 BCE – c. 479 BCE
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A life on the record,
dated by its sources.

Roles, not beliefs

Overview

Read the full article On Wikipedia ↗
In 15 other languages

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From Wikipedia, quoted unmodified under CC BY-SA 4.0; the article’s history is its list of authors.

Life

Affiliation

As a third party recorded it, often for one period of a life.

What this means

As the records give them: every row is a third party’s statement, not a self-description, and a role or an affiliation is often held for one period of a life only. An affiliation is not a belief, and this site does not ask anyone about theirs. For an office: which one, for how long, and where the records give an ordinal or the holders either side. Recognition of a tenure is never universal: contested lines appear as overlapping tenures rather than as one corrected sequence.

Family

The family of Confucius

Parents, spouses and children as the records give them.

Documented family only. A teacher, a successor or a patron is never drawn in this tree.

As documented
The family as a list · 6

Family 6

What this means

A documented human family relationship. Not a succession mechanism, and not religious transmission.

Does not imply a right to an office · transmission of a teaching · a shared religious affiliation

Imported from Wikidata unless a tile says otherwise. Nothing here has been read by an editor.

Transmission

Teachers and students

Teaching passed from one person to another, in the direction of the arrows — not ancestry, and not succession.

What this means

In the direction the records give it. This is not biological ancestry and it is not institutional succession: a student who inherited no office still received the teaching, and an heir who received the office may have been taught by someone else entirely. It does not imply that teacher and student agreed.

Confucius 5th-century BCE Chinese philosopher and politician

Taught 36

Show all 36

Also recorded as a student: 41 more records with no English name

Religious context

What the records tie them to

Founded, supported, associated with — as third parties recorded it.

What this means

A founding is an attribution, usually contested, and not a claim that the tradition began fully formed. Patronage is an act, not a belief: it says nothing about the religion of a population, and nothing about the patron’s own practice in every period of a life. Domains are as sources record them — for a saint, usually a patronage — rarely exclusive, and not the same in every account.

Texts

In the texts

Works this figure appears in. A work’s date is the source’s, not this figure’s.

Connections

How Confucius connects

Grouped by the kind of relationship, because a successor is not a son and a shared symbol is not an influence.

Documented influence 2

What this means

A transmission argued from evidence. Not shared symbols, and not a short path through a database.

Does not imply shared symbols as evidence · a short path through a database

Imported from Wikidata unless a tile says otherwise. Nothing here has been read by an editor.

Sources

Sources and evidence

Where every statement on this page comes from, and how each one stands.

How this site reads its sources

85 statements on this record

  • 1 Has references The statement cites something outside Wikimedia. That citation has not been checked here.
  • 84 Imported Taken from Wikidata as it stands. Nobody here has read it. 1 of them cite only Wikipedia: one source, counted once.

Only this record’s own statements. What other records say about it is counted on theirs.

Three layers, three licences

Data
Wikidata · CC0 1.0
Text
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted, not merged
Pictures
Wikimedia Commons · each file’s own terms

Review

Not yet read by an editor here. Every relationship on this page is an import.

Disagreements are kept, not resolved, and a count of sources is not a confidence score.

Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞; b. 1786, d. 1865) · Public domain

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