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Confucius (Chinese ???; pinyin Kong Fuzi; Wade-Giles K'ung-fu-tzu), lit. "Master Kong,"[1] September 28, 551 BC – 479 BC) was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese thought and life. His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity. These values gained prominence in China over other doctrines, such as Legalism (??) or Taoism (??) during the Han Dynasty[2][3][4] (206 BC – 220 AD). Confucius' thoughts have been developed into a system of philosophy known as Confucianism (??). It was introduced to Europe by the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who was the first to Latinise the name as "Confucius." His teachings may be found in the Analects of Confucius (??), a collection of "brief aphoristic fragments", which was compiled many years after his death. Modern historians do not believe that any specific documents can be said to have been written by Confucius,[5][6] but for nearly 2,000 years he was thought to be the editor or author of all the Five Classics[7][8] such as the Classic of Rites (editor), and the Spring and Autumn Annals (??) (author). The Records of the Grand Historian (??), compiled some four centuries later, indicate that the marriage of Confucius' parents did not conform to Li (?) and therefore was a yehe (??), or "illicit union",[10] for when they got married, his father was a very old man and past proper age for marriage but his mother was only in her late teens. His father died when he was three,[11] and he was brought up in poverty by his mother. His social ascendancy linked him to the growing class of shì (?), a class whose status lay between that of the old nobility and the common people, that comprised men who sought social positions on the basis of talents and skills, rather than heredity.
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