SOURCE: Van der Sprenkel, O. B. “Confucius: Six Variations.” In Self and Biography: Essays on the Individual and Society in Asia, edited by Wang Gungwu, pp. 79-98. Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press, 1975.

In the following excerpt, Sprenkel describes six distinct interpretations of Confucianism and discusses how each has been used to bolster particular notions of social behavior.

Very little is known about Confucius the man. There has never been, in China, a ‘quest for the historical Confucius’. It is generally agreed that he lived from 551 to 479 bc. He is believed to have travelled about China in middle life, and then to have returned to his native place in Lu to spend his last years in teaching and writing. On his life, our most important texts are a collection of sayings ascribed to him, the Lun-yü or Analects, and a biography by the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien, written about the...