Confucius (Cyclopedia of World Authors)
Uncertainty clouds our understanding of the life of China’s most important moral philosopher. The causes of confusion are multiple; one is the difficulty of translation across both linguistic and cultural traditions. The very name “Confucius” (cuhn-FYEW-shuhs), for example, is the result of the Latinization of the Chinese Kongfuzi (“Master Kung”) by his first Western (sixteenth century Jesuit) translators; his “proper” or Chinese name is Kong Qiu. The greater cause of difficulty, however, is that tradition has attributed much to Confucius that modern historians reject as...
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