Confucius

Born Kong Qiu around 551 BCE during China's Spring and Autumn period, Confucius saw himself not as an innovator but a conservator, insisting that the values of earlier eras had been abandoned and needed recovery. He taught that personal virtue, filial piety, and harmonious relationships formed the foundation for stable governance, advising rulers to lead by moral example rather than coercion and distilling his ethic into the Silver Rule: "Do not do unto others what you do not want done to yourself." His ideas gained traction during the Warring States period, stumbled after the Qin conquest, th…