Kǒngzǐ 孔子 (552 or 551 to 479 B.C.E.) provides the intellectual background against which all later thinkers react, and he started a movement that continues to be socially and philosophically influential more than two thousand years later. (This movement is called the Rújiā 儒家, the “School of the Ru,” in Chinese, but has traditionally been called “Confucianism” in English, after the Jesuit Latinization of Kongzi's name, “Confucius.”)

Kongzi was born into a society in crisis. The central authority of the Zhou Dynasty had disintegrated. Though there was still a Zhou king, he reigned but did not rule. Actual power had devolved upon the individual states, typically dukedoms, into which the kingdom was divided.