Though it isn’t wide­ly acknowl­edged, there’s been a long­stand­ing and robust debate at least since the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry over whether or not a his­tor­i­cal Jesus exist­ed. The major­i­ty of Chris­tians dis­miss the evi­dence, or lack there­of, for rea­sons of belief, but on a wider view it’s not at all unique that the his­tor­i­cal founder of a reli­gion or school might be an inven­tion, or might have been noth­ing at all like the tra­di­tion sug­gests. Such ques­tions have arisen about the real­i­ty of the Bud­dha, for exam­ple, or the author­ship of Lao Tzu, writer of the Tao Te Ching, or the his­tor­i­cal exis­tence of his sup­posed con­tem­po­rary Con­fu­cius, founder of the sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy and ethics sim­ply known as Con­fu­cian­ism.

What do we know about Con­fu­cius? “Very lit­tle for cer­tain,” says Alain de Bot­ton in his School of Life intro­duc­to­ry video above. “He’s said to have been born in 551 BC in Chi­na,” and he may have been a stu­dent of Lao Tzu. Con­fu­cius sup­pos­ed­ly served as min­is­ter of crime under the ruler of the state of Lu. Many mun­dane sto­ries about the Chi­nese thinker make his exis­tence seem quite plau­si­ble, though his leg­end picked up mirac­u­lous fea­tures over time. But the say­ings sup­pos­ed­ly by and about Con­fu­cius, his­tor­i­cal or otherwise—like those of Jesus and the Buddha—were only writ­ten down many years after his death, col­lect­ed in the famous Analects (Lun­yu, or “edit­ed con­ver­sa­tions”).

These say­ings became enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar dur­ing the Euro­pean Enlight­en­ment and the 20th cen­tu­ry, writes Char­lotte Allen at The Atlantic, in part because Con­fu­cius remained “agnos­tic on whether a super­nat­ur­al world actu­al­ly exists.” Though he encour­aged par­tic­i­pa­tion in reli­gious rit­u­als, “The Mas­ter,” one of the analects remarks, “nev­er talked of: mir­a­cles; vio­lence; dis­or­ders; spir­its.” What he did talk about what was “the Gold­en Mean: all things in mod­er­a­tion, even mod­er­a­tion itself.” Con­fu­cius was a con­ser­v­a­tive thinker—in the sense that word once had of hold­ing fast to tra­di­tion, encour­ag­ing adher­ence to “rit­u­al pro­pri­ety” and fam­i­ly obser­vances, and respect­ing the rule of law.

His say­ings include a ver­sion of the Gold­en Rule, and he “is said to have taught his dis­ci­ples the cul­ti­va­tion of per­son­al virtue.… ven­er­a­tion of one’s par­ents, love of learn­ing, loy­al­ty to one’s supe­ri­ors, kind­ness to one’s sub­or­di­nates, and a high regard for all of the cus­toms, insti­tu­tions, and rit­u­als that make for civil­i­ty.” One can see his appeal to many lib­er­al West­ern philoso­phers, who have often advanced rad­i­cal the­ses along­side the con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues Max Weber char­ac­ter­ized as the Protes­tant eth­ic. Thomas Paine, writes Allen, “list­ed Con­fu­cius with Jesus and the Greek philoso­phers as the world’s great moral teach­ers” in the Age of Rea­son, and Ezra Pound had a par­tic­u­lar­ly high regard for the Chi­nese thinker.

This kind of ven­er­a­tion has meant that “to many edu­cat­ed West­ern­ers, Con­fu­cius is the very emblem of Chi­nese civ­i­liza­tion and reli­gious belief.” Or as the TED-Ed video above puts it, “most peo­ple rec­og­nize his name and know that he is famous for hav­ing said… some­thing.” In this video intro­duc­tion to Con­fu­cius, the philosopher’s biog­ra­phy plays a very promi­nent role, and it does make for an engag­ing sto­ry. But we should be aware that the details of his life are high­ly con­test­ed by schol­ars in the East and West. The only sources date from “well after his death,” notes the Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Phi­los­o­phy, and “tak­en togeth­er paint con­tra­dic­to­ry pic­tures of his per­son­al­i­ty and the events in his life.” Some schol­ars even claim he was an inven­tion of the Jesuits, who may have cre­at­ed the Con­fu­cius char­ac­ter to accord with their West­ern desire for a per­son­al founder.

But we need not believe bio­graph­i­cal details or decide between schol­ar­ly con­tro­ver­sies to appre­ci­ate Con­fu­cian thought. As de Bot­ton makes clear, Con­fu­cius’ respect for tradition—though cer­tain­ly patri­ar­chal and hierarchical—also gives us a lot of insight into how and why we should heed peo­ple with exper­tise and supe­ri­or knowl­edge, why we should val­ue edu­ca­tion and dif­fi­cult study, and why per­son­al integri­ty mat­ters in civic life. Though we can­not ver­i­fy his life sto­ry, we can see it as a pop­u­lar nar­ra­tive alle­go­ry for his ideas. Con­fu­cius exhort­ed his dis­ci­ples to obey their lead­ers, yet he also insist­ed that those lead­ers be benev­o­lent and hon­or­able.

It is said that Con­fu­cius left Lu, where he had served faith­ful­ly as a min­is­ter, when the Duke received a gift of cour­te­sans and hors­es from a neigh­bor­ing ruler, and began to spend all his time cavort­ing, and mis­us­ing the state’s resources. Thus, accord­ing to the tra­di­tion, began a peri­od of wan­der­ing as the philoso­pher pon­dered the cul­ti­va­tion of char­ac­ter. You can read the Analects for your­self in a num­ber of translations—including this free online ver­sion from Robert Eno. And if you wish to immerse your­self more ful­ly in the study of Con­fu­cian­ism and Chi­nese phi­los­o­phy and cul­ture more gen­er­al­ly, you can do so for free through Harvard’s edX course on Chi­na or, through Coursera’s “Clas­sics of Chi­nese Human­i­ties: Guid­ed Read­ings,” taught by Ou Fan Leo Lee, Pro­fes­sor of Chi­nese Cul­ture at The Chi­nese Uni­ver­si­ty of Hong Kong.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

East­ern Phi­los­o­phy Explained with Three Ani­mat­ed Videos by Alain de Botton’s School of Life

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast, Now at 239 Episodes, Expands into East­ern Phi­los­o­phy

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy: Watch the 1960 TV Show, East­ern Wis­dom and Mod­ern Life

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

We post copi­ous resources for the study of phi­los­o­phy on this site, such that you can obtain a full col­lege-lev­el sur­vey under­stand­ing of the sub­ject on your own by tak­ing the many free class­es, lis­ten­ing to the many free lec­tures and pod­casts, and read­ing the many free texts, ebooks and com­men­taries you’ll find here. But sev­er­al of our posts have met with a sim­i­lar read­er objec­tion: where is the East­ern phi­los­o­phy?

The ques­tion could also be put to almost any aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ment of phi­los­o­phy. One answer I’ve often heard dis­miss­es it alto­geth­er. Phi­los­o­phy, some say, devel­oped in the West, first in ancient Greece, then in Rome, the suc­ceed­ing Chris­t­ian empire, and the sec­u­lar age that fol­lowed. It is a Euro­pean pur­suit and tra­di­tion. Oth­er cul­tur­al­ly par­tial crit­ics, who wish to appear enlight­ened, are will­ing to con­cede that “the world’s Mus­lims,” as Richard Dawkins tweet­ed a few years back, “did great things in the Mid­dle Ages,” at least pro­vid­ing a crit­i­cal bridge between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Scholas­ti­cism.

Islam­ic philoso­phers like Avi­cen­na and Aver­roes kept in dia­logue with the Greeks after Europe had for­got­ten them, and pre­served the only work of Aris­to­tle we have. But that was then. What have they done for us late­ly? Atti­tudes like this, argues phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Peter Adam­son, are prej­u­dices with lit­tle basis in fact, and part of the rea­son for a dearth of high-qual­i­ty, acces­si­ble East­ern phi­los­o­phy resources in Eng­lish. Adam­son, who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the study of phi­los­o­phy online with his pod­cast, His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps, fills in the gap with his series on Islam­ic and Indi­an phi­los­o­phy in sev­er­al parts.

For­ma­tive Peri­od—25 episodes

Phi­los­o­phy in Andalu­sia—25 episodes

East­ern Tra­di­tions—25 episodes

Begin­ning with phi­los­o­phy in the Islam­ic world in Episode 171, “East­ern Tra­di­tions,” at the top, Adam­son cov­ers “influ­en­tial thinkers of the twelfth cen­tu­ry like Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Suhrawardī, focus­ing on their lega­cy in the East­ern realms of cen­tral Asia and Per­sia, mov­ing on to the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires, and end­ing with devel­op­ments in twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry phi­los­o­phy.” Against dis­mis­sive claims like Dawkins’ that these cen­turies were “a time of intel­lec­tu­al and sci­en­tif­ic decline in Islam­ic civ­i­liza­tion,” Adam­son argues they were “in fact a time of remark­able achieve­ment in fields like log­ic and astron­o­my as well as the var­i­ous dis­ci­plines of phi­los­o­phy.” See all three parts of the Islam­ic Phi­los­o­phy series above.

Adam­son shares the intro­duc­tion to Indi­an phi­los­o­phy, just above, with NYU’s Jonar­don Ganeri, and the two lay out a case for the tra­di­tion as “pri­mar­i­ly a way of life and search for the high­est good.” As usu­al, Adam­son brings on guest schol­ars and pro­vides a list for fur­ther read­ing on the podcast’s site. And as usu­al, his his­tor­i­cal frame­works are rig­or­ous and very well-researched. This series breaks into two main cat­e­gories (below). The sec­ond part of the series focus­es on the devel­op­ment of a for­mal tra­di­tion, the “sūtra (lit­er­al­ly ‘thread’)… a genre of writ­ing in which ideas were set forth in brief, apho­ris­tic form. Var­i­ous sūtras were tak­en as author­i­ta­tive and foun­da­tion­al for numer­ous schools of Indi­an thought, which devot­ed fur­ther com­men­taries to the sūtras.”

Ori­gins—17 episodes

Age of Sutra—15 episodes

As he has done with many of his oth­er series, Adam­son has adapt­ed the Islam­ic Phi­los­o­phy pod­casts in book form, Phi­los­o­phy in the Islam­ic World: A his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy with­out any gaps, Vol­ume 3. His even-hand­ed­ness and eru­di­tion make this series a joy to lis­ten to, though he’d also encour­age us to read the philoso­phers he dis­cuss­es, if pos­si­ble. If you’re new to read­ing phi­los­o­phy, or to Adamson’s pod­cast, you’d do well to read his recent­ly post­ed All 20 ‘Rules for His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy,’ which he has brought togeth­er in one place as “guide­lines encap­su­lat­ing what I see as good prac­tice in study­ing the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy.” (Rule 8: “Read the whole text.”)

Many of these guide­lines rub up against the cur­rent ortho­dox­ies, assump­tions and, frankly, snob­beries of some con­tem­po­rary aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy. Among these, “Rule 14: Take reli­gion seri­ous­ly” and “Rule 15: Be broad­mind­ed about what counts as ‘phi­los­o­phy.’” And for those who not only dis­miss but also embrace entire cul­tures’ philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tions for one defin­ing reason—Indian thought is “spir­i­tu­al” or “non-vio­lent”; Islam­ic thought is “tol­er­ant” or “intolerant”—Adamson offers Rule 18: “don’t essen­tial­ize.” As becomes clear on even a cur­so­ry lis­ten to the pod­casts in these series, what we tend to believe about “non-west­ern” phi­los­o­phy oper­ates far in excess of what most of us actu­al­ly know about it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 247 Pod­casts (With More to Come)

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: From Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times 

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy Visu­al­ized

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness