Confucianism Edwin R. A. Seligman, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan Co, 1931. Vol. 4. pp. 198-200. Confucianism. This term, invented by European writers, covers roughly what is implied in the Chinese wordju-kiao(the teaching of theju). Confucius (Kiung Tzu 551-479 B.C.) was one of the paid public teachers (ju), more or less similar to the sophists of ancient Greece, who were common in China during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. He spent many years of his life as a public official, was a historian of importance and did his great work as a teacher. Not a philosopher in the ordinary technical sense, he was concerned with drawing up a set of rules for human conduct rather than with the elaboration of theories. In later times because of the tremendous influenc…