Writes historian Michael Schuman, ‘Confucius expected people to do the right thing because it was the right thing to do, not because they’d get paid off at some point in the future.’ In his lifetime, Confucius failed. He wouldn’t become truly influential for another two hundred and fifty years, when the warring period ended. The new rulers of the Han dynasty found his philosophy of deference and duty, which had been kept alive by generations of adherents, agreeable to their project of uniting and ruling the country. After all, Confucius had always preached that China should be led by a single
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