What ideas did Confucius teach, and how were they spread after his death?

TThe Warring States Period was the golden age of Chinese philosophy, the era when the “Hundred Schools of Thought” contended. During the same period in which Indian sages and mystics were developing religious speculation about karma, souls, and ultimate reality (see Chapter 3), Chinese thinkers were arguing about the ideal forms of social and political organization and man’s connections to nature.

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Serving Parents with Filial PietyThis twelfth-century-C.E. illustration of a passage in the Classic of Filial Piety shows how commoners should serve their parents: by working hard at productive jobs such as farming and tending to their parents’ daily needs. The married son and daughter-in-law offer food or drink to the older couple as their own children look on, thus learning how they should treat their own parents after they become aged. (National Palace Museum, Taiwan/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)