Confucianism

Study the Analects (Lunyu), the primary collection of Confucius's sayings compiled by his disciples after his death in 479 BCE. Divided into twenty books, the Analects explore the virtues of ren (benevolence), li (ritual propriety), yi (righteousness), and zhi (wisdom). Confucius's vision of a harmonious society grounded in moral cultivation and right relationships shaped East Asian civilization for millennia. The James Legge translation remains the standard scholarly English rendering.