[From the name of the Chinese sage K'ung Fu Tzu (550-480 BCE).]
(ethics) Confucianism is the main stream of Chinese philosophy, just as Western philosophy is mostly in the Socratic tradition. Although the views of Confucius have been interpreted in various ways throughout history, no one denies that they are a powerful variety of humanism (Herbert Fingarette's book on Confucius is subtitled "The Secular as Sacred"). Confucius held that the most important, indeed sacred, aspect of life is one's dealings with other people, and he put great emphasis on virtues such as honesty, justice, and integrity. Although Confucius was fairly conservative (similar in this respect, and in many other respects, to Aristotle), often when people talk about 'Confucianism' they are referring not so much to Confucius' actual views as to the way his writings were used by later interpreters to justify reactionary political practices such as a large bureaucracy and the stratification of society.