ABSTRACT
The origin of the word ‘Confucianism’ can be traced to the writings of the sixteenth century, where the Jesuits used ‘Confucius’ as the Latin transliteration of Kong Fu zi. To ‘Confucius’ an ‘-ism’ was added probably not much earlier than the nineteenth century, probably in order to enable ‘Confucius-ism’ to be parallel with many other ‘isms’ such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. The newly coined word ‘Confucianism’ quickly became popular among intellectuals, and was understood as the term for the religio-ethical tradition that dominated China and other parts of East Asia for many centuries. Confucius indeed explored deeply, and elaborated extensively on, the basic principles of what was to become ‘Confucianism’, and succeeded in transmitting and transforming the ancient tradition that placed particular emphases on the interaction between politics, ethics and religion through the enhancement of ritual, education and personal cultivation. However, Confucianism was not ‘created’ solely by Confucius, nor was it sustained exclusively by the faith in Confucius. In this sense, some scholars strongly suggest that ‘Confucianism’ is no more than ‘a symbol manufactured’ in ‘a theology of Christian/ Confucian syncretism’ ( Jensen, 1997). Whether or not this argument is acceptable, more and more scholars have become aware of the cultural differences between ‘Confucianism’ and its original names, ru or ru jia , ru jiao , ru xue or ru shu that are used in China and other East Asian countries.
