(i.e.The works of Mencius).In both theConfucian analectsandThe
works of Mencius,we find great ideas of governance and leadership.
During the Spring and Autumn (722–480 BCE) and the Warring
States (480–221 BCE) periods of Chinese history, there were ‘‘a hun-
dred schools of thought’’ competing for the attention of the kings and
lords of the states. Different schools of thought, such as Confucianism,
Mohism, Daoism, and Legalism all developed their own systems of
theories of government. Although Confucianism was suppressed and
abolished by the first emperor of Qin when he unified China (in
221 BCE), it became the dominant doctrine of government in the West
Han dynasty (206 BCE), when it was proposed that all other schools
of thought should be officially banned to uphold the supremacy of
Confucianism. Since then the orthodoxy of Confucianism dominated
Chinese ways of government and politics till the fall of the Qing
dynasty (1911 CE).
Confucius and Mencius lived in periods of political and social
turmoil that witnessed the degeneration of the feudal system from
the central courts of the Zhou dynasties into the Warring States. There
were debates in China as to whether Confucius and Mencius were
political conservatives or reformists (Fung, 1948 ) because they advo-
cated change and reform of the politics and government by means of
restoring the rites, rituals, and music that were documented in the
classics and attributed to sage-emperors of ancient times (Sima, 1994 ).
Regardless of the differences in characterizing his political orientation,
there is consensus that Confucius founded a philosophy of humaneness
and benevolence by reinterpreting, reconstructing, and teaching the
earlier Chinese classics.
The Confucian philosophy of benevolence
A brief count of the frequency with which the Chinese character
for benevolence (ren) appears in the Analectsshows that it is the
most important concept in Confucianism. TheAnalectscontain 502
chapters of which 58 deal withren, and the characterrenappears
109 times. Forty-nine chapters deal with issues ofli(rituals), which
appears seventy-four times, andyue(music), which appears twenty-
five times. In general, the Confucian philosophy focuses on human
relationships instead of ontological and epistemological issues. The
philosophical foundation of Confucian thoughts on leadership is in
Confucian and Mencian philosophy 33