Confucianism Trivia Quiz

Answer: His father

His dad died when he was three, leaving his mom to raise the family. It's hard to imagine losing a parent at the age of three.

Answer: A merchant

Confucius believed that merchants were to be distrusted because they would normally be the kind of folks to rip off people.

Answer: They were too suppressive

Legalists, known as the School of Law, believed in a suppressive government, which indicates that their 'law enforcement' was the state militia. Confucius believed that this kind of governmental philosophy would lead to rebellion.

Answer: They were too passive

Mohism, founded by Mo Tzu, is the School of Love. They were extremely passive and believed that conflicts arose out of want of mutual love. You could say that they were the first hippies because they loved everyone. Confucius didn't buy their ideas either, stating that 'Mohists would let a wolf into a nursery.'

Answer: False

Confucius had to literally harass princes and government officials to get them to listen to his ideas about government. His ideas about government and morality were accepted after his death.

Answer: Always takes things for granted

Out of all these qualities, Confucius was completely against taking things for granted. He makes this clear in some of his writings.

Answer: Taoism

Judaism and Islam were almost unheard of in China (Islam didn't come until a little more than 500 years after the birth of Christ). Hinduism was practiced primarily in India.

Answer: True

He believed that people needed to be educated and taught right from wrong rather than be forced to be good like the philosophies from Mohism and Legalism. However, women were excluded from the educational system. Later, the Confucian view on the role of women in society changed, and there was less emphasis on their role as being compliant to promote family harmony than was the case in his original writings.

Answer: He was very gifted and could teach multiple subjects

He was very, very gifted and scholars, to this day, could not understand how a man so gifted in areas like history, government, divinity, mathematics, etc. could be so ill-received by princes and prime ministers in his time. Confucius himself was a tutor once in his lifetime and taught his philosophies off and on for the last five years of his life.

Answer: Warring States Period

It was called the Warring States Period, due to the heavy amount of conflict. Confucius came up with his ideas to solve these conflicts, challenging the ideas of the Legalists and Mohists (Legalism and Mohism eventually died out).