Your assignment for this week focuses on your reading of Confucius' Analects.

In the anarchy and chronic warfare that ensued after the fall of the Zhou dynasty, 
Confucius (551-479) appeared.  Kung Fuzi was born into a poor 
shi (scholar-bureaucrat or scholar-gentry) family.  He did not obtain a good 
job, so he wandered and taught and earned a reputation for wisdom.  Over time, 
he developed a set of ethical principles based on the proposition that nobility 
was not inborn but a matter of education and conduct, goodness, wisdom and courage. 
One should cultivate these virtues.  Religious sacrifices were not enough; 
virtue was its own reward as it was a moral code of behavior.

Tao was the practice of all virtues to become a gentlemen 
(and part of the process meant that a gentleman had to govern).  Men with training and 
education should serve society.

The proper way to organize social relationships and to achieve good government 
was to ensure order and harmony.  Each person had his place in harmony based on the 
five links:  three family (father and son, elder and younger brother, husband and 
wife), one political (ruler and subject), one social (friend and friend).

Confucius followers compiled the Analects, collected sayings, and no other direct 
teaching survives.  During the first Han dynasty in the third century bce, 
Confucianism became the dominant force in the civil government.

As you prepare to write your paper, please remember that you are reading the Analects 
as a historian and not as a literary critic. They are difficult reading because there are 
literally hundreds of these recorded snippets of conversations.  You are searching 
for evidence that reveals Confucian practices and attitudes in regard to 
politics and the characteristics of ideal government.  Please focus your paper on the 
assigned question, include
an introduction, use paragraphs (each of which deals with a specific point of your
introductory thesis), review the style rules for history papers in the course and include
short pieces of quoted evidence from the document to support your analysis.