The other in Confucianism, through the basic religious texts

Abstract

This paper examines Chinese religious thought, trying to discover the viewpoint of Confucianism regarding "the other" through its founding texts. It’s reviewed the term " the other" represented in various schools and philosophies that have been involved in many debates in China for a long time and formed what is known as the Hundred Schools of Thought that flourished during the Spring and Autumn period and the era of the Warring States: Taoism, Moism, and Yang Zhou School. The paper examined the judgement of Confucianism on these schools and concluded that despite the Confucian criticism of those schools based on the desire to correct wrong and misleading ideas, this judgement carried an intellectual openness towards "the other" and a positive attitude based on acceptance and recognition, which reveals an environment of tolerance and pluralism, which has its effects today in the reality of the relationship between religions in China.