Confucius vs. Lao Tzu

Comparison chart

Confucius versus Lao Tzu comparison chart

	Confucius	Lao Tzu
Notable ideas	Confucianism, Doctrine of the Golden mean	Taoism, Wu wei
Influenced by	Lao Tzu, Taoism, and the I Ching.	Chinese folk religion.
Influenced	Mencius.	Confucius.
Main interests	Moral philosophy, Social philosophy, Ethics	The Tao.
Introduction (from Wikipedia)	Confucius (551–479 BC) was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese history.	Laozi also known by numerous other names, was a semi-legendary ancient Chinese Taoist philosopher. Laozi is a Chinese honorific, generally translated as "the Old Master".
Born	551 BC, Zou, Lu state	604 BC, Zhou Dynasty
Died	479 BC, Lu state	Zhou Dynasty
Era	Ancient philosophy	Ancient philosophy
Region	Chinese philosophy	East Asian philosophy

Related Comparisons

• Confucianism vs Taoism
• Catholicism vs Zen

• Share
• Follow
• Cite

Share this comparison via:

If you read this far, you should follow us:

"Confucius vs Lao Tzu." Diffen.com. Diffen LLC, n.d. Web. 6 Sep 2025. < >