This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
Taiwanese Chinese-character expert Zhang Fuzhang explains the character 仁 (rén, “benevolence”) as follows:
The core of Confucius’s Confucian teaching is the character 「仁」. On the left is 「人」 (rén, “person”); the 「二」 on the right was, in oracle-bone script, the character 「上」 (shàng, “above, superior”). So it means “Confucius teaching people how to be superior people”; that is, 「仁」 refers to people of noble heart or to their conduct. The character very concisely encompasses Confucian thought.
