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Confucianism
Benevolence at the core, ritual as its form, the family as society’s prototype — the operating system of East Asian politics and education for two millennia.
Confucius died a frustrated itinerant adviser and became an "uncrowned king" after death. In the pre-imperial era Confucianism was one contender among many, fighting Mohists, Legalists and Daoists: Mencius declared human nature good; Xunzi declared it bad (hence the greater need for ritual’s shaping); Xunzi’s student Han Feizi slid out of the lineage altogether to found Legalism. After the Han made it orthodoxy it became an institution rather than a school; Zhu Xi rebuilt the classics around "principle" (li), and Wang Yangming overturned Zhu with "the mind itself is principle" — every great turn inside Confucianism is a fresh debate over human nature and the source of order.