# Confucius — Back to Methuselah character guide

> Confucius in Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Confucius Gravely, Confucius Rising, Confucius Answering, Confucius The Archbishop

**First appearance:** 0056-part-iii-the-thing-happens

## Snapshot

The ancient sage summoned into Shaw's late plays, where a philosopher who never wrote philosophy must finally give an account of himself.

## Who they are

Confucius arrives in the final plays as a figure of immense reputation and uncertain doctrine, one of the great dead whose wisdom the living have inherited without ever testing it. His authority rests on maxims and tradition rather than on any demonstrated grasp of what philosophy actually is, a gap Shaw's preface dwells on when he accuses even Shakespeare of mistaking pessimism for thought. He matters because he embodies the play's central wager: that a civilization can inherit a name without inheriting a method, and that the difference only shows when someone asks the sage a question he has never had to answer.

## Relationships

### [Franklyn Barnabas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/back_to_methuselah_se/characters/franklyn_barnabas)

_friendship_

Mutual respect and philosophical exchange between the ancient sage and the modern thinker.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/back_to_methuselah_se/characters/confucius
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/back_to_methuselah_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/back_to_methuselah_se/characters