Ren
The central Confucian virtue, usually translated as humaneness — the cultivated disposition to care for others and conduct oneself appropriately within social roles.
Ren is the central virtue of Confucian ethics. The Chinese character combines the radicals for person and two, suggesting that ren is the virtue of human-beings-with-other-human-beings rather than a quality of an isolated self. Translators have rendered it as humaneness, humanity, benevolence, or goodness; no single English word captures it fully.
In the Analects, Confucius presents ren as an achievement rather than a given: it is cultivated through ritual propriety (li), study, and the example of the ancient sages. A person of complete ren conducts herself appropriately within all the social relations she occupies — as parent, child, ruler, subject, friend — and extends concern outward from the family in graded fashion. Mencius developed the doctrine further by arguing that the seeds of ren are present in human nature itself, particularly in the spontaneous compassion one feels at the sight of a child about to fall into a well. Ren remains the organizing virtue of the Confucian tradition.