Battle of the Founders

[anvi]

I voted for K'ung fu Tzu (Confucius).  I think the Buddha was incredibly insightful about human egoism and suffering, but his solution of giving up desirous attachments altogether is unrealistic.  Lao Tzu was also a great inspiration (though Chinese textual historians now tend to doubt whether there was a person named Lao Tzu), but he was a little bit too much of an anti-humanist for my taste.  Confucius had the most profound way for accounting for the significance of human relationships and what it means to be human than these other philosophers, so he got my vote.