Confucianism, also known as Ruism, is a system of philosophical and "ethical-sociopolitical teachings" sometimes described as a religion. Confucianism developed during the Spring and Autumn Period from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 BCE), who considered himself a retransmitter of Zhou values. Its metaphysical and cosmological elements developed in the Han Dynasty following the replacement of its contemporary, the more Taoistic Huang-Lao, as the official ideology. More privately, Chinese emperors would still make use of the historical Realpolitik of the Chinese, termed Legalism. The disintegration of the Han in the second century CE opened the way for the soteriological doctrines of Buddhism and Taoism to dominate intellectual life at that time.