Situationism and Confucian Virtue Ethics

Situationist research in social psychology focuses on the situational factors that influence behavior. Doris and Harman argue that this research has powerful implications for ethics, and virtue ethics in particular. First, they claim that situationist research presents an empirical challenge to the moral psychology presumed within virtue ethics. Second, they argue that situationist research supports a theoretical challenge to virtue ethics as a foundation for ethical behavior and moral development. I offer a response from moral psychology using an interpretation of Xunzi—a Confucian virtue ethicist from the Classical period. This Confucian account serves as a foil to the situationist critique in that it uncovers many problematic ontological and normative assumptions at work in this debate regarding the prediction and explanation of behavior, psychological posits, moral development, and moral education. Xunzi’s account of virtue ethics not only responds to the situationist empirical challenge by uncovering problematic assumptions about moral psychology, but also demonstrates that it is not a separate empirical hypothesis. Further, Xunzi’s virtue ethic responds to the theoretical challenge by offering a new account of moral development and a ground for ethical norms that fully attends to situational features while upholding robust character traits.     

Whitehead,Confucius, and the aesthetics of virtue

The most constructive response to the crisis in moral theory has been the revival of virtue ethics, an ethics that has the advantages of being personal, contextual, and, as this paper will argue, normative as well. The first section offers a general comparative analysis of Confucian and Whiteheadian philosophies, showing their common process orientation and their views of a somatic self united in reason and passion. The second section contrasts rational with aesthetic order, demonstrating a parallel with analytic and synthetic reason, and showing that rule‐based ethics comes under the former and virtue ethics under the latter. The third and final section discusses a Confucian–Whiteheadian aesthetics of virtue, focusing on love as the comprehensive virtue. The principal goal of the paper is to propose that an appropriation of Confucian virtue ethics will enhance the otherwise slow development of a Euro–American process ethics.     

Hutchesonian Inspired Agent‐Based Virtue Ethics

Francis Hutcheson's moral sense theory is the inspiration for both act utilitarianism and a contemporary virtue ethics approach that Michael Slote calls agent‐based virtue ethics. In this essay, I look at other possibilities for ethical theory that spring from Hutcheson's writings and conclude that the landscape of sentimentalist inspired ethics is richer than many realize. I begin this article with a short explanation of Hutcheson's moral sense theory. I explain that Hutcheson proposes and embraces three distinct criteria of moral evaluation, one of which is concerned with the evaluation of motives and two of which are concerned with the evaluation of acts. Act utilitarianism adopts one of the criteria of act evaluation, and Slote's agent‐based virtue ethics adopts the remaining criterion of act evaluation and the criterion of motive evaluation. Then, after pointing out what I believe are shortcomings of Slote's agent‐based virtue ethics, I propose two Hutchesonian inspired theories, each of which is a compromise between act utilitarianism and agent‐based virtue ethics. The first, which I call hypothetical agent‐based virtue ethics, adopts two of Hutcheson's three criteria and is similar structurally to a virtue ethics theory articulated by Rosalind Hursthouse and Linda Zabzebski. The second, which, for lack of a better name, I call Hutchesonian hybridism, adopts all three of Hutcheson's criteria and is a hybrid combination of Slote's actualist agent‐based virtue ethics and hypothetical agent‐based virtue ethics. I argue that both hypothetical agent‐based virtue ethics and Hutchesonian hybridism overcome the shortcomings (pointed out earlier in this essay) of Slote's actualist agent‐based virtue ethics, and that both of these theories are, therefore, worthy of further consideration.     

Three Different Approaches to Virtue in Business- Aristotle,Confucius, and Lao Zi

The proposed paper presents an overview on the matter of virtue from different philosophical angles. It concentrates on three different schools of thought coming from the West and the East and their respective concepts of virtue. These schools of thought and the therewith-associated personalities and works discussed in this paper are Aristotelian virtue ethics, Confucianism and Daoism. The paper focuses specifically on the Nicomachean Ethics (NE) by Aristotle, the Analects belonging to Confucianism, and the Dao De Jing coming from Daoism. The paper is divided into three major parts. First, the concept of virtue of each school is outlined. In the second part, the concrete virtues as such according to each school are explained. In the third part, these virtues are then applied in specific business contexts like business practice, corporate culture and leadership, illuminating each school’s characteristic approach. The paper closes with a summary and conclusion. In the conclusion the paper outlines differences as well as similarities between Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics. Yet, the author generally takes a critical stance towards comparisons merely for the sake of finding similarities. Particularly between Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics there is a significant difference when it comes to the cultural and historical background of these schools, which should not be ignored. Besides, even within Chinese philosophy there are already significant differences when it comes to concepts and practice.     

Towards a Confucian Virtue Bioethics: Reframing Chinese Medical Ethics in a Market Economy

This essay addresses a moral and cultural challenge facing health care in the People’s Republic of China: the need to create an understanding of medical professionalism that recognizes the new economic realities of China and that can maintain the integrity of the medical profession. It examines the rich Confucian resources for bioethics and health care policy by focusing on the Confucian tradition’s account of how virtue and human flourishing are compatible with the pursuit of profit. It offers the Confucian account of the division of labor and the financial inequalities this produces with special attention to China’s socialist project of creating the profession of barefoot doctors as egalitarian peasant physicians and why this project failed. It then further develops the Confucian acknowledgement of the unequal value of different services and products and how this conflicts with the current system of payment to physicians which has led to the corruption of medical professionalism through illegal supplementary payments. It further gives an account the oblique intentionality of Confucian moral psychology that shows how virtuous persons can pursue benevolent actions while both foreseeing profit and avoiding defining their character by greed. This account of Confucian virtue offers the basis for a medical professionalism that can function morally within a robustly profit-oriented market economy. The paper concludes with a summary of the characteristics of Confucian medical professionalism and of how it places the profit motive within its account of virtue ethics.     

Xunzi: A Paradigm of Rationalistic Virtue Ethics in Early Confucianism

Against the background of modern academic study, this article consciously uses Aristotle’s virtue ethics as a tool to theoretically analyze Xunzi’s ethical philosophy. This article tries to briefly analyze the basic structure of Xunzi’s moral philosophy and to reveal its unique rationalist theoretical character by exploring the following three topics: “the understanding of human beings,” “the establishment of a moral foundation,” and “the accomplishment of virtue in practice.” From the perspective of comparative philosophy, this article can also be viewed as a model for bringing about communication and synthesis between two philosophical traditions, namely Confucian ethics and Western virtue ethics.     

Virtue Ethics, The Analects, and the Problem of Commensurability

In support of the thesis that virtue ethics allows for a more comprehensive and consistent interpretation of the Analects than other possible models, the author uses a structural outline of a virtue ethic (derived from Alasdair MacIntyre's account of the Aristotlelian tradition) to organize a discussion of the text. The resulting interpretation focuses attention on the religious aspects of Confucianism and accounts for aspects of the text that are otherwise difficult to explain. In addition, the author argues that the structural similarities between the Aristotelian and Confucian conceptions of self-cultivation indicate a dimension of commensurability between the two traditions, despite very real variations in specific content. Finally, the author suggests how crosscultural commensurability, in general, can be understood on a theoretical level.     

Do Confucians Really Care? A Defense of the Distinctiveness of Care Ethics: A Reply to Chenyang Li

Chenyang Li argues, in an article originally published in Hypatia, that the ethics of care and Confucian ethics constitute similar approaches to ethics. The present paper takes issue with this claim. It is more accurate to view Confucian ethics as a kind of virtue ethics, rather than as a kind of care ethics. In the process of criticizing Li's claim, the distinctiveness of care ethics is defended, against attempts to assimilate it to virtue ethics.     

An Ethics of Propriety: Ritual,Roles, and Dependence in Early Confucianism

This study examines the normative foundations of early Confucian ethics and suggests that rather than attempting to understand Confucian ethics in the language of ‘morality’ a more productive way would be to appreciate Confucianism as an ethics of propriety that can be articulated in terms of social roles, ritual decorum, and relational dependence. I argue that Western notions of ‘morality’ betray a thicker, more culturally loaded concept that possesses a limited utility in regard to comparative study. We can appeal to a kind of methodological charity where we not only maximize the sense of the text or subject's sayings but also privilege the categories of thought that are native to the text's or speaker's lexicon. With this in mind, we can understand Confucian ethics as an ethics of propriety that departs substantially from Western moral systems, including virtue ethics, and challenges our received views on justice, autonomy, and personal identity.     

Ethical Analysis in Counseling: A Case for Narrative Ethics,Moral Visions,and Virtue Ethics

The author presents an overview of the current content of ethics education in counseling, grouping that content into 3 areas: decision‐making models, principle ethics, and the standard of care. It is argued that as the field of ethics education has grown, so has the need for additional content models, especially ones that enhance moral sensitivity and reduce objectification of client circumstances. The author presents 3 possible approaches to revising the conceptualization of professional ethics that meet the need for new models: moral visions, narrative ethics, and virtue ethics.     

Confucian Co-creative Ethics: Self and Family

A general account of the Confucian self as either collectivist or relational requires careful examination. This article begins with the major textual resources of the Confucian tradition and then compares this idea of moral expansion with Deweyan ideas of the self and community. By parsing key Confucian terms that comprise the meaning of “being together” and “mutual association,” the author argues that Confucian selves and individuals are fundamentally contextually creative. By comparing the Confucian idea of family with the Deweyan notion of community, the author further supports his argument that the Confucian self is always co-creative with others. Despite the fact that Confucian ethics has long been considered either a kind of virtue ethics or a kind of role ethics, the author argues that Confucian ethics is better viewed as a kind of co-creative ethics, which stems from an ethical theory concerning the co-creative self and other.     

Virtue Ethics,Applied Ethics and Rationality twenty-three years after After Virtue

Abstract

In evaluating the merits and shortcomings of virtue ethics I focus on some central differences between virtue ethics and rival theories such as deontology and utilitarianism. Virtue ethics does not prescribe strict rules of conduct. Instead, the virtue ethical approach can be understood as an invitation to search for standards, as opposed to strict rules, that ought to guide the conduct of our individual lives. This requires a particular method. The importance of this approach in present times will become clear when we investigate the relation between virtue ethics and postmodernity. In our postmodem age moral concepts are no longer perceived as deriving their meaning from larger frameworks. Instead, their meanings are perceived as being derived from the contingencies that define our particular existences. Thus ongoing grassroots moral engagement is required, and virtue ethics is the appropriate moral framework for doing this. This results in a broadening of rationality insofar as the full richness of our situated lives are factored into our accounts of rationality. At the same time virtue ethics prevents relativism, mainly because it does justice to the social embeddedness of human activities. In order to illustrate the virtue ethical approach I will discuss two key concepts in our moral vocabulary: responsibility and integrity. We will see how these basic concepts can be properly understood only if one takes into consideration the contingencies, inherent paradoxes and tensions in human life.     

The Continence of Virtue

Many recent writers in the virtue ethics tradition have followed Aristotle in arguing for a distinction between virtue and continence, where the latter is conceived as an inferior moral condition. In this paper I contend that rather than seeking to identify a sharp categorical difference between virtue and continence, we should see the contrast as rather one of degree, where virtue is a continence that has matured with practice and habit, becoming more stable, effective and self‐aware.     

Confucianism, Democracy, and the Virtue of Deference

Some democratic theorists have argued that contemporary people should practice only a civility that recognizes others as equal persons, and eschew any form of deference to authority as a feudalistic cultural holdover that ought to be abandoned in the modern era. Against such views, this essay engages early Confucian views of ethics and society, including their analyses of different sorts of authority and status, in order to argue that, properly understood, deference is indeed a virtue of considerable importance for contemporary democratic societies and the citizens who constitute them.     

Before and after Ritual: Two Accounts of Li as Virtue in Early Confucianism

In this article, I probe the nature of Confucian virtue with special focus on ritual propriety (li). I examine two classic, mutually competing accounts of li??as moral virtue and as civic virtue??in early Confucianism by investigating the thoughts of Mencius and Xunzi. My primary aim in this article is to demonstrate how their different accounts of human nature and equally different understandings of the natural state (that is, the pre-li state) led them to the development of two distinctive political theories of virtue in the Confucian tradition. More specifically, they justified the nature of the li on different terms??human/moral on the one hand and civic/political on the other. I conclude by revisiting the contemporary debate on the nature of Confucian ethics from the perspective of early Confucianism represented by Mencius and Xunzi.     

Shu and zhong as the virtue of the Golden Rule: a Confucian contribution to contemporary virtue ethics

I aim to show how Confucian philosophy can contribute to the contemporary resurgence of virtue ethics education by arguing that it has the resource to address a lacuna in Aristotelian ethics. Aristotelian ethics, which is arguably the main resource of contemporary virtue ethics, lacks a virtue that corresponds to the notion of loving each person as one’s self or the Golden Rule. To be more precise, Aristotelian ethics has no virtue about loving all people as one’s self, although philia comes close but is precisely limited because it lacks universality. However, I believe that Dai Zhen’s interpretation of the Confucian virtues of shu and zhong does have this universal scope which philia lacks. For Dai, the ground for loving another is not any characteristic that a particular group of people have in common, such as, in the case of philia, being virtuous. Rather, the ground is universal human nature itself.     

Relation-Centred Ethics in Confucius and Aquinas

In recent years, it has become a popular trend for the scholars in comparative philosophy to interpret Confucian moral theory by means of Aristotelian virtue ethics. However, this interpretation overlooks the relation-centred characteristics of Confucian ethics that is lacking in Aristotelian ethics. In this article, I will argue that there is relation-based ethics in the Western tradition—the ethics of Thomas Aquinas. By examining Aquinas's theory of love, I will show the relational characteristics of his ethics. I will use Aquinas's theory of love to interpret three important points of Confucian ethics: filial reverence and material support are both integral parts of xiao孝 (filial piety); the importance of remonstration for xiao; and the symmetrical features of Confucius's virtues.     

德性伦理论要

德性伦理强调以人类自身的内在品质作为人的一切生活的出发点,这不仅使德性伦理在人类伦理思想的起源处规避着人类伦理生活的方向,而且在现代人类遭遇道德困境的形势下,又指示着人类伦理生活所应该采取的态度。德性伦理最终的理论指向便是将成就德性与明其规范统一起来,从而真正实现人自身的价值。在现代社会价值多元化的背景下,对传统德性伦理资源的挖掘,显得尤为重要。无论是亚里士多德的德性传统,还是原始儒家的德性传统,都可以为现代伦理理论的建设提供丰富的智性资源。     

Social Psychology and Virtue Ethics

Several philosophers have recently claimed to have discovered a new and rather significant problem with virtue ethics. According to them, virtue ethics generates certain expectations about the behavior of human beings which are subject to empirical testing. But when the relevant experimental work is done in social psychology, the results fall remarkably short of meeting those expectations. So, these philosophers think, despite its recent success, virtue ethics has far less to offer to contemporary ethical theory than might have been initially thought. I argue that there are plausible ways in which virtue ethicists can resist arguments based on empirical work in social psychology. In the first three sections of the paper, I reconstruct the line of reasoning being used against virtue ethics by looking at the recent work of Gilbert Harman and John Doris. The remainder of the paper is then devoted both to responding to their challenge as well as to briefly sketching a positive account of character trait possession.     

早期儒家与德性伦理学:儒学研究中的相对主义话题——兼与安乐哲、罗思文商榷

20世纪中叶以来,西方伦理学研究的一个重要特征是德性伦理学的复兴.万白安、艾文贺、余纪元等西方汉学学者参照德性伦理学视角来重新诠释中国早期儒家伦理学,借以彰显儒家伦理与西方伦理对话的新路径.安乐哲和罗思文《早期儒家是德性论的吗?》一文则持一种与德性伦理学完全相异的视角:他们认为早期儒家伦理是一种角色伦理(role ethics),“儒家不寻求普遍,而是集中关注特殊性”.本文尝试对此问题展开讨论.意在阐明三个论点:其一,德性伦理学是儒家伦理的题中应有之义;在这一点上,早期儒家伦理虽不及宋明新儒家突出,但实备此一面向.故此,以德性伦理为视角来考究早期儒家伦理,不仅并非绝然扦格,而且可以开启理解儒家伦理的新视域.其二,安乐哲、罗思文的观点固然能够启人心智,但其论说与其说阐明了早期儒家伦理的根本特征,莫若说自我指涉性地流露了其自身的理论限域:去本质化的过程哲学、以实践为先的新实用主义.将这一理论限阈视为“奥卡姆剃刀”,只会使早期儒家伦理成为一种过度后现代化和单面化的狭隘存在.其三,与角色伦理相关联的文化相对主义极度排斥普遍主义的价值诉求,对相对主义和普遍主义之间应有的张力视若不见.以儒家伦理为价值取向的理论和行为主体若将这种绝对了的相对主义内在化为主体自身的信念内容,则无异于自我设限,从而在根本上使得跨文化交流和融合成为一纸空文,在最低限度上也不能避免或消弭不同伦理体系之间的道德冲突.