The Ethics of Self: Another Version of Confucian Ethics

My basic contention in this essay is that the proper characterization of Confucian ethics is not role-based ethics, rule-based ethics, or virtue ethics, but an ethics of the self or a self-based ethics. In essence, Confucian ethics is about how to realize a self in line with inner sagehood and outer kinghood (内圣外王); it is about how to realize a self as fully self-conscious being-for-itself of definite character, substance, and personality. Confucian ethics does not start with the assumption that there is a given self that should be made virtuous, rule-abiding, or dutiful, but starts from the assumption that a self needs to be created, developed, and realized in the ethical life while the potentiality of building a self is given.