Moral Beauty as An Overriding Imperative in Confucianism

Kwong-loi Shun, Sor-hoon Tan, whose papers are included here, and Joel Kupperman. Other invitees to the mini-conference, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Robert C. Neville, and Bryan Van Norden, though unable to attend, have graciously made their contributions to this volume in honor of Kupperman.

Within globalization efforts, the three fundamental categorization aspects that drive Western universal-stigmata are ignorance (knowledge), prejudice (attitudes) and discrimination (behavior); these behavior-drives are largely activated through identity-attributes (overt-cultural-norm-enforcement), unconscious (overt-intuitive-cultural-enforcement) or unexposed (covert-cultural/ intuitive-enforcement); in turn, these cultural identity-attributes are seemingly driven by Western passion-for-the-moral and therefore considered as mandatory shared reality in cultural ambivalence (social), univalence (egocentric) and neutrality of societies

In this article, I present a neo-Confucian answer, by Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, to the question, “Why should I be moral?” I argue that this answer is better than some representative answers in the Western philosophical tradition. According to the Chengs, one should be moral because it is a joy to perform moral actions. Sometimes one finds it a pain, instead of a joy, to perform moral actions only because one lacks the necessary genuine moral knowledge—knowledge that is accessible to every common person as long as one makes the effort to learn. One should make the effort to learn such knowledge—to seek joy in performing moral actions—because to be moral is a distinguishing mark of being human. This neo-Confucian answer seems to be egoistic, as its conception of motivation for morality is based on self-interest: to seek one’s own joy. However, since it emphasizes that one’s true self-interest is to seek joy in things uniquely human, which is to be moral, self-interest and morality become identical; the more a person seeks one’s self-interest, the more moral the person is, and vice versa.

The paper tentatively develops a genealogical interpretation of Early Confucian moral psychology by informing close readings of Early Confucian texts, in particular Mencius and Analects, with research in the mind sciences. This includes examinations of the discussions of emotions and their morality in Analects and Mencius. The paper first analyzes the relationship between Confucian filial piety, genetic kinship and moral emotions. Then the paper analyzes the relationship between Early Confucian ethical principles for interaction with non-kin, empathy, and reciprocal altruism. The paper frames those two issues around a description of the variance between the (high) usage and importance of emotions in the moral philosophy of Early Confucianism and the (low) usage and importance of emotions in the moral philosophy of competing Western moral theories.

PROSPERO Volume 25 Number 1, 2019

The aim of this essay is to introduce scholars to recent discussions of early Confucian ethics that intersect with contemporary moral psychology. Given the early Confucian tradition’s intense focus on the cultivation of virtue, there are a number of ways in which early Confucian thinkers – as represented in the texts of the Analects, the Mencius, and the Xunzi – fruitfully engaged in a range of topics that are closely connected to live issues in moral psychology. Not only did they anticipate some contemporary debates (e.g. moral modularity, situationism) but explored them from a distinctively Confucian normative worldview, attending especially to the role of the family and ritual practice. This essay seeks to demonstrate that early Confucianism, by integrating a normative vision with empirically grounded observations of human behaviour, offers resources for constructively exploring a number of ongoing questions in moral psychology.

Confucianism conceives of persons as being necessarily interdependent, defining personhood in terms of the various roles one embodies and that are established by the relationships basic to one’s life. By way of contrast, the Western philosophical tradition has predominantly defined persons in terms of intrinsic characteristics not thought to depend on others. This more strictly and explicitly individualistic concept of personhood contrasts with the Confucian idea that one becomes a person because of others; where one is never a person independently or in and of oneself but develops into one only in community. This article surveys some differences between Confucian and Western ideas of self and their connection to ethics mainly in light of the relational self of the Confucian Analects and Mencius. A Philosophy Compass article called Confucianism and Ethics in the Western Philosophical Tradition: A Comparative Analysis of Personhood (CEWII) will follow, that examines how the more individualistic way of conceiving of personhood in the West has had moral and political implications that differ, and even conflict, with those of Confucianism.

I would like to start by expressing my gratitude to Chenyang Li for proposing, organizing, and arranging the publication of this symposium discussion on my book, Why Be Moral?: Learning from the Neo-Confucian Brothers. I would also like to thank Jeeloo Liu, Justin Tiwald, and Kam Por Yu for their serious engagements with my work with stimulating and inspiring comments. As they seem to me so persuasive, at the end of the day, I would perhaps have to embrace a wholesale acceptance of their constructive criticisms and abandon what I have said in the contrary in the book. In the following, however, I shall try my best to reply to some of the questions raised in their comments.

Open Journal of Philosophy Vol.14 No.4, 2024

There are three main moral theories: virtue ethics, the deontological approach and utilitarianism. The concern here is how they interrelate, why they come into focus at different times and places, and how they are configured in their application to a modern democratic society. Person-oriented virtue ethics was the dominant understanding in Ancient Greece but within the Western tradition this was later subordinated to the monotheism of Ancient Judaism as modified by Christianity. Of growing importance by the eighteenth century was rights theory which was often still situated religiously. Kant’s principle of the categorical imperative has been highly influential but was challenged by the emerging nature of industrial and capitalist society. Utilitarianism, within which the moral rightness of activity resides in its tendency to promote happiness or unhappiness, represented the decisive move from the transcendental to the immanent approach. Although all three approaches to moral theory continue to be relevant to identifiable situations and aspects of modern society, there has been a substantial turn towards a heavily modified utilitarianism associated with parliamentary democracy and market economies founded on property ownership. The root cause of this is the ability of utilitarianism, as opposed to the other approaches, to handle considerations of number and probability. The concept of utility is fundamental in economics but the idea has evolved away from its origins to mean “preference”. There is a sense in which the straightforward appeal of basic utilitarianism has been “leased out” in modified form to a set of institutional arrangements. Certain “pressure points” in a modern society are noted which pose particular problems pertinent to moral theory. Bernard Williams argues persuasively for an appropriately modified form of virtue ethics.