Abstract
If we can admit that there is potentially a great value in the comparison between widely separate philosophical traditions, namely the virtue ethics of China and the West, then the basic problem becomes how one leads this comparison into a proper and substantial philosophical analysis rather than into a general, sweeping set of comparisons that are driven by false analogies.
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Notes
- 1.
Confucius once said: “One cannot herd with bird and beasts. If I am not to be a man among other men, then what am I to be?”(Analects 18.6; Waley 2012, 28). This sentence is the origin of the Confucian tradition’s penchant for “distinguishing humans from animals.”
- 2.
All quotes from Xunzi in this article are from the translation by Knoblock (1988).
- 3.
Mencius said: “That in which men differ from brute beasts is a thing very inconsiderable; the common herds lose it very soon; gentlemen preserve it carefully” (Mencius 4B19; Bloom 2011, 89). However “the inconsiderable difference” is the “benevolence, righteousness, ritual, and wisdom” that are “rooted in the heart.” If dispossessed of this, “men are not far away from beasts.” Also, as he states, “Humans aren’t human without the feeling of commiseration; humans aren’t human without the feeling of shame and dislike; humans aren’t human without the feeling of modesty and complaisance; humans aren’t human without the feeling of approving and disapproving” (Mencius 2A6; Bloom 2011, 35).
References
Aristotle. (2004). The Nicomachean ethics (R. Crisp, ed., trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bloom, I. (2011). Mencius: translations from the Asian classics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Knoblock, J. (1988). Xunzi: A translation and study of the complete works. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
MacIntyre, A. C. (1981). After virtue: A study in moral theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Slote, M. (2009). Essays on the history of ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Slote, M. (2013). On virtue ethics. Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 8(1), 22–30.
Stalnaker, A. (2006). Overcoming our evil: human nature and spiritual exercises in Xunzi and Augustine. Washington: Georgetown University Press.
Waley, A. trans. (2012). The Analectsof Confucius. London: Routledge.
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Wang, K. (2017). Xunzi’s Virtue Ethics of Rationality and the Issue of Emotions. In: Yao, X. (eds) Reconceptualizing Confucian Philosophy in the 21st Century. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4000-9_4
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