Early Confucian Role Ethics: A Comparative Study
Ever since Matteo Ricci began writing on the texts of Confucianism in the 1590s, Western scholars – and a great many Chinese scholars as well – have argued that the texts do, or don’t reveal a clear Christian theology and morality; or that they do, or don’t show a clear Kantian morality, or a Utiltarian one; more recently it is claimed by many comparative philosophers – for reasons only partly grounded in the texts themselves – that Confucianism should be seen as a “virtue ethics,” in many respects resembling the morality advocated by Aristotle..
In this seminar we will examine another possibility, namely, that early Confucianism
Is best described as a “role ethics,” that it is unique among the world’s philosophies in this regard, and therefore contrasts between various strands of Western and Confucian thought will be of much greater philosophical value than comparisons – which invariably show the Western orientation as superior.
We will concentrate on the Lun Yu (both English and Chinese), and read as well sections of Mengzi, Xunzi, the Liji and also the new translation of the Xiaojing by Roger Ames and myself. Based on the readings, it will be argued 1) that the texts support strongly a role ethics reading of them; 2) role ethics is not so much a theory as it is a way of life; 3) that this way of life has strong aesthetic,social, economic, political and spiritual dimensions, all which must be integrated; 4) that reading the texts as advocating an ethics of roles follows most closely the principle of logical charity, being able to minimize the number of statements in the texts that are incompatible with each other; and 5) that Confucian role Ethics has an important role to play in the 21st Century throughout the world, not China alone, and can makes a significant contribution to making philosophy as truly universal in the future as it has been mistakenly been thought to be in the past.