define confucianism essay

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Confucianism.

Confucianism is one of the most influential religious philosophies in the history of China, and it has existed for over 2,500 years. It is concerned with inner virtue, morality, and respect for the community and its values.

Religion, Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations

Confucian Philosopher Mencius

Confucianism is an ancient Chinese belief system, which focuses on the importance of personal ethics and morality. Whether it is only or a philosophy or also a religion is debated.

Photograph by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images, taken from Myths and Legends of China

Confucianism is a philosophy and belief system from ancient China, which laid the foundation for much of Chinese culture. Confucius was a philosopher and teacher who lived from 551 to 479 B.C.E. His thoughts on ethics , good behavior, and moral character were written down by his disciples in several books, the most important being the Lunyu . Confucianism believes in ancestor worship and human-centered virtues for living a peaceful life. The golden rule of Confucianism is “Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you.” There is debate over if Confucianism is a religion. Confucianism is best understood as an ethical guide to life and living with strong character. Yet, Confucianism also began as a revival of an earlier religious tradition. There are no Confucian gods, and Confucius himself is worshipped as a spirit rather than a god. However, there are temples of Confucianism , which are places where important community and civic rituals happen. This debate remains unresolved and many people refer to Confucianism as both a religion and a philosophy. The main idea of Confucianism is the importance of having a good moral character, which can then affect the world around that person through the idea of “cosmic harmony.” If the emperor has moral perfection, his rule will be peaceful and benevolent. Natural disasters and conflict are the result of straying from the ancient teachings. This moral character is achieved through the virtue of ren, or “humanity,” which leads to more virtuous behaviours, such as respect, altruism , and humility. Confucius believed in the importance of education in order to create this virtuous character. He thought that people are essentially good yet may have strayed from the appropriate forms of conduct. Rituals in Confucianism were designed to bring about this respectful attitude and create a sense of community within a group. The idea of “ filial piety ,” or devotion to family, is key to Confucius thought. This devotion can take the form of ancestor worship, submission to parental authority, or the use of family metaphors, such as “son of heaven,” to describe the emperor and his government. The family was the most important group for Confucian ethics , and devotion to family could only strengthen the society surrounding it. While Confucius gave his name to Confucianism , he was not the first person to discuss many of the important concepts in Confucianism . Rather, he can be understood as someone concerned with the preservation of traditional Chinese knowledge from earlier thinkers. After Confucius’ death, several of his disciples compiled his wisdom and carried on his work. The most famous of these disciples were Mencius and Xunzi, both of whom developed Confucian thought further. Confucianism remains one of the most influential philosophies in China. During the Han Dynasty, emperor Wu Di (reigned 141–87 B.C.E.) made Confucianism the official state ideology. During this time, Confucius schools were established to teach Confucian ethics . Confucianism existed alongside Buddhism and Taoism for several centuries as one of the most important Chinese religions. In the Song Dynasty (960–1279 C.E.) the influence from Buddhism and Taoism brought about “Neo- Confucianism ,” which combined ideas from all three religions. However, in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912 C.E.), many scholars looked for a return to the older ideas of Confucianism , prompting a Confucian revival.

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At different times in Chinese history, Confucius (trad. 551–479 BCE) has been portrayed as a teacher, advisor, editor, philosopher, reformer, and prophet. The name Confucius, a Latinized combination of the surname Kong 孔 with an honorific suffix “Master” ( fuzi 夫子), has also come to be used as a global metonym for different aspects of traditional East Asian society. This association of Confucius with many of the foundational concepts and cultural practices in East Asia, and his casting as a progenitor of “Eastern” thought in Early Modern Europe, make him arguably the most significant thinker in East Asian history. Yet while early sources preserve biographical details about Master Kong, dialogues and stories about him in early texts like the Analects ( Lunyu 論語) reflect a diversity of representations and concerns, strands of which were later differentially selected and woven together by interpreters intent on appropriating or condemning particular associated views and traditions. This means that the philosophy of Confucius is historically underdetermined, and it is possible to trace multiple sets of coherent doctrines back to the early period, each grounded in different sets of classical sources and schools of interpretation linked to his name. After introducing key texts and interpreters, then, this entry explores three principal interconnected areas of concern: a psychology of ritual that describes how ideal social forms regulate individuals, an ethics rooted in the cultivation of a set of personal virtues, and a theory of society and politics based on normative views of the family and the state.

Each of these areas has unique features that were developed by later thinkers, some of whom have been identified as “Confucians”, even though that term is not well-defined. The Chinese term Ru (儒) predates Confucius, and connoted specialists in ritual and music, and later experts in Classical Studies. Ru is routinely translated into English as “Confucian”. Yet “Confucian” is also sometimes used in English to refer to the sage kings of antiquity who were credited with key cultural innovations by the Ru , to sacrificial practices at temples dedicated to Confucius and related figures, and to traditional features of East Asian social organization like the “bureaucracy” or “meritocracy”. For this reason, the term Confucian will be avoided in this entry, which will focus on the philosophical aspects of the thought of Confucius (the Latinization used for “Master Kong” following the English-language convention) primarily, but not exclusively, through the lens of the Analects .

1. Confucius as Chinese Philosopher and Symbol of Traditional Culture

2. sources for confucius’s life and thought, 3. ritual psychology and social values, 4. virtues and character formation, 5. the family and the state, other internet resources, related entries.

Because of the wide range of texts and traditions identified with him, choices about which version of Confucius is authoritative have changed over time, reflecting particular political and social priorities. The portrait of Confucius as philosopher is, in part, the product of a series of modern cross-cultural interactions. In Imperial China, Confucius was identified with interpretations of the classics and moral guidelines for administrators, and therefore also with training the scholar-officials that populated the bureaucracy. At the same time, he was closely associated with the transmission of the ancient sacrificial system, and he himself received ritual offerings in temples found in all major cities. By the Han (202 BCE–220 CE), Confucius was already an authoritative figure in a number of different cultural domains, and the early commentaries show that reading texts associated with him about history, ritual, and proper behavior was important to rulers. The first commentaries to the Analects were written by tutors to the crown prince (e.g., Zhang Yu 張禹, d. 5 BCE), and select experts in the “Five Classics” ( Wujing 五經) were given scholastic positions in the government. The authority of Confucius was such that during the late Han and the following period of disunity, his imprimatur was used to validate commentaries to the classics, encoded political prophecies, and esoteric doctrines.

By the Song period (960–1279), the post-Buddhist revival known as “Neo-Confucianism” anchored readings of the dialogues of Confucius to a dualism between “cosmic pattern” ( li 理) and “ pneumas ” ( qi 氣), a distinctive moral cosmology that marked the tradition off from those of Buddhism and Daoism. The Neo-Confucian interpretation of the Analects by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) integrated the study of the Analects into a curriculum based on the “Four Books” ( Sishu 四書) that became widely influential in China, Korea, and Japan. The pre-modern Confucius was closely associated with good government, moral education, proper ritual performance, and the reciprocal obligations that people in different roles owed each other in such contexts.

When Confucius became a character in the intellectual debates of eighteenth century Europe, he became identified as China’s first philosopher. Jesuit missionaries in China sent back accounts of ancient China that portrayed Confucius as inspired by Natural Theology to pursue the good, which they considered a marked contrast with the “idolatries” of Buddhism and Daoism. Back in Europe, intellectuals read missionary descriptions and translations of Chinese literature, and writers like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and Nicolas-Gabriel Clerc (1726–1798) praised Confucius for his discovery of universal natural laws through reason. Enlightenment writers celebrated the moral philosophy of Confucius for its independence from the dogmatic influence of the Church. While at times he was criticized as an atheist or an advocate of despotism, many Europeans viewed Confucius as a moral philosopher whose approach was in line with rationalism and humanism.

Today, many descriptions combine these several ways of positioning Confucius, but the modern interpretation of his views has been complicated by a tendency to look back on him as an emblem of the “traditional culture” of China. In the eyes of some late nineteenth and twentieth century reformers who sought to fortify China against foreign influence, the moral teachings of Confucius had the potential to play the same role that they perceived Christianity had done in the modernization of Europe and America, or serve as the basis of a more secular spiritual renewal that would transform the population into citizens of a modern nation-state. In the twentieth century, the pursuit of modernization also led to the rejection of Confucius by some reformers in the May Fourth and New Culture movements, as well as by many in the Communist Party, who identified the traditional hierarchies implicit in his social and political philosophy with the social and economic inequalities that they sought to eliminate. In these modern debates, it is not just the status of Confucius in traditional China that made him such a potent symbol. His specific association with the curriculum of the system of education of scholar-officials in the imperial government, and of traditional moral values more generally, connected him to the aspects of tradition worth preserving, or the things that held China back from modernization, depending on one’s point of view.

As legacies of Confucius tied to traditional ritual roles and the pre-modern social structure were criticized by modernizers, a view of Confucius as a moral philosopher, already common in European readings, gained ascendancy in East Asia. The American-educated historian Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962) wrote an early influential history of Chinese philosophy, beginning with Laozi 老子 and Confucius, explicitly on the model of existing histories of Western philosophy. In it, Hu compared what he called the conservative aspect of the philosophy of Confucius to Socrates and Plato. Since at least that time, Confucius has been central to most histories of Chinese philosophy.

Biographical treatments of Confucius, beginning with the “Hereditary House of Confucius” ( Kongzi shijia 孔子世家), a chapter of Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 (c.145–c.86 BCE) Records of the Grand Historian ( Shiji 史記), were initially based on information from compilations of independently circulating dialogues and prose accounts. Tying particular elements of his philosophy to the life experiences of Confucius is a risky and potentially circular exercise, since many of the details of his biography were first recorded in instructive anecdotes linked to the expression of didactic messages. Nevertheless, since Sima Qian’s time, the biography of Confucius has been intimately linked with the interpretation of his philosophy, and so this section begins with a brief treatment of traditional tropes about his family background, official career, and teaching of 72 disciples, before turning to the dialogue and prose accounts upon which early biographers like Sima Qian drew.

Confucius was born in the domain of Zou, in modern Shandong Province, south of the larger kingdom of Lu. A date of 551 BCE is given for his birth in the Gongyang Commentary ( Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳) to the classic Spring and Autumn Annals ( Chunqiu 春秋), which places him in the period when the influence of the Zhou polity was declining, and regional domains were becoming independent states. His father, who came from Lu, was descended from a noble clan that included, in Sima Qian’s telling, several people known for their modesty and ritual mastery. His father died when Confucius was a small child, leaving the family poor but with some social status, and as a young man Confucius became known for expertise in the classical ritual and ceremonial forms of the Zhou. In adulthood, Confucius travelled to Lu and began a career as an official in the employ of aristocratic families.

Different sources identify Confucius as having held a large number of different offices in Lu. Entries in the Zuo Commentary ( Zuozhuan 左傳) to the Spring and Autumn Annals for 509 and 500 BCE identify him as Director of Corrections ( Sikou 司寇), and say he was charged with assisting the ruler with the rituals surrounding a visiting dignitary from the state of Qi, respectively. The Mencius ( Mengzi 孟子), a text centered on a figure generally regarded as the most important early developer of the thought of Confucius, Mencius (trad. 372–289 BCE), says Confucius was Foodstuffs Scribe ( Weili 委吏) and Scribe in the Field ( Chengtian 乘田), involved with managing the accounting at the granary and keeping the books on the pasturing of different animals (11.14). [ 1 ] In the first biography, Sima Qian mentions these offices, but then adds a second set of more powerful positions in Lu including Steward ( Zai 宰) managing an estate in the district of Zhongdu, Minister of Works ( Sikong 司空), and even acting Chancellor ( Xiang 相). Following his departure from Lu, different stories place Confucius in the kingdoms of Wei, Song, Chen, Cai, and Chu. Sima Qian crafted these stories into a serial narrative of rulers failing to appreciate the moral worth of Confucius, whose high standards forced him to continue to travel in search of an incorrupt ruler.

Late in life, Confucius left service and turned to teaching. In Sima Qian’s time, the sheer number of independently circulating texts centering on dialogues that Confucius had with his disciples led the biographer to include a separate chapter on “The arranged traditions of the disciples of Confucius” ( Zhongni dizi liezhuan 仲尼弟子列傳). His account identifies 77 direct disciples, whom Sima Qian says Confucius trained in ritual practice and the Classic of Odes ( Shijing 詩經), Classic of Documents ( Shujing 書經, also called Documents of the Predecessors or Shangshu 尚書), Records of Ritual ( Liji 禮記) and Classic of Music ( Yuejing 樂經). Altogether, some 3000 students received some form of this training regimen. Sima Qian’s editorial practice in systematizing dialogues was inclusive, and the fact that he was able to collect so much information some three centuries after the death of Confucius testifies to the latter’s importance in the Han period. Looked at in a different way, the prodigious numbers of direct disciples and students of Confucius, and the inconsistent accounts of the offices in which he served, may also be due to a proliferation of texts associating the increasingly authoritative figure of Confucius with divergent regional or interpretive traditions during those intervening centuries.

The many sources of quotations and dialogues of Confucius, both transmitted and recently excavated, provide a wealth of materials about the philosophy of Confucius, but an incomplete sense of which materials are authoritative. The last millennium has seen the development of a conventional view that materials preserved in the twenty chapters of the transmitted Analects most accurately represent Confucius’s original teachings. This derives in part from a second century CE account by Ban Gu 班固 (39–92 CE) of the composition of the Analects that describes the work as having been compiled by first and second generation disciples of Confucius and then transmitted privately for centuries, making it arguably the oldest stratum of extant Confucius sources. In the centuries since, some scholars have come up with variations on this basic account, such as Liu Baonan’s 劉寳楠 (1791–1855) view in Corrected Meanings of the Analects ( Lunyu zhengyi 論語正義) that each chapter was written by a different disciple. Recently, several centuries of doubts about internal inconsistencies in the text and a lack of references to the title in early sources were marshaled by classicist Zhu Weizheng 朱維錚 in an influential 1986 article which argued that the lack of attributed quotations from the Analects , and of explicit references to it, prior to the second century BCE, meant that its traditional status as the oldest stratum of the teachings of Confucius was undeserved. Since then a number of historians, including Michael J. Hunter, have systematically shown that writers started to demonstrate an acute interest in the Analects only in the late second and first centuries BCE, suggesting that other Confucius-related records from those centuries should also be considered as potentially authoritative sources. Some have suggested this critical approach to sources is an attack on the historicity of Confucius, but a more reasonable description is that it is an attack on the authoritativeness of the Analects that broadens and diversifies the sources that may be used to reconstruct the historical Confucius.

Expanding the corpus of Confucius quotations and dialogues beyond the Analects , then, requires attention to three additional types of sources. First, dialogues preserved in transmitted sources like the Records of Ritual, the Elder Dai’s Records of Ritual ( DaDai Liji 大戴禮記), and Han collections like the Family Discussions of Confucius ( Kongzi jiayu 孔子家語) contain a large number of diverse teachings. Second, quotations attached to the interpretation of passages in the classics preserved in works like the Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals , or Han’s Intertextual Commentary on the Odes ( Han Shi waizhuan 韓詩外傳) are particularly rich sources for readings of history and poetry. Finally, a number of recently archaeologically recovered texts from the Han period and before have also expanded the corpus.

Newly discovered sources include three recently excavated versions of texts with parallel to the transmitted Analects . These are the 1973 excavation at the Dingzhou site in Hebei Province dating to 55 BCE; the 1990’s excavation of a partial parallel version at Jongbaekdong in Pyongyang, North Korea, dating to between 62 and 45 BCE; and most recently the 2011-2015 excavation of the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun in Jiangxi Province dating to 59 BCE. The Haihun excavation is particularly important because it is thought to contain the two lost chapters of what Han period sources identify as a 22-chapter version of the Analects that circulated in the state of Qi, the titles of which appear to be “Understanding the Way” ( Zhi dao 智道) and “Questions about Jade” ( Wen yu 問玉). While the Haihun Analects has yet to be published, the content of the lost chapters overlaps with a handful of fragments dating to the late first century BCE that were found at the Jianshui Jinguan site in Jinta county in Gansu Province in 1973. All in all, these finds confirm the sudden wide circulation of the Analects in the middle of the first century BCE.

Previously unknown Confucius dialogues and quotations have also been unearthed. The Dingzhou site also yielded texts given the titles “Sayings of the Ru” ( Rujiazhe yan 儒家者言) and “Duke Ai asked about the five kinds of righteousness” ( Aigong wen wuyi 哀公問五義). A significantly different text also given the name “Sayings of the Ru” was found in 1977 in a Han tomb at Fuyang in Anhui Province. Several texts dating to 168 BCE recording statements by Confucius about the Classic of Changes ( Yijing 易經) were excavated from the Mawangdui site in Hunan Province in 1973. Additionally, a number of Warring States period dialogical texts centered on particular disciples, and a text with interpretative comments by Confucius on the Classic of Poetry given the name “Confucius discusses the Odes ” ( Kongzi shilun 孔子詩論), were looted from tombs in the 1990s, sold on the black market, and made their way to the Shanghai Museum. Finally, the 59 BCE tomb of the Marquis of Haihun also contains a number of previously unknown Confucius dialogues and quotations on ritual and filial piety, along with materials that overlap with sections of transmitted texts including the Analects , Records of Ritual and the Elder Dai’s Records of Ritual .

Some excavated texts, like the pre-Han period “Thicket of Sayings” ( Yucong 語叢) apothegms excavated at the Guodian site in Hubei Province in 1993, contain fragments of the Analects in circulation without attribution to Confucius. Transmitted materials also show some of the quotations attributed to Confucius in the Analects in the mouths of other historical figures. The fluidity and diversity of Confucius-related materials in circulation prior to the fixing of the Analects text in the second century BCE, suggest that the Analects itself, with its keen interest in ritual, personal ethics, and politics, may well have been in part a topical selection from a larger and more diverse set of available Confucius-related materials. In other words, there were already multiple topical foci prior to any horizon by which we can definitively deem any single focus to be authoritative. It is for this reason that the essential core of the teachings of Confucius is historically underdetermined, and the correct identification of the core teachings is still avidly debated. The following sections treat three key aspects of the philosophy of Confucius, each different but all interrelated, found throughout many of these diverse sets of sources: a theory of how ritual and musical performance functioned to promote unselfishness and train emotions, advice on how to inculcate a set of personal virtues to prepare people to behave morally in different domains of their lives, and a social and political philosophy that abstracted classical ideals of proper conduct in family and official contexts to apply to more general contexts.

The Records of Ritual , the Analects , and numerous Han collections portray Confucius as being deeply concerned with the proper performance of ritual and music. In such works, the description of the attitudes and affect of the performer became the foundation of a ritual psychology in which proper performance was key to reforming desires and beginning to develop moral dispositions. Confucius sought to preserve the Zhou ritual system, and theorized about how ritual and music inculcated social roles, limited desires and transformed character.

Many biographies begin their description of his life with a story of Confucius at an early age performing rituals, reflecting accounts and statements that demonstrate his prodigious mastery of ritual and music. The archaeological record shows that one legacy of the Zhou period into which Confucius was born was a system of sumptuary regulations that encoded social status. Another of these legacies was ancestral sacrifice, a means to demonstrate people’s reverence for their ancestors while also providing a way to ask the spirits to assist them or to guarantee them protection from harm. The Analects describes the ritual mastery of Confucius in receiving guests at a noble’s home (10.3), and in carrying out sacrifices (10.8, 15.1). He plays the stone chimes (14.39), distinguishes between proper and improper music (15.11, 17.18), and extols and explains the Classic of Odes to his disciples (1.15, 2.2, 8.3, 16.13, 17.9). This mastery of classical ritual and musical forms is an important reason Confucius said he “followed Zhou” (3.14). While he might alter a detail of a ritual out of frugality (9.3), Confucius insists on adherence to the letter of the rites, as when his disciple Zi Gong 子貢 sought to substitute another animal for a sheep in a seasonal sacrifice, saying “though you care about the sheep, I care about the ritual” (3.17). It was in large part this adherence to Zhou period cultural forms, or to what Confucius reconstructed them to be, that has led many in the modern period to label him a traditionalist.

Where Confucius clearly innovated was in his rationale for performing the rites and music. Historian Yan Buke 閻步克 has argued that the early Confucian ( Ru ) tradition began from the office of the “Music master” ( Yueshi 樂師) described in the Ritual of Zhou ( Zhou Li 周禮). Yan’s view is that since these officials were responsible for teaching the rites, music, and the Classic of Odes , it was their combined expertise that developed into the particular vocation that shaped the outlook of Confucius. Early discussions of ritual in the Zhou classics often explained ritual in terms of a do ut des view of making offerings to receive benefits. By contrast, early discussions between Confucius and his disciples described benefits of ritual performance that went beyond the propitiation of spirits, rewards from the ancestors, or the maintenance of the social or cosmic order. Instead of emphasizing goods that were external to the performer, these works stressed the value of the associated interior psychological states of the practitioner. In Analects 3.26, Confucius condemns the performance of ritual without reverence ( jing 敬). He also condemns views of ritual that focus only on the offerings, or views of music that focus only on the instruments (17.11). Passages from the Records of Ritual explain that Confucius would rather have an excess of reverence than an excess of ritual (“ Tangong, shang ” 檀弓上), and that reverence is the most important aspect of mourning rites (“ Zaji, xia ” 雜記下). This emphasis on the importance of an attitude of reverence became the salient distinction between performing ritual in a rote manner, and performing it in the proper affective state. Another passage from the Records of Ritual says the difference between how an ideal gentleman and a lesser person cares for a parent is that the gentleman is reverent when he does it (“ Fangji ” 坊記, cf. Analects 2.7). In contexts concerning both ritual and filial piety ( xiao 孝), the affective state behind the action is arguably more important than the action’s consequences. As Philip J. Ivanhoe has written, ritual and music are not just an indicator of values in the sense that these examples show, but also an inculcator of them.

In this ritual psychology, the performance of ritual and music restricts desires because it alters the performer’s affective states, and place limits on appetitive desires. The Records of Ritual illustrates desirable affective states, describing how the Zhou founder King Wen 文 was moved to joy when making offerings to his deceased parents, but then to grief once the ritual ended (“ Jiyi ” 祭義). A collection associated with the third century BCE philosopher Xunzi 荀子 contains a Confucius quotation that associates different parts of a ruler’s day with particular emotions. Entering the ancestral temple to make offerings and maintain a connection to those who are no longer living leads the ruler to reflect on sorrow, while wearing a cap to hear legal cases leads him to reflect on worry (“ Aigong ” 哀公). These are examples of the way that ritual fosters the development of particular emotional responses, part of a sophisticated understanding of affective states and the ways that performance channels them in particular directions. More generally, the social conventions implicit in ritual hierarchies restrict people’s latitude to pursue their desires, as the master explains in the Records of Ritual:

The way of the gentleman may be compared to an embankment dam, bolstering those areas where ordinary people are deficient (“ Fangji ”).

Blocking the overflow of desires by adhering to these social norms preserves psychological space to reflect and reform one’s reactions.

Descriptions of the early community depict Confucius creating a subculture in which ritual provided an alternate source of value, effectively training his disciples to opt out of conventional modes of exchange. In the Analects , when Confucius says he would instruct any person who presented him with “a bundle of dried meat” (7.7), he is highlighting how his standards of value derive from the sacrificial system, eschewing currency or luxury items. Gifts valuable in ordinary situations might be worth little by such standards: “Even if a friend gave him a gift of a carriage and horses, if it was not dried meat, he did not bow” (10.15). The Han period biographical materials in Records of the Historian describe how a high official of the state of Lu did not come to court for three days after the state of Qi made him a gift of female entertainers. When, additionally, the high official failed to properly offer gifts of sacrificial meats, Confucius departed Lu for the state of Wei (47, cf. Analects 18.4). Confucius repeatedly rejected conventional values of wealth and position, choosing instead to rely on ritual standards of value. In some ways, these stories are similar to ones in the late Warring States and Han period compilation Master Zhuang ( Zhuangzi 莊子) that explore the way that things that are conventionally belittled for their lack of utility are useful by an unconventional standard. However, here the standard that gives such objects currency is ritual importance rather than longevity, divorcing Confucius from conventional materialistic or hedonistic pursuits. This is a second way that ritual allows one to direct more effort into character formation.

Once, when speaking of cultivating benevolence, Confucius explained how ritual value was connected to the ideal way of the gentleman, which should always take precedence over the pursuit of conventional values:

Wealth and high social status are what others covet. If I cannot prosper by following the way, I will not dwell in them. Poverty and low social status are what others shun. If I cannot prosper by following the way, I will not avoid them. (4.5)

The argument that ritual performance has internal benefits underlies the ritual psychology laid out by Confucius, one that explains how performing ritual and music controls desires and sets the stage for further moral development.

Many of the short passages from the Analects , and the “Thicket of Sayings” passages excavated at Guodian, describe the development of set of ideal behaviors associated with the moral ideal of the “way” ( dao 道) of the “gentleman” ( junzi 君子). Based on the analogy between the way of Confucius and character ethics systems deriving from Aristotle, these patterns of behavior are today often described using the Latinate term “virtue”. In the second passage in the Analects , the disciple You Ruo 有若 says a person who behaves with filial piety to parents and siblings ( xiao and di 弟), and who avoids going against superiors, will rarely disorder society. It relates this correlation to a more general picture of how patterns of good behavior effectively open up the possibility of following the way of the gentleman: “The gentleman works at the roots. Once the roots are established, the way comes to life” (1.2). The way of the gentleman is a distillation of the exemplary behaviors of the selfless culture heroes of the past, and is available to all who are willing to “work at the roots”. In this way, the virtues that Confucius taught were not original to him, but represented his adaptations of existing cultural ideals, to which he continually returned in order to clarify their proper expressions in different situations. Five behaviors of the gentleman most central to the Analects are benevolence ( ren 仁), righteousness ( yi 義), ritual propriety ( li 禮), wisdom ( zhi 智), and trustworthiness ( xin 信).

The virtue of benevolence entails interacting with others guided by a sense of what is good from their perspectives. Sometimes the Analects defines benevolence generally as “caring for others” (12.22), but in certain contexts it is associated with more specific behaviors. Examples of contextual definitions of benevolence include treating people on the street as important guests and common people as if they were attendants at a sacrifice (12.2), being reticent in speaking (12.3) and rejecting the use of clever speech (1.3), and being respectful where one dwells, reverent where one works, and loyal where one deals with others (13.19). It is the broadest of the virtues, yet a gentleman would rather die than compromise it (15.9). Benevolence entails a kind of unselfishness, or, as David Hall and Roger Ames suggest, it involves forming moral judgments from a combined perspective of self and others.

Later writers developed accounts of the sources of benevolent behavior, most famously in the context of the discussion of human nature ( xing 性) in the centuries after Confucius. Mencius (fourth century BCE) argued that benevolence grows out of the cultivation of an affective disposition to compassion ( ceyin 惻隱) in the face of another’s distress. The anonymous author of the late Warring States period excavated text “Five Kinds of Action” ( Wu xing 五行) describes it as building from the affection one feels for close family members, through successive stages to finally develop into a more universal, fully-fledged virtue. In the Analects , however, one comment on human nature emphasizes the importance of nurture: “By nature people are close, by habituation they are miles apart” (17.2), a sentiment that suggests the importance of training one’s dispositions through ritual and the classics in a manner closer to the program of Xunzi (third century BCE). The Analects , however, discusses the incubation of benevolent behavior in family and ritual contexts. You Ruo winds up his discussion of the roots of the way of the gentleman with the rhetorical question: “Is not behaving with filial piety to one’s parents and siblings the root of benevolence?” (1.2). Confucius tells his disciple Yan Yuan 顏淵 that benevolence is a matter of “overcoming oneself and returning to ritual propriety” (12.1). These connections between benevolence and other virtues underscore the way in which benevolent behavior does not entail creating novel social forms or relationships, but is grounded in traditional familial and ritual networks.

The second virtue, righteousness, is often described in the Analects relative to situations involving public responsibility. In contexts where standards of fairness and integrity are valuable, such as acting as the steward of an estate as some of the disciples of Confucius did, righteousness is what keeps a person uncorrupted. Confucius wrote that a gentleman “thinks of righteousness when faced with gain” (16.10, 19.10), or “when faced with profit” (14.12). Confucius says that one should ignore the wealth and rank one might attain by acting against righteousness, even if it means eating coarse rice, drinking water, and sleeping using one’s bent arm as a pillow (7.16). Later writers like Xunzi celebrated Confucius for his righteousness in office, which he stressed was all the more impressive because Confucius was extremely poor (“ Wangba ” 王霸). This behavior is particularly relevant in official interactions with ordinary people, such as when “employing common people” (5.16), and if a social superior has mastered it, “the common people will all comply” (13.4). Like benevolence, righteousness also entails unselfishness, but instead of coming out of consideration for the needs of others, it is rooted in steadfastness in the face of temptation.

The perspective needed to act in a righteous way is sometimes related to an attitude to personal profit that recalls the previous section’s discussion of how Confucius taught his disciples to recalibrate their sense of value based on their immersion in the sacrificial system. More specifically, evaluating things based on their ritual significance can put one at odds with conventional hierarchies of value. This is defined as the root of righteous behavior in a story from the late Warring States period text Master Fei of Han ( Han Feizi 韓非子). The tale relates how at court, Confucius was given a plate with a peach and a pile of millet grains with which to scrub the fruit clean. After the attendants laughed at Confucius for proceeding to eat the millet first, Confucius explained to them that in sacrifices to the Former Kings, millet itself is the most valued offering. Therefore, cleaning a ritually base peach with millet:

would be obstructing righteousness, and so I dared not put [the peach] above what fills the vessels in the ancestral shrine. (“ Waichu shuo, zuo shang ” 外儲說左上)

While such stories may have been told to mock his fastidiousness, for Confucius the essence of righteousness was internalizing a system of value that he would breach for neither convenience nor profit.

At times, the phrase “benevolence and righteousness” is used metonymically for all the virtues, but in some later texts, a benevolent impulse to compassion and a righteous steadfastness are seen as potentially contradictory. In the Analects , portrayals of Confucius do not recognize a tension between benevolence and righteousness, perhaps because each is usually described as salient in a different set of contexts. In ritual contexts like courts or shrines, one ideally acts like one might act out of familial affection in a personal context, the paradigm that is key to benevolence. In the performance of official duties, one ideally acts out of the responsibilities felt to inferiors and superiors, with a resistance to temptation by corrupt gain that is key to righteousness. The Records of Ritual distinguishes between the domains of these two virtues:

In regulating one’s household, kindness overrules righteousness. Outside of one’s house, righteousness cuts off kindness. What one undertakes in serving one’s father, one also does in serving one’s lord, because one’s reverence for both is the same. Treating nobility in a noble way and the honorable in an honorable way, is the height of righteousness. (“ Sangfu sizhi ” 喪服四制)

While it is not the case that righteousness is benevolence by other means, this passage underlines how in different contexts, different virtues may push people toward participation in particular shared cultural practices constitutive of the good life.

While the virtues of benevolence and righteousness might impel a gentleman to adhere to ritual norms in particular situations or areas of life, a third virtue of “ritual propriety” expresses a sensitivity to one’s social place, and willingness to play all of one’s multiple ritual roles. The term li translated here as “ritual propriety” has a particularly wide range of connotations, and additionally connotes both the conventions of ritual and etiquette. In the Analects, Confucius is depicted both teaching and conducting the rites in the manner that he believed they were conducted in antiquity. Detailed restrictions such as “the gentleman avoids wearing garments with red-black trim” (10.6), which the poet Ezra Pound disparaged as “verses re: length of the night-gown and the predilection for ginger” (Pound 1951: 191), were by no means trivial to Confucius. His imperative, “Do not look or listen, speak or move, unless it is in accordance with the rites” (12.1), in answer to a question about benevolence, illustrates how the symbolic conventions of the ritual system played a role in the cultivation of the virtues. We have seen how ritual shapes values by restricting desires, thereby allowing reflection and the cultivation of moral dispositions. Yet without the proper affective state, a person is not properly performing ritual. In the Analects , Confucius says he cannot tolerate “ritual without reverence, or mourning without grief,” (3.26). When asked about the root of ritual propriety, he says that in funerals, the mourners’ distress is more important than the formalities (3.4). Knowing the details of ritual protocols is important, but is not a substitute for sincere affect in performing them. Together, they are necessary conditions for the gentleman’s training, and are also essential to understanding the social context in which Confucius taught his disciples.

The mastery that “ritual propriety” signaled was part of a curriculum associated with the training of rulers and officials, and proper ritual performance at court could also serve as a kind of political legitimation. Confucius summarized the different prongs of the education in ritual and music involved in the training of his followers:

Raise yourself up with the Classic of Odes . Establish yourself with ritual. Complete yourself with music. (8.8)

On one occasion, Boyu 伯魚, the son of Confucius, explained that when he asked his father to teach him, his father told him to study the Classic of Odes in order to have a means to speak with others, and to study ritual to establish himself (16.13). That Confucius insists that his son master classical literature and practices underscores the values of these cultural products as a means of transmitting the way from one generation to the next. He tells his disciples that the study of the Classic of Odes prepares them for different aspects of life, providing them with a capacity to:

at home serve one’s father, away from it serve one’s lord, as well as increase one's knowledge of the names of birds, animals, plants and trees. (17.9)

This valuation of knowledge of both the cultural and natural worlds is one reason why the figure of Confucius has traditionally been identified with schooling, and why today his birthday is celebrated as “Teacher’s Day” in some parts of Asia. In the ancient world, this kind of education also qualified Confucius and his disciples for employment on estates and at courts.

The fourth virtue, wisdom, is related to appraising people and situations. In the Analects, wisdom allows a gentleman to discern crooked and straight behavior in others (12.22), and discriminate between those who may be reformed and those who may not (15.8). In the former dialogue, Confucius explains the virtue of wisdom as “knowing others”. The “Thicket of Sayings” excavated at Guodian indicates that this knowledge is the basis for properly “selecting” others, defining wisdom as the virtue that is the basis for selection. But it is also about appraising situations correctly, as suggested by the master’s rhetorical question: “How can a person be considered wise if that person does not dwell in benevolence?” (4.1). One well-known passage often cited to imply Confucius is agnostic about the world of the spirits is more literally about how wisdom allows an outsider to present himself in a way appropriate to the people on whose behalf he is working:

When working for what is right for the common people, to show reverence for the ghosts and spirits while maintaining one’s distance may be deemed wisdom. (6.22)

The context for this sort of appraisal is usually official service, and wisdom is often attributed to valued ministers or advisors to sage rulers.

In certain dialogues, wisdom also connotes a moral discernment that allows the gentleman to be confident of the appropriateness of good actions. In the Analects , Confucius tells his disciple Zi Lu 子路 that wisdom recognizes knowing a thing as knowing it, and ignorance of a thing as ignorance of it (2.17). In soliloquies about several virtues, Confucius describes a wise person as never confused (9.28, 14.28). While comparative philosophers have noted that Chinese thought has nothing clearly analogous to the role of the will in pre-modern European philosophy, the moral discernment that is part of wisdom does provide actors with confidence that the moral actions they have taken are correct.

The virtue of trustworthiness qualifies a gentleman to give advice to a ruler, and a ruler or official to manage others. In the Analects , Confucius explains it succinctly: “if one is trustworthy, others will give one responsibilities” (17.6, cf. 20.1). While trustworthiness may be rooted in the proper expression of friendship between those of the same status (1.4, 5.26), it is also valuable in interactions with those of different status. The disciple Zi Xia 子夏 explains its effect on superiors and subordinates: when advising a ruler, without trustworthiness, the ruler will think a gentleman is engaged in slander, and when administering a state, without trustworthiness, people will think a gentleman is exploiting them (19.10). The implication is that a sincerely public-minded official would be ineffective without the trust that this quality inspires. In a dialogue with a ruler from chapter four of Han’s Intertextual Commentary the Odes , Confucius explains that in employing someone, trustworthiness is superior to strength, ability to flatter, or eloquence. Being able to rely on someone is so important to Confucius that, when asked about good government, he explained that trustworthiness was superior to either food or weapons, concluding: “If the people do not find the ruler trustworthy, the state will not stand” (12.7).

By the Han period, benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness began to be considered as a complete set of human virtues, corresponding with other quintets of phenomena used to describe the natural world. Some texts described a level of moral perfection, as with the sages of antiquity, as unifying all these virtues. Prior to this, it is unclear whether the possession of a particular virtue entailed having all the others, although benevolence was sometimes used as a more general term for a combination of one or more of the other virtues (e.g., Analects 17.6). At other times, Confucius presented individual virtues as expressions of goodness in particular domains of life. Early Confucius dialogues are embedded in concrete situations, and so resist attempts to distill them into more abstract principles of morality. As a result, descriptions of the virtues are embedded in anecdotes about the exemplary individuals whose character traits the dialogues encourage their audience to develop. Confucius taught that the measure of a good action was whether it was an expression of the actor’s virtue, something his lessons share with those of philosophies like Aristotle’s that are generally described as “virtue ethics”. A modern evaluation of the teachings of Confucius as a “virtue ethics” is articulated in Bryan W. Van Norden’s Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy , which pays particular attention to analogies between the way of Confucius and Aristotle’s “good life”. The nature of the available source materials about Confucius, however, means that the diverse texts from early China lack the systematization of a work like Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics .

The five virtues described above are not the only ones of which Confucius spoke. He discussed loyalty ( zhong 忠), which at one point is described as the minister’s behavior toward a ritually proper ruler (3.19). He said that courage ( yong 勇) is what compels one to act once one has seen where righteousness lies (2.24). Another term sometimes translated as “virtue” ( de 德), is usually used to describe the authority of a ruler that grows out of goodness or favor to others, and is a key term in many of the social and political works discussed in the following section. Yet going through a list of all the virtues in the early sources is not sufficient to describe the entirety of the moral universe associated with Confucius.

The presence of themes in the Analects like the ruler’s exceptional influence as a moral exemplar, the importance of judging people by their deeds rather than their words (1.3, 2.10, 5.10), or even the protection of the culture of Zhou by higher powers (9.5), all highlight the unsystematic nature of the text and underscore that teaching others how to cultivate the virtues is a key aspect, but only a part, of the ethical ideal of Confucius. Yet there is also a conundrum inherent in any attempt to derive abstract moral rules from the mostly dialogical form of the Analects , that is, the problem of whether the situational context and conversation partner is integral to evaluating the statements of Confucius. A historically notable example of an attempt to find a generalized moral rule in the Analects is the reading of a pair of passages that use a formulation similar to that of the “Golden Rule” of the Christian Bible (Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31) to describe benevolence: “Do not impose upon others those things that you yourself do not desire” (12.2, cf. 5.12, 15.24). Read as axiomatic moral imperatives, these passages differ from the kind of exemplar-based and situational conversations about morality usually found in the Analects . For this reason, some scholars, including E. Bruce Brooks, believe these passages to be interpolations. While they are not wholly inconsistent with the way that benevolence is described in early texts, their interpretation as abstract principles has been influenced by their perceived similarity to the Biblical examples. In the Records of Ritual , a slightly different formulation of a rule about self and others is presented as not universal in its scope, but rather as descriptive of how the exemplary ruler influences the people. In common with other early texts, the Analects describes how the moral transformation of society relies on the positive example of the ruler, comparing the influence of the gentleman on the people to the way the wind blows on the grass, forcing it to bend (12.19). In a similar vein, after discussing how the personal qualities of rulers of the past determined whether or not their subjects could morally transform, the Records of Ritual expresses its principle of reflexivity:

That is why the gentleman only seeks things in others that he or she personally possesses. [The gentleman] only condemns things in others that he or she personally lacks. (“ Daxue ” 大學)

This is a point about the efficacy of moral suasion, saying that a ruler cannot expect to reform society solely by command since it is only the ruler’s personal example that can transform others. For this reason, the ruler should not compel behaviors from his subjects to which he or she would not personally assent, something rather different from the “Golden Rule”. Historically, however, views that Confucius was inspired by the same Natural Theology as Christians, or that philosophers are naturally concerned with the generalization of moral imperatives, have argued in favor of a closer identification with the “Golden Rule,” a fact that illustrates the interpretative conundrum arising from the formal aspects of the Analects .

Early Zhou political philosophy as represented in the Classic of Odes and the Classic of Documents centered on moral justification for political authority based on the doctrine of the “Mandate of Heaven” ( tianming 天命). This view was that the sage’s virtue ( de ) attracted the attention of the anthropomorphized cosmic power usually translated as “Heaven” ( tian 天), which supported the sage’s rise to political authority. These canonical texts argued that political success or failure is a function of moral quality, evidenced by actions such as proper ritual performance, on the part of the ruler. Confucius drew on these classics and adapted the classical view of moral authority in important ways, connecting it to a normative picture of society. Positing a parallel between the nature of reciprocal responsibilities of individuals in different roles in two domains of social organization, in the Analects Confucius linked filial piety in the family to loyalty in the political realm:

It is rare for a person who is filially pious to his parents and older siblings to be inclined to rebel against his superiors… Filial piety to parents and elder siblings may be considered the root of a person. (1.2)

This section examines Confucius’s social and political philosophy, beginning with the central role of his analysis of the traditional norm of filial piety.

Just as Confucius analyzed the psychology of ritual performance and related it to individual moral development, his discussion of filial piety was another example of the development and adaptation of a particular classical cultural pattern to a wider philosophical context and set of concerns. Originally limited to descriptions of sacrifice to ancestors in the context of hereditary kinship groups, a more extended meaning of “filial piety” was used to describe the sage king Shun’s 舜 (trad. r. 2256–2205 BCE) treatment of his living father in the Classic of Documents . Despite humble origins, Shun’s filial piety was recognized as a quality that signaled he would be a suitable successor for the sage king Yao 堯 (trad. r. 2357–2256 BCE). Confucius in the Analects praised the ancient sage kings at great length, and the sage king Yu 禹 for his filial piety in the context of sacrifice (8.21). However, he used the term filial piety to mean both sacrificial mastery and behaving appropriately to one’s parents. In a conversation with one of his disciples he explains that filial piety meant “not contesting”, and that it entailed:

while one’s parents were alive, serving them in a ritually proper way, and after one’s parents died, burying them and sacrificing to them in a ritually proper way. (2.5)

In rationalizing the moral content of legacies of the past like the three-year mourning period after the death of a parent, Confucius reasoned that for three years a filially pious child should not alter a parent’s way (4.20, cf. 19.18), and explains the origin of length of the three-year mourning period to be the length of time that the parents had given their infant child support (17.21). This adaptation of filial piety to connote the proper way for a gentleman to behave both inside and outside the home was a generalization of a pattern of behavior that had once been specific to the family.

Intellectual historian Chen Lai 陈来 has identified two sets of ideal traits that became hybridized in the late Warring States period. The first set of qualities describes the virtue of the ruler coming out of politically-oriented descriptions of figures like King Wen of Zhou, including uprightness ( zhi 直) and fortitude ( gang 剛). The second set of qualities is based on bonds specific to kinship groups, including filial piety and kindness ( ci 慈). As kinship groups were subordinated to larger political units, texts began to exhibit hybrid lists of ideal qualities that drew from both sets. Consequently, Confucius had to effectively integrate clan priorities and state priorities, a conciliation illustrated in Han’s Intertextual Commentary the Odes by his insistence that filial piety is not simply deference to elders. When his disciple Zengzi 曾子 submitted to a severe beating from his father’s staff in punishment for an offense, Confucius chastises Zengzi, saying that even the sage king Shun would not have submitted to a beating so severe. He goes on to explain that a child has a dual set of duties, to both a father and ruler, the former filial piety and the other loyalty. Therefore, protecting one’s body is a duty to the ruler and a counterweight to a duty to submit to one’s parent (8). In the Classic of Filial Piety ( Xiaojing 孝經), similar reasoning is applied to a redefinition of filial piety that rejects behaviors like such extreme submission because protecting one’s body is a duty to one’s parents. This sort of qualification suggests that as filial piety moved further outside its original family context, it had to be qualified to be integrated into a view that valorized multiple character traits.

Since filial piety was based on a fundamental relationship defined within the family, one’s family role and state role could conflict. A Classic of Documents text spells out the possible conflict between loyalty to a ruler and filial piety toward a father (“ Cai Zhong zhi ming ” 蔡仲之命), a trade-off similar to a story in the Analects about a man named Zhi Gong 直躬 (Upright Gong) who testified that his father stole a sheep. Although Confucius acknowledged that theft injures social order, he judged Upright Gong to have failed to be truly “upright” in a sense that balances the imperative to testify with special consideration for members of his kinship group:

In my circle, being upright differs from this. A father would conceal such a thing on behalf of his son, and a son would conceal it on behalf of his father. Uprightness is found in this. (13.18)

In this way, too, Confucius was adapting filial piety to a wider manifold of moral behaviors, honing his answer to the question of how a child balances responsibility to family and loyalty to the state. While these two traits may conflict with one and other, Sociologist Robert Bellah, in his study of Tokugawa and modern Japan, noted how the structural similarity between loyalty and filial piety led to their both being promoted by the state as interlinked ideals that located each person in dual networks of responsibility. Confucius was making this claim when he connected filial piety to the propensity to be loyal to superiors (1.2). Statements like “filial piety is the root of virtuous action” from the Classic of Filial Piety connect loyalty and the kind of action that signals the personal virtue that justifies political authority, as in the historical precedent of the sage king Shun.

Of the classical sources from which Confucius drew, two were particularly influential in discussions of political legitimation. The Classic of Odes consists of 305 Zhou period regulated lyrics (hence the several translations “songs”, “odes”, or “poems”) and became numbered as one of the Five Classics ( Wujing ) in the Han dynasty. Critical to a number of these lyrics is the celebration of King Wen of Zhou’s overthrow of the Shang, which is an example of a virtuous person seizing the “Mandate of Heaven”:

This King Wen of ours, his prudent heart was well-ordered. He shone in serving the High God, and thus enjoyed much good fortune. Unswerving in his virtue, he came to hold the domains all around. (“ Daming ” 大明)

The Zhou political theory expressed in this passage is based on the idea of a limited moral universe that may not reward a virtuous person in isolation, but in which the High God ( Shangdi 上帝, Di 帝) or Heaven will intercede to replace a bad ruler with a person of exceptional virtue. The Classic of Documents is a collection that includes orations attributed to the sage rulers of the past and their ministers, and its arguments often concern moral authority with a focus on the methods and character of exemplary rulers of the past. The chapter “Announcement of Kang” (“ Kanggao ” 康誥) is addressed to one of the sons of King Wen, and provides him with a guide for behaving as sage ruler as well as with methods that had been empirically proven successful by those rulers. When it comes to the mandate inherited from King Wen, the chapter insists that the mandate is not unchanging, and so as ruler the son must always be mindful of it when deciding how to act. Further, it is not always possible to understand Heaven, but the “feelings of the people are visible”, and so the ruler must care for his subjects. The Zhou political view that Confucius inherited was based on supernatural intercession to place a person with personal virtue in charge of the state, but over time the emphasis shifted to the way that the effects of good government could be viewed as proof of a continuing moral justification for that placement.

Confucius himself arguably served as a historical counterexample to the classical “Mandate of Heaven” theory, calling into question the direct nature of the support given by Heaven to the person with virtue. The Han period Records of the Historian biography of Confucius described him as possessing all the personal qualities needed to govern well, but wandering from state to state because those qualities had not been recognized. When his favorite disciple died, the Analects records Confucius saying that “Heaven has forsaken me!” (11.9). Wang Chong’s 王充 (27–c.97 CE) Balanced Discussions ( Lunheng 論衡) uses the phrase “uncrowned king” ( suwang 素王) to describe the tragic situation: “Confucius did not rule as king, but his work as uncrowned king may be seen in the Spring and Autumn Annals ” (80). The view that through his writings Confucius could prepare the world for the government of a future sage king became a central part of Confucius lore that has colored the reception of his writings since, especially in works related to the Spring and Autumn Annals and its Gongyang Commentary . The biography of Confucius reinforced the tragic cosmological picture that personal virtue did not always guarantee success. Even when Heaven’s support is cited in the Analects , it is not a matter of direct intercession, but expressed through personal virtue or cultural patterns: “Heaven gave birth to the virtue in me, so what can Huan Tui 桓魋 do to me?” (7.23, cf. 9.5). As Robert Eno has pointed out, the concept of Heaven also came to be increasingly naturalized in passages like “what need does Heaven have to speak?” (17.19). Changing views of the scope of Heaven’s activity and the ways human beings may have knowledge of that activity fostered a change in the role of Heaven in political theory.

Most often, in dialogues with the rulers of his time, references to Heaven were occasions for Confucius to encourage rulers to remain attentive to their personal moral development and treat their subjects fairly. In integrating the classical legacy of the “Mandate of Heaven” that applied specifically to the ruler or “Son of Heaven” ( tianzi 天子), with moral teachings that were directed to a wider audience, the nature of Heaven’s intercession came to be understood differently. In the Analects and writings like those attributed to Mencius, descriptions of virtue were often adapted to contexts such as the conduct of lesser officials and the navigation of everyday life. Kwong-Loi Shun notes that in such contexts, the influence of Heaven remained as an explanation of both what happened outside of human control, like political success or lifespan, and of the source of the ethical ideal. In the Analects , the gentleman’s awe of Heaven is combined with an awe of the words of the sages (16.8), and when Confucius explains the Zhou theory of the “mandate of Heaven” in the Elder Dai’s Records of Ritual, he does so in order to explain how the signs of a well-ordered society demonstrate that the ruler’s “virtue matches Heaven” (“ Shaojian ” 少閒). Heaven is still ubiquitous in the responses of Confucius to questions from rulers, but the focus of the responses was not on Heaven’s direct intercession but rather the ruler’s demonstration of his personal moral qualities.

In this way, personal qualities of modesty, filial piety or respect for the elders were seen as proof of fitness to serve in an official capacity. Qualification to rule was demonstrated by proper behavior in the social roles defined by the “five relationships” ( wulun 五倫), a formulation seen in the writings of Mencius that became a key feature of the interpretation of works associated with Confucius in the Han dynasty. The Western Han emperors were members of the Liu clan, and works like the Guliang Commentary ( Guliang zhuan 穀梁傳) to the Spring and Autumn Annals emphasized normative family behavior grounded in the five relationships, which were (here, adapted to include mothers and sisters): ruler and subject, parent and child, husband and wife, siblings, and friends. Writing with particular reference to the Classic of Filial Piety , Henry Rosemont and Roger Ames argue that prescribed social roles are a defining characteristic of the “Confucian tradition”, and that such roles were normative guides to appropriate conduct. They contrast this with the “virtue ethics” approach they say requires rational calculation to determine moral conduct, while filial piety is simply a matter of meeting one’s family obligations. Just as the five virtues were placed at the center of later theories of moral development, once social roles became systematized in this way, selected situational teachings of Confucius consistent with them could become the basis of more abstract, systematic moral theories. Yet this could not have happened without the adaptation of the abstract classical political theory of “Heaven’s mandate”, a doctrine that originally supported the ruling clan, to argue that Heaven’s influence was expressed through particular concrete expressions of individual virtue. As a result of this adaptation in writings associated with Confucius, the ruler’s conduct of imperial rituals, performance of filial piety, or other demonstrations of personal virtue provided proof of moral fitness that legitimated his political authority. As with the rituals and the virtues, filial piety and the mandate of Heaven were transformed as they were integrated with the classics through the voices of Confucius and the rulers and disciples of his era.

Earlier, the usage of “Confucius” as a metonym for Chinese traditional culture was introduced as a feature of the modern period. Yet the complexity of the philosophical views associated with Confucius—encompassing ethical ideals developed out of a sophisticated view of the effects of ritual and music on the performer’s psychology, robust descriptions of the attitudes of traditional exemplars across diverse life contexts, and the abstraction of normative behaviors in the family and state—is due in part to the fact that this metonymic usage was to some degree already the case in the Han period. By that time, the teachings of Confucius had gone through several centuries of gestation, and dialogues and quotations fashioned at different points over that time circulated and mixed. Put slightly differently, Confucius read the traditional culture of the halcyon Zhou period in a particular way, but this reading was continuously reflected and refracted through different lenses during the Pre-Imperial period, prior to the results being fixed in diverse early Imperial period sources like the Analects , the Records of Ritual , and the Records of the Historian. What remains is the work of the hand of Confucius, but also of his “school”, and even sometimes of his opponents during the centuries that his philosophy underwent elaboration and drift. This process of accretion and elaboration is not uncommon for pre-modern writings, and the resulting breadth and depth explains, at least in part, why the voice of Confucius retained primacy in pre-modern Chinese philosophical conversations as well as in many modern debates about the role of traditional East Asian culture.

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Friday Essay: an introduction to Confucius, his ideas and their lasting relevance

Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, The University of Western Australia

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Yu Tao does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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The man widely known in the English language as Confucius was born around 551 BCE in today’s southern Shandong Province. Confucius is the phonic translation of the Chinese word Kong fuzi 孔夫子, in which Kong 孔 was his surname and fuzi is an honorific for learned men.

Widely credited for creating the system of thought we now call Confucianism, this learned man insisted he was “not a maker but a transmitter”, merely “believing in and loving the ancients”. In this, Confucius could be seen as acting modestly and humbly, virtues he thought of highly.

Or, as Kang Youwei — a leading reformer in modern China has argued — Confucius tactically framed his revolutionary ideas as lost ancient virtues so his arguments would be met with fewer criticisms and less hostility.

Confucius looked nothing like the great sage in his own time as he is widely known in ours. To his contemporaries, he was perhaps foremost an unemployed political adviser who wandered around different fiefdoms for some years, attempting to sell his political ideas to different rulers — but never able to strike a deal.

It seems Confucius would have preferred to live half a millennium earlier, when China — according to him — was united under benevolent, competent and virtuous rulers at the dawn of the Zhou dynasty. By his own time, China had become a divided land with hundreds of small fiefdoms, often ruled by greedy, cruel or mediocre lords frequently at war.

But this frustrated scholar’s ideas have profoundly shaped politics and ethics in and beyond China ever since his death in 479 BCE. The greatest and the most influential Chinese thinker, his concept of filial piety, remains highly valued among young people in China , despite rapid changes in the country’s demography.

Despite some doubts as to whether many Chinese people take his ideas seriously, the ideas of Confucius remain directly and closely relevant to contemporary China.

This situation perhaps is comparable to Christianity in Australia. Although institutional participation is in constant decline, Christian values and narratives remain influential on Australian politics and vital social matters .

The danger today is in Confucianism being considered the single reason behind China’s success or failure. The British author Martin Jacques, for example, recently asserted Confucianism was the “biggest single reason” for East Asia’s success in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, without giving any explanation or justification.

If Confucius were alive, he would probably not hesitate to call out this solitary root of triumph or disaster as being lazy, incorrect and unwise.

Political structure and mutual responsibilities

Confucius wanted to restore good political order by persuading rulers to reestablish moral standards, exemplify appropriate social relations, perform time-honoured rituals and provide social welfare.

He worked hard to promote his ideas but won few supporters. Almost every ruler saw punishment and military force as shortcuts to greater power.

It was not until 350 years later during the reign of the Emperor Wu of Han that Confucianism was installed as China’s state ideology.

But this state-sanctioned version of Confucianism was not an honest revitalisation of Confucius’ ideas. Instead, it absorbed many elements from rival schools of thought, notably legalism , which emerged in the latter half of China’s Warring States period (453–221 BCE). Legalism argued efficient governance relies on impersonal laws and regulations — rather than moral principles and rites.

Like most great thinkers of the Axial Age between the 8th and 3rd century BCE, Confucius did not believe everyone was created equal.

Similar to Plato (born over 100 years later), Confucius believed the ideal society followed a hierarchy. When asked by Duke Jing of Qi about government, Confucius famously replied:

let the ruler be a ruler; the minister, a minister; the father, a father; the son, a son.

However it would be a superficial reading of Confucius to believe he called for unconditional obedience to rulers or superiors. Confucius advised a disciple “not to deceive the ruler but to stand up to them”.

Confucius believed the legitimacy of a regime fundamentally relies on the confidence of the people. A ruler should tirelessly work hard and “lead by example”.

Like in a family, a good son listens to his father, and a good father wins respect not by imposing force or seniority but by offering heartfelt love, support, guidance and care.

In other words, Confucius saw a mutual relationship between the ruler and the ruled.

Love and respect for social harmony

To Confucius, the appropriate relations between family members are not merely metaphors for ideal political orders, but the basic fabrics of a harmonious society.

An essential family value in Confucius’ ideas is xiao 孝, or filial piety, a concept explained in at least 15 different ways in the Analects, a collection of the words from Confucius and his followers.

Read more: Can Ne Zha, the Chinese superhero with $1b at the box office, teach us how to raise good kids?

Depending on the context, Confucius defined filial piety as respecting parents, as “never diverging” from parents, as not letting parents feel unnecessary anxiety, as serving parents with etiquette when they are alive, and as burying and commemorating parents with propriety after they pass away.

Confucius expected rulers to exemplify good family values. When Ji Kang Zi, the powerful prime minister of Confucius’ home state of Lu asked for advice on keeping people loyal to the realm, Confucius responded by asking the ruler to demonstrate filial piety and benignity ( ci 慈).

Confucius viewed moral and ethical principles not merely as personal matters, but as social assets. He profoundly believed social harmony ultimately relies on virtuous citizens rather than sophisticated institutions.

In the ideas of Confucius, the most important moral principle is ren 仁, a concept that can hardly be translated into English without losing some of its meaning.

Like filial piety, ren is manifested in the love and respect one has for others. But ren is not restricted among family members and does not rely on blood or kinship. Ren guides people to follow their conscience. People with ren have strong compassion and empathy towards others.

Translators arguing for a single English equivalent for ren have attempted to interpret the concept as “benevolence”, “humanity”, “humanness” and “goodness”, none of which quite capture the full significance of the term.

The challenge in translating ren is not a linguistic one. Although the concept appears more than 100 times in the Analects, Confucius did not give one neat definition. Instead, he explained the term in many different ways.

As summarised by China historian Daniel Gardner , Confucius defined ren as:

to love others, to subdue the self and return to ritual propriety, to be respectful, tolerant, trustworthy, diligent, and kind, to be possessed of courage, to be free from worry, or to be resolute and firm.

Instead of searching for an explicit definition of ren , it is perhaps wise to view the concept as an ideal type of the highest and ultimate virtue Confucius believed good people should pursue.

Relevance in contemporary China

Confucius’ thinking hs had a profound impact on almost every great Chinese thinker since. Based upon his ideas, Mencius (372–289 BCE) and Xunzi (c310–c235 BCE) developed different schools of thought within the system of Confucianism.

Arguing against these ideas, Mohism (4th century BCE), Daoism (4th century BCE), Legalism (3rd century BCE) and many other influential systems of thought emerged in the 400 years after Confucius’ time, going on to shape many aspects of the Chinese civilisation in the last two millennia.

Modern China has a complicated relationship with Confucius and his ideas.

Since the early 20th century, many intellectuals influenced by western thought started denouncing Confucianism as the reason for China’s national humiliations since the first Opium War (1839-42).

Confucius received fierce criticism from both liberals and Marxists .

Hu Shih , a leader of China’s New Culture Movement in the 1910s and 1920s and an alumnus of Columbia University , advocated overthrowing the “House of Confucius”.

Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, also repeatedly denounced Confucius and Confucianism. Between 1973 and 1975, Mao devoted the last political campaign in his life against Confucianism.

Read more: To make sense of modern China, you simply can't ignore Marxism

Despite these fierce criticisms and harsh persecutions, Confucius’ ideas remain in the minds and hearts of many Chinese people, both in and outside China.

One prominent example is PC Chang , another Chinese alumnus of Columbia University, who was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on December 10 1948. Thanks to Chang’s efforts , the spirit of some most essential Confucian ideas, such as ren , was deeply embedded in the Declaration.

Today, many Chinese parents, as well as the Chinese state, are keen children be provided a more Confucian education .

In 2004, the Chinese government named its initiative of promoting language and culture overseas after Confucius, and its leadership has been enthusiastically embracing Confucius’ lessons to consolidate their legitimacy and ruling in the 21st century.

Read more: Explainer: what are Confucius Institutes and do they teach Chinese propaganda?

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Philosophy: What Is Confucianism? Essay

What do you think confucius was, briefly describe the han dynasty., briefly describe the qin dynasty, briefly describe the zhou dynasty and the zhou political ideology.

Confucianism is an ethical, philosophical, and political ideology that is common in Asian communities. It is based on the teachings of Confucius who is rated among the greatest Chinese philosophers. After its founding, the system was embraced as an ethical and political system to govern people’s lives. However, as it spread to other regions, it turned into a moral, metaphysical, and cosmological system of beliefs and teachings.

In certain societies, Confucianism is embraced as a religion and a way of life. The system was first adopted by the Han dynasty after the collapse of the Qin dynasty. Confucius did not intend to start a movement through his teachings and philosophy. However, the system was developed in his honor because of the great impact he had on people’s lives and the political system of China. The Chinese develop the majority of their beliefs, traditions, morals, and ethical codes on Confucianism.

Confucius’ impact in the fields of philosophy and politics is one of the major reasons why his teachings were adopted into an ethical and philosophical system. Confucianism has several beliefs and principles that form its fabric as a moral, religious, political, and philosophical system.

The central doctrines include relationships, ethics, the rectification of names, gods, and tian. Confucianism promotes the concept of ethics through its five core values that include Ren (humanness), Hsin (sincerity and fidelity), Chih (wisdom), Li (correct behavior and propriety), and Yi (honesty and righteousness).

Ren includes values such as sympathy, politeness, and kindness. These ideals are expressed through one’s language and actions. According to Confucius, everyone should be humane, merciful, and loving. Li involves the practice of good mannerisms when dealing with different people. It is important for individuals to act appropriately and speak respectfully. Zhi is a value that requires individuals to embrace wisdom and knowledge for proper living.

It endows people with values such as honesty and sincerity. Rectification of names refers to the proper use of language in order to create and maintain order in society. Things and people should be referred to according to their proper names in order to create harmony in communication. Confucianism emphasizes the importance of relationships. Confucius taught that the most important relationships in society are those between married people, parents and children, rules and their subjects, friends, and brothers.

Each individual has a special role to play depending on the type of relationship involved. A core tenet of Confucianism is filial piety, which is expressed through rituals such as ancestor worship and veneration. In addition, it is expressed through respect for parents and superiors. Children are required to honor their parents because of the sacrifices they make to take care of them. On the other hand, parents are required to love and respect their children.

Filial piety is also expressed through the worship of ancestors in shrines and graveyards. Ancestor worship is a sign of respect for parents after they die. Confucianism has several teachings that encourage individuals to become superior persons (junzi). The junzi is the ideal personality that everyone should aim for. It is characterized by ideals such as simplicity, knowledge, wisdom, honesty, humanness, and respect.

Confucianism also teaches that the most appropriate people to govern any society are those who have learned how to govern themselves. Superior individuals are self-governing people who possess high moral standards. Therefthe ore, they are fit to govern others because of their admirable moral values. The virtues above are the core tenets of Confucianism that teach individuals how to behave and relate with other people.

Confucius was an educator whose teachings had great impact on the lives of many people in China. One of the most important aspects of Confucianism is emphasis on the importance of education. Confucius believed and taught that education and study are important factors in the creation a good life. He was against the idea that intuition is more important in the attainment of knowledge than proper study.

According to him, long and careful study is the main way through which an individual can attain knowledge. He believed that effective learning involves searching for a good teacher and imitating their words and actions. He recommended older people for the roles of teachers because of their experience with life situations. Confucius taught that the role of the elders is to teach the youth and the role of the youth is to learn from the elders.

Confucius emphasized the importance of various arts such as music, archery, calligraphy, language, and speech. Morality was an important component of Confucius’ teachings that were aimed at forming superior persons (junzi). Confucius taught that it was possible for an individual to acquire virtues through study. He helped many students to solve problems and acquire knowledge in various fields. Throughout his life, he taught more than 3, 000 students using teaching and learning methods that he had created.

Confucius taught through his words and actions and he is considered as the first professional teacher in China who taught people how to develop noble morals in order to improve their lives. The importance of education in China was developed from ancient philosophers such as Confucius. In order to attain harmony in society, Confucius taught that it is important for people to get an appropriate education.

According to him, all humans have equal potential and should desist from immoral conduct by embracing good morals that are furnished by education. In his teachings, Confucius disregarded social class and made education available to all students despite their differing backgrounds. He used ancient anecdotes to instill various ethical and social norms of the Chinese people in his students’ lives. He borrowed many concepts from the Chinese traditions.

Confucius used the term junzi to refer to a person who possessed high moral standards and who served as a role model to other people. In The Analects, he used the term to define the traits of an ideal person that everyone in society should strive toward. Confucius’ teachings aimed to make people better persons by instilling in them virtues and morals that would create harmony in society. Another teaching that shows Confucius as an educator is his insistence on the proper use of language.

Proper language is important in society because it helps to create order, understand the will of Heaven, develop character, and understand other people. Four prominent teachings of Confucianism include culture, loyalty, conduct, and truthfulness. The main components of culture include music, poetry, and conduct. Moral duties such as filial piety and respect for elders are also important tenets. Confucius played important roles in several fields that include politics, education, and literature.

However, his impact as an educator was the greatest. In politics, he taught that only people who govern themselves through the attainment of values can govern others. He believed that leadership was a reserve of the junzi. Confucius’ impact as an educator was evident from the adoption of his teachings into a moral, political, and social system that was monumental in the civilization of China. Confucius was a philosopher, politician, and a great teacher who played an important role in creating the moral and ethical fiber of the Chinese society.

According to historical records, the Han dynasty was formed after the death of Qin Shihuangdi who was the leader of the Qin dynasty. The dynasty’s rule occurred in two different periods, namely the Western Han and the Eastern Han. The boundaries of the empire were determined by emperor of the Qin dynasty and their impact is still felt today because they are the boundaries of present-day China.

The Han dynasty lasted between 206BC and 220 AD and was founded by a rebel leader known as Liu Bang. Its domination was interrupted by the Xi dynasty between the years 9 AD and 23 AD. This interruption was responsible for the aforementioned Eastern and Western Han periods. Historians argue that the period of the dynasty’s existence marked an important period in the history of China, mainly because of its impact and innumerable achievements in different fields.

The positive impact of the dynasty is evident in contemporary China. Many Chinese people consider themselves as descendants of the Han people. The Han’s social class was defined by a certain hierarchy that held the emperor as the head of the dynasty, followed by the kings, and other nobles below them. The dynasty had twenty ranks that divided members into different social classes. Each rank had different legal privileges that were accorded to nobles only.

Pension and territorial rule are examples of these privileges. Members of high ranks enjoyed more privileges than members of lower ranks. The family unit comprised approximately five nuclear family members who lived in one household. This tradition was abolished in later dynasties. The Han dynasty embraced the teachings of Confucianism. One of the core tenets of Confucianism is the role that each family member plays.

For instance, during the marriage ceremonies of daughters, the opinions of the fathers were considered more important than those of the mothers. Marriages were both monogamous and polygamous. Polygamous marriages were mainly practiced by nobles who were wealthy enough to support several wives and concubines. The Han dynasty is considered as the most important dynasty in the Chinese history because of its numerous achievements.

Among the developments that occurred during the rule of the dynasty, the most monumental was the development of paper. The paper was made from hemp fibers. The development of paper was a major step in civilization because it introduced a reliable way of storing records. The dynasty’s government structure accorded a lot of power to the emperor. He was the highest judge and also appointed people to serve in different positions in his government.

The emperor appointed his relatives to govern the small kingdoms that comprised the dynasty. The Han dynasty collapsed during the tenure of Emperor Xian. The dynasty disintegrated into regional regimes that were later reunified by Cao Cao. However, the unified dynasty collapsed after a while due to intensified conflicts. The legacy of the Han dynasty is invaluable to the Chinese people.

In the history of China, the Qin dynasty was the first state that centralized power. It lasted from 211 to 207 BC. During the initial years after its founding, the dynasty had great impact on the civilization of China. The most important feature was its impact on the dynasties that were established after its fall. The empire was ruled by two emperors only before its fall that emanated from an uprising. The origin of the Qin dynasty is traced back to the Warring States period that lasted from 476 BC to 221 BC.

The dynasty developed rapidly during this period. The first emperor, Yingzheng, created the empire by conquering several states that had weak military presence. After conquering the states, Yingzheng unified them and founded the Qin dynasty. The dynasty’s unity brought the chaos of the wars to an end. The initial years of Yingzheng’s rule were characterized by rapid developments, economic growth, and peace.

However, the last years of his rule were characterized by oppression, corruption, and cruelty. After founding the Qin dynasty, the emperor implemented several economic, cultural, military, and political reforms that aided in unifying the states. Politically, he assumed the role of the emperor and controlled all the affairs of the dynasty. He restructured local counties and elected new people to govern them.

Economically, he created new units of measure and introduced a currency that was used throughout the empire. Moreover, he improved agriculture by constructing dams and canals that increased production. One of the greatest achievements of the emperor was the construction of the Great Wall of China. Yingzheng used tyranny as a strategy to control people and exploit them. He commissioned the burning of books that he thought could free the minds of his people and prompt them to oppose his rule.

During his second year as emperor, he killed scholars who attempted to compromise his rule by discussing and criticizing his egotism. In China, the aforementioned incidents are important historical events that have great significance. Despite his oppressive rule, Yingzheng built numerous palaces, roads, irrigation projects, and the Terra-Cotta Warriors and Horses. He accomplished these feats by imposing heavy taxes, introducing hard labor and mandatory military service, and harsh laws.

The collapse of the dynasty began after the death of Yingzheng, which occurred during a trip to acquire magical powers from Taoist magicians. The dynasty’s chief eunuch and prime minister devised a plan that they thought would allow them to rule the dynasty. They believed that if they appointed the son as the emperor, they would manipulate and lead him to their ways in order to control the dynasty indirectly.

Like his father, Qin Er Shi killed many top government officials and continued the massive projects his father had started. He raised taxes and enlarged the army to suit his political purposes. His cruelty resulted in revolts and uprisings that led to the emergence of small territories that had their own kings.

Constant fights between the chief eunuch and the prime minister contributed towards the increased turmoil that was experienced in the dynasty. Attempts by the emperor’s nephew to declare himself king were unfruitful. The move increased uprisings that resulted in the dynasty’s disintegration.

The Zhou dynasty was the longest-lasting dynasty that ruled China for a thousand years from 1046 BCE to 256 BCE. It was founded after the disintegration of the Shang Dynasty and collapsed after the city of Changzhou was taken over by military men belonging to the state of Qin. The dynasty is famous for the proliferation of China’s greatest intellectuals during its period. The last years of its existence saw the emergence of great historical figures such as Mozi, Confucius, and Mencius.

These intellectuals lived during one of Zhou dynasty’s period that was known as the Eastern Zhou period. The ideas and teachings of these intellectuals played a key role in evolving and developing the civilization of the Chinese people. The capital of the dynasty was located in two different regions during two different times. This explains the existence of Western Zhou and Eastern Zhou periods.

According to historians, the Eastern Zhou period was more significant than the Eastern Zhou period because of the developments in art and education that occurred. It lasted from 770 BC to 221 BC. The Zhou people replaced the Shang Dynasty and formed a government in which land was owned by the elite class. On the other hand, the Western Zhou was similar to the Shang in that the rulers came from a noble lineage.

The poor were not allowed to mingle with the nobles. The philosophers of the time developed the concept of divine leadership through their belief that leaders were specially chosen by the gods to govern and their dethronement meant that the gods had rejected them. The Eastern Zhou experienced a period of decreased reliance on royal authority. Despite this, kings ruled for more than five hundred years before the collapse of the system.

The Spring and Autumn Period was a significant period in the growth of the dynasty because it was during that period that the greatest reforms and developments occurred. This period had three sub-periods, namely the age of regional cultures, the age of reforms, and the age of encroachments. During this period, the kings only possessed insignificant power and controlled small regions. The second phase was referred to as the Warring States Period.

Han, Zhao, and Wei were recognized as independent states and had their won kings. They later collapsed due to continued conflicts. The period marked an important stage in the development of Chinese philosophy. Numerous schools of thoughts emerged, but only a few survived. The ones that survived included Legalism, Confucianism, Mohism, Agriculturalism, Taoism, Diplomatists, Logicians, Naturalists, and the Militarists. The Zhou political ideology was referred to as fengjian, which was a decentralized form of government.

It was similar to European feudalism even though many differences were evident. The Zhou system of governance was unique compared to other systems that existed at the time in other places. Farming was a major economic activity and was controlled by the government. Farming lands were owned by the elite class but tilled by the people of the lower social classes. To develop agriculture, the government constructed dams and canals.

Art was diverse because of the versatility of the numerous states that made up the dynasty. Confucian and Legalist philosophers developed the majority of the concepts that the government followed. Members of the dynasty belonged to four major professions in the fields of education, business, agriculture, and art. The occupations played different roles under the fengjian system.

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Bibliography

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• Shang and Zhou Dynasties
• Confucianism and Daoism: The Vision of Life
• China's Historical Experience in the Early Imperial Period
• Shang and Zhou Dynasties: Comparison Between Rituals and Artefacts
• Confucian Ethics and Legalists Authority in Shaping of Chinese History
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Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology

Overview Essay

Confucian Environmental Virtue Ethics

Yong Huang , Chinese University of Hong Kong

1. Introduction

Environmental ethics, as an applied ethics, may be regarded as an application of some general ethical theory to specific environmental issues. Alternatively, as traditional ethical theories are basically limited to human beings as moral patients (recipients of action), environmental ethics can also be seen as their expansion, to include the non-human parts of the ecosystem among moral patients. In either case, environmental ethics is closely related to general moral theories. Similar to ethics in general, consequentialism, which focuses on the consequences of actions, and deontology, which focuses on moral rules or principles, dominated much of the initial development of environmental ethics. However, virtue ethics, which focuses on the characters of moral agent, has now become a powerful alternative in environmental discourses (Hill 1983, van Wensveen 2000, Thoreau 1951, Carson 1956, Bardsley 2013), partially due to its own attractiveness and partially due to the respective deficiencies of deontology (see Kant 1997: 212; O’Neill 1993: 22–24, Sandler 2007: 113) and consequentialism (see Zwolinski and Schimdtz 2013), either in these theories themselves or in their applications/expansions to environmental issues.

However, there is also a problem with this virtue ethics approach to environment issues, which shifts our attention from nature to us human beings. We need to acquire virtues, including environmental virtues, because they contribute to or are even constitutive of human flourishing, which is clearly anthropocentric (O’Neill 1993, Rolston 2005, Cafaro 2015). In this chapter, I shall develop a Confucian version of environmental virtue ethics that is not anthropocentric, by focusing on the work of the neo-Confucian philosopher in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) of China, Wang Yangming (1472–1529). He is commonly regarded as the leader of the idealist school of the neo-Confucian movement to revive Confucianism, starting from the Song dynasty (960–1279), in response to the dominance of Buddhism in the Tang period (see Tu, Cua, and Ching 1996).

2. Being in one body with the ten thousand things

Confucian ethics is primarily a type of virtue ethics. The most fundamental virtue in Confucianism is ren, most frequently translated as humanity or humaneness, the virtue that characterizes a human being as a human being. Different Confucians define this humanity differently, and Wang Yangming’s understanding of it comes more directly from Cheng Hao (1032–1085), a neo-Confucian in the Song dynasty. At the very beginning of his famous essay, “On Humanity,” Cheng Hao claims that, “The first thing all learners need to understand is humanity. A person of humanity is completely in one body with all things,” where there is no distinction between self and things as inner and outer (Cheng and Cheng 1988: 17). To illustrate it, Cheng Hao discusses the lack of humanity, buren, in the medical sense: “medical books regard the numbness of hand and foot as lack of ren. This is the best description” (Cheng and Cheng: 15). When one’s hand is numb, one cannot feel its pain and itch, and this is the lack of ren. Thus when one is not numb, one can feel the pain and itch of one’s whole body, and this is ren. Then he expands it to explain the moral sense of ren: “a person of ren takes heaven, earth, and the ten thousand things all as one body, no part of which is not oneself” (Cheng and Cheng: 15). If someone or something else in the world suffers, and I don’t feel it, that means that I’m numb. In other words, I lack the virtue of humanity. By contrast, a person of humanity will feel the suffering of other things in the world, because he or she is in one body with the ten thousand things.

Wang Yangming adopts and expands on Cheng Hao’s interpretation of ren. He states that, “a person of humanity (ren) regards heaven, earth and the ten thousand things as being in one body (with oneself).  If there is one thing that cannot live its natural life, (he or she believes that) this must be because his or her own humanity is not fully developed” (Wang 1992: 25). When one’s humanity is not fully developed, there are things that one does not feel to be in one body with. One does not regard them as part of one’s body. The reason that one fails to feel being in one body with everything in the universe, for Wang Yangming, is that “one has not fully got rid of one’s selfish desires” (Wang 1992: 110), which blocks one’s original heart–mind, just as clouds block the sunshine.  This means that one’s original heart–mind naturally feels to be in one body with the ten thousand things (Wang 1992: 968).

Moreover, just as a cloud cannot completely block the sunshine, selfish desires cannot completely block one’s original heart–mind, which is characterized by the virtue of “humanity.” Wang explains this in the following famous passage:

“When a superior person sees an infant about to fall into a well, he or she will definitely have the heart that feels the alarm and commiseration. This is because his or her ren makes him or her to be in one body with the infant. You may say that this is because the infant is of the same species as the superior person. However, when he or she sees a bird or land animal making sad sound and having frightened appearance, he or she will definitely have a heart that cannot bear to let it happen. This is because his or her ren makes him or her to be in one body with the bird or animal. You may say that this is because the bird and animal are also sentient beings. However, when he or she sees a blade of grass or a tree breaking, he or she will definitely have the heart that feels pity. This is because his or her ren makes him or her to be in one body with the grass or tree. You may say that this is because they are also living beings. However, when he or she sees a tile or stone getting broken, he or she will definitely have the heart that feels regret. This is because his or her ren that makes him or her to be in one body with the tile or stone.” (Wang 1992: 26; 968).

In this passage, Wang Yangming repeatedly emphasizes that the reason that a person is concerned with the wellbeing of others when something bad happens to them is not simply that they belong to the same species, but that the person has ren, the sensibility toward the suffering of others.

Since Wang Yangming’s conception of being in one body with the ten thousand things is used to explain ren, the most fundamental virtue in Confucianism , his ethics is a virtue ethics. Since the object of one’s concern goes beyond human beings to include heaven, earth, and the ten thousand things, it is also an environmental virtue ethics. However, the familiar version of environmental virtue ethics that we see in contemporary Western discussions is largely Aristotelian. In contrast, Wang Yangming’s version of environmental virtue ethics is a sentimental one, since its central concept, being in one body with the ten thousand things, is essentially a concept of empathy. In contemporary moral psychology, empathy is understood to be a kind of emotion or an emotion-generating entity. An empathic person is one who is able to feel the pain and suffering of another person, not merely to feel about the pain and itch of that person, which is characteristic of sympathy. Thus an empathic person is naturally motivated to help the other get rid of the pain, just as anyone who feels itch in his or her back will naturally move his or her hand to scratch it. As we have seen, this is precisely how Cheng Hao and Wang Yangming describe the person who is in one body with the ten thousand things.

In appearance, Wang Yangming’s neo-Confucian version of environmental virtue ethics, with empathy as its central concept, also suffers anthropocentrism and even egoism. In such a version, an environmentally virtuous or empathic person is concerned about both other human beings and non-human beings because he or she feels pain that others suffer as his or her own. In this sense, it may be claimed that this virtuous person’s concern with and help for others is really also egoistic in the narrow sense and anthropocentric in the broad sense.

Defenders of this Confucian version of environmental virtue ethics may be tempted to appeal to Daniel Baston and his team, who have conducted a series of experiments to show that an empathic person’s concerns with others is not due to a selfish desire to escape aversive arousal, or social disapproval, or guilt, or shame, or sadness, or to increase vicarious joy. Instead, such a concern is purely altruistic: an empathic person’s concern with others is for the sake of others (see Batson 2011). However, when applied to environmental virtues, one would ask, why should a virtuous person take care of non-human beings for their own sake? Is this because they have intrinsic values and not merely instrumental values to human beings? However, a thing’s having intrinsic value does not necessarily mean that it has the right for our care or that we have duty to take care of it. A virus also has its own intrinsic value, but it does not automatically have a right for our care.

Wang Yangming’s environmental virtue ethics, with the central idea of being in one body with the ten thousand things, can avoid the problem of anthropocentrism or egoism in a different way. Anthropocentrism assumes the separateness between human and non-human beings or between self and other. However, since a virtuous person in Wang Yangming’s sense feels to be in one body with the ten thousand things, there is no such separateness. The whole universe becomes the virtuous person’s single body, and the ten thousand things in the universe become different parts of this virtuous person’s own body. So, a virtuous person’s taking care of the forest, for example, can be seen as both for the sake of the forest and as for the sake of himself or herself, since this forest is already part of his or her body.

3. Love with Distinction

However, Wang does not think that this Confucian empathic person loves, or should love, the ten thousand things equally. Some sacrifices have to be made, especially when conflicts arise among the ten thousand things, now all different parts of a virtuous person’s body.

This view of Wang Yangming’s is made most clear in one of his conversations with his students. The Great Learning, one of the Confucian classics, calls for cultivating the self, regulating the family, governing the state, and harmonizing the world. It then states that “everyone, from the emperor to common people, should regard cultivation as the root. It is impossible to have a distorted root with ordered branches, and there has never been the case when less intense care is given when the more intense care is called for or the more intense care is given when the less intense care is called for” (Wang 1992: 108).  According to Zhu Xi (1130–1200), one of the most influential neo-Confucians, while root refers to self-cultivation, the branches refer to regulating families, governing the state, and harmonizing the world. While intense care is meant for family members, the less-intense care is meant for other people in the state and the world. Having learned about Wang’s teaching, one of his students asks: “since a great person feels being in one body with (the ten thousand) things, why does the Great Learning still talk about the distinction between more and less intense care” (Wang 1992: 108).

Here is Wang’s response in a well-known passage, directly related to our concern with environmental issues:

“There is a reason (daoli) for this natural distinction between the more and the less intense care. For example, all in one body, we use our hands and feet to defend our head and eyes. It is not that we are discriminating against our hands and feet. There is a reason for being so. We love both birds and animals on the one hand and grasses and trees on the other, but it is bearable for us to feed birds and animals with grasses and trees. We love both human beings and birds and animals, but it is bearable for us to kill birds and animals to feed parents, to sacrifice for rituals, and to entertain guests. We love both our parents and strangers, but it is bearable for us to save our parents and not the stranger when there is only one single dish of food, with which one can live and without which one will die. Things are so for a reason. The distinction between the more and the less intense care in the Great Learning is the natural vein (tiaoli) of one’s innate moral knowledge (liangzhi), which is the moral rightness that cannot be transgressed.” (Wang 1992: 108)

So while calling upon us to cultivate empathy with the ten thousand things, Wang does not go to the extreme that we should treat everything in nature, including us human beings, equally or impartially. Yet other than his view about animals (which may be killed to feed our parents, etc.), Wang’s view is something even the most radical ecologist would accept. Clearly, hardly any environmental activist would object to our cutting a tree if this tree contains elements that alone can cure cancer suffered by numerous patients. The question we have is on what basis Wang develops his partialist view.  Just as his view of being in one body with the ten thousand things does not assume the equality of the intrinsic values of the ten thousand things, his partialist view is not based on his conception of inequality of intrinsic values of the ten thousand things. While we may be tempted to think that Wang has a hierarchical  view of intrinsic values of different beings when we see him allowing us to feed birds and animals with grasses and trees and kill animals for human purposes, thinking that humans have higher intrinsic value than animals, and animals have higher intrinsic values than plants. However, we have to abandon this assumption when we see him talking about the preferential treatment of our parents over strangers along the same line, as he certainly would not think that our parents possess higher intrinsic value than strangers. If so, precisely what does he mean by the “natural reason” (daoli or tiaoli) for such a partiality that he repeatedly talks about?

We can begin to understand it by realizing that our empathy with and empathic care for the ten thousand things is naturally a gradual process starting from the near and dear. This point is made clear in another conversation between Wang Yangming and one of his students. The student asks: “Master Cheng (Hao) says that ‘a person of ren feels to be in one body with the ten thousand things.’ How then is the Mohist idea of impartial love not ren?” (Wang 1992: 25).  From the student’s point of view, to be in one body with the ten thousand things means to have impartial love for them, and, if so, it must be right for the Mohists to advocate impartial love, which, however, all Confucians regard as problematic. In response, Wang Yangming emphasizes the gradual nature of our empathy with things, with an analogy:

“Take a tree as an example. At the beginning, there is sprout, from which the vitality of the tree originates; from the sprout grows the trunk; and from the trunk grow the branches and leaves; and then its life cycle continues ceaselessly. If there is no sprout, how can there be trunk, branches, and leaves? And there can be sprout only if there is root. Only with the root can the tree grow; without the root, the tree will die. If there is no root, how can there be sprout? The love between parents and children and among siblings is the beginning of the vitality of human heart/mind; it is like the sprout of a tree. Starting from the beginning, one can be humane to all people and love all things; it is like the tree’s growing the trunk, branches, and leaves. The Mohist idea of impartial love without distinction sees one’s own parents, children, and siblings as no different from strangers; as a result there is no beginning (of love).” (Wang 1992: 25–26)

Thus, one aspect of Wang’s “natural reason” for the partiality in our empathy with and empathic care of the ten thousand things is that we have to start from those near and dear to us and then gradually expand our empathy and empathic care to others. However, by itself, this does not imply any preferential treatment of those near and dear to us; it only stipulates a temporal order: we love our family members first and others later. Indeed, this is not something that Mohism really has any problem with when it argues against Confucianism. For example, the Mohist Yizi in the Mencius states that “we Mohists hold that there should be no distinction in love, although our love can start with parents” (Mencius 3a5; emphasis added). In other words, it is fine to first love those who are near and dear, as long as such a love is equal to our love for others, which happens later. However, this is clearly not what Wang Yangming in particular and Confucians in general have in mind with their idea of love with distinction. In the passage quoted above, Wang Yangming argues that we should have more intense love for those near and dear to us than for others, especially when our love for the former comes into conflict with our love for the latter. For Wang Yangming, there is also a “natural reason” (daoli or tiaoli) for this, although Wang may take such a reason as self-evident and thus does not fully explain it.

Indeed, to explain why we ought to have more intense love of those near and dear to us may be what contemporary philosopher Bernard Williams regards as “one thought too many”. Suppose I’m in a situation in which my wife and a stranger are in equal peril and yet I can only rescue one of them. I’ll naturally save my wife without any further thought. If my motivating thought, fully spelled out, is, in addition to the fact that she is my wife, in situations of this kind it is permissible to save my wife, it is “one thought too many” (Williams 1981: 18). The situation that Williams imagines is almost identical to the one conceived by Wang Yangming: when there is only one dish of food, with which a person lives and without which a person dies, one can bear to use it to save one’s parent and not one’s stranger. This natural tendency of partiality toward those near and dear to us has recently received empirical support from contemporary moral psychology of empathy. As Martin Hoffman, one of the most influential moral psychologists studying the phenomenon of empathy, points out, there is evidence “that most people empathize to a greater degree (their threshold for empathic distress is lower) with victims who are family members, members of their primary group, close friends, and people whose personal needs and concerns are similar to their own” (Hoffman 2000: 197).

So the second aspect of Wang Yangming’s “natural reason” is that we naturally tend to have stronger empathy with those near and dear to us. However, this is still not enough. What we are naturally doing or tend to do is not necessarily what we ought to do. When Williams claims, in relation to the above-mentioned case of a husband’s rescuing his wife, that “some situations lie beyond [moral] justification” (Williams 1981: 18), he considers, at least from Susan Wolf’s point of view, what the husband does is a non-moral good, which is as important as a moral good and so should not be trumped by the latter (Wolf 2012).  In this respect, Hoffman goes a step further, thinking that this aspect of empathy is a bias that comes into conflict with moral philosophy’s criterion of impartiality. Since for him, “empathic morality, at least empathic morality alone, may not be enough” (Hoffman 2000: 206), and so it is important for empathy to be supplemented with or embedded in the moral principle of justice. Even in Williams’s case, while he considers it absurd for us to require the person to provide a justification for his action of rescuing his wife instead of the stranger in addition to the fact that she is his wife, he does not say that this action itself is justified from a moral point of view.

However, when Wang Yangming says that there is a “natural reason” for us to be partial to those who are near and dear to us, this natural reason is clearly not merely descriptive but also normative. This is the third aspect that I would like to highlight. Why should we give preferential treatment to those who are near and dear to us? There are a number of reasons. Love or empathy, by its nature, is more intense to those who are near and dear to and less so who are far from and unknown to us. Assume this is a deficiency of empathy or love; and then let us imagine a world in which such an empathy or love exists and another world in which it does not exist. Other things being equal, in which world do we prefer to live? I think the answer is clear: we would like to live in a world in which such empathy or love exists, even though we know it is partialistic. This line of thinking is consistent with the contemporary moral sentimentalist philosopher Michael Slote when he says that “our high moral opinion of love is inconsistent with accepting morality as universal benevolence, and I take that to constitute a strong reason to favor caring over universal benevolence” (Slote 2001: 137).

Such a justification may still not be enough, as it may be considered that we are here forced to make a choice of the lesser evil. The ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi thus provides an alternative: imagine a world that practices Confucian love with distinction and another world that practices impartial ai, which literally means love, but should be more appropriately translated as care, since love as an emotion cannot be impartial by its nature. To respond to the Confucian objection that one’s parents would not receive as much love in a world practicing the Mohist love as in a world practicing Confucian love, since their children now are not allowed to provide more care to them than to anyone else, Mozi says that this is a misunderstanding. While parents will indeed receive less care from their children, since their children need to care for other people as much as they care for their parents, they will receive more care from people other than their children, since other people will also care for them as much as their children care them and as much as their care for their own parents. This, however, is also a misunderstanding from the Confucian point of view. In order to care (to say nothing about love) for someone appropriately, one needs the relevant knowledge of the person, i.e., what the person needs, likes, prefers, etc. Clearly one knows better, and therefore can care better, for those who are near and dear than for those who are far and unknown, fellow human beings than animals, animals than plants, and living things than non-living things.

Moreover, on the one hand, to say that we love our parents, human beings, and animals more than other human beings, animals, and plants, respectively, does not mean that we don’t love the latter. It only means that we love them less intensively, and (at least part of) the reason is that we don’t know the latter as well as we know the former. On the other hand, even when we face the dilemma in which our love for the former requires that we make some sacrifice of the latter, Wang Yangming uses the term ren (a character different from the one that means humanity), translated as “bear” (“bearable”) above, which is quite illustrative. To bear to do something implies that enduring something unpleasant in doing it.

Thus, when he says that “we love both birds and animals on the one hand and grasses and trees on the other, but it is bearable to feed birds and animals with grasses and trees,” he means that we still have empathy with grasses and trees, since we also love them; otherwise there is no reason for us to bear to see them being fed upon by animals. A similar thing can be said about what immediately follows in the passage, about our bearing to see animals being killed to feed parents, etc., and about bearing to see a stranger starve when the only dish of food is used to prevent the starvation of our parents. We need to make an effort to “bear” such things when they happen indicates that, even though we allow or even make them happen, they are things we would like to prevent if possible at all.

The point that Wang Yangming makes here echoes what contemporary virtue ethicist Rosalind Hursthouse calls “moral residue” or “moral remainder,” or, more appropriately, the latter echoes the former. When people face dilemmas such as those mentioned by Wang Yangming, Husrthouse states, “whatever they do, they violate a moral requirement, and we expect them (especially when we think in terms of real examples) to register this in some way—by feeling distress or regret or remorse or guilt, or, in some cases, by recognizing that some apology or restitution or compensation is called for. This—the remorse or regret, or the new requirement to apologize or whatever—is called the (moral) ‘remainder’ or ‘residue’” (Hursthouse 2001: 44).

4. Conclusion

In this chapter, by drawing on the ideas mostly developed by the neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Yangming, I have argued that Confucian environmental virtue ethics can avoid some pitfalls of deontological and consequentialist approaches to environmental issues as well as those of other versions of environmental virtue ethics, particularly the Aristotelian ones. Central to this Confucian environmental virtue ethics is the idea of being in one body with the ten thousand things. A virtuous person in this sense feels the pain and itch of the thousand things, just as he or she feels the pain and itch on his or her own back. Such an ability to feel either (both) the pain and itch of the ten thousand things or (and) to be in one body with the ten thousand things is ren, the cardinal Confucian virtue that characterizes a human being. It is not merely cognitive but also affective for both humans and the more-than-human world. Thus, a person who feels the pain of a bird, for example, is not merely a person who knows that the bird is in pain but also a person who is motivated to help the bird get rid of the pain. So a Confucian environmental virtuous person takes care of the ten thousand things not because of their intrinsic values but because they are part of his or her own body. Despite its appearance, such a person is not self-centered, as there is nothing outside the person, or, to put it another way, everything is part of the person, while egoism assumes the separateness of the self from others.

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Header photo: Wenmiao Temple in Jianshui, Yunnan, China. One of the oldest Confucian temples in the world

Contemporary Confucianism and Ethical Theory

• First Online: 18 December 2020

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• Stephen C. Angle 3  

Part of the book series: Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy ((DCCP,volume 15))

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This chapter examines the ways in which Confucianism has been related to ethical theorizing in recent decades, both as part of interpretive projects aimed at classifying Confucianism and as part of projects aimed at putting Confucian ethical theory to work—that is, using Confucianism to argue for a particular kind of moral education or solution to a moral quandary. The chapter looks at three different theories of normative ethics—deontology, virtue ethics, and role ethics—and explores both the relevant debates around the classification of Confucian ethics and, to a lesser degree, efforts to use Confucian ethics, as interpreted via each of the normative theories. It also examines the work of philosophers who use Confucianism in more applied ways, while also making note of their classificatory arguments or assumptions. One theme of the chapter is the degree to which Sinophone and Anglophone philosophers are starting to engage one another, which is helping to spur the related (though not identical) process of dialogue between Western and Chinese philosophical traditions.

The present chapter draws in significant ways on a related chapter that I wrote a few years ago for the Dao Companion to the Analects , titled “The Analects and Moral Theory” (Angle 2013 ). To assist those who might already be familiar with the earlier essay, here are the main differences between the two. Sections 1 and 6 are entirely new; in particular, the attention that I pay here to applied ethics is absent in the earlier essay. Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 have been thoroughly revised in order both to broaden their scopes beyond the Analects , and for various substantive reasons, though they still resemble the earlier versions in many ways.

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See also chapter “Confucian Thought and Contemporary Western Philosophy”—Ed.

Two interpretive options that have been explored with respect to Mengzi are consequentialism (see Im ( 1999 , 2011 ) and the argument against a consequentialist reading in (Wang 2005 )) and moral sense theory (see (Huang 1994 ) and the rebuttal in (Lee 1990 : 37–38 and passim ) and (Lee 2013 ), as well as (Liu 2003 )). Another important approach that has received some attention is care ethics; see (Li 1994) and Tao ( 2000 ).

See also Rosemont Jr. ( 1991 ).

Silber develops this idea in a variety of articles; see, for example (Silber 1959–1960). L ee Ming-huei 李明輝 notes that a similar distinction is made in German moral discourse between “ Gesinnungsethik ” and “ Erfolgsethik ” (Lee 2013 : 49).

Both on this specific point, and more generally concerning the topic of this section, I have found (Wang 2005 ) to be very helpful.

I mention some of the philosophers involved in these debates in Sect. 4 .

See (Driver 1996 ). Various other terms are used to mark roughly the same distinction. Van Norden prefers to speak of a spectrum from moderate to “radical” virtue ethics (Van Norden 2007 : 34); Adams refers to “the ethics of character as an important department of ethical theory” (Adams 2006 : 4).

For one argument against viewing Confucianism through the lens of ethical theory, see (Nichols 2015 ).

For some discussion of this topic, see (Angle 2013 : 226–229).

David Elstein has reminded me that key Chinese developers of the deontological reading believe that Confucianism in fact surpasses Kant in key ways, and so it is somewhat misleading to label their views as “Kantian.” This is an excellent point that I have taken to heart. As Elstein emphasized, since we see virtue ethics as broader than Aristotle (see below), shouldn’t we see deontology as broader than Kant?

The essay was published serially over several months. For some fascinating background to Liang’s essay, including the degree to which he both drew on but also deviated from prior Japanese interpretation and translation of Kant, see (Huang 2014 ).

Quoted in (Chan 2011 : 36–37), slightly modified.

The best source on Mou’s approach to the idea of autonomy is (Billioud 2011 ). It is worth noting that it is controversial how Kantian Mou really is; see, for example (Zheng 2000 ).

Elstein ( 2015 ) has a very helpful chapter on Lee, though his focus is more on Lee’s political philosophy than his ethics. See also Fong ( 2016 ) for a detailed discussion of Lee’s most influential writings on Confucianism and Kant.

Translations from the Analects in this chapter are ultimately my responsibility, but I have based my renderings closely on those in (Brooks and Taeko Brooks 1998 ).

Mengzi 7A:3; translation from (Mengzi 2008: 172).

For more discussion, see (Elstein 2015 : 104–105).

One important source for this reading of Mengzi is (Ivanhoe 2002 ), the first edition of which was published in 1990.

One of the best arguments for this reading is in (Van Norden 2007 : 217–218).

Mou ( 1983 : 24). For a helpful discussion of these issues that is sympathetic to Mou’s reading, see Ng ( 2014 ).

The balance of this paragraph draws on material in (Angle 2012 : ch. 7).

Mou ( 1969 ).

In Sect. 2, I noted that Alasdair MacIntyre and Gary Watson have both argued that while virtue ethics is a form of teleological ethics, it is not a maximizing teleology in which moral nobility is reducible to some other form of goodness. They would thus resist Lee’s move from “heterogeneous” to “deontological.”

There is also considerable, albeit ambiguous, evidence in Mengzi , which famously begins with a criticism of those who speak about “profit ( li 利)” in 1A:1. Lee gives his interpretation of these passages in (Lee 1990 ).

Analects 15.21.

For a rebuttal of Roetz’s position from someone in the virtue ethics camp, see P. J. Ivanhoe’s argument in Footnote 39.

Mou ( 1983 : 74).

Mou ( 1983 : 116–117).

On Mou, see Bunnin ( 2008 ), Chan ( 2011 ), Billioud ( 2011 ), and Van den Stock ( 2016 ). For some initial comparisons between Mou and Kant, see the special journal issue devoted to relations between Kant and Confucianism (Schönfeld 2006 ), as well as (Palmquist 2010 ).

See Anscombe ( 1958 ), Murdoch ( 1970 ), Foot ( 1978 ), McDowell ( 1979 ), MacIntyre ( 1981 ), and Nussbaum ( 1990 ). This list is by no means exhaustive; other important early contributions include Wallace ( 1978 ) and Pincoffs ( 1986 ). It is worth noting that, as discussed in Sect. 2, Nussbaum explicitly rejects the label “virtue ethics” (Nussbaum 1999 ).

Representative works include Slote ( 2001 ), Swanton ( 2003 ), and Tessman ( 2005 ).

See Mahood ( 1971 , 1974 ).

See Nivison ( 1996a , b ).

As can be seen from his glowing back-cover endorsement, Alasdair MacIntyre was also clearly aware of the book. This is perhaps an apt moment to mention MacIntyre’s fairly extensive engagement with Confucian ethics—as seen in MacIntyre ( 1991 , 2004a , b )—although some claims that he makes in his systematic treatments of virtue ethics such as (MacIntyre 1999 ), in which Confucianism makes no appearance, show that the influence of Confucianism has not gone as deep as one might have hoped.

This is more implicit than explicit in Ivanhoe’s dissertation (published as Ivanhoe ( 1990 )), though it is explicit in that work’s revised second edition (Ivanhoe 2002 : ix, 2n5, 9). The theme of virtue is also central to Ivanhoe ( 2000 ) (the first edition of which was published in 1993). See also Wilson ( 2002 ) and Slingerland ( 2001 ), both of which will be discussed further below. The most mature statement of Van Norden’s position is Van Norden ( 2007 ), on which see below.

In addition to Van Norden ( 2007 ), two important comparative studies of Aristotle and Confucius were published Sim ( 2007 ) and Yu ( 2007 ).

In addition to those discussed in the main text, (Van Norden 2007 ) also contributes further arguments; Van Norden maintains that a virtue-ethics interpretation of the Analects and Mengzi “illuminates many interesting aspects of [Confucianism] that might otherwise go unnoticed” (Van Norden 2007 : 2). Van Norden’s approach to “virtue ethics” itself is loose and pluralistic, including both what we have called above “virtue theory” as well as virtue ethics more strictly. Particularly with respect to the Analects , which he considers more “evocative” than “systematic” (Van Norden 2007 : 137), his goal is to see what can be learned about the views in the text by asking questions of it phrased in virtue-related terminology, rather than seeking to elucidate a specific, virtue-ethical moral theory.

Another version of this strategy can be seen in Ivanhoe’s argument that Roetz’s deontological interpretation fails because (1) his insistence that the Analects contains universal ethical claims can be accounted for in other ways, and (2) there is no evidence of a relationship between reason and morality in the Analects like that insisted on by Kant: “We look in vain for an analysis of moral maxims, autonomy, or freedom” (Ivanhoe 2002 : 9).

By now a large literature on this subject has developed; one important source of the discussion is (Sherman 1997 ).

L ee Ming-huei argues rather convincingly that Shen’s critique of the contemporary implications of deontological moral theories is based on a mere caricature of Kantianism (Lee 2005 : 107).

In addition to the books highlighted in the next three paragraphs, several contributions to Angle and Slote ( 2013 ) also endeavor to use Confucian ethical theory. Eric Hutton’s Stanford Ph.D. thesis is an early instance of this trend (Hutton 2001 ). See also the final chapter of Van Norden ( 2007 ), Ivanhoe ( 2011 ), and Slingerland ( 2011 ), among others.

For example, Sim says, “ethics for both [Confucius and Aristotle] centers on character” (Sim 2007 : 134); for his part, Yu begins his first chapter by saying, “For both ethics of Confucius and Aristotle, the central question is about what the good life is or what kind of person one should be. More strikingly, both ethics answer this central question by focusing on virtue…” (Yu 2007 : 24).

For some of the debate, see the book symposia printed in Dao 8:3 ( 2007 , on Sim’s book) and Dao 10:3 ( 2010 , on Yu’s book).

In the Preface to his 2011 book on Confucian role ethics, Ames notes that Rosemont began developing the idea of Confucian role ethics as early as a 1991 essay that drew a contrast between the “rights-bearing individuals” of Western moral theories and the “role-bearing persons” on Confucian ethics (Ames 2011 : xv). As far as I know, though, Ames and Rosemont only began using the term “role ethics” in print in (Rosemont Jr. and Ames 2009 ). Another parallel approach to using the category of “role ethics” to understand Confucianism emerges in the work of A. T. Nuyen, whose “Confucian Ethics as Role-Based Ethics” was published in 2007. He draws in part on earlier work of Ames and David Hall on the Confucian self (Nuyen 2007 : 317), but develops his role-ethical structure quite independently. (Ames also seems unaware of Nuyen’s work on role ethics; it is not cited in (Ames 2011 ).) I will comment in a moment on one or two differences between Nuyen and Ames and Rosemont, but reserve discussion of the biggest difference—namely, that Nuyen sees considerable similarity between the structure of Confucian role ethics and certain Western ethical theories that he labels “social ethics”—for the essay’s concluding section.

Although Ames and Rosemont do not emphasize it, we can read this interpretation as a kind of meta-ethical argument, insofar as it grounds a distinctive form of ethics. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

It also bears noting that in a fascinating series of blog posts, William Haines has argued that “in most respects, Aristotle accepted Confucian role ethics as Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont describe [it]” (Haines 2012 ).

Of course there are argument about how measurable pleasure is, and thus how operationizable “Maximize pleasure!” might be, but I set those concerns aside here. Elsewhere I have noted an important difference between virtuous perceptions of Coherence in Neo-Confucian virtue ethics and virtuous reactions within Francis Hutcheson’s sentimentalist virtue ethics. Since Hutcheson believed that virtue leads one to judge “that action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers” (Hutcheson 2006 : 74), subsequent thinkers were able to set aside the perceptual aspect of his theory and attempt directly to calculate the greatest happiness. “Be efficacious” is like “Follow Coherence” in not being amenable to such re-casting as an independent principle. See Angle ( 2009 : 58–59).

In A. T. Nuyen’s version of role ethics (see footnote 44), the distinction between a good and bad occupier of a role is determined by how well a given individual fulfills the obligations associated with the given role. He writes that “to be in a role is to be under a set of obligations” (Nuyen 2007 : 317). These obligations are determined by social expectations, which for key roles are “encoded in the rites, li .” As Nuyen recognizes, this approach raises serious concerns about relativism, but he seeks to deflate these by endorsing a “soft relativism” according to which both societal morality (in this case, the Confucian combination of virtues and “strict moral rules”) and the social context on which it is based (primarily, the li or rituals) are able to “evolve together in a kind of Rawlsian ‘reflective equilibrium’” (Nuyen 2007 : 328).

See chapter “Contemporary Confucian Political Thought”—Ed.

Philosopher L ee Shui Chuen (L i Ruiquan 李瑞全) is a partial exception to these generalizations. Lee is among the earliest Confucian-influenced scholars to address topics in applied ethics, for example publishing an essay on informed consent in 1987 (Lee 1987 ), and he published a Chinese-language book titled Confucian Bioethics in 1999 (Lee 1999 ). Lee received his graduate education at the Chinese University Of Hong Kong but has taught primarily in Taiwan.

Scholars rarely explicitly invoke the classificatory categories I introduced in Sect. 1 (that is, deontology, virtue ethics, and role ethics), so I will not be discussing these categories here. I do note, though, that some theorists of Confucian applied ethics do root their theories in specific interpretations of Confucian ethics—as L ee Shui Chuen relies on a largely deontological reading, for example. I thank an anonymous reviewer for calling my attention to this.

Olberding ( 2015 : 236), citing Ivanhoe ( 2010 : 40).

Engelhardt ( 2010 : 6).

An anonymous reviewer raises an important question: can we identify what counts as a Confucian way of life (or “real” Confucians) independent from our philosophical views about what Confucianism is? Even if someone announces that he or she is “committed to the Confucian tradition,” someone else may dispute whether the first individual’s commitments are genuinely “Confucian.” Still, I believe that we can grant that what counts as Confucianism in the modern world is contested, and still acknowledge that there is knowledge to be gained through living a putatively Confucian life—knowledge, that is, which is not available simply through reading the texts of ancient Confucians.

Chen ( 1999 : 216, 228–230).

It is quite possible that, as has been suggested to me by an anonymous reviewer, sufficient novelty will lead to the collapse of the “classifying” project discussed elsewhere in this chapter. As he or she says, the classifying project “always presupposes a given framework which we can put Confucianism into, but these existing frameworks might be facing novel challenges themselves,” and thus also be disrupted.

See footnote 30 for some references.

To-date, it has to be said that there has been more attention on the part of Chinese-trained Confucian philosophers to English-language works (most commonly, those that have been translated into Chinese) than attention by Western-trained ethicists to works like Huang’s.

Not all Confucian theorists limit themselves in this way; L ee Shui Chuen, writing in the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy , explicitly argues that “family-based consent,” which he derives from Confucianism, “is the only morally acceptable method of medical decision-making” (Lee 2015 : 419).

In general, Ames and Rosemont do not write about ways that they have learned from, much less hope to contribute to, Aristotelian theory. The following sentence is a partial exception: “In fact, it is Aristotle’s sustained and often unsuccessful struggle to balance and coordinate the conflicting demands of partiality and impartiality, of first philosophy and particular context, that serves as an object lesson and shows a way forward for us” (Ames and Rosemont Jr 2011 : 34, emphasis added). The primary idea here seems to be that Aristotle is a negative example, showing why his approach is to be avoided.

For some initial suggestions about how care ethics and Confucian ethics might be able to learn from one another, see the references cited in footnote 3. In (Tan 2004), Sor-hoon Tan masterfully shows ways in which Confucian and Deweyan political theories can inform and enhance one another; with this as a point of departure, it is plausible to think that similar results might emerge from a dialogue in the area of morality. A. T. Nuyen argues that his version of role ethics (see footnotes 44 and 49) bears considerable similarity to a trend in Western ethical thinking that he labels “social ethics,” including such figures as Charles Taylor, Dorothy Emmet, P. F. Strawson, Marion Smiley, and Larry May. I agree that there are various overlaps between Nuyen’s theory and those of these Western figures, although his discussion is too brief to be more than suggestive. For references, see Nuyen ( 2007 : 322–325).

On the role of emotion for many of the philosophers sympathetic to virtue ethics, see (Nussbaum 1999 ). Rosemont and Ames note in passing that Lawrence Blum has argued for a stronger role for communities and relations in the production and practice of moral virtues (Rosemont Jr. and Ames 2009 : 37n24).

For a related caution, see Hutton ( 2015 ).

My thanks to David Elstein, Sean Walsh, and an anonymous reviewer for providing very helpful feedback on an earlier draft of the chapter.

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Van Norden, Bryan W. 2007. Virtue ethics and consequentialism in early Chinese philosophy . New York: Cambridge University Press. (Detailed interpretation of the Analects , Mengzi , and Mozi , using a general virtue-ethical framework to understand the first two of these texts.)

———. 2009. Response to Angle and Slote. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 8:305–309. (Shows ways in which Mengzi and Hume are importantly disanalogous.)

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Walsh, Sean Patrick. 2013. Varieties of moral luck in ethical and political philosophy for Confucius and Aristotle. In Virtue ethics and confucianism , eds. Stephen C. Angle, and Michael Slote. New York: Routledge. (Argues that moral luck is a significant factor in Kongzi’s thinking.)

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Angle, S.C. (2021). Contemporary Confucianism and Ethical Theory. In: Elstein, D. (eds) Dao Companion to Contemporary Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56475-9_19

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Virtue Ethics and Confucianism

Stephen C. Angle and Michael Slote (eds.),  Virtue Ethics and Confucianism , Routledge, 2013, 271pp., $125.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780415815482.

Reviewed by Hagop Sarkissian, The City University of New York, Baruch College

This volume is the product of a 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar "Traditions Into Dialogue: Confucianism and Contemporary Virtue Ethics", jointly organized by the editors. The primary emphasis of that seminar was to focus on "the development of Aristotelian and Humean virtue-ethical theorizing in relation to Confucian philosophy," with considerable time devoted to reading classics of Confucian and Neo-Confucian ethics (2). The collected papers represent the fruits of this seminar and related events, with contributions from well-established scholars of Confucianism as well as relative newcomers. There are 18 papers grouped under four headings, along with an introductory essay. The volume marks a substantial contribution to the virtue theoretical approach to Confucianism; the range of topics is impressive, as are the range of thinkers discussed. In what follows, I will attempt to provide a brief summary of each contribution, though with so much material I can only touch upon the major points and critical remarks will be necessarily brief. At the end I will have a few more general remarks concerning the nature of the volume and how it fits into current scholarship.

The six chapters of Part I ("Debating the Scope and Applicability of 'Virtue' and 'Virtue Ethics'") divide roughly in half, with three papers critiquing virtue ethics and virtue ethical readings of Confucianism, and three endorsing them. Chen Lai's falls in the former category. He discusses a number of themes in early Confucian thought, such as understanding ritual, the ideal of the gentleman, and, most extensively, love of learning. The chapter jumps from theme to theme, and Chen makes a number of interesting observations -- for example, that the earliest discussions of virtue tend to talk about virtuous conduct as opposed to virtuous character, and thus do not reflect a preoccupation with psychology. Nevertheless, the chapter lacks cohesion, and some of the more provocative points are insufficiently developed. For example, Chen argues that the concept of rites in early Confucianism is similar in spirit to the notion of justice in pre-Aristotelian Greek thought (19), but the idea gets only passing treatment. He also criticizes Alasdair MacIntyre's claim that early Confucians found ritual training requisite to virtue. However, most specialists will find MacIntyre's claim not only true but trivially so. (Chen makes the claim while discussing the Analects , which clearly embraces the necessity of ritual training.) While Chen claims, plausibly, that the meaning of the rites transcends formal ritual, this is entirely consistent with formal ritual being indispensable in becoming virtuous.

Lee Ming-huei's "Confucianism, Kant, and Virtue Ethics" continues the critical perspective, and claims that discussions of virtue in Confucianism have ignored two background intellectual trends, the most important of which consists of Kantian readings of Confucianism spearheaded by Mou Zongsan (popular among contemporary Chinese commentators but largely ignored by Western interpreters). Lee thinks the Kantian reading is correct, and that Confucianism is best considered a form of deontological ethics (48). Indeed, Lee goes further, claiming that "because the distinction between teleological [consequentialist] ethics and deontological ethics is exhaustive and mutually exclusive, logically it is not possible that there exists a third type of ethics" (51), and that virtue ethics "is so ambiguous a concept, the strategy to interpret Confucianism with it can only make things go from bad to worse" (52). Amidst the enthusiasm in this volume for both virtue ethics and Confucianism as virtue ethics such claims are refreshing, but neither is sufficiently developed and one is instead pointed to previous work by Lee to find the missing arguments.

In the third critical piece, Wong Wai-ying claims that "Confucian ethics should not be limited by (certain types of) 'virtue ethics,' thereby depriving it of its richer connotation" (74). A virtue ethics approach might draw attention to the moral dimension of Confucianism to the exclusion of other prominent yet non-moral aspects: "if the ideal personality is merely moral oriented, then flourishing life understood in terms of the ideal person would have to be very narrow" (76). This is both true and important, but one might be puzzled at some of Wong's choices of non-moral traits (e.g., wisdom, bravery). Also, Wong singles out Bryan Van Norden's work in Confucianism for criticism. Yet while some might be guilty of reducing a Confucian life to one of moral purity, Van Norden is not one of them (as we shall see). Wong's argument would have been more persuasive had she identified better targets.

In contrast to these, Philip Ivanhoe's "Virtue Ethics and the Chinese Confucian Tradition" is clearly in favor of virtue ethical readings, and discusses the Confucian philosophers Mengzi (Mencius) and Wang Yangming by drawing a distinction between two types of virtue ethics: virtue ethics of flourishing (VEF), and virtue ethics of sentiments (VES). The former offers a detailed account of the content, structure, and shape of human nature, along with an ideal model of its best expression, whereas the latter focuses on certain aspects of human psychology (emotional resources), and connects virtues to agreeable social interactions. While finding neither Mengzi nor Wang a perfect fit in either camp, Ivanhoe nonetheless describes in detail how each can be read as advocating VEF and even broadening our understanding of what it might be -- for example, by linking individual virtues to the good of larger social units (Mengzi) and emphasizing that moral education is most effective when engaged with one's own actual life events (Wang).

Van Norden asks, "Can Confucianism contribute something of value to contemporary virtue ethics, or is it of purely historical interest?" (57). Van Norden claims it can by addressing three limitations of some prominent accounts of human flourishing in the West (though they seem like three variations on a theme): a) we today recognize a wider variety of flourishing lives than thinkers like Aristotle and Aquinas did; b) it seems strange to think they could have already exhausted the list of plausible flourishing lives; and c) their accounts tend to be monistic (i.e., one particular way of life -- for example, theoretical contemplation -- is taken to be the best or most flourishing). What follows is a sketch of flourishing lives drawn from classical Confucian and Daoist sources that outstrip Western models: the life of skillful activity (as exemplified in parts of the Daoist Zhuangzi ), the life of artistic performance and creation, the life of artistic appreciation, and the life of loving intimate relationships. (A final category -- the life of free self-creation -- is offered as something neither Aristotelians nor Confucians entertain.)

Finally, invoking the Wittgensteinian notion of 'family resemblance', Liu Liangjian suggests that there are broad similarities across Western and Confucian conceptions of the virtues. However, the bulk of the chapter focuses on Peter Singer's critique of Aristotelian virtue ethics as resting on a faulty teleology. (The critique itself is familiar and not limited to Singer.) According to this critique, no examination of human nature can reveal a characteristic end or function, because we no longer believe (as Aristotle did) in a purposeful universe. Thus, talk of human 'ends' or 'purposes' lacks credibility. Liu argues that Confucians conceived of human nature as containing certain "wants" and "needs", which closes the gap between how human nature is and how it ought to be, and can thus resolve Singer's challenge. But while Liu is right in claiming that Confucian self-cultivation works with human tendencies -- shaping and pruning them according to a curriculum meant to cultivate excellence -- this hardly shows that human nature itself has an end or provides us with the oughts to shape it.

Part II, "Happiness, Luck, and Ultimate Goals", begins with "The Impossibility of Perfection", where Michael Slote argues for just that, presenting a potential problem for Confucianism (which seems committed to the possibility of perfection). For example, Slote argues that adventurousness is incompatible with prudence, for "if one is really adventurous, one is lacking in prudence: that is, there is something about one that is less than fully or perfectly admirable" and vice versa (85). Slote makes similar remarks about being tactful and being frank, and pursuing a career and directly caring for one's family -- the pursuit of one entails the demotion of the other. But couldn't a person of immense talent or skill manage to, say, have a fulfilling career while still having time for family? Slote believes something would be missing from a life where accomplishment comes effortlessly, and this seems right. Another issue lies in the lurking relativism in his argument. Slote wants to resist this implication, but it's not clear how he can, and others have marshaled 'impossibility of perfection' type arguments in favor of relativism (e.g., Wong 2006).

The remaining papers in this section all address the concept of flourishing in some form or other. For example, Matthew D. Walker defends the philosophical cogency of structured inclusivism about flourishing (i.e., that the intrinsic goods constituting a flourishing life are related to one another as parts to a whole) by drawing on the writings of Mengzi (Mencius). Mengzi can be said to have a conception of human nature as an organized composite, made up of parts that relate to one another in a hierarchical structure. Flourishing consists in developing these parts. A central feature of Walker's argument hinges on a passage in Mengzi 6A14, where he finds a 'principle of sacrifice': "where X and Y are both goods, if one would sacrifice X instead of Y in case of conflict, then X is subordinate to Y ", and "one has reason to grant priority to Y over X " (98). Mengzi thus maps the hierarchical aspects of flourishing onto hierarchical aspects of human nature, offering a part-whole picture of flourishing that some (such as Richard Kraut) have claimed implausible. How such a view might be appropriated and modified to fit contemporary views of human nature is an interesting question arising from this chapter.

Benjamin Huff identifies two fundamental pressures any virtue ethicist must balance -- the best possible way to live on the one hand, and an achievable way to live on the other. He compares Aristotle and the Neo-Confucian Wang Yangming on this score, and aims to show how the latter might supplement the former. Huff argues that the greatest good (for any virtue theorist) is best conceived as being self-sufficient, singular, impossible to improve or increase, and (importantly) achievable in degrees. Wang's view fits the pattern that Huff is after: for Wang, the highest good is sagehood, the result of learning and cultivation. The process is akin to purifying gold. Those attaining purity -- the sages -- are distinguished only by their subsequent achievements, which are the fruits of circumstances as opposed to any innate difference. Thus there are qualitative (purity) and quantitative (achievement) dimensions to Wang's target life. And since we all come to the world with a sage-like mind, identical with the li -- the ordering principle of the cosmos -- we can all be sages. This notion itself might seem incredible to us. However, Huff argues that the general idea of manifestation of inner character is something we can all embrace.

Finally, Sean Drysdale Walsh discusses the role of luck (forces and situations beyond one's control) in the moral and political philosophies of Aristotle and Confucius. The focus of the earlier parts of the chapter are in acting well despite lacking virtue, and on the role of government in mitigating luck by fostering stable environments in which the masses (or hoi polloi ) might develop virtuous habits and character. For both of these thinkers, developing virtue requires luck -- for example, in having the right environment and mentors under whom to cultivate character and habit. Walsh then moves on to discuss two cases of luck in exercising virtues -- Aristotle's example of happiness on the torture rack, and Confucius's brilliant but impoverished student Yan Hui. For the latter, Walsh goes against the trend of using it to show that, for Confucius, flourishing is immune from luck. Instead, Walsh argues that Yan Hui shows us precisely the importance of having just enough luck.

Part III, "Practicality, Justification, and Action Guidance", begins with two papers devoted to a standard objection to virtue ethics as a normative rival to utilitarianism and deontology -- namely, that it is unable to provide solutions to practical problems. Yu Jiyuan seeks to shift the terms of the debate by exploring the notion of practicality from the perspective of the ancient philosophers themselves. Yu argues persuasively that the ancients did not think of ethics' efficacy in terms of practicality (i.e., telling us what to do or providing a set of rules to apply in solving problems). Rather, he draws from Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius, and Mencius to present the ancient perspective as one in which ethics is "a practical science [that] aims at improving people's lives. . . . It 'transforms' people, rather than just 'informs' them". The contemporary charge of impracticality is therefore "anachronistic and misguided" (129). For academic philosophers today ethics is professional, for the ancients it was personal (138).

Lo Ping-cheung addresses the same criticism by drawing upon a set of Chinese military treatises (the Seven Military Classics ), which he claims are continuous with Confucian virtue texts and can be seen as works of applied virtue ethics. These treatises link practical strategies of warfare to virtuous traits of commanders, both ad bellum and in bello . Virtues can guide conduct, and the virtues (and vices) of the enemy can suggest strategic opportunities for exploitation. Parts of the presentation here could be improved by carefully distinguishing trait from context, and making clear the connection between the two; virtues have predictive value in these texts because of the particular context in which they are discussed -- namely, military strategy and tactics. In the absence of a specified context the virtues themselves would seem to have less predictive value. Part of the elusive nature of virtue guidance at a general level, then, might be the absence of situation specification.

In "Rationality and Virtue in the Mencius ", Yang Xiao focuses on the former concept, arguing that Mencius gives rational justifications for his normative injunctions to rulers to practice virtuous or benevolent politics. His discussion centers on a much discussed passage in the Mencius (1A7), in which Mencius tries to persuade King Xuan that he has the capacity to care for his people and practice virtuous government. The rational argument (as Yang reconstructs it) is as follows: The ruler has a desire (or end) to become a powerful, matchless ruler (the "teleology premise"). Practicing virtuous government would lead to the realization of this end (the "pattern premise"). Thus, refusing to practice virtuous government is irrational (in the sense of frustrating his own ends). While Mencius does not invoke the notion of irrationality in this discussion, he does analogize rejecting such reasoning to instances of paradigmatically irrational behavior (such as climbing a tree to find a fish). One implication of Yang's discussion is that were rulers to reject Mencius's normative claims they wouldn't simply be uncaring but, on Mencius's view, also irrational.

Finally, while some have argued that thinkers such as Confucius can be classified as moral particularists (e.g., Van Norden 2007), Huang Yong extends this idea to the neo-Confucian Cheng brothers, Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi. Huang argues that they do not understand the Confucian notion of 'love with distinctions' (i.e., differing concern and care based on others' relationship to oneself) as one general thing -- love -- varying only by intensity, but rather as particular instances of loving appropriate to one relationship and not any other. In other words, just as there are no general moral principles that are then applied to particular situations, "there is no one true, genuine, abstract, and universal love in addition to all these particular forms of love" (165). Additionally, Huang argues that the Cheng brothers have a better way of explaining the links between morality from case to case than do particularists such as Jonathan Dancy; the latter must insist that we have a 'contentless ability' to discern particular moral features across situations, whereas the Cheng brothers can appeal to an inborn capacity that links such instances together -- namely, the foundation of love in human nature.

The final section, Part IV, "Moral Psychology and Particular Virtues", contains essays focusing on particular virtues and aspects of moral psychology. Sara Rushing, for example, discusses the theme of humility in the Analects , both to show its similarities with Western accounts as well as how it might supplement them. Rushing distinguishes humility from cognate notions such as lowly origins, self-effacement, and deference, and she argues that humility in the Analects reveals a disposition of strength. She develops the notion through discussing three other sub-themes in the Analects : learning and reflection, realistic self-assessment, and the limits of human efficaciousness. Rushing concludes that the resulting notion of Confucian humility "suggests a particular kind of political engagement that is principled but also pragmatic" (180).

Stephen C. Angle follows with "Is Conscientiousness a Virtue? Confucian Answers". His main thesis responds in the negative: conscientiousness, which he characterizes as "consciously ensuring that one does one's duty" (182), is not a virtue in the classical period. Virtues are "robust dispositions that spontaneously can guide the style and substance of our reactions to our environment" (190); conscientiousness, by contrast, is a capacity exercised by learners and those on the path to virtue, which allows them to conform to moral demands when they are not inclined to. Angle works through numerous textual passages from the Analects , the Mencius , and the Xunzi in developing his view, and argues persuasively that, in spite of significant differences, these early texts have a coherent and cohesive account of this capacity.

Kai Marchal explicates the "sense of justice" in the writings of the Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi. By "sense of justice", Marchal means "the disposition of moral actors to care for the good of others and be concerned about the equal distribution of goods in the community" (192). Marchal argues that Zhu Xi both advocated for concrete policies to shift the burdens and benefits of economic activity in his time toward greater equality, and also characterized certain Confucian virtues in ways amenable to justice talk. The policies Marshal mentions do seem concerned with distributive justice (land redistribution, the revival of the well-field system of land sharing, reduction of tax burdens). As for justice-friendly virtues, Marchal does a commendable job marshaling aspects of Zhu's writings toward an account of justice. While some are equivocal, such as Zhu's interpretation of "humaneness" as "caring for people and fostering the well-being of sentient beings" (195), others are more convincing, such as Zhu's interpretation of humane government as encompassing the dictum to "let each receive his or her allotment" (198).

The book ends with a pair of essays discussing Confucianism in the context of care or empathy ethics. Andrew Terjesen raises several issues surrounding the use of "sympathetic understanding" or simply "empathy" as a translation for the virtue of shu in the Analects . However, instead of seeking absolute conceptual clarity by narrowing down one meaning of "empathy", Terjesen explores its various meanings in order to call attention to the range of ways that it may be understood. He distinguishes four prevalent usages of the term across philosophy and psychology (cognitive empathy, affective empathy, conative empathy, and simulative empathy) and goes on to show how each of these may be attributed to various parts of the Analects (indeed, how each may be attributed to one and the same passage). He concludes that the success of interpreting Confucianism as an empathy-based ethics will hinge on making clear these distinctions and the advantages and disadvantages attached to each.

In the final chapter, Marion Hourdequin focuses on two crucial questions regarding the ethics of care: whether empathy can ground a moral theory by itself, and what the proper scope and focus of empathic care might be. With regard to the second question, Hourdequin points out that "One can't simply advise that we 'emphatically care,' and leave it at that, as if the imperative were self-interpreting" (209). Slote attempts to address the scope question by appealing to a "normal, fully developed human empathy", yet Hourdequin finds it lacking. She notes that a fully developed empathy seems at work in King Xuan in Mencius 1A7, yet it misfires; it is directed at the sacrificial ox and not his people. King Xuan thus requires more than empathy. This case "illustrates the important general point that empathy is not self-directing and must be supplemented through the provision of additional norms, values, and practices that guide it" (210) . The li play this role in classical Confucian thought (though, as Hourdequin points out, Mencius seems to assume this rather than explicitly state it). The chapter is well-argued and should be of interest to anyone advocating an ethics of care, Confucian or not.

As early as 1990, Lee Yearley published a monograph comparing Mencius's and Aquinas's conceptions of virtue, among the first extended treatments of Confucianism as a virtue ethic (Yearley 1990). Yet as recently as 2010, Justin Tiwald argued that virtue ethical approaches to Confucianism, while having grown in number and quality over the last decade, remain in their infancy, with numerous fruitful avenues yet to be pursued (Tiwald 2010). The current volume provides evidence for that assessment -- showing new avenues for exploration and pushing the field forward. All told, the papers approach the central topic of virtue ethics and Confucianism from diverse angles. Some address problematic issues in virtue ethics by using Confucian resources (e.g., Liu, Rushing), whereas others aim to establish the relevance of Confucianism to contemporary virtue ethics more generally (e.g., Van Norden). Some provide detailed virtue theoretical readings of Confucianism (e.g., Ivanhoe) while others focus on particular interpretive topics (e.g., Walsh, Angle). And, as noted, the volume contains some papers arguing against the whole enterprise (e.g., Chen, Lee, Wong), even while some prominent contemporary critics are left out (e.g., Ames and Rosemont 2011). The distribution of topics promises to make the volume of interest to philosophers working in virtue ethics regardless of their particular commitments or perspectives.

In the Introduction, the editors note the comparatively favorable circumstances that exist today for philosophers seeking to engage with the Confucian tradition. First, a number of scholars of that tradition have spent the last several decades working in mainstream philosophy departments, training students in interpretive methods that are faithful to the texts while also being accessible to contemporary analytic philosophers. Second (and largely as a consequence of the first point), there has been a proliferation of philosophically informed translations of many of the foundational texts in both classical and Neo-Confucian writings. Philosophers today are thus well positioned to engage with the tradition. The bar of entry is not as high as it once was. And if we are to judge the contributions by seminar participants whose prior record of publication in Confucian philosophy was minimal or non-existent (e.g., Walker, Huff, Walsh, Rushing, Terjesen, Hourdequin) then there can be no doubt that the seminar was a success, and that Confucianism can easily become a resource for future work in virtue ethics. The volume should therefore be an important part of the conversation moving forward.

Tiwald, Justin. 2010. "Confucianism and virtue ethics: still a fledgling in Chinese and comparative philosophy." Comparative Philosophy 1.2: 66-63.

Van Norden, Bryan. 2007. Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wong, David B. 2006. Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism . New York: Oxford University Press.

Yearley, Lee H. 1990. Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage. Albany: SUNY Press.

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36 Confucius and Contemporary Ethics

Tim Connolly is Professor of the Modern Languages, Philosophy, and Religion Department at East Stroudsburg University (East Stroudsburg, PA, USA). His books include Doing Philosophy Comparatively (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Foundations of Confucian Ethics: Virtues, Roles, and Exemplars (Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming).

• Published: 26 January 2023
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Much of the recent work on early Confucian ethics has attempted to read thinkers like Confucius 孔子(551–479 BCE) and Mencius 孟子 ( c .372–289 BCE) in terms of contemporary ethical theory. While many scholars have argued that Confucianism is best understood as a virtue ethics, others favor an approach that looks at the tradition as a distinctive “role ethics.” Still others maintain that Confucianism has important affinities with care ethics, attempting to build bridge between the Chinese Confucian tradition and contemporary feminism. While these approaches have often been opposed to one another, this essay looks at points of convergence between the three interpretations, arguing that one might see them as a “family of views” that can help scholars understand what is distinctive about the early Confucian tradition.

Many recent interpreters of early Confucianism have relied on the language of contemporary ethics to make sense of texts such as the Analects and Mencius . Reading such works with an ethical theory in hand allows us to understand how the different parts of the text fit together. Such a project also helps us see how ethical theories originating in the West compare with views found within a dominant tradition in East Asian philosophy. Since early Confucian thinkers develop ideas that, while showing some overlap with contemporary notions, often differ substantially in their method and content, such an approach can help us develop the theories in question.

At the same time, a number of problems have surfaced with this approach. The abstract and systematic approach of contemporary ethics may seem a mismatch for the Confucian tradition, with its goals of personal and societal transformation. 1 The approach can also lead to interpretive one-sidedness, where we understand Confucianism according to dominant Western categories without appreciating what makes it unique. 2 Additionally, because there has been a lack of consensus about which ethical theory is the best for early Confucian views, critics have argued that the entire project of “Confucian ethics” is a dead end. 3

In this essay, I want to discuss a family of approaches to early Confucianism—virtue ethics, care ethics, and role ethics—and some shared conclusions that they have reached. While each approach has different goals and methods, and they have often been opposed to one another, they nonetheless converge on a set of main ideas about what makes Confucian ethics distinctive. By looking at the three approaches alongside one another, we gain a more precise understanding of the texts in question.

Virtue, Care, and Role Ethics as Theories

The virtue, care, and role ethical approaches to early Confucianism all cast themselves as “outsider” views that stand in contrast to mainstream Western ethical theory. Care ethical interpreters attempt to build connections between the Confucian tradition and the feminist ethical tradition. As one advocate of the care view notes, “the struggle of feminist theories in comparison with established canons is reflective of the struggle of Asian and comparative philosophy in finding ways to fit into the mainstream philosophical (Western) discourse.” 4 Proponents of the role view—most notably Roger Ames, in a series of collaborative works written with David L. Hall and Henry Rosemont, Jr.—think Confucian philosophy makes claims about the significance of familial relationships that are distinctive enough that they cannot be understood in terms of the dominant Western ethical approaches of utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Instead, they bring Confucian ethics into dialogue with non-mainstream traditions such as pragmatism and process philosophy. Proponents of the virtue view in turn point out that virtue ethics is also a minority tradition within contemporary Western philosophy, one which has only recently experienced a period of revival. Stephen Angle, for instance, contends that we should see virtue ethics “not as the imposition of hegemonic Western categories, but rather as exploring an interpretation based on a minority—even ‘esoteric’—position within Western thought.” 5

Proponents of the virtue, care, and role views use different sets of concepts to make sense of early Confucian texts. For the virtue view, the most common approach has been to look at the early Confucians in comparison to Aristotelian forms of virtue ethics. On this approach, the early Confucians teach a set of character traits or virtues, such as benevolence ( ren 仁), righteousness ( yi 義), ritual propriety ( li 禮), and wisdom ( zhi 知). As Mencius argues, while every human has the “roots” or “sprouts” ( duan 端) of these virtues already present in us, we need to develop them in order to lead flourishing lives (2A6). Sages such as Yao 堯 (c. 24th–23rd centuries BCE), Shun 舜 (c. 23rd–22nd centuries BCE), and Confucius provide different models of the ideal standard for all human beings.

Advocates of the role view argue that Aristotelian and other forms of virtue ethics are too focused on the individual to make sense of Confucian ethics. Rosemont, Jr., argues that at the center of Confucian ethics is the notion of the “role-bearing person,” who is understood as the sum total of their lived roles such as sibling, parent, child, teacher, or student. 6 Flourishing is achieved not through the cultivation of inner character traits, but rather through achieving excellence in our relationships with others. Proponents of Confucian Role Ethics contend that the role-bearing person is an important corrective to the Western model of self, which can help provide solutions to many social problems that have resulted from a narrow individualism.

Those who support a care ethical interpretation also focus on the notion of caring relationships that they think is at the center of early Confucian thinking. Chenyang Li argues for a connection between care ethics and the Confucian ideal of ren , writing that both sides are in agreement that “a good government as well as a good person is one that cares, and promotes care, for the people.” 7 While Confucianism in its historical manifestation has often been associated with oppression of women, Li contends that the shared focus on caring means Confucianism has more in common with contemporary feminist ethics than it does with Greek virtue ethics.

As mentioned in the introduction, one criticism of the use of contemporary ethical theory to understand early Confucian texts is that the language of ethical theory is too abstract and academic to make sense of thinkers like Confucius and Mencius. The virtue, care, and role views, however, show great concern for the practical and social orientation of the Confucian tradition, using different points of comparison to capture this orientation. In putting forth their understanding of a “Confucian Role Ethics” that is rooted in familial relationships, Ames and Rosemont, Jr., say that they are not offering a theory at all, but rather a “vision of human flourishing.” Ames criticizes the emphasis on “abstract, unconditioned knowledge, and its promise of certainty” that came to dominate the Western tradition, drawing on American pragmatists such as John Dewey in order to appreciate Confucian philosophy. 8 Jiyuan Yu, who uses Aristotelian ethics as a point of reference for Confucian virtue, highlights the practical side of ancient ethics that is missing from modern philosophy: “Ancient philosophers are motivated to do ethics because they take it as a way of living. It is deeply personal rather than professional.” 9 Finally, the care ethical approach attempts not just to understand the concept of care at work in early Confucianism, but to mediate an encounter between contemporary feminism and global Confucianism.

A number of influential scholars, including the 20th-century New Confucian thinker Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909–1995), have used Kant as an interpretive device to understand the early Confucian tradition. 10 A shared feature of the care, virtue, and role interpretations is that they all invoke a special point of contrast with Kantian ethics, rejecting first and foremost the idea that Confucian ethics is focused on universal principles. Virtue ethical interpreters such as Yu contrast the Confucian focus on character and virtue with modern moral theories that focus on moral rules. 11 Li writes that “rules are not an essential feature of Confucian morality” and refers to ren and care as “ethics without general principles.” 12 Ames and Rosemont, Jr., also emphasize the particularist nature of Confucian role ethics: “Confucians do not seek the universal, but concentrate on the particular; they do not see abstract autonomous individuals, but rather concrete persons standing in a multiplicity of role relations with one another. …” 13 In the next two sections, we will consider in more detail the differences between these three views, on the one hand, and Kantian ethics, on the other.

Centrality of Relationships

Virtue, care, and role ethical interpreters all highlight the significance of relationships in the Confucian tradition. All three approaches converge on a model of flourishing based on the family, seeing this focus as distinctive to the early Confucians. Within this broad similarity, however, an important difference is that where care ethics and role ethics see these familial and social relationships as ontologically and ethically basic for thinkers like Confucius and Mencius, virtue ethical interpreters focus on the individual character traits that contribute to flourishing lives and communities.

The three interpretations arrive at the significance of family from different directions. An important influence on the early development of care ethics was Kohlberg’s model of moral development, in which the highest level of morality is characterized by the commitment to universal moral principles that transcend personal interest and social convention. Carol Gilligan argued that this model relies on a masculine conception of moral development, by which the distinctively feminine ethical voice is considered to be deficient. In contrast to the impartial and disinterested concept of morality found in Kohlberg, Gilligan writes that women are in fact driven by “an injunction to care, a responsibility to discern and alleviate the ‘real and recognizable trouble’ of this world.” 14 Care is expressed through particular relationships that contribute to “sustaining the web of connection” that includes everyone. 15 Care ethics, as with role ethics, takes these relationships as fundamental. As Nel Noddings puts it, “Perhaps the greatest contribution of care theory as it is developed here is its emphasis on the caring relation. Relations, not individuals, are ontologically basic. …” 16

In a seminal essay on care ethics and Confucian thought, Chenyang Li notes that whereas care ethics has aligned itself with feminism, Confucianism in its practice has been patriarchal. Yet both early Confucianism and care ethics, Li thinks, will reject the language of individual rights in favor of a view of society as the family writ large. The Confucians think of filial piety ( xiao 孝) and fraternal deference ( ti 弟) as the root of ren ( Analects 1.2), recommending a practice of care for others that begins with one’s parents and other family members, and then extends outward to other members of one’s society. For this reason, the early Confucians, like contemporary care ethicists, will challenge the notion of a separation between the public and private realms, seeing care as a value not just for the household but for society as well. 17

The role view also sees the family as the basis of Confucian ethics. The Western focus on impartiality, according to Roger Ames, contrasts with “the Confucian worldview in which family is the governing metaphor, and in which in fact all relationships are familial.” 18 Ames argues that the metaphysical presuppositions informing this worldview contrast with those at the basis of the Western philosophical tradition. Chinese thinkers inhabit a universe that is characterized by constant change, wherein ethical meaning arises from the ability to navigate the ever-shifting field of relationships with the things around us. As with care ethics, the role ethical interpretation sees the Confucians as developing a view of morality that begins from our relationships with our immediate family members and radiates outward.

Rosemont, Jr., contrasts the Confucian “role-bearing person” with the Western Enlightenment model of an autonomous self that is the bearer of rights. Since family is the place where we develop morally, an ethical vocabulary that centers on being a good daughter or good father or good brother is more meaningful than one based on abstract principles. Role ethical interpreters attempt to reconstruct the cluster of concepts, centered on filial piety, that makes Confucian ethics distinct from Western ethical theory. In dealing with difficult moral dilemmas, Ames and Rosemont, Jr., emphasize that the solutions to these dilemmas must be found from within familial relationships.

Whereas familial relationships are the key constituents of human flourishing for role ethics and care ethics, virtue ethical interpreters focus on the individual qualities of character that help us to play our familial and social roles. Rather than beginning from the idea that relationships are ontologically basic, the virtue view begins from a conception of human nature and its proper development that is found in Mencius. By developing our roots with the right nurturing and environment into full-fledged virtue, individuals can lead flourishing lives. It is these virtues that allow us to maintain good relationships with family and the community at large. The early Confucians are committed to a “minimally substantial” self that is the bearer of character traits and the performer of various social roles. 19

While virtues are the fundamental component of early Confucian flourishing, family plays a central role in the development of the virtues. While Aristotle’s account of moral development focuses on friendship between equals, Confucius emphasizes the hierarchical relationship between father and son. 20 Virtue interpreters also see the regard for the inherent value of familial life in the Confucian tradition as another factor that distinguishes it from the ancient Greek virtue ethical tradition. 21 Finally, like care and role ethical interpreters, proponents of virtue ethics also see the family as central to the early Confucian account of human flourishing. As Philip J. Ivanhoe, one of the main defenders of the virtue view, writes, “At the heart of Kongzi’s conception of the proper life for human beings … is a model of a harmonious and happy family, one whose different members each contribute to the welfare and flourishing of the whole. …” 22

Proponents of care ethics, role ethics, and virtue ethics all contend that family has been a neglected topic in contemporary moral philosophy. When we use these ethical theories as ways of understanding early Confucianism, we see this focus on the family as a distinctive feature of this tradition. Special consideration for one’s immediate family members is the root of ren , and this holds even in cases where they have done something wrong. When Confucius condones a son covering up for his father’s crime of stealing sheep ( Analects 13.18), the contrast with Kantian ethics could not be more clear. From Kant’s perspective the maxim governing such an action cannot be made into a universal law for all rational beings. 23 In emphasizing the significance of familial relationships in the Confucian tradition, the virtue, care, and role ethical approaches differ dramatically from the Kantian one.

The Emotions

Another area of convergence between the three views, illustrating an additional point of contrast with Kant, is their emphasis on the emotional component of the ethical life. Whereas Kant asserted that only actions that are done from duty have any moral worth, ethics based on virtue, care, and roles all focus on one’s emotional investment in the action. At the same time, there is disagreement among the three views about whether it is this inner component, or our external relations with others, that is fundamental to the good life.

As we saw earlier, the development of care ethics was marked by a critical reaction to morality as defined by the impartial application of universal principles. The focus on caring relationships entails a critique of Kant’s advocacy of duty over inclination. As Noddings points out, “For Kant, acts done out of love or inclination earn no moral credit. To behave morally, the Kantian moral agent must identify and act on the appropriate moral principle. Reason must displace emotion. In care ethics, however, we are not much interested in moral credit. We are, rather, interested in maintaining and enhancing caring relations. …” 24 Caring, in her view, involves “feeling with,” a special kind of receptivity that involves sharing someone else’s pain as if it were one’s own. A mother, for example, will react to her infant’s crying with the immediate desire to relieve whatever is bothering the infant. “ Something is wrong . This is the infant’s feeling, and it is ours,” Noddings writes. “We receive it and share it.” 25

Care ethical interpreters such as Li note that for the early Confucians the highest ideal of ren exists as both a general virtue and as a specific sort of affection. In the latter regard, Confucius defines ren as “loving others” ( ai ren 愛人; Analects 12.22). As affection or caring, it is a kind of “virtue of human relations.” 26 Mencius shows how this feeling is the foundation of the ethical life, noting that “All humans have hearts that are not unfeeling toward others” ( Mencius 2A6). 27 Like Noddings, the Chinese thinker uses the example of our distress at a baby’s suffering to illustrate this idea. That such concepts are found in early Confucian texts shows that the emphasis on caring is not unique to contemporary feminism.

Drawing on Aristotle, contemporary virtue ethicists have also attempted to restore emotions back into our conception of the moral life. As Rosalind Hursthouse writes, virtues are “dispositions not only to act, but to feel emotions, as re actions as well as impulses to action.” 28 To be a virtuous person is to feel the right emotions in the right circumstances and for the right reasons. Virtue ethicists criticize modern ethical theories for creating a split between reason and motivation. One advantage of Aristotle over Kant, according to Hursthouse, is that the former “allows the emotions to participate in reason. ” 29

Virtue interpreters of early Confucianism emphasize the importance of a person’s inner comportment in carrying out the appropriate rituals. For example, Confucius says that we need to not only provide nourishment for our parents, but do so with a feeling of respectfulness, in order for it to count as filial piety ( Analects 2.7). As Edward Slingerland writes, “That the inner state of the actor be harmonized with outer behavior was crucial for Confucius. Not only was there no place for Kantian duty, but any such duty-bound behavior would have been considered by a Confucian to be forced and inauthentic.” 30 Emotional investment in the performance of a ritual is the only way to distinguish the cultivated person from the “village worthy” or hypocrite.

The role view in turn places “family feeling” at the center of the Confucian vision of human flourishing. As Rosemont, Jr., writes, “This is, in my opinion, the essence of Confucian personal cultivation: cultivating our feelings and intuitions, often with the help of rituals (customs, traditions, manners).” 31 Family is the “emotional training ground” in which we learn to feel the proper role-specific emotions, with feelings such as deference, respect, and affection getting nourished within the context of roles such as child or younger sibling and then being extended outward to the world. While this view is similar to both virtue ethics and care ethics, Ames and Rosemont, Jr., contrast Confucian role ethics with Western ethical theories, which they think are overly dependent on rational calculation. In contrast with the kind of practical reasoning that is the focus of Aristotelian virtue ethics, moral choices for Confucius are ones “emerging spontaneously out of a cultivated sense of appropriateness within family and communal relations.” 32

There is further disagreement about the priority of inner and outer in the early Confucian tradition. While virtue ethical interpreter sees character traits as the key component of the view of flourishing in texts such as the Analects and Mencius , role ethics and care ethics both take relations to be fundamental. Ames and Rosemont, Jr., criticize the view of the virtues as qualities of character that exist independently of circumstance, focusing on the idea of a “virtuosity” that is expressed within the particular nexus of roles present in the given situation. For them, since the overlapping relationships present in any situation will always be unique, virtuosity is a matter of responding with sensitivity and imagination to the particular demands of these relationships. Care ethicists have also focused on this point, noting the caring is not a quality of a person’s character, but instead a relation between the carer and cared-for. Caring, as Noddings writes, “is not in itself a virtue. The genuine ethical commitment to maintain oneself as caring gives rise to the development and exercise of virtues, but these must be assessed in the context of caring situations. … We must not reify virtues and turn our caring toward them.” 33

Some scholars have suggested that early Confucian virtue includes both a character trait and a relational aspect. Shirong Luo, for instance, argues that while thinkers like Confucius and Mencius conceive of virtues as qualities of the individual person, early Confucian virtue has a social dimension that Aristotle’s arête lacks. While virtues such as ren reside within a particular individual, they can only be exercised in relation to others. 34 The cultivated person relies on virtue to transform their relationships with those around them in a way that inspires admiration and emulation in the community. Guided by the ideal of the community as the family writ large, such a person works to create a world in which “everyone within the four seas is one’s brother” ( Analects 12.5).

Often the three approaches have been on different sides of a debate about the foundational concepts of Confucian ethics. However, this debate should not lead us to overlook the consensus between the three views. Looking at the virtue, care, and role ethical accounts of early Confucianism together suggests an ethics that sees virtuous dispositions and caring relationships as the central components of a flourishing community.

Apart from the interpretation of the Confucian tradition, we should note that there is substantial overlap between care ethics, role ethics, and virtue ethics as theories. A number of philosophers have explored the overlap between care ethics and virtue ethics. Others have attempted to develop a virtue ethical theory of roles, or—less commonly—views that include both care ethics and role ethics. As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, studying Confucianism and contemporary ethics together is beneficial not only because it can help us to advance our understanding of the Confucian tradition, but also because it can lead to the development of our ethical views. The virtue, care, and role ethical approaches allow us to understand not just what is distinctive about Confucian ethics, but different areas of overlap between these three philosophical views.

1. For recent versions of this criticism, see Ryan Nichols , “Early Confucianism is a System for Social-Functional Influence and Probably Does Not Represent a Normative Ethical Theory,” in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 14 (2015): 499–520 ; and Yang Xiao , “Virtue Ethics as Political Philosophy: The Structure of Ethical Theory in Early Chinese Philosophy,” in Lorraine Besser-Jones and Michael Slote , eds., The Routledge Companion to Virtue Ethics (New York: Routledge, 2015), 471–489 .

2. For discussion, see Kwong-Loi Shun, “Studying Confucian and Comparative Ethics: Methodological Reflections,” in Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36 (2009): 455–478 ; and Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. , “Were the Early Confucians Virtuous?,” in Chris Fraser , Dan Robins , and Timothy O’Leary , eds., Ethics in Early China: An Anthology (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011) .

Nichols, “Early Confucianism.”

4.   Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee , “ The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global by Virginia Held” [Review], in Philosophy East and West 58:3 (2008): 403–407 .

5.   Stephen C. Angle , “Building Bridges to Distant Shores: Pragmatic Problems with Confucian Role Ethics,” in Jim Behuniak , ed., Appreciating the Chinese Difference: Engaging Roger T. Ames on Methods, Issues, and Roles (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018), 173 .

6.   Henry Rosemont, Jr. , “Rights-Bearing Individuals and Role-Bearing Persons,” in Mary I. Bockover , ed., Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility: Essays Dedicated to Herbert Fingarette (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1991), 71–101 .

7.   Chenyang Li , “The Confucian Concept of Jen and the Feminist Ethics of Care,” in Hypatia 9:1 (1994): 70–89 , at 75.

8.   Ames, Confucian Role Ethics (Manoa: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011), 10 .

9.   Jiyuan Yu , “The Practicality of Ancient Virtue Ethics: Greece and China,” in Stephen C. Angle and Michael Slote , eds., Virtue Ethics and Confucianism (New York: Routledge, 2013), 127–140 , at 138.

10. See Mou Zongsan , Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy and Its Implications , tr. by Julie Lee Wei , available at https://www.nineteenlects.org/ (accessed Dec. 15, 2018 ). For more discussion of the Kantian interpretation, see Stephen C. Angle , “The Analects and Moral Theory,” in Amy Olberding , ed., Dao Companion to the Analects (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2013) .

11.   Jiyuan Yu , The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue (New York: Routledge, 2007), 2 .

Li, “Confucian Concept of Jen .”

Ames and Rosemont, Jr., “Were the Early Confucians Virtuous?,” 28.

14.   Carol Gilligan , In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982/2003), 100 .

15.   Ibid. , 62.

16.   Nel Noddings , Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics & Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984/2003), xxi .

17. For a care ethical discussion of this point, see Virginia Held , The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, Global (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 21 .

  Ames, Confucian Role Ethics , 153.

19. See May Sim , Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 56ff .

20. See Tim Connolly , “Friendship and Filial Piety: Relational Ethics in Aristotle and Early Confucianism,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 39:1 (2012): 71–88 .

21.   Bryan W. Van Norden , Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 358 .

22.   Philip J. Ivanhoe , Ethics in the Confucian Tradition: The Thought of Mengzi and Wang Yangming (2nd ed.; Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), 1 .

23. On this point, see Katrin Froese , “The Art of Becoming Human: Morality in Kant and Confucius,” in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 7 (2008): 257–268 , at 265–266.

  Noddings, Caring , xvi.

25.   Ibid. , 31.

Li, “Confucian Concept of Jen ,” 74.

27. Translation is from Bryan W. Van Norden , Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2008) .

28.   Rosalind Hursthouse , On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 108 .

29.   Ibid. , 119.

30.   Edward Slingerland , “Virtue Ethics, the Analects , and the Problem of Commensurability,” Journal of Religious Ethics 29 (2001): 97–125 , at 101.

31.   Henry Rosemont , Jr., Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 113 n. 19.

32.   Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. , eds. and tr., The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press 2009), 46 .

  Noddings, Caring , 96–97.

34.   Shirong Luo , “Relation, Virtue, and Relational Virtue: Three Concepts of Caring,” Hypatia 22:3 (2007): 92–110 , at 103.

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