Abstract

Abstract Though issues concerning moral philosophy in the classic or pre-Qin period have been the central issues in the contemporary literature on pre-Qin philosophy, the issues concerning the concept of reason, the role of reason, and the relation between reason and emotion in moral psychology have not been given an extensive discussion. In Western tradition, moral psychology centers on the contrast between reason and desire/emotion, and no one disputes that the concept of reason and the contrast between reason and emotion/desire play a central role in moral psychology. However, it is not clear and controversial as well whether moral psychology in classic Chinese philosophy also employs the concept of reason and operates on the contrast between reason and emotion/desire. In this paper, the author explores the issue of whether pre-Qin moral psychology employs the concept of reason that resembles the Western concept of reason and operates on the contrast between rea­son and emotion/desire. Chad Hansen is one of a few philosophers who have given an extensive discussion of the issue concerning the concept of reason in the Chinese context. Hansen has argued that classic Chinese philosophy lacks a theory of reason , and thus a concept of reason and the contrast between reason and desire or emotion in its model of human psychology. Hansen's works emphasize the differences between the Western philosophical discourse and the classic Chinese philosophical discourse. The purpose of the author in this paper is to explore similari­ties between two discourses with respect to moral psychology. There may be significant differences between the Western and the Chinese philosophical discourse, but where we locate the differences is not dic­tated by the fact that there are differences and should not render the Chinese philosophical discourse less plausible.