For many commentators, Confucian ethics is a kind of virtue ethics. However, there is enough textual evidence to suggest that it can be interpreted as an ethics based on rules, consequentialist as well as deontological. Against these views, I argue that Confucian ethics is based on the roles that make an agent the person he or she is. Further, I argue that in Confucianism the question of what it is that a person ought to do cannot be separated from the (...) question of what it is to be a person, and that the latter is answered in terms of the roles that arise from the network of social relationships in which a person stands. This does not mean that Confucian ethics is unlike anything found in Western philosophy. Indeed, I show that many Western thinkers have advanced a view of ethics similar to the Confucian ethics as I interpret it. (shrink)

How is the Confucian moral agent motivated to do what he or she judges to be right or good? In western philosophy, the answer to a question such as this depends on whether one is an internalist or externalist concerning moral motivation. In this article, I will first interpret Confucian ethics as role-based ethics and then argue that we can attribute to Confucianism a position on moral motivation that is neither internalist nor externalist but somewhere in between. I will then (...) illustrate my claim with my reading of Mencius 6A4, showing that it is superior to readings found in the literature, which typically assume that Mencius is an internalist. (shrink)

It is often supposed that Confucianism is opposed to the idea of equality insofar as the key ideals to which it is committed, such as meritocracy and li , are incompatible with equality. Sympathetic commentators typically defend Confucianism by saying that (a) the Confucian person is not a free-standing individual but a social being embedded in a social structure with different and unequal roles, and (b) social inequality has to be traded in for other values. This paper argues that in (...) advocating meritocracy, Confucianism does not abandon the idea of equality. Indeed, invoking Aristotle's account of equality in the Nicomachean Ethics , it can be argued that the unequal distribution of rights and benefits reflects one aspect of equality, namely the vertical aspect, or the unequal treatment of unequals. (shrink)

Kant says that ideas have to be linked with sense experience to be meaningful. Rational ideas can be so linked via the "symbolical process" which is a process of creating a similarity (in rules of application) between an idea and its symbol. In this process the imagination goes beyond a concept (which is already linked with sense experience) to another concept in order to say something about the latter. This turns out to be the metaphorical process. For in every metaphor (...) there is an idea that receives expression in another, The latter already meaningful (i.E., Having a literal meaning). (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that people of Asia, particularly the ethnic Chinese, subscribe to values which are not conducive to economic progress. The gap between the capitalist West and Asia is often attributed to the 'cultural' factor. Behind such perception is the supposition that capitalism is wholly a product of the West, alien to Asia and cannot be successfully embraced without doing violence to its cultural traditions. Against this position, I argue that classical capitalism is perfectly compatible with the key (...) elements of Chinese philosophy. Whether or not there is anything in the suggestion of some historians that Quesnay borrowed from Confucianism, I argue that his economic doctrine could have developed from the fundamentals of Chinese philosophy. If I am right, the economic gap between the West and Asia has to be explained in terms other than the 'cultural' factor, such as, perhaps, colonialism and post-colonialist ideologies. (shrink)

Kant claims in the religion that morality leads ineluctably and inevitably to religion. I argue that a moral agent can resist the movement towards religion and still remain moral. My strategy differs from many found in the literature insofar as I do not believe we need to attack the notion of the highest good. I argue instead that the promotion of the highest good can be a moral duty for a rational nonbeliever.

The pace of globalisation has quickened considerably in the last ten to fifteen years. The process has yielded benefits but also resulted in conflicts. The benefits would be enhanced if the conflicts could be resolved. One source of conflicts is the desire to maintain cultural identity. Can Confucianism contribute to the working out of a universal global justice that can help resolve conflicts, particularly conflicts of cultural identities? Can it be part of the globalisation process without sacrificing its cultural identity? (...) I argue that it can on both counts and thus it is neither a villain blocking the progress of universal justice, a necessary condition for conflict-free globalisation, nor a helpless victim of that progress. (shrink)

The Tao Te Ching begins enigmatically with the following lines:The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

Suppose that there are good or morally defensible reasons for not responding truthfully to a question or request for information. Is a lie or a deception better as a means to avoid telling the truth? There are many situations in public and private life in which the answer to this question would serve as a useful moral guide, for instance, clinical situations involving dying patients, educational situations involving young children and personal situations involving close friends. Intuitively, we feel that there (...) is a moral asymmetry in favor of deceiving over lying. However, doubts have been cast on such intuition. The aim of this paper is to bolster this intuition. It will be argued that the claim of moral asymmetry in favor of deception can be supported on a consideration of the different degrees of expectation involved in communicative ethics. Two other objections to the claim of asymmetry will also be considered. (shrink)

Why did Levinas choose Isaiah 45:7 ("I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all that") as a superscription of his essay on evil? This article explores the role of evil in Levinas's religious ethics. The author discusses the structure of evil as revealed phenomenologically and juxtaposes it to the structure of subjectivity found in the writings of Levinas. The idea of the "ethical anthropic principle," modeled upon the cosmic anthropic principle, is then used to link evil to (...) the responsibility of the subject. The link is subsequently extended to God. This is proposed as one way of understanding the meaning of Isaiah 45:7. (shrink)

: Ronald Dworkin claims that if we are able to control our own biology, "our most settled convictions will . . . be undermined [and] we will be in a kind of moral free-fall." This is so because he takes moral convictions to be determined by the choices we make against a fixed biological background. It would seem that if Confucian ethics is grounded in ren xing (human nature) and if ren xing refers to a fixed biological background, then the (...) Confucian moral agent will be in a state of moral free-fall in the age of biological control—that is, if Dworkin is right. We can try to read ren xing as a creative process rather than a fixed nature, but any such reading inevitably grounds ren xing in something else that is biological. There is a way out for Confucians: the Dworkinian choice/chance distinction that is crucial for morality can be relocated away from the boundary between free choice and fixed biology to the boundary between the choices that we make and the fixed background of tradition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:372 THE ROLE OF REASON IN HUME'S THEORY OF BELIEF Much has been written on Hume's theory of belief, yet problems of interpretation remain as serious as ever. The most pervasive and persistent problem relates to the role reason plays in Hume's conception of belief. When Hume says that belief is a matter of feeling, does he mean to say that reason has nothing to do with it, or (...) that belief is not a matter of choice? Does he imply that one cannot be blamed for believing as one does? The view that belief is unavoidable and not a matter of choice, and its implication, seem counter-intuitive, if not drastic. Are there grounds for attributing such a view to Hume? There is indeed a tendency to interpret Hume as saying that reason plays no role, not just in the moral sphere, but in the understanding as well. Thus, Barry Stroud claims that "in Hume's hands the denigration of the role of reason and the corresponding elevation of feeling and sentiment is generalized into a total theory of man." Elsewhere I have argued against this view insofar as it relates 2 to Hume's moral theory. But the dismay at Hume's (alleged) denigration of reason is even greater in the case of belief. For instance, Antony Flew considers Hume's view that belief is "a species of natural instincts, which no reason or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent" as a "drastic and disastrous conclusion." According to Flew, one drastic and disastrous consequence of such a view is that "insofar as belief really is necessary and unavoidable we can neither criticize others for the irrationality of their convictions nor retain any 4 confidence about the rationality of our own." 373 In a more sympathetic reading of Hume, J. A. Passmore has cited evidence to show that Hume acknowledges that belief can be a matter of choice, 5 and thus there can be an ethics of belief. However, in doing so Passmore presents an inconsistency in Hume's view of belief, and does nothing to account for this inconsistency. Barbara Winters also sees inconsistencies, or paradoxes, in Hume's treatment, not only within Book I of the Treatise, but also between it and the other two Books (and between the Enquiries). Her resolution of the paradox is the suggestion that there are two conceptions of reason in Hume, the "traditional" and the "naturalistic," the former "plays no role in our acquisition of fundamental beliefs," and the latter is such that we do indeed "arrive at our beliefs through reasoning." In this paper I wish to argue that there are no inconsistencies, or paradoxes, in Hume's treatment of belief, and that his view is neither drastic nor disastrous. I wish to show that there is no 'denigration' of reason, " and that while belief is a matter of feeling, it is also, to an important degree, a matter of choice. In promoting the "undoubted truth, that belief is nothing but a peculiar feeling," Hume does write in such a way as to encourage the interpretation that he subordinates the role of reason to feelings (or sentiments, or passions), or worse, that he denigrates the role of reason. He tells us that belief is not "some new idea, such as that of reality or existence, which we join to the simple conception of an object" (T 623). If it were, "it wou'd be in a man's power to believe what he 374 pleas 'd" (T 624), as the mind can mix or join any two ideas. Hume tells us that we can easily "discover by experiments" that belief "arises immediately, without any new operation of the reason or imagination" (T 102). The widely quoted sentence is the following: "When the mind... passes from the idea or impression of one object to the idea or belief of another, it is not determin'd by reason..." (T 92). These and other statements clearly encourage the interpretation that belief does not arise from reason, or indeed that reason has nothing to do with belief. Depending on how far one sees the... (shrink)

Much has been written on Levinas's ethics. However, there is a problem with his ethical theory that has received little attention in the literature, the problem of moral motivation. Nuyen argues that given what Levinas says about the empirical conditions in which metaphysical responsibility is played out, he stills owes an account of the normative force of such an ethics.

There is a common concern in some of the writings of Husserl and Gadamer. It is the concern to defend the legitimacy and dignity of the "human sciences." They argue from the methodological standpoint that the method of the natural sciences leaves out the relationship between the object of inquiry and the inquirer. This relationship plays a key role in "understanding," which is the concem of the human sciences. In explicating it, Husserl and Gadamer stress the role of the community (...) and the lifeworld as the context of understanding. Parallels to Husserl's and Gadamer's ideas can be found in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

It is argued that Hume has two notions of causation, one psychological and the other philosophical. Kant's criticism of Hume overlooks the fact that Hume's scepticism is directed only at the latter. At the psychological level, Hume could have accepted Kant's argument without abandoning his own account of causation. The real difference between Hume and Kant is that Hume is not and Kant is concerned with the conditions for the possibility of sense experience. Hume is concerned only with the philosophical (...) inferences we can draw, having experienced the world in a certain way. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:26. DAVID HUME ON REASON, PASSIONS AND MORALS Perhaps the most notorious passage in Hume's Treatise is the one that concerns the relative roles of reason and passions, where he says: Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions (T 415). This psychology of action is the foundation of Hume's moral theory, wherein we find his two other notorious dicta, one being!.¡oral distinctions cannot be (...) derived from reason, and the other, Ought cannot be derived from is. Many commentators have interpreted Hume as saying that reason plays no role in the making of moral judgments, and, while not taking the rationalistic line, criticized him for not giving reason its proper due. The aim of this paper is to show that Hume's primary concern is to argue against the rationalist position which takes reason to be sufficient (always or sometimes) to move one to act, and to give rise to moral judgments. I wish to show that Hume is only concerned with dismissing the claim that reason could be a sufficient condition, not that it is a necessary one. Indeed, Hume could be interpreted as saying that reason is no less important than passions in shaping human conduct, anc in the area of inorai conduct, there can be no moral judgments without the work of reason. At the same time, however, passions remain the prime mover; reason does not move us to act (generally, hence morally). 1 shall try to show that the dictum '¿¡oral distinctions cannot be derived from reason' is essentially correct, but its being correct in no way shows that reason is not a necessary element of moral distinctions. 27. Before discussing the views of some critics of Hume's moral theory, it is important to clear up one source of misunderstanding that lies in Hume's discussion of the psychology of action. When Hume says that reason is the slave of passions, he does not say thereby that reason is unimportant. He is saying merely that reason alone does not move one to act. The force that propels one to action is the passion, whether it be love, or anger, or pride, or envy, or fear, or desire. Reason alone does not provide the motive. However, it is reason that does the groundwork, analyzing facts, perceiving relations, and drawing conclusions, all of which go to determine which action to perform, but the action will not be performed unless one of the passions is also present. Just because reason is the slave does not indicate that its work is not relevant. To extend the slavery metaphor, we may observe that slave owners supported slavery for the very reason that the slave's work was found indispensable; analogously, it must be observed that Hume is most unlikely to hole that reason plays no part in human action. To complete the analogy, we should say that while much could be achieved with slaves, it was the masters who conceived the plan, and the masters must rank higher in the causal order. We may observe further that greater achievement could be had by treating slaves properly, not overworking them, and not ill-treating them. If reason is the slave, it will be in our interest to cultivate it, sharpen it, and use it always and to the full. This could be inferred from HuTr.e's discussion of the understanding in Book 1 of the Treatise. indeed, in the conclusion of Book I, Hume points out forcefully that we contradict ourselves if we hold that no refin'd or elaborate reasoning is ever to be 28. receiv'd (T 268). For it is only through reasoning that we arrive at any such conclusion. He goes on to say: Very refin'd reflections have little or no influence upon us; and yet we do not, and cannot establish it for a rule, that they ought not to have any influence; which implies a manifest contradiction (T268). There cannot be a clearer demonstration that it is not the case that Hume fails to give reason its proper due. Later, I shall cite further evidence for this in relation specifically to the role of reason in... (shrink)

The philosophers' tendency to characterize euthanasia in terms of either the right or the responsibility to die is, in some ways, problematic. Stepping outside of the analytic framework, the author draws out the implications of the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas for the euthanasia debate, tracing the way Levinas's position differs not only from the philosophical consensus but also from the theological one. The article shows that, according to Levinas, there is no ethical case for suicide or assisted suicide. Death cannot (...) be assumed or chosen-not only because suicide is a logically and metaphysically contradictory concept but also because in the choice of death ethical responsibility turns into irresponsibility. However, since Levinas holds that one must be responsible to the point of expiation, he can be said to approve certain actions that may have the consequence of hastening death. (shrink)

If the current trend is any guide, it looks like we are heading towards a future in which relationships are determined and regulated by rights. In addition to the ?universal human rights? declared soon after the Second World War, other ?universal rights? have been declared and added to the list of rights, such as the rights of the child, the rights of indigenous peoples and so on. A question arises as to whether a world in which our relationships are governed (...) entirely on the basis of rights is an appealing one. I want to suggest that if our common future is regulated entirely by rights then we are moving in the wrong direction. By contrast, Tu Wei-ming believes that if Confucianism flourishes, we will move towards a society based on trust rather than rights, or what he calls a ?fiduciary society?. I will argue that while Tu's Confucian fiduciary society is perhaps an impractical ideal, a move towards it will provide a necessary counter-balance to the relentless march towards a rights-based society. (shrink)

Does Confucianism have anything to contribute to the idea and practice of citizenship? Many critics would argue that it does not, on the grounds that it is inhospitable to values such as individuality, individual rights, equality and democracy. However, these grounds have to be severely qualified. Furthermore, there is no single conception of citizenship, even though the liberal conception stands out as, probably, the most influential one. Recently in the debate on citizenship, many commentators have been highly critical of the (...) liberal conception, precisely for its uncompromising emphasis on individuality and individual rights, which tends to produce a political practice that fails to bring about equality and democratic values. Confucianism has much to contribute to the critique of the liberal conception of citizenship, as well as to the construction of a more viable conception, one that has a better chance to cope with the effects of globalisation. (shrink)