The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy

Alexus McLeod, Alexus McLeod

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350007215
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Filosofía oriental

Focusing on early Chinese ethical and political thought across multiple schools and thinkers, this book presents a comprehensive overview of the research being done in Chinese comparative ethics and political philosophy. In addition to chapters on Chinese comparative and interpretative thought, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy brings early Chinese ethics and political philosophy into conversation with Western and Indian Philosophy, as well as Western Theology. Contributors discuss numerous texts and schools in Pre-Qin and Han Philosophy, including Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, the Xunzi, the Liyun, and the Zhuangzi. The volume also shows how early Chinese ethical and political theories can be used to contextualise contemporary philosophical issues, such as metaethics, human rights, emotions, and the connection between ethics and metaphysics. The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students encountering early Chinese ethics and political philosophy for the first time.

PART ONE

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Historical Approaches

CHAPTER ONE

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Confucian Role Ethics: Issues of Naming, Translation, and Interpretation

SARAH MATTICE

The last ten to fifteen years have seen a proliferation of philosophical manuscripts and chapters in English concerning Confucian ethics. Some of these have an overtly historical/textual approach, while others are explicitly comparative (often between Confucius

or Mencius

and Aristotle), and some seek to put ideas from the classical period into conversation with issues in contemporary ethics. Some projects begin from within a more “analytic” orientation, while still others identify themselves as belonging to the “continental” tradition. Theorists have argued that Confucian ethics is best understood as a species of deontology, as a distinctive form of virtue ethics, and as care ethics, to name a few. The project of trying to figure out the best already-present Western category to use for Confucian ethics is one that has occupied a great deal of time and effort in contemporary circles, and which may, as Stephen Angle has argued, be an example of the “unhealthy hegemony” of Western frameworks in comparative or cross-cultural philosophy.¹ As I see it, the project of Confucian Role Ethics (CRE), however, is not trying to intervene in that discourse. While Roger Ames and others use some non-Confucian thinkers in articulating CRE, the project itself is trying to set up Confucian ethics as a distinct category of its own, on par with, but not subsumed under, other ethical traditions.

Ames opens his monograph by suggesting that CRE and its commitment to growth in personal relationships should not be understood solely as an historical artifact, but as a meaningful participant in contemporary ethical discourse. In the Introduction to Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary Ames writes:

The contention of this monograph then, is that we are entering upon a transitional period of enormous proportions with the imminent emergence of a new cultural order, and that Confucianism offers us philosophical assets that can be resourced and applied to serve not only the renaissance of a revitalized Chinese culture, but also the interests of world culture more broadly.²

That is, Ames is arguing for what Kam-Por Yu, Julia Tao, and Philip J. Ivanhoe have called taking Confucian ethics seriously—this means that one does not “see it simply as something East Asian or Confucian; to take Confucian ethics seriously is to be concerned with the contemporary philosophical relevance of the Confucian tradition.”³ CRE adds to this that taking Confucian ethics seriously in a philosophical sense also requires taking it first and foremost on its own terms, which requires rethinking and retranslating much of the content of early Confucian texts, as their early reception in the western world was filtered through some decidedly distortive sources. While Ames may be the most famous current proponent of Confucian Role Ethics, this interpretation of Confucianism is situated in an intellectual lineage that owes much to earlier interpreters such as Zhang Dongsun

(1886–1973) and Tang Junyi

(1909–78), and which continues in the work of scholars such as Henry Rosemont, Jr., A.T. Nuyen, WEN Haiming, John Ramsey, and others.⁴

Many contemporary accounts of Confucian ethics focus heavily on the classical texts, especially the Analects

and the Mengzi

, although some do include and/or focus on other texts. Most accounts share certain features such as the central place of the family and the importance of relationships, the need for a strong connection to and contribution to tradition, an understanding of ethical life as inherently political, and the demonstration of ethical cultivation through ritual proficiency, to name a few. CRE also shares these features, but it takes them in what I call elsewhere a “radically relational direction,” putting correlative cosmology and relational personhood at the nexus of the interpretive framework.⁵

When we speak of a _______ ethic(s), an X ethics, we take that to be a theory of ethics that focuses on X, takes X as a central concept or concern. Confucian Role Ethics, then, is an account of ethics drawn from Confucian traditions that takes human persons as irreducibly relational and human lives as flourishing in and through familial, social, and political roles.⁶ Ames writes, “At the very heart of Confucian role ethics, distinguishing it fundamentally from more familiar Western ethical ‘theories,’ is a concept of a relationally constituted person who realizes a vision of the consummate life through a kind of moral artistry.”⁷

I see at least three sets of concerns that animate the reasoning behind Confucian role ethics: naming, translation, and interpretation. In terms of naming, I discuss this project as an example of zhengming

, or proper naming, which is a common Confucian ethical project. Confucian thinkers are often preoccupied with appropriate categorization, one species of which is naming. The naming of Confucian ethics as role ethics, I argue, is not only consistent with but is situated in a larger Confucian concern with appropriate names. In terms of translation, I explore CRE in conversation with the translation theory of Lawrence Venuti, who argues against translations of “fluency” for an anti-domestication strategy—a method for translations to maintain some level of “foreignness.” Finally, I engage certain hermeneutic and interpretive assumptions about the very project of coming to understand “Confucian” ethics at all. In doing so, I also provide certain critical reflections on “role ethics” as a way of understanding Confucianism.

NAMING

In Confucian traditions, names matter. One way to understand the project of Confucian role ethics is as an example of zhengming

, or proper naming, which is a common Confucian ethical project, and an inherently political project. Confucian thinkers are often preoccupied with language and appropriate categorization, one species of which is naming.

While the phrase zhengming itself only appears once in the Analects (although proper naming is a concern of other passages), and not at all in the Mengzi, it is the subject of an entire chapter of the Xunzi, and is incorporated into Confucian concerns as the tradition moves forward. The most often-cited passages in the Analects having to do with proper naming are 12.11, 13.3, and 13.6, although as nearly every commentator on early Confucianism remarks, the key terms “ren” and “li” (along with others) are in a constant process of definition and refining, as Confucius takes these terms up in new and innovatively philosophical directions—so the concern with naming roles, relationships, and ideals is present through much of the text. In addition, the context of the text, and of early Confucianism, as a product of the situations of the pre-Qin Warring States period, suggest that the name of a person or a role is especially important for what that person is expected to do and how that person is expected to behave.

In 12.11, when asked by the Duke of Qi about zheng

, effective governing, Confucius replies: “

,

,

,

”⁸ In his reply, Confucius uses the reduplicative function of nouns to emphasize the already present moral dimension of the roles of ruler, minister, father, and child. In saying that the ruler should rule, the minister minister, the father father, and the child child, he directs the Duke’s attention to the fact that these key political and family roles and relationships are inherently normative, and as such require regular tune-ups to be attuned properly. To be appropriately called a ruler, certain practices, attitudes, activities, and behavior...