Journal of East China Normal University (Philosoph ›› 2016, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (3): 145-158.doi: 10.16382/ j.cnki.1000-5579.2016.03.016

• 比较视域中的儒家伦理 • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Theorizing “Person” in Confucian Ethics: A Good Place to Start

Roger T. Ames   

  • Online:2016-05-15 Published:2016-07-06
  • Contact: Roger T. Ames
  • About author:Roger T. Ames

Abstract: Confucian conception of person is the starting point of Confucian ethics. Different from our ontological and teleological cosmology, the Confucian assumption is a interdependent one. Our commonsense understanding of the discrete and substantial individual is merely an abstraction of its narrative where persons are in inner and constitutive relationships. The “being” of a “human being” is a permanent, ready-made, and self-sufficient soul— a human being; but we are “human becomings” in Confucian Ethics, which is a radical empiricism that favors historical models over principles. Person in Confucian Ethics is both focus and its focused field appealing to a narrative understanding of relationship. What is moral is conduct that conduces to growth and flourishing of persons in the roles and relations. It is claimed in Virtue Ethics that the early Confucian counterpart of the term “virtue” (arete) can be found in the term, de. And it is the holistic and narrative meaning of the term renthat makes classical Confucianism references role ethics. The standards of critical evaluation arenot independent of the roles, but the quality of their relationships with all of the complexity of it and ultimately the growth in the specific role itself. By invoking Postulate of Immediate Empiricism of Dewey, we admit that experience is what it is, and it is all real. We offer a holographic “Focus” as the functional equivalent of “Agency”, arguing that personal identity is not pre-existing. We are the sum of and are constituted by our relationships themselves on a doctrine of internal relations.