The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle : Mirrors of Virtue

As a comparative study of the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Confucius, this book explores how they each reflect upon human good and virtue out of their respective cultural assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and philosophical perspectives. It does not simply take one side as a framework to understand the other; rather, it takes them as mirrors for each other and seeks to develop new readings and perspectives of both ethics that would be unattainable if each were studied on its own. Cover The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of virtue Copyright Contents Preface and acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Two revivals The meaning of comparison The possibility of comparison The nature of ethical thinking The scope of the comparison The structure of the book 1 Eudaimonia, dao, and virtue Human good: eudaimonia and dao Virtue: aretē and de De and ren The beginning of ethics Doing ethics and being pious The ways of ethics 2 Humanity: Xing and ergon Human nature and humanity Function and good nature Humanity as the foundation of ethics Justifying humanity Actualization of humanity From humanity to virtue 3 Virtue, the mean, and disposition The mean: inner and outer Hitting the mean The inner mean and virtue Disposition and second nature The components of virtue 4 Habituation and ritualization Social value: li and ethos The training of emotion Political animal and relational self Nature and cultivation Family and virtue Politics and virtue 5 Practical wisdom and appropriateness Ethical wisdom and traditional value The structure of ethical wisdom Harmony of emotion and reason Ethical reasoning Particular virtues The unity of virtues 6 The highest good and external goods Virtue, activity, and happiness Contemplation and self-completion Being one with God and being one with Heaven External goods Virtue and good 7 The practical and the contemplative Contemplative activity and contemplative life Self and self-actualization Self and the others The value of contemplation Greek glossary Chinese glossary Notes Selected bibliography Index of names Index of subjects "The emergence of virtue ethics, which might be the most significant development in contemporary ethics, takes Aristotle's ethics as the most important paradigm. Aristotle's ethical thinking, in contrast to modern Western moral philosophy, starts with a reflection on human life as a whole instead of on some moral acts, and focuses on character and virtue instead of on principles and rules. This way of doing ethics is shared by Confucius. First, Confucius seeks to find the human dao, i.e. the way to become a good person. Second, to become a good person, one must cultivate de, that is, a dispositional character (indeed, de has been generally translated as "virtue" in English). Confucius calls this dispositional character ren. Ren has been generally translated as "benevolence" or "humanity," but is also widely referred to as "virtue," "complete virtue," or "cardinal virtue."" "It is in elaborating how one person can become a good person by cultivating ren that Confucius reflects on and discusses issues such as human nature and its fulfillment, the doctrine of the mean, the role of social customs and traditions, self-cultivation and moral education, love, family, virtue politics, moral emotion, moral reasoning, family, and so on. These are also the central themes in Aristotle's theory of virtue. To a great extent, Aristotle's ethics is taken as the model in contemporary virtue ethics precisely because these important ethical concerns have been left out or at least marginalized in dominant modern moral theories."--Jacket Presents a comparative study of the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Confucius. This book explores how they each reflect upon human good and virtue out of their respective cultural assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and philosophical perspectives.