Between Generalism and Particularism: The Cheng Brothers’ Neo-Confucian Virtue Ethics

Abstract

One of the important features of virtue ethics is its emphasis on particularity. In virtue ethics, as stated by Rosalind Hursthouse, a contemporary virtue ethicist, “an action is right if it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically (i.e. acting in character) do in the circumstances” (Hursthouse 1999: 28; emphasis added). Here I emphasize the last word, “circumstances,” as a virtuous person does not simply apply universal moral principles to all circumstances. Instead, as Michael Slote, another contemporary virtue ethicist, states when he comments on Aristotle, a virtuous person is “someone who sees or perceives what is good or fine or right to do in any given situation” (Slote 2001: 5). Indeed, Aristotle himself also claims that virtue is to feel relevant passions, such as fear, confidence, and anger, “at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way” (Aristotle 1963: 1106b20-22). So a virtuous thing to do in one circumstance or situation may not be so in a different circumstance or situation. This emphasis on particularity is radicalized in moral particularism or anti-theory, which I regard as an extreme form of virtue ethics, or at least a close ally of the latter in their argument against their common rivals, deontology and utilitarianism, two moral theories of generalism. In this essay, after a brief presentation of moral particularism, I shall argue that, while it reflects the Confucian idea of love with distinction as interpreted by the neo-Confucian Cheng brothers, Cheng Hao (1032-1085) and Cheng Yi (1033-1107), there is a blind spot in the former that is avoided in the latter.