Confucian Ethics Research Articles

АНТИГЕРОЙ В ПРОСТРАНСТВЕ ЮЖНОКОРЕЙСКОГО СЕРИАЛА: НОРМАЛЬНО ЛИ БЫТЬ НЕНОРМАЛЬНЫМ?

The article focuses on the image of an antihero in South Korean television series: its typical features, its functions, and interaction with the audience. The article opens with a brief outline of the antihero version that has been sought after by the global audience since the 2000s—a gifted sociopath, unable and unwilling to maintain the generally accepted format of interaction with other people. Further, the article turns to the historical and cultural conditions in which such antiheroes find themselves in the South Korean TV series. First of all, there are the principles of Confucian ideology: the priority of society over an individual, reverence for elders, drive to maintaining family ties, strict adherence to etiquette. This ideology, combined with the South Korean television’s tendency to be didactic, seems to create an unfavorable environment for antiheroes. However, the following three South Korean dramas—Kill Me, Heal Me (2015), A Beautiful Mind (2016), and It’s Okay to Not Be Okay (2020)—show that a character with recognizable antihero traits may successfully fit into the structure of these narratives. And since the antihero function in the third series is performed by the main female character, her behavior conflicts not only with Confucian norms, but also with stereotypical behavior patterns of female characters in South Korean TV series. However, the results of the study suggest that, in general, a South-Korean-type antihero is created under the influence of Confucian ethics. Society and family play an important role both in the formation of the antihero’s personality and in his or her subsequent “normalization”. Besides, the image of a South Korean antihero may indicate a more tolerant attitude of contemporary South Korean society towards the non-standard lifestyles and behavior of the individuals.

Reply to Dr. Yu Yihsoong

Reply to Dr. Yu Yihsoong Stephen C. Angle (bio) I am grateful to Dr. Yu Yihsoong for having engaged so deeply with my book Sagehood and its view of Coherence (or li 理), and to the editor for giving me this opportunity to reply. I am also pleased that Dr. Yu is not hung up on the translation of li as “Coherence”—indeed, he says he likes the translation—but rather argues with the details of what I say about li itself. As I read him, Dr. Yu’s critique of my book has three main aspects. First, he sees that I defend a virtue-ethical rather than a rule-ethical reading of Neo-Confucianism, and based on his sense of what virtue ethics is and requires, this leads Dr. Yu to conclude that I am forced into certain errors of interpretation. Second, Dr. Yu believes that while my views are problematic as interpretations of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, they resonate much more closely with the ideas of Wang Chuanshan, whom Dr. Yu himself endorses as a superior philosopher. Dr. Yu therefore regrets that I did not develop my account in closer conversation with Wang Chuanshan. Third, Dr. Yu argues that I downplay the ontological (for Zhu Xi) and immanent (for Wang Yangming) aspects of li. In this brief reply, I will focus primarily on the first and third of these points. Dr. Yu is surely correct that I would benefit from a more detailed engagement with Wang Chuanshan and that we should all pay careful attention to the recent work that has been done in this vein, most especially in JeeLoo Liu’s excellent Neo-Confucianism: Metaphysics, Mind, and Morality.1 Still, a dialogue with Wang Chuanshan that is both charitable and yet critical would require more space than I have room for here, and I believe that it is possible to clear up some potential confusions about my views without taking that further step at this time. In brief, then, I will argue that the particularist emphasis in my account of Neo-Confucian virtue ethics does not depend on a bifurcation of intellectual and moral virtues, and that once we have a clearer understanding of what I mean by “agent-based” virtue ethics, several other misunderstandings of my views on Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming can be resolved as well. Before turning to these two arguments, it might be useful to call attention to one of the major methodological differences between Dr. Yu’s approach and mine. He relies on the idea that Neo-Confucianism can be usefully divided into three distinct schools—the “School of Principle,” the “School of Mind,” and the school of “Qi-based Ontology”—and that the differences among these schools are sharp. A premise of my work, both in Sagehood [End Page 260] and in the book I have more recently co-authored with Justin Tiwald, is that the major Neo-Confucians do not divide neatly into such schools and that focusing on these divisions often obscures more than it reveals.2 We are better off attending to differences and similarities in piecemeal fashion and noticing different patterns of emphasis (Justin and I write of different areas of “focus”) as they emerge from our interpretive work. I will suggest some ways in which this approach—which, admittedly, runs against the mainstream of modern intellectual historical work on Neo-Confucianism—might make differences to the outcome of our interpretations as I proceed. Dr. Yu’s understanding of what I intend by “virtue ethics” has two key dimensions. On the one hand, he sees that I believe that the Neo-Confucians stress the “virtues of responding well to one’s circumstances” instead of what he calls the “the virtues of following moral doctrines.” While I am surprised that he finds it obvious that “traditional Confucian ethics” stresses the latter, Dr. Yu is correct that I do not think that Neo-Confucians endorse a rule-based (or moral-doctrine-based) understanding of ethics. In their different ways, neither Zhu Xi nor Wang Yangming believes that our ultimate guide is one or more state-able rules or “principles” that we can follow. It is true that Wang...

Training Virtue without Losing Autonomy: A Response to Aaron Stalnaker

Training Virtue without Losing Autonomy:A Response to Aaron Stalnaker Patricia Marechal (bio) Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority. By Aaron Stalnaker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Introduction In Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority, Aaron Stalnaker argues that reading Confucian ethics will persuade us that dependence on the right authorities is essential to living a good, virtuous life. Relinquishing autonomy to experts early in life can allow us, in time, to become fully autonomous [End Page 512] and exercise our autonomy in appropriate ways. Indeed, these forms of non-oppressive dependence "make possible a much richer and better shared life" (p. 209).1 For the Rú, a good life requires virtues such as ritual and wisdom. These virtues, Stalnaker argues, are a mix of "trained abilities, i.e. skills, and cultivated tendencies to think, feel, and desire in certain ways" (p. 79). A virtuous character is "in fact partially constituted by the mastery of certain skills" (p. 81). Insofar as the virtues involve skill, they are partly acquired in the same way as other skills, such as carpentry or archery, are acquired. That is, they are trained by experts. Understanding virtue as a form of skilled behavior or practical mastery, Stalnaker argues, allows us to see why it is so important to subject oneself to, and obey, the (right) authorities: we become virtuous only if we are trained by the right people, follow these experts' guidance and example, and (at least in the beginning) obey their commands. Eventually, this results in an internalized sense of what is correct and incorrect, and so we become ready to act virtuously on our own and apply what we have learned to novel situations. Furthermore, we become able to articulate why this is the right action in these circumstances, and challenge our leaders if we think they have deviated from the virtuous path. As Stalnaker claims, "human beings are not automatically, spontaneously, autonomous; our capacity for autonomy needs to be cultivated, over time, through deliberate practices of training, [for] which we depend on the guidance of virtuous and skilled teachers" (p. 269). Appropriate dependence is, then, essential to living well. Some of this, Stalnaker tells us, is familiar to those of us embedded in a Western tradition. The idea that living a good life involves cultivating virtues of character, and that developing the virtues requires shaping our natural dispositions by repeatedly acting in a virtuous way under the guidance of elders and teachers until these actions become "second nature," is central to ancient Greek virtue ethics—in particular to an Aristotelian conception of virtue. According to Aristotle, we acquire a firm and steady disposition to act and feel at the right time, toward the right people, and in the right way by a process of habituation that involves repeatedly performing good actions, just as we become good piano players by playing the piano (Nicomachean Ethics II.1 1103a33–b1; II.4 1105a30–34; II. 1106b21–23). Moreover, Aristotle insists that this process of habituation requires the guidance of virtuous people who will steer us in the right way (II.3 1104b8–12; X.1 1172a20–21). But can ethical virtue be trained in the same way that skills like carpentry or archery can? Can this sort of training result in autonomous, responsible agents? Furthermore, if our sense of what is good and bad is deeply molded by others, how can we come to realize that the practices in which we were trained are actually not good, so as to exercise appropriate remonstration? [End Page 513] I. Virtue as Skill Virtue versus Mere Self-Control In chapter 3 of his book, Stalnaker addresses a controversy in virtue ethics. In a nutshell, we may wonder whether the virtues of character involve skill. Aristotle himself makes a distinction between virtue and skill, even though he often finds similarities between the two. Stalnaker argues that making a distinction between virtue and skill is "importantly misleading" (p. 81), and that thinking of the virtues as involving skill helps us understand their nature and how we acquire them, namely thanks to the rigorous training received from those who are already experts. But do the virtues involve...

Mother’s tongue and father’s culture; A late nineteenth-century Javanese versification of Master Zhu’s Household Rules ("Zhuzi Zhijia geyan")

The Serat Tiyang Gegriya or “Book for people on running their homes and households” is a Javanese versification of the famous seventeenth-century Chinese treatise Zhuzi Zhijia geyan (“Master Zhu’s Household Rules”), better known in the Anglophone world as “Maxims for managing the home” or “Family regulations”. Propagating the basic principles of Confucian ethics, this small treatise instructed generations of Chinese readers, presumedly adult males, lessons in proper behaviour. Today, Master Zhu’s little compendium is among the most reprinted works of classical Chinese popular literature. The Serat Tiyang Gegriya exists in the form of a manuscript, written in Surabaya in 1878, and was subsequently published ten years later in the same city. The appearance of this popular Confucian tract in Javanese seems to have been born of a perceived sense of crisis and alarm at the decline of “Chineseness” among the Chinese minority in a foreign land, the upshot of the seemingly inexorable process of acculturation taking place in the Sino-Javanese community at the end of the nineteenth century. Paradoxically, however, the Serat Tiyang Gegriya itself is a fine product of acculturation, transmitting Chinese moral teachings in the form of the Javanese piwulang genre, or lessons on how to live a good life, composed in the mother tongue of the mothers of the intended readers as this group was unable to understand Chinese, the language of their fathers and paternal ancestors.

Developing Ethical Leadership in China: The Value of Confucian Virtue Ethics

Developing Ethical Leadership in China: The Value of Confucian Virtue Ethics

Wall, Gate and Self-Other Dynamics: A Confucian Ethics of Separation and Interconnection

This paper starts with the social and moral implications of wall in history and in the contemporary world, to usher in the early Confucian discourse on wall and gate. The Confucian discourse implies that walls either actual, virtual or symbolic are there to defend and/or to separate, while gates enable the managed access to and opening-up the self-imposed insularity or moderate the self-centred exclusiveness that walls imply. By way of reinterpretation and reconstruction, we will extract from a variety of Confucian discussions the ethical awareness that however strongly built, walls must be associated with gates, and that the wall and the gate are therefore locked in mutuality to make possible the reality of interconnectedness between the inside and the outside and between the self and the other. It will be argued that by using ethical virtues as tools to moderate separation and exclusiveness, Confucian discourses highlight the dynamics of the self-other relationship, and establishes an ethics that may well be still applicable to contemporary situations and can be drawn upon to help dissolve the tension between the values of populist self-centrism and those of globalist interconnectedness.

Beyond Mencius and Xunzi: A Third Approach to Confucianism

Abstract After Confucius died, his disciples formed the Eight Confucian Factions [rujia ba pai 儒家八派]. The most influential among them were the moral idealist school of Mencius 孟子, which proposed the doctrine of heart-mind and human nature [xinxing 心性], and the political idealist school of Xunzi 荀子, which posited a political interpretation of Confucianism. The Mencian approach emphasized the ethics of Confucianism, whereas the Xunzian approach focused on the political application of Confucianism. Their respective weaknesses have become evident in the present. It is hoped that we can overcome their shortcomings by integrating them and formulating a new approach to modern Confucianism that uses their advantages. However, modern Confucianism had made important contributions not only in its synthesis of Mencian and Xunzian thought but, more importantly, as it carries on the approach advocated by Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒. This involves not only examining the political applications of a particular kind of scholarship on the Chunqiu gongyang zhuan 春秋公羊傳 [The Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals] developed by Dong known as Gongyang scholarship [gongyang xue 公羊學] but also integrating the internal principles and politics of Confucianism. In theory, it requires an integration of the strengths of various schools to achieve a Confucian ideological system that embraces the Hundred Schools of Thought [zhuzi baijia 諸子百家]. In practice, it entails actual political application taken from a melting pot of the theoretical and political ambitions of Confucianism that is superior to the form of Confucianism that originated in the pre-Qin period [221 BCE] and other schools of thought and their successors.

Mary Mee-Yin Yuen, Solidarity and Reciprocity with Migrants in Asia: Catholic and Confucian Ethics in Dialogue

Mary Mee-Yin Yuen<i>, Solidarity and Reciprocity with Migrants in Asia: Catholic and Confucian Ethics in Dialogue</i>

근대 개화기 서양 윤리학의 수용과 유교윤리의 지속 : 1900년대 수신(修身) 교과서를 중심으로

근대 개화기 서양 윤리학의 수용과 유교윤리의 지속 : 1900년대 수신(修身) 교과서를 중심으로

Handbook on Religion in China ed. by Stephan Feuchtwang

Reviewed by: Handbook on Religion in China ed. by Stephan Feuchtwang Shin-Yi Chao Stephan Feuchtwang, ed., Handbook on Religion in China. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020. vii, 472 pp. US$240 (hb), US$65 (ebook). ISBN 978-1-78643-795-2 The Handbook on Religion in China is part of the series “Handbooks of Research on Contemporary China.” It contains an introduction and nineteen articles divided into four parts: “State Policies, Civic Society and Cultural Revival,” “Revitalized and Modernizing Traditions,” “Daoism, Buddhism, Tibet, the Naxi,” and “Islam and Christianity.” The Introduction, by Stephan Feuchtwang, sets the tone: Religious landscape takes shape on secular ground. This and the following chapters discuss political conditions and socio-economic change as major impetuses in the reshaping of the current religious landscape. The rural-urban contrast runs throughout the book. While the volume’s focus is the post-Mao era, the contributors are not stingy in offering historical background. Part I provides an essential understanding of the politico-economic environments and cultural traditions for approaching the religious landscape of contemporary China. Chapter 1, “Religious Policy in China,” authored by Richard Madsen, analyzes two water-shed events in the PRC’s religious policy: the publication of Document 19 in 1982; and the establishment of Xi Jinping’s regime in 2012. The author perceptively characterizes the underlying principles of the two periods as “ambiguity” and “Sinicizing,” respectively. Chapter 2, by Robert Weller, C. Julia Huang, and Keping Wu, discusses religious philanthropy on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. It argues that activist volunteerism emphasizing good deeds could give religious groups “legitimacy, political support and room to pursue their own agenda from the state” (p. 39). The combination of “political merit-making” and “the rise of a cosmopolitan, civic self” (p. 50) led religious philanthropy to grow to such an enormous scale that it became “industrialized.” Chapter 3, by Anna Iskra, Fabian Winiger, and David A. Palmer, introduces body-mind cultivation movements from qigong 氣功 to Falun gong 法輪功, and movements for living the/attaining a good life including the Crazy English phenomenon and other self-help groups. Whether or not these movements are religious depends on the reader’s own definition of religion. Nevertheless, they are expressions of a desire to cultivate one’s “inner essence” (p. 68) to construct a new self in civic society. Chapter 4, by Sébastien Billioud, investigates the actors in the current revival of Confucianism. The reemergence of popular Confucianism in the 2000s, the author argues, began as a grassroots (minjian 民間) movement that elites (academic, business, and political) subsequently endorsed. In the 2010s, redemptive societies like Yiguandao 一貫道, which uphold Confucian ethics in their core teaching, joined the promotion campaign after losing the stigma of being “reactionary” (fandong 反動). Chapter 5, “Heritage and Religion in China” by Yujie Zhu, elaborates on the vague boundaries between religious and cultural traditions. This has led to compromise and contestation between different agents with overlapping or conflicting goals in promoting cultural/religious practices and sites. Under the Intangible Cultural Heritage program, the author argues, religious activities and celebration are rebranded as cultural heritage and marketed as tourist attractions. Entrepreneurship is thus integrated into the religious sphere. Part II is about “practices that exist outside formal religious organizations” (p. 8) and explores family (chapter 6), community (chapter 7), individual practices (chapter 8), and sectarians (chapter 9). Chapter 6, by Ellen Oxfeld, examines the transformation of rituals of death, marriage, and birth in cities and the countryside. The urban-rural gap is highlighted in death rituals. By the last decade of the twentieth century, traditional religious elements had already reemerged in rural funerals but urban funerals continue to be conducted primarily in the secular form of a memorial service (zhuidao hui 追悼會) managed by the deceased’s work unit (danwei 單位). The author argues that this contrast reflects [End Page 290] “the social distinction between the organization of urban living and the peasant community” (p. 120). The reader wonders what has become of urban funerals in the twenty-first century as danwei have largely disappeared? The discussion on marriage and birth rituals highlights the impact of improvement in general living standards, but scarcely mentions religious elements such as taboos, horoscopes...

Конфуціанство і протестантизм: перспективи трансцивілізаційної конвергенції "Схід – Захід"

The aggravation of the struggle for global leadership between the United States and China in the context of rapidly developing globalization has brought to the fore the problem of a comparative analysis of the ethical and value foundations of socio-economic dynamics, innovativeness and competitiveness of the Euro-Atlantic (primarily Protestant) society, on the one hand, and the East Asian (primarily Confucian) society, on the other. The purpose of this study is to compare the religious and ethical systems of Confucianism and Protestantism in terms of their competitive advantages, compliance with the interests of global economic leadership, and mutual adaptability. The study applies the interdisciplinary approach, methods of synergetic, civilizational and world-system analysis. It is argued that the modernization potential and mental-value compatibility of the Protestant and Confucian worlds is much higher than that of respectively the Protestant and the post-Soviet Eurasian. The key correspondences of ethical-value principles and motivations of Protestant and Confucian cultures in their genetics, historical dynamics and modern dimension have been determined. It is shown that such fundamental principles of modern Western society as pluralism and the rule of law have their traditional correspondences, albeit in a transformed form, among the core values of Chinese and, geographically wider, Confucian social culture. Therefore, the current trend of China’s return to its cultural roots, to Confucian ethics not only does not interfere with the process of modernization and the country’s movement towards global financial and economic leadership, but, on the contrary, contributes to these processes. In this regard, the prospects for a rational convergence of East and West values, primarily Protestantism and Confucianism, within the framework of a new globalized civilization of the future look rather likely.

Spatialization of Confucian ethics in the Song of China

This article analyses the understudied film Song of China, mainly directed by Fei Mu, and argues that Confucian morality is spatialized and encapsulated in various chronotopes through the construction and movement of three types of ethical space (the space of propriety, the space of misconduct and the liminal space between good and evil), which enhances the aesthetic effect of conveying moral and political messages. The three main characters in the movie – the FATHER, the SON and the GRANDSON – each open up one of the three ethical spaces, and the spatial constructions interact or conflict with each other in the larger polarized spaces of country and city. Eventually, the temporospatial transmission of Confucian ethical values is achieved when the space of propriety is expanded from the individual to the whole society, the space of misconduct is closed up and the liminal space is transformed into the space of propriety. This ideal moral state has the political implication of promoting fascist militarization in the social context of the time. This analysis of ethical space and chronotopes sheds new light on the artistic technique employed in this silent film.

Ethics, society, and technology: A Confucian role ethics perspective

This essay provides a very brief overview of Confucian ethics that focuses on the role-based morality. It compares Confucian ethics with two dominant schools of thought in Western ethics deontology and consequentialism. This essay then discusses how Confucian ethics provides a unique way to think about social and political issues such as how the political leaders are selected and evaluated, the ethical justification of political legitimacy, the prioritization of economic, social, and cultural rights over other rights, and moral egalitarianism. Finally, this essay explores the ways in which Confucian ethics serves as a useful intellectual resource for examining the issues arising from the ethical assessment of (emerging) technologies and the professional formation of engineers. The Appendix of this essay includes some teaching resources that instructors can employ to teach students about ethics, society, and technology from a Confucian role ethics perspective.

Intentions of Reflective Moral Judgment and Confucian Ethics –A Study on the Novels of Seo, Jung-In–

Intentions of Reflective Moral Judgment and Confucian Ethics –A Study on the Novels of Seo, Jung-In–

Who are macro-community members: an answer from the viewpoint of Confucianism

PurposeThis paper aims to present and discuss the findings from a qualitative study of victim-offender mediation meetings in two non-government organisations in Hong Kong between January 2015 and February 2016. It argues that mediators in Hong Kong have a unique interpretation of the criteria for someone to be considered a “macro-community member”. Confucian relational ethics emphasises that everyone lives in a personal nexus and wrongdoings will disturb this nexus. In this specific context, therefore, mediators feel that reconciliation and reparation should be dealt with by the people in the offender’s network while the involvement of unknown macro-community members is discouraged.Design/methodology/approachThe semi-structured interview was adopted for use in this study, and an interview schedule with 12 open-ended questions was prepared as a guideline for conducting the interviews.FindingsMediators in Hong Kong have a unique interpretation of the criteria for someone to be considered a “macro-community member” Confucian relational ethics emphasises that everyone lives in a personal nexus and wrongdoings will disturb this nexus. Reconciliation and reparation should be dealt with by the people in the network, and the involvement of macro-community members will certainly disturb this network.Originality/valueThis study was conducted by the author between January 2015 and February 2016 for the purpose of obtaining a doctorate. The paper has neither been published previously nor is it under review for publication in any other journal at this time.

Blame-Laden Moral Rebukes and the Morally Competent Robot: A Confucian Ethical Perspective.

Empirical studies have suggested that language-capable robots have the persuasive power to shape the shared moral norms based on how they respond to human norm violations. This persuasive power presents cause for concern, but also the opportunity to persuade humans to cultivate their own moral development. We argue that a truly socially integrated and morally competent robot must be willing to communicate its objection to humans' proposed violations of shared norms by using strategies such as blame-laden rebukes, even if doing so may violate other standing norms, such as politeness. By drawing on Confucian ethics, we argue that a robot's ability to employ blame-laden moral rebukes to respond to unethical human requests is crucial for cultivating a flourishing "moral ecology" of human-robot interaction. Such positive moral ecology allows human teammates to develop their own moral reflection skills and grow their own virtues. Furthermore, this ability can and should be considered as one criterion for assessing artificial moral agency. Finally, this paper discusses potential implications of the Confucian theories for designing socially integrated and morally competent robots.

Sheng-Sheng (生生) as Being-Between-Generations: On the Existential Structure of Confucian Ethics

Abstract On the level of existential structure, “Shengsheng Buxi” unfolds an existential structure different from Heidegger’s “being-in-the-world”. This paper calls it “being-between-the-generations”. Through this existential structure, it reveals many aspects which Heidegger ignored in his existential analysis. The existence of “I” between generations is, first of all, a conjunction of generations, “this body” has its own origin. Its original facing the Other is to love his/her parents, and showing the structure of “being-together-with-the-generations” in filial piety; family implements the existence of “inheritance”, thus gaining its ontological status in this structure. The state of mood in generations shows the “Enjoyment-at-home” of this-body; at the same time, being-between-the-generations also makes “learning” and “teaching” indispensable and essential moments in the existential structure, and makes the “Project” of “trans-generations” possible. The “historicity” formed by “generations” has an impact on this. Ultimately, in the memorial ceremony of “death of parents and ancestors”, it builds the structure of “being-together-with-the-generations” within a family, and maintains the dimension of transcendence, in the way of filial piety, whose nature is revealed in The Analects as “Tribute to the death of parents and keeping memory of ancestors” (慎終追遠).

Will Confucian Values Help or Hinder the Crisis of Elder Care in Modern Singapore?

The unique mix of modern Western and traditional Confucian values in Singapore presents young people with contradictory views on duties to aging parents. It remains to be seen whether the changing demands of modern life will result in new generations giving up Confucian family ethics or whether the Confucian dynamic will find a way to adapt to the new pressures. It is the opinion of this author that the Confucian family structure has mixed potential for the growing crisis of elder care. Alone, both Confucian traditions and typical Western institutional approaches toward elder care fall short of what is necessary for intergenerational social justice, yet a hybrid of the two has great potential for the growing aging crisis. To demonstrate this, I first give a brief account of the history of filial piety in Confucianism as well as the social environment from which it originated. Then I turn my attention to the present issues of an aging population and elder care that face much of the developed world in the twenty-first century. Finally, I show how adherence to Confucian filial traditions can both help to address many of these issues and how it can potentially leave unjust gaps in elder care. Ultimately, I conclude that the crisis of elder care may be best dealt with through a hybrid of Confucian values and Western approaches.

Escape from Kantian Eurocentric bias in cross-cultural psychology

Taking Kant’s misjudgment on Confucian silver rule as the point for first cut, this article is designated to illustrate the fallacy of imposed Orientalism prevailing in mainstream cross-cultural psychology which tends to understand non-Western cultures by a mental set of dualism with a tendency of Westcentrism, particularly the popular research on individualism-collectivism. This type of Euro-centric or Westcentric misjudgments are very common in Western social sciences, for instance, Confucian ethics are frequently described as particularistic in consideration of the distinction between universalism and particularism made by Parsons . In order to help the international academic community to escape from the trap of Eurocentric bias, this article will argue for and illustrate its characteristic of contextualized universalism step by step on the basis of Hwang’s previous research. Finally, the meaning of constructing scientific microworld of Confucian ethics will be discussed to explain how Chinese people are facing the impact of Western cultured during the globalization age of multiculturalism.

漢詩의 능동적 향유와 독법에 관한 고찰

This paper analyzes how the classical works can become modern style by analyzing five Chinese poetry animations produced by the Chinese Poetry Animation Production Group. China has been thinking about how to attract public attention through the process of change and reinterpretation between traditional culture and popular culture. In addition, five Chinese poetry animations produced by Chinese Poetry Animation Production Group show the bold transformation of Chinese poetry, and the public begins to wake up the sleeping Chinese poem and communicate. Five animations of Chinese poetry are not only popular works that the Chinese are familiar with, but also works that show the characteristics of different writers of different ages. The Chinese Poetry Animation Production Group fully uses storytelling techniques to not only interpret the subject matter of poetry and historical anecdotes to the general public and modern, but also through these narrative devices, effectively conveys the overall feeling of Chinese poetry. Not only that, but by converting poetry into animation, the audio-visual content can resonate beyond national boundaries and languages. But on the other hand, the key point is what it means to communicate through these videos. Although the five Chinese poetry animations produced by the Chinese Poetry Animation Production Group are interesting to the audience through carefully choreographed storylines and gorgeous images, each of them hides Confucian values and ethics so that the audience who watches the program can naturally and actively accept historical facts and ideas. These aspects are still a useful testament to the modern age's traditional view of the utility of poetry and the common value of society, and how to change the classicality of appearance through the continuous use of modernity.