Early Confucians Research Articles

Debts of Gratitude in Cross‐Cultural Perspective: Confucian and Western Ethics

ABSTRACTThis article examines the contrasting conceptions of gratitude in Early Confucian and Western philosophy. It focuses on a key difference: the presence of the notion of ‘debts of gratitude’ in Western thought and its absence in Confucianism. We explore how this difference is rooted in contrasting ethical outlooks and values. Western philosophy often conceives of gratitude as a duty of reciprocation, furthering the values of social equality and individual autonomy. By contrast, Early Confucians viewed gratitude as proper acknowledgement that strengthens social relationships that are part of an ongoing collective project, spanning generations. This view reflects the importance of values such as community, harmony, and ritual propriety in Confucianism. Unlike the Western context, in the Early Confucian social world, there was no role for ‘debts of gratitude’ to play. There were no Confucian values that ‘debts of gratitude’ would help to realize, or would be responsive to, in the way that debts of gratitude further the values of equality and independence in the West. We conclude by noting that some Western philosophers express ideas about gratitude in collaborative contexts that align with Confucian ideas, suggesting some shared elements between Confucian and Western ethical outlooks.

Is there a universal priority in cases of value conflicts? —Reverse engineering Quan 權

ABSTRACT When we face a choice between two incompatible actions, is there a universal priority? The early Confucians used the notion of quan 權 to navigate conflicts. On the one hand, quan can be a mean of weighing or assessing. Through quan, agents should be able to recognize the most valuable action and arrive at a universal priority. Thus, quan entails impersonal reasoning. On the other hand, quan means balancing, and its aim is to seek the most appropriate response. What is appropriate depends on each individual’s personal factors. Thus, quan implies personal reasoning. I argue that quan represents a holistic thinking process that includes both impersonal and personal reasoning. But agents cannot engage in these two types of reasoning simultaneously. By reverse engineering how exemplars would implement quan, I show that these two types of reasoning are primarily used in different kinds of value conflicts.

Moral Perfection as the Counterfeit of Virtue

It is sometimes assumed that the best people—those whom it would be appropriate to admire and emulate—ought to be free of all moral defects. Numerous contemporary scholars have attributed this assumption to the early Confucian philosophers with moral perfection said to be a necessary condition for sagehood. Drawing upon the early Confucian literature I will argue in support of two claims. The first is that the early Confucians did not insist on the moral perfection of the sage; on the contrary, the sage was explicitly understood to be morally fallible. The second claim is that the early Confucians were right to reject moral perfection as a suitable ideal. I conclude with a discussion of the relative merits of taking “love of learning” (haoxue 好學)—rather than moral perfection—as one’s ideal.

Confucian Ethics and Confederate Memorials

As self-conscious curators and critics of moral history, the early Confucians are relevant to the contemporary debate over the fate of memorials dedicated to morally flawed individuals. They provide us with a pragmatic justification that is distinct from those utilized in the current debate, and in many respects superior to the alternatives. In addition to supplying this curative philosophic resource, the early Confucian practices of ancestral memorialization suggest preventative measures we might adopt to minimize the chances of establishing divisive and oppressive memorials in the future.

Virtuous actions in the Mengzi

ABSTRACT Many anglophone scholars take the early Confucians to be virtue ethicists of one kind or another. A common virtue ethical reading of one of the most influential early Confucians, namely Mengzi, ascribes to him the view that moral actions are partly (or entirely) moral because of the state from which they are performed, be it the agent’s motives, emotions, or their character traits. I consider whether such a reading of the Mengzi is justified and I argue that it is not. I argue that there is no reason to believe that Mengzi distinguishes the moral value of actions that are performed from virtuous and non-virtuous states. Given this, virtue (as a feature of agents) is normatively posterior to virtuous actions. I conclude, first, that this poses a challenge to a wide range of common interpretations of the Mengzi, be they virtue ethical or otherwise, and second, that there might be conceptual space for an account of virtue ethics that rejects the normative priority of virtue over virtuous actions.

Confucian Ethics and Confederate Memorials

As self-conscious curators and critics of moral history, the early Confucians are relevant to the contemporary debate over the fate of memorials dedicated to morally flawed individuals. They provide us with a pragmatic justification that is distinct from those utilized in the current debate, and in many respects superior to the alternatives. In addition to supplying this curative philosophic resource, the early Confucian practices of ancestral memorialization suggest preventative measures we might adopt to minimize the chances of establishing divisive and oppressive memorials in the future.

Xunzi’s Ritual Model and Modern Moral Education

While the early Confucians were largely content to maintain the rituals of ancient kings as the core of moral education in their time, it is not obvious that contemporary humans could, or should, draw from the particulars of such a tradition. Indeed, even if one takes ritual seriously as a tool for cultivation, there remains a question of how to design moral education programs incorporating ritual. This essay examines impediments faced by a ritualized approach to moral education, how they might be overcome, and how a ritual method could be developed in modernity. I contend that a Confucian notion of ritual, particularly as elaborated in the Xunzi, is both compatible with modern moral education and capable of making a distinct contribution to moral education in terms of how rituals can be used to structure and inculcate a shared climate of respect and humaneness both in- and outside the classroom. Specifically, the ritual education method includes emphases on inculcating moral fluency via symbolic practices and distinctions, training and appropriately associating promoral dispositions, enhancing moral imagination, and developing awareness of other minds. The model is thus a multifaceted approach to moral education through (meta)cognitive development.

The classical Confucian conception of Heaven's Mandate

AbstractThe belief in heaven's mandate (tianming 天命) in earlier documents referred to divine‐ethical sanctions of political rulers. It later developed multiple implications such as an individual's destiny or fate and became one of the most fundamental concepts in Chinese intellectual and cultural history. In modern times, this concept has received long‐lasting attention in the field of Chinese philosophy, and almost all major scholars have more or less been involved in discussions and debates, especially on the topic of the classical Confucian conception of heaven's mandate. Their discussions on this topic have largely focused on two major controversies: (i) whether early Confucians view heaven's mandate as prescriptive ethical command or descriptive amoral fate, and (ii) whether their attitude toward heaven's mandate is voluntarist or fatalistic. While this scholarship has been fruitful and insightful, it has continued for almost a century with certain variants. Therefore, it is time to address this topic with new approaches and hermeneutic horizons. In this essay, I propose a new approach and horizon to viewing the classical Confucian conception of heaven's mandate as their reflections on individual existence and self‐realization under the constraints of mandate or destiny. I examine the texts associated with Confucius and Mencius such as the Analects and the Mencius, as well as some recently unearthed texts, to suggest that early Confucians accommodate individual initiative and self‐determination of life choices through their conceptualization of heaven's mandate. To them, the vocabulary of heaven's mandate empowers individuals, especially through situating their places in society and the cosmos. By knowing and standing firmly on one's mandate or destiny, the individual not only realizes the value of their existence but also goes beyond the ultimate destiny of death. This fresh reading of heaven's mandate is grounded in the context of the development of Confucian ideas in the early period and presents an optimistic vision of Confucian humanism.

Comments on Aaron Stalnaker’s Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority

Comments on Aaron Stalnaker’s Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority Nancy E. Snow (bio) Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority. By Aaron Stalnaker. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Introduction Aaron Stalnaker's Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority is a significant achievement. The aim of this book is to mine the insights of the early Confucians, or Ru, for enriching Western ethical and political thought on the ethics of authority and dependence. Stalnaker does this through a meticulous and in-depth study that highlights, but is not limited to, the early Confucian thinkers Kongzi, Mengzi, and Xunzu. His focus is on the ways in which their approach to ritual and certain forms of authority/dependence relationships, such as master/student and father/son, have the potential to inform contemporary Western political structures and governance. The Ru thought that by learning certain virtues and skills, such as benevolence, righteousness, filial piety, and propriety—primarily through ritual—junzi (gentlemen), could be educated to become wise and virtuous. Having been educated in virtue, junzi could then become shengren (sages)—a higher stage on the path to wisdom and virtue. Degrees of expertise are envisioned in this process, but the point is that acquiring significant learning and virtue qualifies one either to rule or to advise rulers. The Ru approach to ethics and politics is significantly different from the Western perspectives that Stalnaker discusses, which are in the liberal political tradition. In that tradition, individualism and autonomy are the key points of departure for theorizing structures of governance. By contrast, the Confucian tradition highlights wisdom and virtue acquired through training in the performance of ritual, undertaken under the guidance of an accomplished master. Individuals are ineluctably enmeshed in relationships of authority and dependence, and this network of relationships forms the basis for Confucian thought about governance. Individual liberty and, in [End Page 497] some versions of liberalism, equality are the guiding values that government should embody and seek to promote. Confucian government, by contrast, should embody and promote the Dao, or way, which is the path we should follow to achieve virtue and righteousness. I am only peripherally familiar with the early Confucian tradition, and have learned much from reading this book. My familiarity is with the liberalism of the West, and perhaps that explains why I have more questions about Confucianism than about Stalnaker's treatment of liberalism. Since I am no expert in Confucian philosophy, I present my comments as questions for clarification or edification. They fall into three areas: persons and rituals, deference and remonstration, and gender subordination and the perils of meritocracy. Persons and Rituals The performance of ritual, for Confucians, is the path by means of which virtue is cultivated. All three of the early Confucians—Kongzi, Mengzi, and Xunzi—thought this. To the best of my knowledge, Kongzi does not clearly articulate a set of assumptions about human nature (xing), but seems to assume that persons have capacities for goodness as well as for evil. Mengzi, by contrast, apparently assumes that we are basically good, contending that we have four 'sprouts', or, as I read them, basic tendencies or orientations, toward various types of goodness: benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom (Stalnaker 2020, p. 94). Xunzi, according to my (imperfect) understanding, has a darker view of human nature, believing, in terms reminiscent of Hobbes, that we are basically prone to evil, and that our natural tendencies need to be curbed and reshaped in ways more consistent with goodness, so that we may truly follow the Dao. Stalnaker acknowledges that there are differences between Mengzi and Xunzi, but sets these aside, stating: "In brief, I think analysts have been overly credulous regarding Xunzi's critique of Mengzi's ideas about "human nature" (xing…) and self-cultivation, and thus missed some aspects of what these two texts nevertheless share regarding teaching, learning, and the economic and social order necessary for personal formation to succeed more than occasionally" (p. 57). I want to push back a bit on this. Surely, assumptions about human nature would shape the kinds of rituals that each Confucian theorist would prescribe for self-cultivation, as well as for the governance of...

Manners, Vulnerability, and Rude Women: Comments on Amy Olberding's The Wrong of Rudeness

Manners, Vulnerability, and Rude Women:Comments on Amy Olberding's The Wrong of Rudeness Emily McRae (bio) In response to Amy Olberding's fascinating and thoughtful book—a book that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone—I will explore a specific kind of problem regarding manners and morality. It is a question that arises at the intersection of good manners, moral self-cultivation, and oppressive social systems: how do we practice good manners in non-ideal, unjust contexts as members of socially disadvantaged groups? Before I begin to address this question, I want to note that I am convinced by Amy's arguments for the significance of civility and mannerliness in moral and social life (her main argument being, roughly, that civility shows our commitment to the big values of shared life together, the regular expression of which is necessary for living together well). My reflections in this comment are not intended to devalue or undercut civility in social life. I take myself to be doing the opposite by thinking seriously about how we show our reverence for, as Amy says, that which is "finest and most exquisite" in our shared life, in contexts shaped by unjust norms (p. 58). Of course, the Confucian philosophers that Amy engages so compellingly in this book are not strangers to this question: they were arguing for the value of li 禮 in times that were far from ideal, as political corruption, war, crime, and famine were widespread during the time period in which these thinkers were teaching and writing (475–221 b.c.e.). Not only that, but these early Confucians, including Confucius himself, were making their arguments as members of an at least somewhat socially disadvantaged group: Confucius and his followers were infamously exiled, often (but not always) denied political influence, and were not uncommonly the object of ridicule. These early Confucians were arguing for the importance of li—including civility and good manners—not from a place of assumed social, political, or economic dominance, but from the position of a complicated and considerably more vulnerable relationship to power. As far as I know, all of these early Confucians, recorded in the Analects and other texts, were men—at least that is the conclusion of the early Hanperiod Chinese historian Sima Qian (145–86 b.c.e.), who lists seventy-seven disciples of Confucius, all male. We don't really know, then, how Confucius would counsel women students on li, or whether and how this counsel would be different from his advice to his male disciples. Regardless, it does seem to be the case that the general expectation to be mannerly applied to [End Page 1084] men and women, in the sense that neither group is given a pass on the demands of civility. Even if the specific norms of etiquette were highly gendered—for instance the different norms of etiquette that govern appropriate behavior for a husband and a wife—the general expectation to abide by li could be (and I suspect was) universal. This, I think, is a point of significant difference between the Confucian context and our own. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that manners were feminized in Warring States period China. But a quick tour through the history of etiquette in the United States reveals it to be a highly gendered concept: etiquette, at least from the nineteenth century onward, is feminized in at least two main ways. Etiquette in the American context is feminized in the sense that it is largely understood as for women (and, significantly, other social climbers), as rules directed to, and often written by, women (pp. 7–8). But good manners and etiquette are also feminized in the sense that they are ridiculed and trivialized in strikingly feminine terms. As Amy notes, even the word "etiquette" can be "rejected as useful for discussing serious subjects," being dismissed as "ladylike" and "prissy" (p. 8). In thinking about manners as a cornerstone of moral self-cultivation, we have to take this history into account, since, unlike in the early Confucian context, it seems to me that for us the general expectation to be well-mannered is gendered, with the bulk of the...

The Organizing Power of Harmony in the Chinese Tradition of Thought

Early and later Confucians, known in Chinese as the “ruists” school of ancient origins, perceived the idea of “harmony” as a fundamental concept that lies at the basis of self-cultivation, society and governance. In modern times this idea still plays in one or another form a dominant note in Chinese politics and social life. The article attempts to search for causes of the significance of “harmony” by focusing on analyzing two pivotal Confucian texts compiled in the Han dynasty, namely, Records of Music [Yue ji 樂記] and Divination of Music [Yue wei 樂緯]. The analysis shows that ruists belonging to Zhou dynasty’s imperial class of music officials, gradually developed the aesthetics of music into a complex idea of "harmony" that contains the highest aesthetical way—“Dao”—which guides both the whole universe as well as the evolution of human society.

The Chinese Pleasure Book by Michael Nylan

Reviewed by: The Chinese Pleasure Book by Michael Nylan Andrew Lambert (bio) The Chinese Pleasure Book. By Michael Nylan. New York: Zone Books, 2018. Pp. 472. Hardcover $32.95, ISBN 978-1-942130-13-0. In this vast and ambitious tome, Michael Nylan aims to "trace the evolution of pleasure theories in early China over the course of a millennium and a half" (p. 17), roughly from 400 BCE to 1100 CE. This involves dissecting the discourse surrounding a single graph, le 樂, which Nylan translates as pleasure, and actively distinguishes from other states such as happiness and joy. Nylan understands such pleasure as "deeper satisfactions" realized in long-term commitments and often relational in nature (p. 18). In texts, pleasure (樂) is often associated with "objects of consequence" such as intimate friends (you 友), Heaven (tian 天), graceful and charismatic acts (de 德) and family profession or heritage (ye 業) (p. 35). Nylan believes that the importance of pleasure in understanding Chinese thought has been neglected by modern sinologists. Furthermore, the Chinese term involves connotations and practical implications that do not neatly align with accounts of comparable inner states found in "classical Greece and Rome and in modern philosophy" (p. 18). In Chinese thought, for example, pleasure is contrasted not with pain--as is common in European thought, including classical utilitarianism--but with concern or anxiety (you 憂), danger (wei 危) or grief arising from loss (ai 哀) (p. 35). The distinctive profile of Chinese pleasure thus invites a detailed study. This book-length study consists of seven chapters. The first introduces notable features of Chinese pleasure discourse. These include: the sheer range of pleasure-related terms in the texts; the relation of pleasure with theories of resonance (ganying 感應); insistence that the pleasure promoted was not hedonistic; and that all thinkers, from the Warring States period to the eleventh century, addressed how to "convert the consuming pleasures--those that expand vast time, wealth and physical energy--into sustaining pleasures that could support…the polity, the family or the body" (p. 33). Such transformation could ensure "a life of maximal pleasure and minimal distress" (p. 54). This wide-ranging theory of pleasure is unpacked in subsequent chapters. The second chapter examines two closely linked themes that illustrate the relational and more rewarding pleasures: music and friendship. Subsequent chapters then focus on the treatment of pleasure by particular texts or thinkers. [End Page 1] Chapters 3-5 focus on the treatment of pleasure in pre-Qin Master's texts: the Mencius, the Xunzi and the Zhuangzi. Chapter 6 focuses on Yang Xiong's conviction that pleasure is found in immersion in great writers of antiquity. The final chapter is a comparative study of pleasure in the works of Tao Yuanming and Su Shi. The first four chapters in particular develop a multi-faceted theory of how pleasure functioned in Chinese thought and social life. This integrates accounts of human nature with broader social and political issues. The chapters on Mencius and Xunzi outline how the early Confucians understood pleasure and the desire for it as part of human nature. People were bundles of desires, and desires could not be eliminated. Accordingly, pleasure was not to be dismissed or actively restricted, but was to be accommodated where possible (asceticism finds few backers in the tradition). At the same time, the metaphors of organic growth in the Mencius and of social conditioning in the Xunzi indicate that desires were to be refined through the shaping of personal character. Mencius encourages rulers to "recognize the essential humanity underlying their desires" with "ordinary desires" transmuted into desires for "community and cooperation." (p. 137) through sympathetic extension of feeling. For Xunzi, "the Way of ritual and music…constitutes the only conceivable path by which to provide reliable satisfaction for the jumble of desires and longings" (p. 177); such cultivation enables people to become virtual works of art, charismatic and a pleasure to emulate. The possibility of transforming desires, and the need to do so, gave rise to a rich discourse about the management of desires. A central theme of the book, and a topic Nylan has explored in previous articles, is that such management--as both giving and taking pleasure--was central to social and...

"Dear Heart": Homage to Henry Rosemont, Jr., 1934–2017

"Dear Heart":Homage to Henry Rosemont, Jr., 1934–2017 Roberta E. Adams (bio) What can be said about me is simply that I continue my studies without respite and instruct others without growing weary. Analects 7.34 We can read the list of Henry Rosemont's accomplishments—the books and papers he wrote, edited, and translated, and his classes and workshops, conference papers, and seminars. The 2008 collection of essays in his honor, Polishing the Chinese Mirror, edited by Marthe Chandler and Ronnie Littlejohn,1 provides almost two dozen testimonies to the influence and reach of his work. In her introduction, Marthe Chandler emphasizes as well Henry's political activism, quoting the ideal he expressed in 1991, in A Chinese Mirror, of a dream "that can be shared by all peoples, holding their humanity in common."2 Henry worked toward that dream. He was a scholar, teacher, philosopher, and activist. His publications will long outlive him, but he truly lives in the people he touched, the communities he created, his quests for social justice and social change, and the ideas he espoused in conversation with others—these define him. In his preface to Against Individualism (2015), Henry expressed his purpose to advance "the views of the early Confucians on what it is to be a role-bearing person," which he considered "a genuinely viable alternative answer to the question of what it is to be a human being."3 Henry lived as a role-bearer; many of us found in him a role model, an exemplary person (junzi). We learned from him the value of appropriate behavior, of authoritative conduct, of ritual embodied in performance. Confucius said that he would never get to meet a sage (sheng ren) (Analects 7.26); those of us who had the good fortune to know Henry were luckier. I met Henry Rosemont, along with Roger Ames, when I was a participant during the summer of 1996 in their NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Institute at St. Mary's College, "Teaching the Chinese Classics in Translation." Henry and Roger were completing the text that appeared the next year as The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation.4 Among the many joys of that workshop was that, as Henry and Roger tried [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolution Henry Rosemont, Jr., 1934–2017. Photo by Stan Shoptaugh. [End Page 2] out their translations with each other, they included us and took our responses seriously: they created of us a community of scholars, and modeled the roles of teacher, scholar, disputant, and friend. At the end of this experience, we were invited to become members of the Asian Studies Development Program (ASDP) of the East-West Center at the University of Hawai'i. Launched in 1991 by Roger Ames, Betty Buck, and Peter Hershock, ASDP is one of the many families that Henry helped to foster. The importance of this enterprise is that it enables academics from a variety of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences, and even the sciences—many without prior formal training in philosophy or Asian Studies—to introduce the study of Asia into the curricula of small colleges, universities, and community colleges throughout the United States. Henry Rosemont was the consummate teacher of philosophy who had the opportunity through his various teaching appointments to train students in their work over the course of several years. He worked collaboratively with other scholars on significant publications. But he also led a number of NEH and ASDP faculty workshops that brought his ideas to an expanded group of teachers eager to bring a global focus to their campuses and to give students an understanding of Eastern traditions and alternate ways of viewing the world. Faculty who participated in these programs then invited Henry back to their campuses for further professional development. The publication of A Reader's Companion to the Confucian Analects5 in 2013 increased the demand for Henry to conduct master classes, to teach teachers how to teach Confucius. This eulogy presents a few of the voices of friends from some recent tributes to Henry Rosemont. In September 2017 many of Henry's colleagues, students, and neighbors gathered...

Power, Situation, and Character: A Confucian-Inspired Response to Indirect Situationist Critiques

Indirect situationist critiques of virtue ethics grant that virtue exists and is possible to acquire, but contend that given the low probability of success in acquiring it, a person genuinely interested in behaving as morally as possible would do better to rely on situationist strategies - or, in other words, strategies of environmental or ecological engineering or control (Doris, 2002, 1998; see also Levy 2012). In this paper, I develop a partial answer to this critique drawn from work in early Confucian ethics and in contemporary philosophy and psychology. From early Confucian ethics, I lean on the concept of li, or ritual. Ritual represents both a set of situational manipulations that are especially effective at directly producing moral behavior and at indirectly cultivating virtue over time, and also a virtue that consists of facility with and expertise in these situational manipulations (Mower 2013; Slingerland, 2011; Sarkissian, 2010; and Hutton, 2006). Appealing to the particular example of social power, I then argue that one is justified in attempting to acquire virtue if one (a) knows that one will frequently encounter circumstances in which purely situationist strategies lose effectiveness, (b) if these circumstances also carry moral urgency: the risk of great harm or opportunity for great benefit to others is high, and (c) if utilizing the potent combination of situationist strategies and virtue envisioned by the early Confucians as ritual is possible.

Joy, Wisdom and Virtue—The Confucian Paradigm of Good Life

This paper is intended to examine the ethical paradigm of the good life constructed in the early Confucian texts, in contrast with the clear tendency to the rational paradigm as ascribed in the ancient Greek philosophy. To fully appreciate the Confucian paradigm, we will investigate how joy becomes the central concern for early Confucians and what categories it is classified through discourses on wisdom and virtue. We will argue that joy, wisdom and virtue underlie the theme of learning to be human and is both the necessary ingredient and the consequence of the good life in early Confucianism.

Contingency and responsibility in Confucian political theory

In this article I investigate the Confucian sense of responsibility from the framework of “moral economy,” understood as a causal relationship between one’s virtue and non-moral goods including political position/success, and “contingency,” the failure of moral economy, and argue that early Confucians’ astute understanding of the contingent nature of the political world enabled them to subscribe to the non-causal sense of responsibility. Contrary to the common argument that Heaven was invoked by the Confucians in order to shield themselves from responsibility for their political failures, I argue that they imposed a more expanded sense of responsibility both on them and on the rulers, largely preoccupied with realpolitik. In their effort to restore moral economy between the ruler’s virtue and his political position in particular, I show Confucians engaged in what I call reverse moral economy, at the heart of which was to constrain the ruler’s arbitrary use of political power.

Two Virtuous Actions Cannot both be Completed

AbstractThis essay highlights an alternative tradition of understanding value conflicts in early Confucian thought. In contrast to a prominent position among interpreters that argues for the resolvability or harmonization of conflicting values, I argue that some early Confucians conceptualized value conflicts as irresolvable. In other words, when meaningful aspects of a situation come into tension with each other and values are threatened to be either left unfulfilled or harmed, early Confucians put forth a variety of views. Some believed that all values could be tended to as long as one had the moral imagination of a sage, whereas others saw the world as a place where irreconcilable conflicts between values could occur for even the most profound people. Within this diversity, I take up a view about irresolvable value conflicts where the confrontation with a deep value conflict leaves behind a moral remainder that can mar even the character of a sage.

Martha and the Masters: Virtuous Domestic Aesthetic Activity

In this essay, I draw Karen Stohr’s work on the moral-aesthetic elements of hospitality into conversation with classical Confucianism. While the early Confucians would not deny the other-regarding elements of hospitality Stohr emphasizes, they also notably highlight the ways exercises in taste and skillful aesthetic activity can work on and for the agent herself, providing a sensibility that can guard domestic aesthetic activity against problematic forms of self-sacrifice and alienated labor that color contemporary gendered representations of the home and its activity. The most robustly virtuous and indeed rewarding versions of hospitality and domestic aesthetic activity, I argue, will link self to environment and work, using both as mechanisms that foster wider values the self prizes and endorses.

Would Early Confucians Really Support Humanitarian Interventions?

Several prominent interpreters have suggested that early Confucians would support what we now call “humanitarian intervention,” albeit with some particularly Confucian nuances. It is argued here that this is at least misleading. It is maintained that the key criterion for the appropriate use of offensive military force implied in the early Confucian texts is such overwhelming support, on account of one’s moral virtue, that little resistance is encountered, and thus the carnage associated with genuine war is not required. Since this condition is not actually encountered in real circumstances, early Confucianism can provide support for resisting calls to use offensive warfare for humanitarian purposes. First the focus is on Mencius, and interpretations of Mencius’s view of humanitarian intervention, especially that of Daniel A. Bell. It is then argued that Xunzi holds a view similar to that of Mencius. This suggests that there is a relatively consistent early Confucian perspective on warfare that is, in its practical implications, more pacifistic than recent commentaries suggest.

Achieving the Way: Confucian Virtue Politics and the Problem of Dirty Hands

Confucian virtue politics is premised on two fundamental assumptions. First, a good government founded on the Way is predicated on the political actor’s personal moral virtue, and there is no qualitative difference between the ruler’s virtue and the virtue(s) that people are ultimately to embody. Second, since there is only one single and holistic Way and the political is extended from the ethical, there cannot be two separate political and moral standards, which implies the impossibility of what Michael Walzer calls “the problem of dirty hands.” After examining how early Confucians such as Mencius and Xunzi rationalized the ostensibly problematic actions taken by their ancient moral heroes in politically critical moments, this essay concludes that early Confucians’ absolutist commitment to the Way enabled them to deal with moral dilemmas in politics with great moral flexibilities without invoking dirty hands.