Relational and autonomous selves

Journal of Chinese Philosophy

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 419-432

  Wong, David B ^a  

^a DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 37649021388     PISSN: 03018121     EISSN: 15406253     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6253.2004.00163.x     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. David Hall and Roger Ames, Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 26
2. Hall and Ames, p. 32
3. Henry Rosemont, "Rights-bearing Individuals and Role-bearing Persons," in Mary I. Bockover, ed., Rules, Rituals, and Responsibilities: Essays Dedicated to Herbert Fingarette (LaSalle, IL: Open Court Press, 1991), p. 90
4. Wing-tsit Chan translates it as "humanity" in his translation of the Analects, in A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969)
5. D. C. Lau translates it as "benevolence" in Confucius: The Analects (New York: Penguin, 1998)
6. Arthur Waley as "goodness" in The Analects of Confucius (New York: Vintage, 1989)
7. and Henry Rosemont, Jr., and Roger Ames as "authoritative conduct" or "authoritative person" in The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998)
8. See Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture (New York: Anchor Books, 1976), for a distinction between "high-context" (where context is seen as very relevant to personal attributes) and "low-context" (where context is not seen as so relevant) societies
9. also Ara Norenzayan, Incheol Choi, and Robert E. Nisbett, "Cultural Similarities and Differences in Social Inference: Evidence from Behavioral Predictions and Lay Theories of Behavior," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28 (2002): 109-120, for a study indicating that Koreans are more likely to recognize relevant information about situational factors that influence behavior
10. Gilbert Harman, "Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1998-99): 315-331
11. and "The Nonexistence of Character Traits," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (1999-2000): 223-226
12. John Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
13. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (New York: Harper, 1974)
14. C. Haney, W. C. Banks, and P. Zimbardo, "Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison," International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1 (1973): 69-97
15. J. M. Darley, and C. D. Batson, "From Jerusalem to Jericho": A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27 (1973): 100-108
16. It is open to Doris to suggest, on the other hand, that the distance makes virtue ethics a psychologically unrealistic ethic. His fair demand of virtue ethicists is to show why the best ethic is one that asks people to emulate a character ideal that may be very distant from the way they actually are. I think there are good answers to this (some of which take us into criticisms of principle-based ethics and the alternative to principle-guided decisions that virtue ethics provides; and others of which involve the argument that the empirical evidence is not as negative about the existence of global traits as Doris thinks), but it takes a longer story than I can tell here
17. This is to slide over the complications of passages such as Mencius 1A7, where King Xuan displays compassion for an ox being led to ritual slaughter but his substitution of a lamb for the ox is approved, since the ritual must go on. This is why, Mencius says, the junzi stays out of the kitchen. An implication that might be drawn here is that being a compassionate person might sometimes make it more difficult for one to do what is right (carry out the ritual), but that nevertheless it is better to be compassionate than to avoid the difficulties one's own emotional nature presents. On this reading, some virtues of the junzi can come into tension with the virtue of righteousness. Another way of thinking about the King Xuan story, however, is that the king's compassion for the ox was not the wrong attitude for him to have had. It is the right attitude upon having encountered the ox. It is just that it is also right for him to find a way to complete the ritual
18. I want to stress that the Confucian ideal allows us to put agents in this world of causal laws. I do not believe it is correct to attribute a causally deterministic conception of the nature to the Confucians (nor the denial of such a conception), but my point here is that such a conception is indeed a powerful one for us, and compatibility with it weighs in favor of an ethical ideal. Thanks to Chung-ying Cheng for prompting me to clarify this point
19. Thanks to May Sim for raising this possibility
20. Translation from D. C. Lau, Confucius: The Analects (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), p. 63
21. Translation from Burton Watson, Basic Writings of Mo Tzu, Hsün Tzu, and Han Fei Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 97-98