Theorizing “Person” in Confucian Ethics: A Good Place to Start

email of the author: rtames@hawaii.edu 141 Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies Vol.16 No.2 © 2016 Academy of East Asian Studies. 141-162 DOI: 10.21866/esjeas.2016.16.2.001 The Problem: “It’s a Poor Sort of Memory that only Works Backwards” G. W. F. Hegel in the introduction to his Encyclopaedia Logic famously observes that one of the most difficult problems in any philosophical investigation is the question of where to begin. In this essay I will argue that the appropriateness of categorizing Confucian ethics as either role ethics or virtue ethics turns largely on the conception of “person” that is presupposed within the interpretive context of classical Chinese philosophy. If our goal is to take the Confucian tradition on its own terms and to let it speak with its own voice without overwriting it with our own cultural importances, we must begin by first self-consciously and critically theorizing the Confucian conception of person as the starting point of Confucian ethics. The problem of using Western categories to theorize Confucian philosophy is an old and persistent story. Kwong-loi Shun has recently made much of this asymmetry in how we make our cultural comparisons (2009, 470): [T]here is a trend in comparative studies to approach Chinese thought from a Western philosophical perspective, by reference to frameworks, concepts, or issues found in Western philosophical discussions. This trend is seen not only in works published in the English language, but also in those published in Chinese. Conversely, in the contemporary Roger T. AMES Berggruen Fellow, Peking University In the introduction of Chinese philosophy and culture into the Western academy, we have tended to theorize and conceptualize this antique tradition by appealing to familiar categories. Confucian role ethics is an attempt to articulate a sui generis moral philosophy that allows this tradition to have its own voice. This holistic philosophy is grounded in the primacy of relationality, and is a challenge to a foundational liberal individualism that has defined persons as discrete, autonomous, rational, free, and often self-interested agents. Confucian role ethics begins from a relationally constituted conception of person, takes family roles and relations as the entry point for developing moral competence, invokes moral imagination and the growth in relations that it can inspire as the substance of human morality, and entails a human-centered, a-theistic religiousness that stands in sharp contrast to the Abrahamic religions.