Virtue and Hierarchy in Early Confucian Ethics

Abstract

Aaron Stalnaker’s Mastery, Dependency, and the Ethics of Authority proposes a moral vision that reclaims authority and dependency as indispensable conditions for fostering autonomy. Contemporary Western ethics, argues Stalnaker, is mired in faulty thinking about a set of linked concepts that inhibits an appreciation for the ubiquitous fact of human interdependence. The nature of authority is viewed as exclusively coercive, freedom as primarily negative, autonomy as automatically possessed, and equality as incompatible with differentiated appraisal of moral achievement and expertise. Stalnaker retrieves early Confucianism as a corrective because it does not present authority and autonomy in competitive terms. Instead, early Confucianism advocates that properly submitting oneself to the right sort of authority and dependent social relationships is the indispensable path for cultivating autonomy. The article lifts up three attractive claims of the proposal and probes the tension between virtue, hierarchy, and cosmology in early Confucianism.

Subject: Peng Yin, “Virtue and Hierarchy in Early Confucian Ethics” Journal of Religious Ethics 49.4 (December 2021)

“…Yin suggests that Confucian defense of “meritocracy” is conducive to ideological defense of the status quo—I agree, as he notes (249; Yin 2021, 804), and attempt to highlight the dangers, although there is always room for making critical points even more explicit. This is one reason I concur with some of Thomas Metzger's (2005) criticisms of Confucian political thought as utopian, even while drawing attention to some of the more realist elements of Mengzi's and Xunzi's ideas.…”

“…These other aspects of the contemporary proposal form the basis of my response to Yin's most serious charge: that “the sufficientarian approach [I advocate] stands in inverse relationship to [the] self‐respect” of all those who would be purportedly supported by it (Yin 2021, 799). Yin's reading implies that the currently vertiginous status and wealth hierarchies of the United States would continue, and perhaps even be bolstered by a more fully executed “meritocratic” set of selection procedures for the various positions that exist today.…”

A study on the integration of Confucian aesthetics into the curriculum thinking of universities based on multiple data chain networks

“…Confucian aesthetic thought, a model of excellent traditional Chinese culture, has significantly influenced China and the world. For a long historical period [1][2][3][4], the feudal ruling class has regarded the ideology of Confucianism as orthodox and has supported it. Confucianism is the essence of five thousand years of excellent traditional culture, and it has formed a strong sense of national identity, value, and social responsibility.…”