In his new book, Ames defends his interpretation of Confucian ethics as "role ethics" through a detailed examination of the Confucian vocabulary. Through such vocabulary, we can see that the Confucian self is a being that cultivates itself as it lives and matures in the context of the family and society. As role ethics, Confucianism is distinct from the Western tradition and its Greek roots. However, in order to highlight the contrast between Confucianism and the Western tradition, Ames paints a (...) picture of the latter that is a little misleading. As it turns out, there are many strands in the Western philosophical fabric, including those in the Continental tradition, where we can find conceptions of the self not all that different from what is in Confucianism as interpreted by Ames. Content Type Journal Article Pages 141-150 Authors A. T. Nuyen, National University of Singapore Journal Comparative and Continental Philosophy Online ISSN 1757-0646 Print ISSN 1757-0638 Journal Volume Volume 4 Journal Issue Volume 4, Number 1 / 2012. (shrink)
How is the Confucian moral agent motivated to do what he or she judges to be right or good? In western philosophy, the answer to a question such as this depends on whether one is an internalist or externalist concerning moral motivation. In this article, I will first interpret Confucian ethics as role-based ethics and then argue that we can attribute to Confucianism a position on moral motivation that is neither internalist nor externalist but somewhere in between. I will then (...) illustrate my claim with my reading of Mencius 6A4, showing that it is superior to readings found in the literature, which typically assume that Mencius is an internalist. (shrink)
There is a common concern in some of the writings of Husserl and Gadamer. It is the concern to defend the legitimacy and dignity of the "human sciences." They argue from the methodological standpoint that the method of the natural sciences leaves out the relationship between the object of inquiry and the inquirer. This relationship plays a key role in "understanding," which is the concem of the human sciences. In explicating it, Husserl and Gadamer stress the role of the community (...) and the lifeworld as the context of understanding. Parallels to Husserl's and Gadamer's ideas can be found in analytical philosophy. (shrink)
It is often supposed that Confucianism is opposed to the idea of equality insofar as the key ideals to which it is committed, such as meritocracy and li , are incompatible with equality. Sympathetic commentators typically defend Confucianism by saying that (a) the Confucian person is not a free-standing individual but a social being embedded in a social structure with different and unequal roles, and (b) social inequality has to be traded in for other values. This paper argues that in (...) advocating meritocracy, Confucianism does not abandon the idea of equality. Indeed, invoking Aristotle's account of equality in the Nicomachean Ethics , it can be argued that the unequal distribution of rights and benefits reflects one aspect of equality, namely the vertical aspect, or the unequal treatment of unequals. (shrink)
It seems that Derrida objects to Gadamer's hermeneutics on the grounds that it is, as Gadamer puts it, "a discipline that guarantees truth," taking it as something that partakes in the "metaphysics of presence." However, this criticism is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of hermeneutic truth. It would be on target if hermeneutic truth were some kind of universal condition of correspondence. Gadamer has tried to correct this conception of hermeneutic truth in his various attempts at opening a (...) dialogue with deconstructionism. In this article, the author argues that in a possible debate between hermeneutics and deconstructionism, there are good reasons to judge in favor of the former. (shrink)
Why did Levinas choose Isaiah 45:7 ("I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all that") as a superscription of his essay on evil? This article explores the role of evil in Levinas's religious ethics. The author discusses the structure of evil as revealed phenomenologically and juxtaposes it to the structure of subjectivity found in the writings of Levinas. The idea of the "ethical anthropic principle," modeled upon the cosmic anthropic principle, is then used to link evil to (...) the responsibility of the subject. The link is subsequently extended to God. This is proposed as one way of understanding the meaning of Isaiah 45:7. (shrink)
It is commonly supposed that people of Asia, particularly the ethnic Chinese, subscribe to values which are not conducive to economic progress. The gap between the capitalist West and Asia is often attributed to the 'cultural' factor. Behind such perception is the supposition that capitalism is wholly a product of the West, alien to Asia and cannot be successfully embraced without doing violence to its cultural traditions. Against this position, I argue that classical capitalism is perfectly compatible with the key (...) elements of Chinese philosophy. Whether or not there is anything in the suggestion of some historians that Quesnay borrowed from Confucianism, I argue that his economic doctrine could have developed from the fundamentals of Chinese philosophy. If I am right, the economic gap between the West and Asia has to be explained in terms other than the 'cultural' factor, such as, perhaps, colonialism and post-colonialist ideologies. (shrink)
Suppose that there are good or morally defensible reasons for not responding truthfully to a question or request for information. Is a lie or a deception better as a means to avoid telling the truth? There are many situations in public and private life in which the answer to this question would serve as a useful moral guide, for instance, clinical situations involving dying patients, educational situations involving young children and personal situations involving close friends. Intuitively, we feel that there (...) is a moral asymmetry in favor of deceiving over lying. However, doubts have been cast on such intuition. The aim of this paper is to bolster this intuition. It will be argued that the claim of moral asymmetry in favor of deception can be supported on a consideration of the different degrees of expectation involved in communicative ethics. Two other objections to the claim of asymmetry will also be considered. (shrink)
Does Confucianism have anything to contribute to the idea and practice of citizenship? Many critics would argue that it does not, on the grounds that it is inhospitable to values such as individuality, individual rights, equality and democracy. However, these grounds have to be severely qualified. Furthermore, there is no single conception of citizenship, even though the liberal conception stands out as, probably, the most influential one. Recently in the debate on citizenship, many commentators have been highly critical of the (...) liberal conception, precisely for its uncompromising emphasis on individuality and individual rights, which tends to produce a political practice that fails to bring about equality and democratic values. Confucianism has much to contribute to the critique of the liberal conception of citizenship, as well as to the construction of a more viable conception, one that has a better chance to cope with the effects of globalisation. (shrink)
The pace of globalisation has quickened considerably in the last ten to fifteen years. The process has yielded benefits but also resulted in conflicts. The benefits would be enhanced if the conflicts could be resolved. One source of conflicts is the desire to maintain cultural identity. Can Confucianism contribute to the working out of a universal global justice that can help resolve conflicts, particularly conflicts of cultural identities? Can it be part of the globalisation process without sacrificing its cultural identity? (...) I argue that it can on both counts and thus it is neither a villain blocking the progress of universal justice, a necessary condition for conflict-free globalisation, nor a helpless victim of that progress. (shrink)
: Ronald Dworkin claims that if we are able to control our own biology, "our most settled convictions will . . . be undermined [and] we will be in a kind of moral free-fall." This is so because he takes moral convictions to be determined by the choices we make against a fixed biological background. It would seem that if Confucian ethics is grounded in ren xing (human nature) and if ren xing refers to a fixed biological background, then the (...) Confucian moral agent will be in a state of moral free-fall in the age of biological control—that is, if Dworkin is right. We can try to read ren xing as a creative process rather than a fixed nature, but any such reading inevitably grounds ren xing in something else that is biological. There is a way out for Confucians: the Dworkinian choice/chance distinction that is crucial for morality can be relocated away from the boundary between free choice and fixed biology to the boundary between the choices that we make and the fixed background of tradition. (shrink)
The philosophers' tendency to characterize euthanasia in terms of either the right or the responsibility to die is, in some ways, problematic. Stepping outside of the analytic framework, the author draws out the implications of the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas for the euthanasia debate, tracing the way Levinas's position differs not only from the philosophical consensus but also from the theological one. The article shows that, according to Levinas, there is no ethical case for suicide or assisted suicide. Death cannot (...) be assumed or chosen-not only because suicide is a logically and metaphysically contradictory concept but also because in the choice of death ethical responsibility turns into irresponsibility. However, since Levinas holds that one must be responsible to the point of expiation, he can be said to approve certain actions that may have the consequence of hastening death. (shrink)
If the current trend is any guide, it looks like we are heading towards a future in which relationships are determined and regulated by rights. In addition to the ?universal human rights? declared soon after the Second World War, other ?universal rights? have been declared and added to the list of rights, such as the rights of the child, the rights of indigenous peoples and so on. A question arises as to whether a world in which our relationships are governed (...) entirely on the basis of rights is an appealing one. I want to suggest that if our common future is regulated entirely by rights then we are moving in the wrong direction. By contrast, Tu Wei-ming believes that if Confucianism flourishes, we will move towards a society based on trust rather than rights, or what he calls a ?fiduciary society?. I will argue that while Tu's Confucian fiduciary society is perhaps an impractical ideal, a move towards it will provide a necessary counter-balance to the relentless march towards a rights-based society. (shrink)
For many commentators, Confucian ethics is a kind of virtue ethics. However, there is enough textual evidence to suggest that it can be interpreted as an ethics based on rules, consequentialist as well as deontological. Against these views, I argue that Confucian ethics is based on the roles that make an agent the person he or she is. Further, I argue that in Confucianism the question of what it is that a person ought to do cannot be separated from the (...) question of what it is to be a person, and that the latter is answered in terms of the roles that arise from the network of social relationships in which a person stands. This does not mean that Confucian ethics is unlike anything found in Western philosophy. Indeed, I show that many Western thinkers have advanced a view of ethics similar to the Confucian ethics as I interpret it. (shrink)
In most countries, failed criminal attempts are punished less severely than those that succeed. Many philosophers, including myself, have argued that differential punishment can be justified. However, in a recent paper, Hanna raises objections to defenses of differential punishment, claiming that such policy goes against our “desert intuitions” and also cannot be justified on utilitarian grounds. I argue in this paper that Hanna’s desert-based and utilitarian objections can be undermined. Further, they are valid only within moral theories that take the (...) agent to be an independent self, whose responsibility rests on his or her intentions and deliberations alone. However, differential punishment can be justified in a different kind of moral theory, in which there are good reasons to give luck a role to play. (shrink)
It is now widely accepted that experiments using human subjects without their informed consent is unethical. However, in certain kinds of experiment, such as placebo trials, informing participants about what will happen will invalidate research results. Some authors have suggested that the principle of informed consent has to be modified, others claim that ethical concerns can be set aside in the interest of advancing medical research. I argue that these attempts at justifying withholding information from participants are inadequate. Drawing from (...) a debate in epistemology between so-called internalists and externalists, I claim thatwe can know on a different level that we are not to know certain details about an experiment, and argue that consent given on the basis of such knowledge is informed consent and is ethically sufficient. (shrink)
Emancipation is a legitimate human interest. It may be said that Foucault in his last works is concerned with putting forward a strategy for emancipation. The strategy consists in an aesthetic construction of the self. It is argued that this strategy ultimately fails and that, instead of retreating to the self, we need to return to the community level and to examine the rules of discourse that operate there. Contrary to Foucault's strategy, Habermas argues that what we need is a (...) communicative rationality capable of correcting discursive distortions. Coming from a different angle, Lyotard argues that what we need at the community level is a set of rules that prevent any one discourse totalizing all others. Such rules would ensure just gaming. Together, Lyotard and Habermas offer us an ethics that has the potential to serve the human interest in emancipation. (shrink)
Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, by Roger T. Ames, The Chinese University Press and The University of Hawai’i Press, 2011, 332 pp., pb. $31.00, ISBN-13: 9780824835767. In his new book, Ames defends his interpretation of Confucian ethics as “role ethics” through a detailed examination of the Confucian vocabulary. Through such vocabulary, we can see that the Confucian self is a being that cultivates itself as it lives and matures in the context of the family and society. As role ethics, Confucianism (...) is distinct from the Western tradition and its Greek roots. However, in order to highlight the contrast between Confucianism and the Western tradition, Ames paints a picture of the latter that is a little misleading. As it turns out, there are many strands in the Western philosophical fabric, including those in the Continental tradition, where we can find conceptions of the self not all that different from what is in Confucianism as interpreted by Ames. (shrink)
The aim of this paper is to explore the perplexity of the notion of sincerity, chiefly by examining Lionel Thrilling’s account in his Sincerity and Authenticity. I will show that his account is problematic if interpreted as a “truthfulness account.” However, I will also show that his basic insight can be preserved in my own account of sincerity as a kind of congruence between the agent’s avowal and those beliefs, feelings, and dispositions that constitute the agent’s “true self.” The latter (...) include a set of minimally morally acceptable beliefs, feelings, and dispositions that constitute the agent’s moral integrity. Further, the context of sincerity is one in which the agent realizes that his or her integrity, particularly the moral part, is vulnerable. (shrink)
In Confucius' time, it was supposed that the sovereign had the mandate of heaven (tianming) to rule. Both Confucius and Mencius speak of a legitimate ruler as someone who has such a mandate and of a deposed ruler as someone who has lost it. Commentators have recently turned their attention to what the reference to the mandate of heaven means, as there are implications for the prospects of democracy in a Confucian state. The result is a wide spectrum of views. (...) In what might be called the liberal interpretation of the "mandate of heaven," Confucianism, or Mencius more specifically, allows for a popular revolt against a despotic ruler (hence for the possibility of democracy). In what might be called the conservative .. (shrink)
In most countries, failed criminal attempts are punished less severely than those that succeed. Many philosophers, including myself, have argued that differential punishment can be justified. However, in a recent paper, Hanna raises objections to defenses of differential punishments, claiming that such policy goes against our “desert intuitions” and also cannot be justified on utilitarian grounds. I argue in this paper that Hanna’s desert-based and utilitarian objections can be undermined. Further, they are valid only within moral theories that take the (...) agent to be an independent self, whose responsibility rests on his or her intentions and deliberations alone. However, differential punishment can be justified in a different kind of moral theory, in which there are good reasons to giveluck a role to play. (shrink)
Heidegger is well known for his views on technology. What would he have to say about the crowning glory of digital technology, the Internet? This paper argues that he would not reject the new technology, which would be just as inauthentic as being delivered over to it. Instead, Heidegger would urge us to reflect critically on it to see how we could develop a free relationship to it. He would say that in order to have a free relationship to it, (...) we need to avoid letting it serve to make us forget our Being as Being-in-the-world. An inauthentic relationship with the Internet occurs when we take to it because of the anonymity it affords, or because we mistake the wealth of information it makes available for real knowledge. For all that, Heidegger regards technology as having a “saving power,” or the potential to reveal Being. However, I argue that to be saved by technology’s saving power, we need to develop, on the one hand, what Foucault calls the “arts of existence,” and on the other what Habermas calls “human interests,” interests that will help realize the potential of the Internet. (shrink)
Geography and religion -- Landscape of anxiety and fear -- Chinese cosmic space and places -- European sacred space and places -- A comparison with American Indian world-view -- Similar, yet different -- Apartness -- Order -- Wholeness and completion -- Sacred state -- Violence -- Ironies of piety -- God and morality -- From amoral energy to power for good -- Rise and fall of place specificity -- Traders and pilgrims -- Religious geography; or just human geography -- The (...) aesthetic sublime : vastness, place, and space -- Space vs. local place and custom -- Unbounded vastness and placelessness -- The aesthetic sublime : transiency and the eternal -- The ethical sublime : Buddhism -- The ethical sublime : Christianity -- Falling standard -- Geography and religion : fundamental questions -- From architectural and ritual to storytelling -- Community, self, and selflessness -- Placelessness and ethereality -- Religion of fear and privilege -- True religion -- Progress -- The ultimate test. (shrink)
The research about strategic human resource management (SHRM) has suggested that human resource professionals (HRPs) have the opportunity to play a greater role in contributing to organizational success if they are effective in developing systems and policies aligned with the organization’s values, goals, and mission. We suggest that HRPs need to raise the standard of their performance and that the competitive demands of the modern economic environment create implicit ethical duties that HRPs owe to their organizations. We define ethical stewardship (...) as a model of governance that honors obligations due to the many stakeholders and that maximizes long-term organizational wealth creation. We propose that if HRPs adopt an ethical stewardship framework and the qualities of transformative leaders, they will be more aware of their ethical duties to their organizations and more effective in helping their organizations to create increased wealth, achieve desired organizational outcomes, and establish work environments that are more satisfying to employees. (shrink)
Nuyen (this journal, vol 20, no. 4) contrasts "objectivity" in the natural science with a relation of "understanding" between knower and object in the human sciences. I present a different approach to natural science--a perspective in which the objects of the natural sciences are constructions that arise out of the interaction of the knower and the knowable world. From this perspective, it is inappropriate to to distinguish between the natural sciences and the human sciences in the way Nuyen (...) does. Instead, the crucial point is that if the human sciences refrain from abstractions and generalizations in favor of the particularities of objects and situations, then they must employ some other way to constitute a separation between theory and data in order for the work to be "scientific" as that term is used in regard to the natural sciences. (shrink)
The aim of this study was to explore and describe how Flemish nurses experience their involvement in the care of hospitalized patients with dementia, particularly in relation to artificial nutrition or hydration (ANH). We interviewed 21 hospital nurses who were carefully selected from nine hospitals in different regions of Flanders. ‘Being touched by the vulnerability of the demented patient’ was the central experience of the nurses, having great impact on them professionally as well as personally. This feeling can be described (...) as encompassing the various stages of the care process: the nurses' initial meeting with the vulnerable patient; the intense decision-making process, during which the nurses experienced several intense emotions influenced by supporting or hindering contextual factors; and the final coping process, a time when nurses came to terms with this challenging experience. From our examination of this care process, it is obvious that nurses' involvement in ANH decision-making processes that concern patients with dementia is a difficult and ethically sensitive experience. On the one hand, the feeling of ‘being touched’ can imply strength, as it demonstrates that nurses are willing to provide good care. On the other hand, the feeling of ‘being touched’ can also imply weakness, as it makes nurses vulnerable to moral distress stemming from contextual influences. Therefore, nurses have to be supported as they carry out this ethically sensitive assignment. Practical implications are given. (shrink)
