Ethics Unbound: Chinese and Western Perspectives on Morality

3. Strangers to Ethics: Kierkegaard and Daoist Approaches

CHAPTER THREE Strangers to Ethics: Kierkegaard and Daoist Approaches In the first part of this book, I dealt with thinkers for whom the moral vision was paramount, and for whom knowing one’s place within the social order becomes a central component of living a life of virtue. While this does not imply that an ethical life is one which remains stagnant, it does link moral virtue to a process of familiarization. Confucius emphasizes that knowing where one stands through the ritualized practices of society is essential if moral virtue is to prevail. A meaningfully ordered cosmos demands that one assume a place within a distinct cultural community . Only this setting is conducive to developing the moral character that allows one to express humanity toward others. The Confucian vision differs profoundly from the legalistic universality of Kant’s categorical imperative. Although Kant would refuse to wed morality to a particular place, his insistence on universalization suggests that I should be able to conceive of myself in the position of any other. The imaginary Kingdom of Ends is a world in which nobody is a moral stranger. Mencius and Rousseau broaden the moral vision by insisting that nature be more carefully incorporated into it. Both would find the Kantian gap between heteronomous desires and the maxims of morality unsustainable . One could argue that, according to their philosophies, a reflection upon nature makes the movement from the familiar to the unfamiliar possible. For Mencius, expanding one’s range of concern by building upon innate moral dispositions is part of the human contribution to the flowing dynamic of qi. In Rousseau, commitment to the community and to others is motivated in part by our nostalgia for a prehuman state of natural harmony, which fuels the attempt to re-create this harmony 100 Ethics Unbound: Chinese and Western Perspectives on Morality at a social level. The natural substratum, which both thinkers rely upon, makes the familiarization of the unfamiliar possible by shaping and also providing a check on artifice. In the second part of this book, I will deal with thinkers who are critical of ethical systems which they assume are closely tied to convention . This makes it difficult to openly receive the unfamiliar stranger who may not be so easily incorporated into a familiar rubric. From Kierkegaard ’s perspective, it is precisely in dealing with a stranger that ethics is subjected to its most rigorous and excruciating tests. Kierkegaard is not content with an ethics that limits itself to an extension of the self, for this simply constitutes a broadening of horizons which remains within the purview of selfish behavior. While it is relatively easy to comport oneself ethically when dealing with another subject we either know or whose wellbeing is correlated with our own, it is much more difficult to act morally when such correlation is impossible and the otherness of the other cannot be reasoned away. In such a situation, our ethical horizons are stretched to the limit. Although Confucius would insist that moral cultivation would allow the sage to act appropriately even amongst strangers, Kierkegaard would disagree. A nonpossessive approach to ethics is impossible without faith in God, who is the infinite intermediary between self and other, in Kierkegaard ’s view. God, as infinite and absolute other, also opens us up to the “otherness” of others. Kierkegaard insists that if we are truly to respond to the other as other, without attempting to reduce her to a version of ourselves, then the differentiation between self and other must be vigorously maintained. We do this only when we allow her to be stranger, without reducing her to the comforts of familiarity. Daoist philosophies,1 with their emphasis on the myriad things, also require a release from selfish attachments in order to provide an opening 1 Texts such as the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi are not likely the work of a single author. In the case of the Zhuangzi, only the first six chapters are likely to have been penned by Zhuangzi himself. Hans-Georg Moeller notes that in the life of ancient China, the Daodejing was not present in the form of a book as it is read now. Whether or not its alleged author, Laozi, actually existed is still a matter of debate. See Moeller, The Philosophy of the Daodejing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 1–3. 3. Strangers to Ethics: Kierkegaard and Daoist Approaches 101...