Moral Philosophy and the Confucian Tradition ed. by Fang Xudong (review)

Moral Philosophy and the Confucian Tradition (MPCT hereafter), edited by Fang Xudong, aims to introduce to mainland China the significant findings on Chinese philosophy made by scholars overseas. The book consists of twenty-one essays, which draw upon Confucianism as they work through various issues within moral philosophy. All essays are selected from the well-known journal Philosophy East and West. Since its establishment in 1951, Philosophy East and West has been a key English-language journal for the study of Chinese philosophy. Therefore, the publication of MPCT is undoubtedly a new achievement in translating overseas study on Chinese philosophy.

Roughly speaking, essays in MPCT can be divided into three groups. Group 1 examines core concepts in Confucian ethics such as ren (仁), li (禮), jing (敬), cheng (誠), zide (自得), and gewu (格物).

The examination involves many novel readings. For instance, Karyn Lai claims that li plays different roles and exhibits different degrees of flexibility in the three stages of moral development (pp. 145–159). However, Lai’s treatment of moral development as a process of skill training easily reminds us of the Dreyfus fivestage model of adult skill acquisition: novice, advanced beginner, competence, proficiency, and expertise.¹ We could safely say that Lai is implicitly drawing upon Western philosophy to study ancient Chinese philosophy.

Group 2 engages in a comparative study of Chinese and Western philosophy on more particular subjects, including the ethics of respect in Confucius and Kant; the public good in Confucius, Dewey, and Rorty; and the issue of finding the Way in Kierkegaard and Confucius.

Since the Indian scholar Brajen-dranath Seal (1864–1938) began to advocate comparative philosophy in his Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and Christianity in 1899, which the French philosopher Paul Masson-Oursel (1882–1956) echoed in his La philosophie comparée in 1923, the comparative study of philosophy has made significant contributions to the mutual understanding of Western and Eastern philosophy traditions. However, comparative study as a methodology is not satisfactory, since it easily leads to a so-called objective and detached observation of the objects compared (for instance, Confucius and Kant) in order to discover their similarities and/or differences. For instance, David B. Wong tells us: “The contrast between reason and emotion has played a crucial role in the moral psychology of the Western ethical tradition.” To the contrary, “Mencius held a picture of the role of emotion in moral motivation that militates against a general separation of reason from emotion”² (p. 262). Although this finding is not uninteresting, David B. Wong has to go beyond comparison if he attempts to develop a “third alternative to Humean and Kantian theories of practical reason”³ (p. 272). Moreover, if there is an announced or tacit rank between objects compared, a comparative study will be too enthusiastic to understand the object of the lower rank from the perspective of the higher. In a global age, it is necessary for us to go further from comparison to dialogue, which is exactly the approach that other essays in group 3 take. They discuss the significance of traditional Confucianism in attempts to solve contemporary ethical and political issues such as moral education, morality and human nature, biological control, proceduralism, liberal rights, and the balance between community and liberty.

Group 3 contains quite a few brilliant ideas. For example, Seung-hwan Lee raises the problem of the danger of a liberal morality, which has resulted in the immoderate practice of rights: “[A]n individual’s bullheaded insistence on rights under some inappropriate circumstances may bring about the danger of ‘a right to do wrong’ or ‘rights damnably insensitive’”⁴ (p. 59). To solve the problem, he suggests a coordination of a right-based morality of liberalism and Confucianism, which advocates a morality based on communitarian virtues. This suggestion is really appealing despite the fact that his argument is not absolutely beyond dispute. By “Confucian virtues,” Lee mainly means “the virtues of modesty...