The nature of the virtues in light of the early confucian tradition

In this chapter, I take a prominent and plausible conception of virtues from the Western philosophical tradition, apply it to some early Confucian texts, and see where it succeeds and fails. In this way, I show how this conception of virtues needs to be revised.1 To some, it may seem strange to take Western concepts of virtue and see how they hold up in light of the early Confucian tradition. However, if Western virtue ethicists take themselves to be prescribing for everyone, as opposed to simply for those within their own cultural background, then they must be willing to take into account challenges that may arise from outside their own tradition. And, insofar as the early Confucians were developing a virtue ethic of their own,2 insights gleaned from their thought may well advance contemporary Western virtue ethics, pointing out some of its shortcomings and highlighting possible solutions. The particular conception of virtues I am starting with is one of virtues as correctives, which was made prominent by Philippa Foot in her paper "Virtues and Vices"3 and further developed by Robert C. Roberts in his article "Will Power and the Virtues."4 On Foot's account, "the virtues are corrective, each one standing at a point at which there is some temptation to be resisted or deficiency of motivation to be made good."5 This conception captures certain aspects of the virtues. However, I wish to demonstrate that virtues that are often thought of as correctives are not best characterized in this way, at least on the general understanding of correctives. I will do this in two ways. First, I show that being a corrective is only a contingent feature of these virtues. Second, I demonstrate that "self-love," which carries many similarities to other so-called corrective virtues, is a plausible candidate for the status of virtue while not being a corrective, even in a contingent way. In addition, I want to show that there is another class of virtues that the idea of virtues as correctives completely misses. I will call this class of virtues "inclinational virtues." Finally, I explain why expecting the notion of a corrective to accommodate the idea of inclinational virtues is unwise. There are at least two distinct ways one could use the early Confucian tradition to elucidate a contemporary discussion of the virtues. The first would be to try to reconstruct and put forward a comprehensive early Confucian account of the virtues. Such a project would necessitate a much longer treatment than I can give here. In addition, while it makes sense to discuss an early Confucian virtue ethic tradition, it would be a mistake to assume that the underlying structure of the virtues did not differ between texts such as the Lunyu (Analects) and the Mengzi. The second approach is to selectively choose passages from these early Chinese texts and apply the conception of virtues as correctives to them to see where they force us to rethink our ideas about the nature of virtues and prompt us to recast the discussion of the nature of virtues in a different light.6 In this discussion of the virtues I draw heavily from ideas found in the Lunyu and the Mengzi, two early and important Confucian texts. It is important to note that in my discussion of the virtues I am not relying on any particular Chinese term but am rather discussing things that the early Confucians would think of as good character traits that contribute to the flourishing of individuals and their society. As such, I am simply using a "thin" account of the virtues, a description that has little in the way of theoretical content, but which could be agreed on by both the early Confucian thinkers and more contemporary Western thinkers.7 I am not, as might be assumed, relying on an equation of the Chinese character de as an equivalent of the English "virtue." This character, while often translated into English as "virtue," has aspects that are not normally associated with our Western concept of virtue. It is, we might say, a "thick" concept, and what I am interested in here is simply the underlying "thin" concept.8 I wish to take as a starting point for this discussion a thin account of virtues as dispositions of character that contribute in direct and substantial ways to the flourishing of individuals and their communities.9 Given such a thin account, we can analyze thicker accounts of the virtues, such as the ones given by Foot and Roberts and those given in the Lunyu and Mengzi and see the extent to which they can be supported. © 2010 State University of New York. All rights reserved.