Abstract
Although there has been a resurgence of interest in virtue ethics, there has been little work done on how this translates into the political sphere. This essay demonstrates that the Confucian thinker Xunzi offers a model of virtue politics that is both interesting in its own right and potentially useful for scholars attempting to develop virtue ethics into virtue politics more generally. I present Xunzi's version of virtue politics and discuss challenges to this version of virtue politics that are raised by the Legalist thinker Han Fei. I show that not only is Xunzi's virtue politics capable of surviving the challenges raised by his contemporary, he offers an account that is in many ways both attractive and plausible, one that may usefully be brought into conversation with contemporary visions of virtue politics. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 93-110 |
| Journal | Dao |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Online published | 4 Jan 2013 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2013 |
Research Keywords
- Han Fei
- Ideal theory
- Non-ideal theory
- Political philosophy
- Xunzi