Abstract
It has been widely observed that virtue ethics, regarded as an ethics of the ancient, in contrast to deontology and consequentialism, seen as an ethics of the modern (Larmore 1996: 19–23), is experiencing an impressive revival and is becoming a strong rival to utilitarianism and deontology in the English-speaking world in the last a few decades. Despite this, it has been perceived as having an obvious weakness in comparison with its two major rivals. While both utilitarianism and deontology can at the same time serve as an ethical theory, providing guidance for individual persons and a political philosophy, offering ways to structure social institutions, virtue ethics, as it is concerned with character traits of individual persons, seems to be ill-equipped to be politically useful. In recent years, some attempts have been made to develop the so-called virtue politics, but most of them, including my own (see Huang 2014: Chapter 5), are limited to arguing for the perfectionist view that the state has the obligation to do things to help its members develop their virtues, and so the focus is still on the character traits of individual persons. However important those attempts are, such a notion of virtue politics is clearly too narrow, unless one thinks that the only job the state is supposed to do is to cultivate its people’s virtues. Yet obviously the government has many other jobs to do such as making laws and social policies, many if not most of which are not for the purpose of making people virtuous. The question is then in what sense such laws and social policies are moral in general and just in particular. Utilitarianism and deontology have their ready answers in the light of utility or moral principles respectively. Can virtue ethics provide its own answer? This paper attempts to argue for an affirmative answer to this question from the Confucian point of view, as represented by Mencius. It does so with a focus on the virtue of justice, as it is a central concept in both virtue ethics and political philosophy.
Literature
Byerly, T. Ryan / Byerly, Meghan, “Collective Virtue”, Journal of Value Inquiry, vol. 50, 2016, pp. 33–50.10.1007/s10790-015-9484-ySearch in Google Scholar
Cohen, G. A., If You’re an Egalitanian, How Come You’re So Rich? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2002.Search in Google Scholar
Fricker, Miranda, “Can There Be Institutional Virtues?”, Oxford Studies in Epistemology, vol. 3, 2010, pp. 235–252.Search in Google Scholar
Gregory, James, “Engineering Compassion: The Institutional Structure of Virtue”, Journal of Socal Philosophy, vol. 44, 2015, pp. 339–356.10.1017/S004727941400083XSearch in Google Scholar
Gu, Cunyuan 顧存遠, Mencius’s Political Thought 孟子的政治思想, Taipei: Xin Wenfeng Chuban Gongsi 1975.Search in Google Scholar
Huang, Yong, Why Be Moral: Learning from the Neo-Confucian Cheng Brothers, Albany: State University of New York Press 2015.10.1353/pew.2016.0077Search in Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel, The Metaphysis of Morals, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991.Search in Google Scholar
Larmore, Charles, The Morals of Modernity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996.10.1017/CBO9780511625091Search in Google Scholar
LeBar, Mark, “The Virtue of Justice Revisited”, in: The Handbook of Virtue Ethics, ed. by Stan van Hooft, Bristol, CT: Acumen 2014.Search in Google Scholar
Liang, Qichao 梁啓超, A History of Political Thought in the Pre-Qin China 先秦政治思想史, Beijing: Dongfang Chubanshe 1996.Search in Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1984.Search in Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? London: Duckworth 1988.Search in Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair, “The Privatization of Good: An Inaugural Lecture”, The Review of Politics, vol. 52, 1990, pp. 344–361.10.1017/S0034670500016922Search in Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair, “Community, Law, and the Idiom and Rhetoric of Rights”, Journal of Religion and Culture, vol. 26, 1991, pp. 96–110.10.5840/listening19912622Search in Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, Auckland: The Floating Press 2009.Search in Google Scholar
Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, Westminster: John Knox Press 2013.Search in Google Scholar
Pakaluk, Michael, Nicomachean Ethics: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005.Search in Google Scholar
Rawls, John, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Bd. 14, vol. 3, 1985, pp. 223–251.Search in Google Scholar
Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Revised edition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1999.10.4159/9780674042582Search in Google Scholar
Sa, Mengwu 薩孟武, An Essay on Confucian Politics: The System and Evolution of Pre-Qin Confucian Political Thought 儒家政治衍論 : 先秦儒家政治思想的體系及其演變, Taibei: Dongda Tushu Gongsi 1982.Search in Google Scholar
Sandin, Per, “Collective Military Virtues”, Journal of Military Ethics, vol. 6, 2007, pp. 303–314.10.1080/15027570701755505Search in Google Scholar
Slote, Michael, Moral Sentimentalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195391442.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Tang, Zhilong 唐志龍, Inner Sageliness and Outer Kingliness: Essays on Mencius’s Strategies 内聖外王 : 孟子謀略縱橫, Beijing: Lantian Chubanshe 1997.Search in Google Scholar
Wei, Francis, The Political Principles of Mencius, Washington D.C.: University Publications of America 1977.Search in Google Scholar
Xu, Fuguan 徐復觀, Confucian Thought and the World of Humanites 儒家思想與人文世界 Wuhan: Hubei Renmin Chubanshe 2009.Search in Google Scholar
Yang Zebo 楊澤波, A Critical Biography of Mencius 孟子評傳, Nanjing: Nanjing University Press 1998.Search in Google Scholar
Zheng, Chuanxuan, A Comparison between Western and Chinese Political Ideas: The Difference and Complementarity of the Liberal-Democratic and Moral-Despotic Traditions, Lewiston: Mellen University Press 1995.Search in Google Scholar
Ziv, Anita Konzelmann, “Institutional Virtue: How Consensus Matters”, Philosophical Studies, vol, 161, 2012, pp. 87–96.10.1007/s11098-012-9933-4Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston