Wesleyan University. From the SelectedWorks of Stephen C. Angle. Stephen C. Angle, Wesleyan University

Transcription

1 Wesleyan University From the SelectedWorks of Stephen C. Angle 2009 Defining 'Virtue Ethics' and Exploring Virtues in a Comparative Context: Comments on Bryan W. Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Confucianism in Early Chinese Philosophy Stephen C. Angle, Wesleyan University Available at:

2 Defining Virtue Ethics and Exploring Virtues in a Comparative Context Comments on Bryan W. Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy Stephen C. Angle, Wesleyan University Bryan Van Norden s new book, Virtue ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy (Van Norden 2007; references to this book will be indicated with page numbers only) is impressive and learned, pursuing a number of inter-related objectives in its 412 pages. My task here is to reflect on the book s objectives and to ask whether they are well-conceived and successfully accomplished. Van Norden s book has enhanced my understanding and stimulated my thinking on many fronts; I hope, therefore, to take advantage of this forum to open up opportunities for further philosophical work that builds on the foundation Van Norden has laid. Let us begin with a very basic question: What is the book about? Van Norden s thesis is that we can learn a great deal by looking at certain texts in this book, he focuses on the Analects, Mozi, and Mengzi through a particular interpretive lens, which he characterizes as analytic philosophy. This approach depends on detailed readings of specific passages to locate arguments and clarify meanings. Van Norden does not maintain that this is the only way to approach his texts; philosophers with different backgrounds will do it differently, and scholars from other disciplines will proceed in still other ways. The key to success is whether a given reading is fruitful, one aspect of which is whether it reveals important aspects of a text that were otherwise obscure. When we look for arguments, do we find them? When we strive for careful clarification of meanings, does the text support our attentions?

3 As the book s title suggests, Van Norden s interpretive lens is in fact still more specific. He proposes to employ the ideas of virtue ethics and, to a lesser degree, consequentialism as frameworks for analyzing his texts. Here again, success comes when reading the texts in these ways is fruitful; Van Norden does not offer arguments that we must approach them via his categories. The most he does is offer arguments designed to show that we can approach early Chinese texts as he does without obvious error. For instance, one objection that he debunks is an extreme view about the difference between classical Greek philosophy and the interests of his Chinese Masters : as Van Norden nicely demonstrates, concern with argument and concern with how to live a good life can be found in both traditions. (Reference to the work of Pierre Hadot might help to make this point even more thoroughly.) A second objection to his project s possibility is the worry that ancient Chinese and ancient Greek thinkers employed fundamentally different concepts. Van Norden s response is first, to resist facile, essentialist claims of incommensurable cultures; and second, to appeal to the difference between thin concepts and thick ones. Thin descriptions fix the topic of disagreement, while thick descriptions are the detailed accounts given by particular participants in a discussion. Van Norden offers humility as an example, suggesting that a thin version of humility would be the stable disposition to have an appropriate attitude toward one s worth as a person [19]. Thick versions, he says, include Christian subordination to the will of God, Ruist false consciousness in which one underestimates one s own worth, and Aristotelean megalôpsychos (being great-souled ). He further argues that humility should not be necessarily tied to self-denigration, even if this stretches its current, ordinary use, because 2

4 as a result we can see relevant disagreements cross-culturally which can lead to productive debate [20]. In assessing Van Norden s use of thick and thin, it is important to keep in mind that his project in the book is not primarily comparative. He is seeking to justify using terms like virtue to explicate early Chinese thinking, rather than engaging in detailed comparisons and then hoping for productive debate. His project is thus unlike the recent books of Aaron Stalnaker, Jiyuan Yu, or May Sim, in which one can listen for the voices of two dialogue partners (see [Stalnaker 2006], [Yu 2007], and [Sim 2007]).. Aaron s analogue of thin concepts is the bridge concept, which is purposely constructed in order to facilitate dialogue; in fact, he distinguishes bridge concepts from generalized thin concepts because bridge concepts are developed inductively, with the goal of making specific comparisons fruitful. Absent the dialogic context, it is a bit trickier to see how the possibilities of productive debate can be appealed to in order to justify the particular ways in which Van Norden chooses to thin-down his concepts. His proposal for thinning-down virtue ethics, for instance, revolves around an account of the flourishing human life and the contribution thereto of various virtues (among other things). How are we to assess whether this is a plausible or adequate thinning? Van Norden says that it may lead us to interesting aspects of Ruism [21], as indeed it may. But we might want more. I will return to this point in a moment. Let me step back briefly, and return to two questions I asked earlier: When we look for arguments, do we find them? When we strive for careful clarification of meanings, does the text support our attentions? My answer on both scores is a wholehearted yes. Van Norden finds relatively little argumentation in the Analects, but a 3

5 great deal in both the Mozi and the Mengzi. He teases out many of the arguments in these latter two texts with subtlety and patience; his treatment of argumentation in the Mengzi, in particular, I felt to be a tour-de-force. It is also abundantly clear that the careful clarification of meanings is a worthwhile enterprise. A bit later, I will suggest some ways in which we might build on points Van Norden makes about various aspects of the Mengzi, but there can be no doubt that his detailed, philologically informed approach to particular terms and passages repays his efforts. If there is a danger associated with Van Norden s approach, it is that of losing the forest for the trees. He is absolutely correct that it is important to demonstrate the actual, detailed argumentation in particular passages. But do we miss out, as a result, on the broader argument of a whole work? Similar worries might be raised about a focus on fine-grained conceptual clarification, as opposed to articulating the systematic interrelations among concepts that constitute a fuller theory. It is here that Van Norden s use of virtue ethics and consequentialism as lenses might be expected to do some of their most important work. By showing how the Analects or Mengzi presents a thick version of virtue ethics, as opposed to some other sort of ethical theory, we should have a context in which to understand and assess the broader claims being made in the two texts. The same should work for the Mozi and consequentialism. Success in this domain is clearly not an all-or-nothing affair. There are a number of ways in which Van Norden sheds light on the Mozi as consequentialist theory, even while frankly and appropriately acknowledging the limited degree to which study of the text can support clarity about modern distinctions among types of consequentialism. With respect to the Ruist texts, much of course depends on the thinned-down version of virtue 4

6 ethics that Van Norden has adopted. As discussed above, the thinning process is more stipulative than dialogic, which makes the question of whether the theory truly illuminates the Analects and Mengzi all that much more acute. And I think there are reasons to wonder how much light Van Norden s description of virtue ethics as a type of ethical theory, as opposed to a set of topics really sheds. For example, Van Norden takes flourishing and virtues to be central to virtue ethics, though he briefly notes that some theories will make flourishing logically primary, others will make virtues primary, and still others may see flourishing and virtue as more independent [39]. We might expect some clarification of this relationship, and some discussion of what is at stake, when we come to specific, thicker versions in the Analects and Mengzi. But it is not so clear that we do. In the Analects chapter, flourishing is discussed in terms of several components that Van Norden suggests can be grouped under such a rubric, though it s tricky to see an overall notion of flourishing at work. (This despite the fact that the discussion of individual components, particularly of ritual, is exemplary.) Turning to virtues, we again find piecemeal discussion of a number of putative virtues with little synthetic discussion of their relations to flourishing. Van Norden mentions in passing that courage is not generally a virtue that Kongzi speaks highly of [122], but if it is a virtue, and either contributes to or is constitutive of flourishing, then how are we to understand this? Again, I need to emphasize that there is rich discussion of individual passages and terms on nearly every page. The challenge I am articulating is whether the thick and thin theories of virtue ethics receive adequately robust development. I agree with Van Norden that the Analects is more of what he calls an evocative than a systematic text [137]. So perhaps it is not really the right place to look for 5

7 development of a virtue ethical theory. If we turn to Mengzi, though, I would argue that we again find less of a virtue-ethical theory than we might have expected, leaving it an open question whether viewing the text as expressing such a theory is as illuminating as Van Norden has posited. Consider, for example, the definitions Van Norden offers of benevolence (ren 仁 ) and righteousness (yi 義 ). He says that the former is a disposition toward agent-relative obligations involving the well-being of others, and the latter is a disposition to accord with agent-relative prohibitions involving the expression and preservation of one s own ethical character [249 and 258]. Perhaps this is correct, but where do these obligations and prohibitions come from? They seem to be logically prior to the dispositions. One possibility is that Mengzi has an account of flourishing, on the basis of which he derives these obligations and prohibitions; the obligations and prohibitions would then provide the link between flourishing and specific virtues. However, Van Norden does not make this argument; indeed, there is no explicit discussion of flourishing in his entire chapter on Mengzi. (Nor does he mention Mengzi when, at the end of the book, he discusses flourishing in his sketch of Neo-Mengzian philosophy.) For all Van Norden has said, we might conclude that Mengzi is not a virtue ethicist at all, but rather a philosopher who has a virtue theory as part of a larger ethics whose basis (or focus) is not virtue. Kant, for instance, had a theory of virtues: they were not the centerpiece of his ethics, but he recognized their importance. Without a clearer sense of the kind of virtue ethics that Mengzi is advocating, it is hard to be confident that Van Norden s use of the category of virtue ethics is contributing to our understanding of early Confucianism. 6

8 Let me enter two caveats before moving on. First, it is certainly true that in manifold ways, Van Norden helps to see the Ruist texts as concerned with virtues, flourishing, particularistic judgments, and so on all of which are ingredients in many theories of virtue ethics. A reader of the book is likely to come away thinking that virtue ethics is a far more plausible framework for understanding Ruism than deontology or consequentialism. This is different, though, from seeing it as having thickly exemplified the thin version of virtue ethics with which we began. Second, there are a variety of interesting hints about how a Ruist, or more narrowly Mengzian, theory of virtue ethics might look. Most intriguingly, when near the end of the book Van Norden allows himself to engage in what he calls historical retrieval rather than the more limited historical exegesis, he suggests some fascinating grounds for understanding virtues as we find them in the Mengzi. It is still not clear whether virtues or flourishing are primary, but if I had to guess, it seems to me that Van Norden is leaning toward saying that the virtues (based themselves in a particular understanding of human nature and activity) are primary, and that a good (perhaps flourishing) life is one lived through these virtues. I will say a bit more about Van Norden s sketch of neo-mengzian contributions to virtue ethics near the end of my remarks. Now let me turn to one of the richest parts of the book Mengzi on human nature and self-cultivation and some directions for further fruitful development. Given what Van Norden labels as Mengzi s naturalism, it is very likely that Mengzi (and Van Norden himself, for that matter) would accept Owen Flanagan s principle of minimal psychological realism as a condition of adequacy on any ethical theory [Flanagan 1991]. An assessment of Mengzian virtue ethics should take into account what we know about human psychological capabilities. In fact we can go 7

9 farther than Flanagan s minimal constraint, and suggest that an ethical theory that resonates strongly with the best current psychological research is a theory that we should take very seriously. Based on what Van Norden tells us, I want to suggest both that this is true of Mengzi s thought, and that the convergences I am about to sketch also suggest directions for further textual, philosophical, and even psychological research. First let us consider Mengzi s si duan 四端, which Van Norden renders as the four sprouts. There is a well-known interpretive controversy here, with some arguing that duan must be understood merely as tip rather than sprout. I find Van Norden s position to be very strong, particularly when he notes that even if one is not convinced that duan 端 (the character in the text, which means tip) should be taken as standing in for duan 耑 (a closely related character, which means sprout), still, in the context of the work as a whole, duan = tip would carry a meaning similar to sprout. That is, given all the agricultural imagery, it is natural to think of tips as the sprouts of plants emerging [217-8]. In any event, Van Norden translates the key bit of 2A6 as follows: The heart s sympathy is the sprout of benevolence. The heart s sense of shame is the sprout of righteousness. The heart s deference is the sprout of propriety. The heart s approving and disapproving is the sprout of wisdom. [216] Passage 2A6 also includes the famous thought experiment about suddenly seeing a baby about to fall into a well; as Van Norden explains, Mengzi thinks that the sudden, prereflective character of the [sympathetic] reaction suggests that it is an authentic expression of our nature [218]. Van Norden also considers a passage that, he plausibly suggests, shows Mengzi illustrating something close to the sprout of righteousness: even a homeless person in desperate straights, Mengzi says, would not accept food if it is given with contempt. Van Norden notes that there is something implausible about this 8

10 claim, since surely people sometimes humiliate themselves in order to survive. He suggests that we read Mengzi as saying that for every human there are some actions that she avoids doing. It seems to me that what Mengzi really should have said whether or not we can find a way to read the passage in this way is that we all feel revulsion or shame at these paradigmatic acts of humiliation, but that no one necessarily acts to avoid humiliation. Indeed, there is no single virtuous response to being humiliated that fits all circumstances. This approach would be parallel to the 2A6 discussion of sympathetic reactions; as Van Norden rightly emphasizes, Mengzi does not say that one would necessarily act to save the child, since various other desires/motives might be stronger. At any rate, my main interest here is what happens when we think about the psychological plausibility of Mengzi s claims. Let us begin with the sprout of benevolence. Mengzi says we would have a chuti ceyin zhi xin 怵惕惻隱之心, which Van Norden renders as heart of alarm and sympathy [218]. In the same passage Mengzi also says that the child-well thought experiment is meant to show that we all have hearts that are not indifferent to others, in Van Norden s translation; a more literal translation of buren ren zhi xin 不忍人之心 might even be hearts that cannot bear [the suffering] of others. I dwell on this because Mengzi s claim seems possibly related to the research that Martin Hoffman and associates have done, over several decades, on the significance of human reactions of empathy. Hoffman notes that there are countless studies showing that when people witness others in distress, they typically respond empathetically or with an overt helpful act [Hoffman 2000, 31]. We need to distinguish two ideas. Sympathy is a feeling-for, a caring concern; empathy is a feeling-with, which Hoffman defines as an affective response more appropriate to another s situation than one s own [Ibid, 4]. 9

11 According to Hoffman, empathy is a fundamental feature of human psychology, present to some degree from birth and significantly responsible for the development of human prosocial responses and activities. Sympathy, as he understands it, is the developmentally more advanced attitude of concern for another; while sympathy is important, Hoffman understands it as rooted in the more basic reaction of empathy [Ibid, 87f]. This juxtaposition of Mengzi and Hoffman suggest at least two lines of inquiry. First, is Mengzi in fact talking about something like empathy? If so, then are there ways that Mengzi s discussions and Hoffman s research and theorizing can inform one another? This second question may push us to look back at Mengzi s text, to reflect on what may be implicit there, and to further explore the psychological literature for relevant findings. On the first question, I suggest that focusing on the meanings of ce 惻 and yin 隱 which include sadness and pain, respectively as well as the cannot bear meaning of buren 不忍, suggests that a connection to empathy may be very apt; this can be seen as a feeling-badly-with, rather than a wanting-to-do-something-for. If so, then Van Norden s translations of sympathy and not indifferent may be too imprecise. It is relevant that Hoffman understands empathy as experienced in a variety of modes, some of which are so basic that even a newborn can exemplify them, while others are both developmentally and morally more advanced. Mengzi seems to have adults in mind in his thought experiment, so a variety of nuanced (even though spontaneous) responses are possible. Nonetheless, Mengzi s statement elsewhere that A great man is one who retains the heart of a new-born babe [4B12] suggest that we should be thinking about a capacity that has early roots, just as Hoffman s notion of empathy does. Despite these 10

12 similarities, one reason for being cautious about reading Mengzi as discussing empathy is that Mengzi is not absolutely clear that he conceives of the pain felt by the observer to be, in some sense, the same pain as that felt by the one actually harmed. 1 These are complex matters, made more so by the fact that the exact parameters and distinguishing characteristics of empathy are still being debated. At the very least, it is not clear that Mengzi is not talking about empathy, as Van Norden s translation of ceyin as sympathy might suggest. Beyond this specific issue of interpretation, are there ways that Mengzi and Hoffman can inform one another? Going very far into this question would take me too far from Van Norden s book, but I think that the answer is certainly yes, and I want to look briefly at two areas that look particularly interesting, namely: (1) the other sprouts and (2) the question of extension and cultivation or moral development more generally. On the first, let us note that Van Norden has a marvelous treatment of Mengzi s notion of shame; he rightly suggests, I think, that it has a constructive role to play in our moral lives. 2 How might this relate to psychological research and to the relation between emphatic capacities and shame-based ones? Guilt plays a central role in Hoffman s explication of empathy s development, and I have suggested a close tie between empathy and the sprout of benevolence. Is there a role, though, for anything like guilt in the Chinese case? Van Norden sees more room for a notion of guilt in ancient Greek culture than in ancient China, which makes the contrast with Hoffman quite stark, especially because Hoffman makes no reference to anything like the ethical shame that Van Norden emphasizes in 1 I owe this point to Michael Slote. 2 With respect to shame being a natural sprout, Bryan suggests that the term wu, whose meaning overlaps with both shame and our natural distaste for unpleasant things like dampness, helps us conceptualize our sense of shame as a natural instinct [265]. 11

13 the Chinese case. There clearly is much here that is worth more careful exploration than I can go into here. As a starting point, though, consider King Xuan s reaction to seeing an ox being led to its ritual sacrifice in Mengzi 1A7. Once one has read Hoffman, it is hard not to think that the King is experiencing empathic guilt here. Note in particular that the King s spontaneous reaction points toward what is about to happen to another, rather than at least in any obvious way being a reflection on the King s own character. Van Norden partly relies on this distinction (borrowed from Bernard Williams) in order to demarcate guilt from shame [259]: shame reactions are supposed to be limited to reflections on one s character. Turning to the other sprouts, Van Norden says nothing directly about the heart of approving and disapproving ; I wonder if the roots and development of this sprout might bear, in some ways, on Kohlberg s claims for the role of cognitive capacities in moral development? Finally, our early capacities for deference and its constructive cultivation (via ritual) are completely off the radar screens of Hoffman and Kohlberg, which I think impoverishes their understandings of what discipline might encompass. Perhaps with prompting from scholars like Van Norden (and, in different but related ways, Roger Ames), we might begin to recognize the importance of deference even in relatively egalitarian societies like our own. The second area in which I would like to suggest Van Norden and psychologists like Hoffman can stimulate one another revolves around Mengzi s idea of extension. There is a general fit between Mengzi s natural developmentalism especially as viewed through the lens of agricultural metaphors that combine natural growth with active cultivation and Hoffman s understanding of empathy. The basic modes of 12

14 empathy are natural and spontaneous, though (like Mengzi) Hoffman recognizes that empathic distress does not always lead to helping ; most of the reasons for this noted by the modern researcher mirror those suggested by Mengzi in 2A6, though Hoffman adds a few others (cf. pluralistic ignorance and diffusion of responsibility ) [Ibid, 33]. Active cultivation of empathic responses is critical because, says Hoffman, natural empathy is not enough, particularly in cases where a subject is (or is considering) causing harm to another him or herself. 1 Still, this cultivation must be measured rather than forced; in Hoffman s language, inductions rather than power assertions are much more effective, especially in the long-term. This qualification echoes Mengzi s metaphorical warning to not too aggressively help plants grow in passage 2A2. More generally, Van Norden presents an extended, nuanced, and quite convincing picture of cognitive extension as developing a skill at thinking about the similarities and differences between ethical cases [241] and affective extension as a related process of nurturing existing dispositions rather than fundamentally reshaping them [244]. Both of these aspects bear interesting similarities and dissimilarities to the process that Hoffman calls bonding between principles (like justice or care) and empathy, which Hoffman says leads to the development of stable dispositions [Hoffman 2001: 241]. Hoffman s notion of principle is more flexible than that of Kohlberg, say, but it bears investigation whether it is flexible enough to mesh with Mengzi; after all, Van Norden has emphasized that cognitive extension is not a process of coming to generalize to an inviolable rule, which we then apply to further cases [241]. Many psychologists studying moral development, especially those influenced by Kohlberg, take a dim view of 1 See especially Part II, Transgression, of [Ibid]. 13

15 the particularistic judgments we typically associate with virtue ethics [Gibbs 2003, 4]. Hoffman s view allows for more flexibility, or at least vagueness; he says that principles are merely ideal types that are applicable in varying degrees to all situations [Hoffman 2000, 252]. At the very least, we can wonder how a modern-day follower of Mengzi would explain the experimental and anecdotal results on which Hoffman and others base their understandings of the roles of principles in moral development. At the same time, there should be little doubt that contemporary theorists would be stimulated by the overall framework for moral development that Mengzi has articulated. Van Norden concludes his book by offering preliminary answers to two large questions: (1) How would Ruism have to change if it is to become a plausible philosophical alternative for us today [325]? (2) In what areas is Ruism most likely to be able to contribute to contemporary philosophical developments? I will conclude my remarks here by briefly engaging with Van Norden s answers. In terms of the first question, I think Van Norden has done an admirable job of identifying key issues. Ruism must become, he says, pluralist rather than monist; it must dispense with its sexism; it must endorse fallibilism rather than epistemological optimism; and it must find room for virtue and procedural justice to coexist. I agree with all four agendas. On each count, though, Van Norden does rather little to argue why a Ruist should endorse these changes. At most he suggests that Ruists can accommodate these changes, but even these claims are more anecdotal than theoretical. When one combines the fact that these short sections at the end of the book are meant to be preliminary with the emphasis throughout the book on detailed description rather than theory-construction, we should not be surprised or concerned about the tentative nature of Van Norden s development of these themes. 14

16 Furthermore, there are a variety of resources for one who wants to push the theoretical articulation and reconstruction of Ruism further. On pluralism, YU Kam Por s work on multiple values in Ruist ethical reasoning is extremely important [Yu forthcoming]. On excising sexism, Sin-yee Chan has shown how one can argue against the notion of gender found in Ruist texts on the basis of still-more-fundamental Ruist values [Chan 2000]. Thomas Metzger s continued engagement with epistemological aspects of Ruism is important for any progress in this regard [Metzger 2005]. Finally, while Van Norden has little sympathy for their metaphysical and epistemic teachings, several of the twentieth century s New Confucians made real progress in thinking about how procedural justice and virtue-based ideas can complement one another (see [XU 1980] and [MOU 1991]). As for what Van Norden calls The Road Ahead, namely ways in which Ruism can be inspiring for us today, I think Van Norden would agree that this can happen in many ways. Chinese traditions can become relevant in a new way to Chinese who are seeking to make sense of their lives in a rapidly changing world. These same reconstructed Chinese traditions may resonate with people outside China, too. And I join Van Norden in suggesting that philosophers raised on Western traditions should open themselves to being inspired by Chinese traditions. Elsewhere I have argued that rooted global philosophy which means working out of one s home traditions but with an openness to inspiration from (or critical engagement with) other philosophical traditions is a way of thinking about the philosophical enterprise that is particularly apt to the present moment. Inspiration or engagement naturally depends on understanding, and Van Norden s book contributes a great deal to scholarly understanding of his subjects. His 15

17 openness to the road ahead is equally important, and I look forward to walking further with him down the path. Bibliography Chan, Sin Yee. (2000). Gender Relationship Roles in the Analects and the Mencius. Asian Philosophy, 2:1, Flanagan, Owen. (1991). Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gibbs, John C. (2003). Moral Development & Reality: Beyond the Theories of Kohlberg and Hoffman. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hoffman, Martin L. (2000). Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Metzger, Thomas A. (2005). A Cloud Across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash Between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. Mou, Zongsan 牟宗三. (1991). 政道與治道 [The Way of Politics and the Way of Administration]. Taipei: Xuesheng Shuju. Sim, May. (2007). Remastering Morals With Aristotle and Confucius. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stalnaker, Aaron. (2006). Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Xu, Fuguan 徐復觀. (1980). 學術與政治之間 [Between Scholarship and Politics]. Taipei: Xuesheng shuju. Yu, Jiyuan. (2007). The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue. New York: Routledge. Yu, Kam-por. (Forthcoming). The Handling of Multiple Ethical Values in Confucianism. In Yu, Kam-por, Ivanhoe, P. J., & Tao, Julia (Eds.), Taking Confucian Ethics Seriously: Contemporary Theories and Applications. 16