Confucius and Aristotle

Most Greek philosophers agreed that virtue is a form of knowledge. They generally thought that self-examination leads to self-knowledge which in turn leads to the good life. For the moral virtues Aristotle found this knowledge in a mean that is "relative to us" and is shown to us by phron‘sis, a concept that has instructive parallels with Confucian yi. The Analects state that a junzi "does not have things that he invariably does or does not do, but rather is committed to yi." Roger Ames and David Hall have given the most intelligible reading of this passage so that the personalism and contextualism of yi comes forth. Just as phron‘sis is Aristotle’s guide to a personal mean so is yi for the Confucian dao. "The junzi considers yi as the most important," says Confucius and then goes on to argue that one achieves only semblances of the virtues without yi. One could, for example, be physically brave but lack true courage, or one could be clever without being very wise. Confucius also claims that yi is our "raw stuff" that allows us to put the rules of propriety (li) into practice. Without yi Confucian morality would a mere moralism based on strict conformity to li. Therefore, for a contemporary virtue ethics of self-creation, one could formalize the Confucian position as ren + yi + li = ren*. In Aristotle’s terms we can see an equivalence between li and ethos as social custom, and with the aid of phron‘sis and moral cultivation, this ethos becomes particularized as unique character traits (‘thos) and the moral virtues (ethik‘ aret‘).

    Jiyuan Yu acknowledges Ames and Hall’s work on yi and wonders why they did not turn to Aristotle after they "open[ed] the door for an Aristotelian practical wisdom." Yu rejects the connection between yi and phron‘sis primarily because Confucius’ idea of li does not allow for any variation or personal appropriation. The best argument that Yu gives for this position is that while Aristotle believes one could be a good citizen without being a good person, Confucius would reject this disjunction outright. Civic and personal virtue are both grounded in conformity to li, whereas phron‘sis would allow a person such as Socrates to critique the state. (This is perhaps why the idea of civil disobedience developed in Europe and America but did not in China.) In this same vein Yu also believes that yi always refers to the judgment of the many rather than any personal moral discernment.

    We, however, can still speak of yi as personal appropriation without allowing a single variation in li. For example, even though judges interpret the exact same set of laws, their judicial decisions will have a very distinct personal style and character. Similarly, even though violin virtuosos are reading the exact same musical score, each them will give the piece a unique interpretation. We should assume that the dances the Confucians performed had a set choreography, but we could easily imagine each having particular styles as varied as all ballerinas do. These examples obviously support the idea of personal judgment rather than a group decision. A Confucianism aesthetics virtue is, however, role specific just as these examples from the fine arts are. Even though the younger brother may have his own particular style of deferring to his elder brother, he has no freedom not to defer or take on other roles not appropriate to li. Similarly, violin players do not switch to the French horn while performing their concertos.

    In his excellent article on Aristotle and Confucius Yu offers an insightful three part explanation of how practical reason operates. First, phron‘sis allows us to discover the reasons why we must be virtuous. This knowledge then gives the proper motivation for virtue so that it is not a mindless emulation of others’ behavior. Second, since any idea of the good life is always going to be rather general, phron‘sis allows us to determine the proper means to the specific ends of our own lives. Third, phron‘sis, as opposed to other intellectual virtues, is attuned to context and aids us in finding our own personal mean between the extremes of deficiency and excess.

    Nancy Sherman argues that Aristotle’s concept of equity, the ability to apply the law to particular cases, is also one of the functions of practical reason. If she is correct, Yu’s rejection of the phron‘sis-yi parallel is especially curious because he says that yi "is something like the principle of justice or what action one should follow or conform to." Furthermore, Yu admits that yi as "natural character" (Ames’ "raw stuff") is contrasted with cultural refinement, so this at least gives us the contemporary option that yi could provide a critique of culture. Even within the ethos of the Analects the capacity to adapt to context is clearly seen in the junzi’s freedom from invariable norms and permission to ignore the small rules and concentrate on the good. In fact, at the age of seventy Confucius claims that he had reached the point where he could do anything that he pleased without "crossing the line." Furthermore, yi enables the junzi, just as phron‘sis does for Greek gentleman, to distinguish real virtue from its semblances. An inferior man may seem brave, but without yi, his rashness may turn him into an outlaw. The example of courage is an especially instructive one to answer Yu’s specific point: no other person or group could possibly determine the very personal judgments that are required in the development of this virtue.

    Tu Weiming is very helpful in demonstrating that yi, like phron‘sis, allows us to apply the universal to the particular:

Explicitly defined as fitness and appropriateness, yi mediates between the universal principle of humanity and the particular situations in which the principle is concretely manifested. . . . Yi is the human path (renlu) through which one’s inner morality becomes properly realized in society. This involves a practical judgment based upon the holistic evaluation of objective conditions.

"Right" rather than the traditional "righteousness" is a much better translation of yi, as long as we realize that this would always mean what is right for us or right for our conditions. For example, in Mencius’ time it was generally not right to touch your sister-in-law, but you certainly must do so if she is drowning and only your hand can save her. Yi is acting appropriately given one’s own personal history and situation. The meaning of one’s life is a creative fusion of external li and internal yi. Interestingly enough, Foucault finds the same dialectic in Hellenistic ethics, viz., "codes of behavior" (= li) coupled with "forms of subjectivation" (= yi). Foucault also maintains that moral practices are "not something that the individual invents by himself. They are patterns that he finds in his culture."

    Sherman has observed a dual function in phron‘sis, an ability not only to discern what is appropriate for the agent but also an equally important perception about the needs of others and corresponding responsibilities. I suggest that there is a Confucian parallel in the difference Ames and Hall find between yi as "self-assertive and meaning bestowing" and its homophone yi* as "self-sacrificing and meaning-deriving." They state: "Whereas yi denotes appropriateness to one’s own person, yi* refers to appropriateness to one’s context." Using the language of Merleau-Ponty, Confucian sages involve themselves in a process of personal Sinngebung, a centrifugal process of meaning giving (yi) to the centripetal influx of social patterns (yi* + li). For both Merleau-Ponty and the Confucians human freedom and creativity happens right at the intersection of this internal-external dynamic. Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, process philosophers, and the pragmatists all join most ancients in their fusion of the inner and the outer, refusing to dichotomize subject and object.

    Thinking of yi as a capacity for premoral discrimination is particularity helpful in understanding why the ren* person, who presumably uses yi, is "capable of liking or disliking other men." It also might explain the passage where Confucius believes something is terribly wrong when either everyone hates or likes something. Morally inferior people may either be indifferent and indiscriminately like anything; or alternatively, they may easily be swayed to hate those whom the group hates. What is appropriate, according to Confucius, is that people love virtue and the virtuous person and hate the lack thereof. (In a note to his translation Chan clarifies that "hate" in this passage "means dislike, without any connotation of ill will.") Mencius verifies the connection between yi and personal preference that I am proposing. In his discourse on the four beginnings, Mencius states yi originates in the sentiments of "disdain and dislike." Confucius’s observation that if a person is still disliked at forty, he will be always be disliked not only shows how lack of discernment becomes habitual, but also how this prevents such a person from enjoying the joys of a full social life. Some people continually misjudge how to act and relate to others. For Aristotle this would demonstrate a serious failure in practical reasoning and ultimately an inability to establish lasting friendships.

    Returning to the aesthetics of virtue it is significant to note that personal preferences have more to do with matters of taste than issues of morality. A person might, for example, being fully justified in criticizing a person for an immoral act, but many may not like the way he did it. It was not, as the British would say, "good form." Robert Eno has discovered that Zhou inscriptions do not distinguish between yi as morally right from another yi meaning good and proper form. Bad manners are not wrong because they are immoral but wrong because they lack aesthetic order: they are inelegant, coarse, or worse. Confucian li makes no distinction between manners and morality, so an aesthetic standard rules for all of its actions.

    Phron‘sis is sometimes translated as practical "wisdom," so it is important that we look at the connection between yi and the Confucian virtue of wisdom ( zhi). Confucian ethics does not distinguish between intellectual and moral virtues, so Confucian wisdom represents a fusion of practice and theory by an integrated heart-mind (xin). Chad Hansen states that "we should understand zhi as know-how rather than know-that. To zhi the dao is to know (how) to perform it properly." If Hansen is correct, this establishes a very close connection between yi and zhi, but one which the Analects does not explicitly make. There the connection is between zhi and ren*, although we must assume the operation of yi as well. Here is an example: "If your wisdom can grasp it, but your ren* is incapable of maintaining it, even though you have grasped it, you will certainly lose it." Tu’s position that ren* is the one comprehensive virtue that perfects the others is supported here. Even though we may perceive what is proper for us to do, we will not be able to follow through consistently without being ren*. Indeed, virtually all who do wrong know what the right is.

    Mencius describes the relationship between yi and zhi in a way that supports the present analysis. For him zhi is more like Aristotle’s practical wisdom, because its origins lie in feelings of right and wrong, whereas yi a more general capacity of discrimination arising in likes and dislikes. Taking Hansen’s idea of zhi as "know-how" one could say that yi provides the initial preference for acting, while zhi would be the skill necessary for carrying it out. (We will return to skills and virtues in the last section.) This point is confirmed even in the Analects: "When faced with what is right (yi), to leave it undone shows a lack of courage." True courage, we will recall, requires the presence of ren*. Mencius insists on the strict alliance between ren* and yi in achieving zhi: "The actuality of ren* consists in serving one’s parents. The actuality of yi consists in obeying one’s elder brother. The actuality of wisdom consists in knowing these two things and not departing from them." Although the Confucians never affirm the unity the virtues in the way that Aristotle does, they both share a functional holism in which the virtues must always work together in harmony with one another.

    Just as Aristotle’s relative mean does not lead to ethical subjectivism, Confucians maintain an objective and normative morality. Using "right reason" (orthos logos) Aristotle declared that for actions such as murder and adultery there is no personal mean at all. Right reason also tells us that eating too much is always wrong, but the right amount is always a personal determination based on objective needs and conditions and governed by phron‘sis. In the Eudemian Ethics he claims that the ideal ensemble of virtues would be modeled on the regularity and beauty of the heavens. The Confucians agree with Aristotle: moral objectivity is founded firmly in the very nature of things. For them cultural li is the moral expression of the order and regularity of Heaven such that, as Confucius claims, "Heaven is author of the virtue that is in me." At this point it is essential to observe that li as a norm based on Heaven could be construed as a set of moral principles to which human being have a duty to conform. Such a deontological ethics would clearly eliminate any aesthetics of virtue and would deemphasize the role of yi as personal appropriation. Generally Confucian texts support a view of li that focuses on aesthetic cultivation rather than rigid obedience.

    Let us now summarize the advantages of Confucian over Greco-Roman ethics. First, the absence of any major conflict between reason and the passions allows Confucians to integrate the affective parts of the self without any difficulty. That sexist Confucian males produced such a view puts the lie to some feminist claims that only women could create an ethics of care in which relationality, the emotions, and the body are given prominence. (The conjunction of relationality and nonviolence in the Buddha is striking, especially given his initial resistance to women entering the Sangha and Carol Gilligan’s discovery of these qualities in her female subjects.) We have also argued that the Confucian view of the self supports the moral imperative of concern for others without sacrificing individual integrity. Confucian morality aims at an ideal of the coincidence of self-interest and other-interest. On the other hand, a substantialist view of a universal Self in Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Christianity appears to promote a more self-sacrificial ethic, arguably because this Self is always to preferred over the ego self, viz., "Not I but Christ" or "Not I (jiva) but Atman." The fact that process theologian John Cobb is committed to preserve self-interest within the performance of other-regarding Christian virtues may reveal significant common ground between American and Confucian process views of the self.

    With regard to common ground between Confucius and Aristotle, we have seen that ancient virtue ethics can preserve normative morality within a very dynamic personalist and contextualist framework. The idea that virtue ethics is a voyage of personal discovery dovetails nicely with the idea of self-creation, so that a capacity such as like yi or phron‘sis must be central to a contemporary aesthetics of virtue. In the last section we will see that the performance arts will allow us to overcome the distinction Aristotle established between artistic making and moral practice. Despite this distinction both Plato and Aristotle still assumed the unity of goodness and beauty, and Flint Shier sums up Aristotle’s view aptly:

A good man is a perfectly functioning hierarchy of goals in which his projects cooperate harmoniously under the direction of more general, overarching goods. . . . Analogously, the plot of a good tragedy is thus a formal emblem of the well-planned life. Work and life are noble to the extent that they manifest the handiwork of a virtuous practical intelligence.

It should be obvious that Confucius agrees with Aristotle in his perfectionism and functional holism.