Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy

Description

Original, influential, and often controversial, ethicist David Wong defends forms of moral relativism. His 1984 Moral Relativity was a study of this concept, and his 2006 Natural Moralities presented a new and sophisticated account of it. Wong's vision is of a pluralistic moral relativism; he does not defend all forms of relativism but evaluates what moralities may be true. His singular philosophy reflects his deep knowledge of Confucian and Daoist thought.

In this book, moral philosophers and scholars of Chinese thought debate ideas central to Wong's work and Wong responds to them. The discussion ranges widely, including exploring Wong's thought on naturalism, criteria for moralities, the principle of charity, moral authority, and the concept of community, and looking at his readings of Xunzi and Zhuangzi. Wong's nuanced and forceful responses clarify and develop further arguments in his work. These engaging and critical exchanges between Wong and his critics illuminate not only Wong's thought, but also contemporary ethical theory and Chinese philosophy.
Preface

1. Introduction
Yong Huang and Yang Xiao

Part I: Critical Essays

2. Human Morality, Naturalism, and Accommodation
Lawrence Blum

3. Naturalism and Pluralistic Relativism
Steven F. Geisz and Brook J. Sadler

4. Principle of Humanity vs. Principle of Charity
Chad Hansen

5. Naturalism, Relativism, and the Authority of Morality
Christopher W. Gowans

6. The Metaphysics and Semantics of Moral Relativism
Paul Bloomfield and Daniel Massey

7. Toward a Benign Moral Relativism: From Agent/Appraiser-Centered to the Patient-Centered
Yong Huang

Part II: David Wong's Responses to Critics

8. Response to Blum

9. Response to Geisz and Sadler

10. Response to Hansen

11. Response to Gowans

12. Response to Bloomfield and Massey

13. Response to Huang

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Ethique et morale

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 03 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438450964
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture

Roger T. Ames, editor
Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy
David Wong and His Critics
Edited by
YANG XIAO
and
YONG HUANG
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moral relativism and Chinese philosophy : David Wong and his critics / edited by Yang Xiao and Yong Huang. pages cm. — (Suny series in Chinese philosophy and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5095-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Wong, David B. 2. Ethical relativism. 3. Philosophy, Chinese.
BJ968.W663M67 2014 171'.7—dc23
2013019645
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In Memory of My Parents Yong Huang
To My Father and the Memory of My Mother Yang Xiao
Contents
Preface
1. Introduction
Yong Huang and Yang Xiao
Part I: Critical Essays
2. Human Morality, Naturalism, and Accommodation
Lawrence Blum
3. Naturalism and Pluralistic Relativism
Steven F. Geisz and Brook J. Sadler
4. Principle of Humanity vs. Principle of Charity
Chad Hansen
5. Naturalism, Relativism, and the Authority of Morality
Christopher W. Gowans
6. The Metaphysics and Semantics of Moral Relativism
Paul Bloomfield and Daniel Massey
7. Toward a Benign Moral Relativism: From the Agent/Appraiser-Centered to the Patient-Centered
Yong Huang
Part II: David Wong’s Responses to Critics
8. Response to Blum
9. Response to Geisz and Sadler
10. Response to Hansen
11. Response to Gowans
12. Response to Bloomfield and Massey
13. Response to Huang
Contributors
Index
Preface
David Wong is one of the most important philosophers working in ethics and Chinese philosophy today. Wong’s 1984 book Moral Relativity is a pioneer work on moral relativism, and his 2006 book Natural Moralities articulates and defends an ethical theory that is pluralistic, relativist, and naturalist. Wong’s pluralistic relativism is a sophisticated and attractive alternative to both value monism and vulgar relativism. Wong’s naturalism accommodates a wide range of traditions and disciplines, from Xunzi’s naturalist and functionalist account of morality, Zhuangzi’s emphasis on the virtue of accommodation, to scientific studies of human nature in the humanities and social sciences, such as anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary theory. In the field of Chinese philosophy, Wong is best known for a series of influential essays on classical Chinese thinkers such as Mozi, Mencius, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi, offering penetrating insights into important concepts and arguments in classical Chinese philosophy. Wong’s work is where East and West, nature and morality, as well as science and philosophy, meet.
The present volume consists of two parts. The first brings together six critical and engaging essays on the main themes from Wong’s Natural Moralities . With deep appreciation of Wong’s contributions to ethics and Chinese philosophy, the critics also present serious challenges to Wong, bringing to the fore the underlying interconnections and tensions among various parts of Wong’s vision. In the second part of the volume, Wong responds to each essay with nuance, clarity, and force. The essays by the critics and Wong’s responses, taken together, might be best seen as a contest and a dialogue at the same time, addressing some fundamental questions in contemporary ethics and classical Chinese philosophy.
This book is ultimately inspired by our shared belief and hope that Chinese philosophy should be an integrated part of philosophy as a humanistic discipline. We may be said to be living in the beginning of the age of accommodation, when Eastern and Western philosophy will become integrated into each other. As Wong and his critics have compellingly demonstrated, Chinese and Western philosophy gain depth, vision, vitality, and perspective when they attend to each other’s deepest concerns, assumptions, and insights. We hope this book will inspire more people to join us in this endeavor of articulating what philosophy might become in the future.
In putting this volume together, we owe a great deal of debt to many people, without whose support this volume would have been simply impossible. The idea for the book grew out of a lively “Author Meets Critics” panel, organized and chaired by Yang Xiao, at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in March 2008. Earlier versions of three papers included here, by Lawrence Blum, Steve Geisz and Brook J. Sadler, and Yong Huang respectively, were presented and followed by Wong’s responses. These authors, together with Chad Hansen, who prepared his paper but was unable to deliver it at the panel, further revised and expanded their papers, and David Wong also revised and expanded his responses to them accordingly. At a later stage, we invited Christopher Gowans and Paul Bloomfieled and Daniel Massey to make two additional contributions, to which David Wong also provided engaging responses. We thank them all for their wonderful support for this project.
We want to thank Roger Ames, editor of SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture, in which this volume appears, for his enthusiasm for our project. We want to thank the three anonymous referees for their constructive criticisms. We also want to thank Laurel Delany of Kutztown University for copyediting the whole manuscript before we submitted it to SUNY Press, and Jenn Dum, then a student at Kutztown, for preparing an initial list of index words. Finally, we are extremely grateful to Nancy Ellegate and Diane Ganeles of SUNY Press for being wonderful and meticulous editors of our book.
Yang Xiao and Yong Huang Gambier, Ohio, USA and Hong Kong, China December 2013
1
Introduction
Yong Huang and Yang Xiao
It is only quite recently that moral relativism has become a central topic among moral philosophers. About thirty years ago, in 1979, Philippa Foot had the following to say: Because moral relativism is “one of those natural philosophical thoughts … one might therefore expect that moral relativism would be a central topic among those discussed in classes and in the journals. Surprisingly, however, the truth has for long been quite otherwise. Many recent books on moral philosophy ignore the problem or give it perfunctory treatment, and it is only in the last two or three years that strong, interesting articles have begun to appear in print” (Foot 2002, 20). In 1984, David Wong’s Moral Relativity , the first book-length study of moral relativism appeared (Wong 1984). Since then, there have been many books and journal articles on the topic. 1 It is a significant fact that, in contrast to most of the people who have aimed at establishing its falsity, Wong is among a handful of contemporary philosophers in the English-speaking world who are willing to defend certain forms of relativism. 2
In his second book on moral relativism, Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism (Wong 2006), which is the focus of this edited volume, Wong gives new arguments for an ambitious, sophisticated, and original version of moral relativism, which was first sketched out in his 1984 book. As one of the reviewers remarks, Wong’s new book is “the most systematic and persuasive defense of moral relativism that has yet been written” (Gowans 2007). At the Pacific Division Meeting of American Philosophical Association in 2008, we organized an “author meets critics” session on Wong’s book; three chapters of this volume (by Lawrence Blum, Steven Geisz and Brook Sadler, and Yong Huang) and Wong’s responses to them were first presented there. Chad Hansen’s chapter was originally written for the session, although he could not attend the session to present it. For this volume, we also commissioned two chapters from Christopher Gowans as well as Paul Bloomfield and Daniel Massey, and invited Wong to respond to them.
We divide this introduction into two parts. In the first part, we highlight a few salient features of Wong’s pluralistic moral relativism, as developed in Natural Moralities , and its relationship with some important aspects of Chinese philosophy. In the second part, we highlight a few central issues involved in the exchange between contributors of this volume and David Wong. 3
I. David Wong’s Pluralistic Moral Relativism
1. The Strategy and Style of Wong’s Approach: Working Out a Defensible Relativism
Suppose there is a philosophical position, R, and all philosophers can be divided into those who believe in R and those who do not. Suppose one wants to write a book about R with the subtitle “A Defense of R.” What would be the best way to do it? Obviously, some might try to defend all versions of R at all cost. We shall call such a defense an “ideological” defense of R. However, most philosophers would agree that the best strategy to defend R should rather be to figure out (and, in many cases, construct) a defensible (or even true) version of R, and one should not try to defend those versions of R that are clearly indefensible. This is exactly what Wong does in his defense of moral relativism. His basic strategy is that a debate about whether relativism is true or not should be turned into a debate about what kind of relativism may be true.
This partly explains the explorative and empirical style of Wong’