Moral Cultivation and Confucian Character

Description

In this volume, leading scholars in Asian and comparative philosophy take the work of Joel J. Kupperman as a point of departure to consider new perspectives on Confucian ethics. Kupperman is one of the few eminent Western philosophers to have integrated Asian philosophical traditions into his thought, developing a character-based ethics synthesizing Western, Chinese, and Indian philosophies. With their focus on Confucian ethics, contributors respond, expand, and engage in critical dialogue with Kupperman's views. Kupperman joins the conversation with responses and comments that conclude the volume.
Acknowledgments

Foreword
Fred Dallmayr

Introduction
Chenyang Li and Peimin Ni

Part I. Moral Cultivation and Confucian Virtues: Engagements and Developments

1. From Kupperman’s Character Ethics to Confucian Role Ethics: Putting Humpty Together Again
Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr.

2. Kongzi and Aristotle as Virtue Ethicists
Philip J. Ivanhoe

3. Anthropocentric Realism about Values
Bryan W. Van Norden

4. The Different Faces of Love in a Good Life
David B. Wong

5. On Reflective Equanimity: A Confucian Perspective
Kwong-loi Shun

6. Individual and Rituals
Robert Cummings Neville

Part II. Moral Cultivation and Material Well-Being

7. Material Well-Being and Character Cultivation in Confucianism
Chenyang Li

8. Materialistic Desires and Ethical Life in the Analects and the Mencius
Sor-hoon Tan

9. Character and Ethics for Social Entities
Peimin Ni

10. When Good Relationships Are Not Enough for Business: Understanding Character in Confucian Ethics
Karyn Lai

Part III. Responses and Comments

11. Responses and Comments
Joel J. Kupperman

Appendix: Publications by Joel J. Kupperman
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Ethique et morale
• Confucianism

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 30 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438453248
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

Moral Cultivation and Confucian Character
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
__________
Roger T. Ames, editor
Moral Cultivation and Confucian Character
Engaging Joel J. Kupperman
Edited by
Chenyang Li and Peimin Ni
Cover art woodcarving portrait of Joel Kupperman courtesy of Michael Kupperman
Cover art: background image © Leshabu / Dreamstime.com and Confucius image © Liang Zhang / Dreamstime.com
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 Kate McDonnell
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moral cultivation and Confucian character : engaging Joel J. Kupperman / edited by Chenyang Li and Peimin Ni.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5323-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Ethics. 2. Character. 3. Confucianism. 4. Kupperman, Joel J. I. Li, Chenyang, 1956–, editor of compilation. BJ1521.M765 2014 170—dc23 2013045657
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Joel,
A mentor and a junzi
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Fred Dallmayr
Introduction
Chenyang Li and Peimin Ni
Part I. Moral Cultivation and Confucian Virtues: Engagements and Developments
1. From Kupperman’s Character Ethics to Confucian Role Ethics: Putting Humpty Together Again
Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr.
2. Kongzi and Aristotle as Virtue Ethicists
Philip J. Ivanhoe
3. Anthropocentric Realism about Values
Bryan W. Van Norden
4. The Different Faces of Love in a Good Life
David B. Wong
5. On Reflective Equanimity: A Confucian Perspective
Kwong-loi Shun
6. Individual and Rituals
Robert Cummings Neville
Part II. Moral Cultivation and Material Well-Being
7. Material Well-Being and Character Cultivation in Confucianism
Chenyang Li
8. Materialistic Desires and Ethical Life in the Analects and the Mencius
Sor-hoon Tan
9. Character and Ethics for Social Entities
Peimin Ni
10. When Good Relationships Are Not Enough for Business: Understanding Character in Confucian Ethics
Karyn Lai
Part III. Responses and Comments
11. Responses and Comments
Joel J. Kupperman
Appendix: Publications by Joel J. Kupperman
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the following individuals for their contribution to the making of this volume: Paul Bloomfield, who organized the “Character: East and West” conference in honor of Joel Kupperman at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, on May 20 and 21, 2011, which provided a valuable venue to us to discuss Joel’s work and to contemplate this project; Roger Ames, for his able assistance with the mini-conference that we organized in honor of Joel Kupperman, held in conjunction with the Tenth East-West Philosophers Conference in Honolulu, on May 23 and 24, 2011; Karen Kupperman for her persistent help along the way; Michael Kupperman for his professional drawing of Joel’s portrait that appears on the cover of this book; Li Jifen and Sun Qingjuan for their technical assistance with the preparation of the manuscript; Jonathan Sim for assisting with proofreading and for preparing the index; and at SUNY Press, Nancy Ellegate, our acquisitions editor, for her guidance along the way; Jessica Kirschner, for her timely assistance. Diane Ganeles and Kate McDonnell, for their efficiency and professionalism in handling respectively the production and marketing of this book. This project was supported by a generous grant from the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and NTU research grant M4080394. Finally, we thank our respective family members, Ying and Sophie (for Peimin), Hong, Fay and Hansen (for Chenyang), for their continuous understanding, support, and love. The long-lasting friendship between these two families is traceable all the way back to our student years under the guidance of Joel Kupperman.
C. L., P. N.
Foreword
F RED D ALLMAYR
The political thinker Hannah Arendt once remarked that the task of responsible human agency is “to think what we are doing.” What this comment endorses or recommends is neither the descent into mindless activism nor the escape into abstract metaphysics, but rather a continuous learning process where thought is seasoned through practical experience. The recommendation, one can readily see, had a critical edge: it opposed the prevailing dichotomy (in the West) between rationality and arbitrary whim—a dichotomy undergirding the equally glaring hiatus between the academy and public life. Fortunately, in our time, Arendt’s position is no longer an isolated exception: her plea to reconnect thinking and doing finds resonance in several contemporary philosophical perspectives—including above all the perspective of “virtue ethics” which by now has a global or cross-cultural reach. By contrast to the focus on invariant principles or private emotions, virtue ethics—from both an Aristotelian and an Asian/Confucian vantage point—emphasizes the reflective cultivation of practical life, that is, the ethical shaping of human conduct in its relation to fellow-beings and the world.
The present volume pays tribute to Joel Kupperman as a scholar, teacher, and practitioner of virtuous life. As reflected in his writings, teachings, and personal interactions, Kupperman is one of those all-too-rare people: an individual who “practices what he preaches,” whose everyday conduct exemplifies in a concrete manner the meaning of the legacies he investigates and transmits. I was not fortunate enough to be closely acquainted with Kupperman; but even my limited contacts (at conferences and on other occasions) convinced me that I was in the presence of a knower/doer, of an erudite expert on ethical philosophy who allowed his learning to infiltrate and pervade his “persona” or character. Together with many colleagues and probably with all of his students, I benefited from this exposure to a life well lived, to this concrete exemplification of virtue in our time.
As the assembled contributions to this volume show, the precise meaning of virtue ethics, in both the Aristotelian and the Confucian traditions, is a matter of debate and allows for different readings. In this debate, Kupperman himself placed an accent on the formation of “character” in ethical conduct, an accent which departs to some extent from “role” conceptions (as well as other conceptions) of virtue. As it seems to me, however, these different accents do not cancel a deeper commonality: the recognition that role performance depends on the cultivation of personal dispositions which, in turn, are shaped by interpersonal contexts. Perhaps, such a linkage of form and content, of outside and inside, best captures Kupperman’s harmonious approach. No matter which accent one prefers, however, the fact remains that his work has given new impulses to a great variety of interpretations and thus provided a boost to the reinvigoration of virtue ethics in a global setting. For this service, we all—Western and Asian comparativists—are deeply indebted and grateful to him.
Introduction
C HENYANG L I AND P EIMIN N I
This volume grew out of two events in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Joel J. Kupperman’s teaching career in philosophy. The first was “Character: East and West—a Conference in Honor of Joel Kupperman,” organized by the Philosophy Department of the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, on May 20 and 21, 2011. Joel Kupperman, David Wong, and the editors of this volume were among the attendees. The second event was a mini-conference in honor of Joel Kupperman, held in conjunction with the Tenth East-West Philosophers Conference in Honolulu, on May 23 and 24, 2011. The mini-conference was organized by these editors, attended by Roger Ames, Henry Rosemont, Jr., Karyn Lai, Kwong-loi Shun, Sor-hoon Tan, whose papers are included here, and Joel Kupperman. Other invitees to the mini-conference, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Robert C. Neville, and Bryan Van Norden, although unable to attend, have graciously made their contributions to this volume in honor of Kupperman.
As former students with the good fortune of having studied with Kupperman, we can speak the world of our mentor. Kupperman is not only a learned scholar and a thought-provoking philosopher, but also a most caring teacher, who has the ability to convey deep insights with a good sense of humor. Though his research and publications encompass a broad range of ethics, aesthetics, moral psychology, metaphysics, applied philosophy, and the philosophy of mind, his major intellectual focus has been on ethics. Much of his early work in this regard was a reaction to a widespread assumption by philosophers that judgments of values or of rightness were to some degree subjective. In the 1960s, there was much talk about “pro-attitudes,” or inclinations. In two books, Ethical Knowledge (1970) and The Foundations of Morality (1983), Kupperman argued that there are cases in which some judgments of rightness or of value could reasonably be considered objectively right, or to be wrong. Most distinctive about him as an ethicist, however, is his engagement in Asian and comparative philosophy. Kupperman’s interest in Asian philosophy began early when he was an undergraduate student in Herrlee G. Creel’s seminar on Chinese philosophy at the University of Chicago. He began to publish on Asian and comparative