Human Becomings

Roger T. Ames

Description

In Human Becomings, Roger T. Ames argues that the appropriateness of categorizing Confucian ethics as role ethics turns largely on the conception of person that is presupposed within the interpretive context of classical Chinese philosophy. By beginning with first self-consciously and critically theorizing the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics, Ames posits that the ultimate goal will be to take the Confucian tradition on its own terms and to let it speak with its own voice without overwriting it with cultural importances not its own. He argues that perhaps the most important contribution Confucian philosophy can make to contemporary ethical, social, and political discourse is the conception of focus-field, relationally constituted persons as a robust alternative to the ideology of individualism with single actors playing to win.
Preface

Introduction

1. The Question of Which Questions to Ask

2. How Do the Confucian Canons Say "Role Ethics"?

3. A Narrative Conception of Human Nature

4. Holography and the Focus-Field Conception of Persons

5. Relational Autonomy and Thick Choices

6. Holism, Democracy, and the Optimizing of the Human Experience

7. From Human "Becomings" to a Process Cosmology

Epilogue: Why Theorize Confucian Persons for a Changing World Cultural Order?

Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Confucianism
• Comparative religion

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438480817
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

Human Becomings
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture

Roger T. Ames, editor
Human Becomings
Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics
Roger T. Ames
Cover: Xiaodao , the prime moral imperative in the Confucian tradition that references the intergenerational embodiment of a continuing culture. Calligraphy by Ni Peimin.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 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
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ames, Roger T., 1947– author.
Title: Human becomings : theorizing persons for Confucian role ethics / Roger T. Ames.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, 2021. | Series: SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020023197 (print) | LCCN 2020023198 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438480794 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438480817 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Confucian ethics. | Human beings. | Confucianism.
Classification: LCC BJ1289.3 .A44 2021 (print) | LCC BJ1289.3 (ebook) | DDC 170.951—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023197
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023198
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For the Berggruen Institute Good People Doing Good Things
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One The Question of Which Questions to Ask
Chapter Two How Do the Confucian Canons Say “Role Ethics”?
Chapter Three A Narrative Conception of Human Nature
Chapter Four Holography and the Focus-Field Conception of Persons
Chapter Five Relational Autonomy and Thick Choices
Chapter Six Holism, Democracy, and the Optimizing of the Human Experience
Chapter Seven From Human “ Becomings ” to a Process Cosmology
Epilogue Why Theorize Confucian Persons for a Changing World Cultural Order?
Bibliography
Index
Preface
Whence this monograph? Some years ago, much influenced and encouraged by my dear friend and collaborator, the late Henry Rosemont Jr., I embraced the notion that taking Confucian ethics as a sui generis role ethic is the best way to understand the moral discourse found in the early Confucian canons. And over the ensuing years, Henry and I together—and independently, too—have tried our best to elaborate on what we have come to understand as Confucian role ethics. A collection of the papers we wrote in this joint effort recounting the history and development of this idea has been published in a volume entitled Confucian Role Ethics: A Vision for the Twenty-first Century? 1 In 2011, I published a monograph that began as the 2008 Ch’ien Mu [Qian Mu] Lectures at the Chinese University of Hong Kong entitled Confucian Role Ethics , with the subtitle: A Vocabulary . That is, in this book I appeal to the conceptual vocabulary of the tradition itself in my best attempt to allow Confucian role ethics to, quite literally, speak on its own terms. 2 My argument in Confucian Role Ethics is that we must begin from an understanding of the vocabulary of Confucian role ethics itself. Only when this has been accomplished and the tradition has been allowed its own voice can we then bring it into a conversation with the contemporary ethical discourse. Said another way, given the long history of Confucian ethics, I was keen to resist the familiar shoehorning of this tradition into our own familiar philosophical categories on the uncritical assumption that the encounter of Confucian ethics with Western moral theory was somehow its defining moment.
Assuming that this publication had made a fair argument for taking Confucian ethics on its own terms, I happily began work on a sequel monograph tentatively entitled “Against Objectivism: Doing Justice to Justice in Confucian Role Ethics.” In this second book, my explicit intention was to bring Confucian role ethics into conversation with Western moral theory on the single theme of “justice” and to thus promote an intercultural dialogue on this important topic. In this now stalled book, I began with John Rawls, moved on to Susan Moller Okin, then to Joel Kupperman and Robert Solomon, on to Amartya Sen and John Dewey, and finally to a holistic Confucian conception of social justice. This “justice” monograph has since been deferred. While I was working on this manuscript, responses to Confucian Role Ethics came in from some much-respected colleagues within the corridors of Western philosophy, and particularly after the translation into Chinese, from distinguished members of the Chinese academy as well. I was much encouraged by the interest garnered by the idea of role ethics, and in service to clarifying my terms and further refining my arguments, I was grateful to have their critical engagement. While getting much from the comments and criticisms of these scholars, I also came to see that Henry and I, up until now, have been less than successful in stating clearly what we take to be perhaps Confucian philosophy’s most important contribution to the contemporary ethical discourse: its relationally constituted conception of persons. That is, I became aware that neither my monograph Confucian Role Ethics nor the work I had done in collaboration with Rosemont has provided a sufficiently clear account of how the Confucian relationally constituted conception of persons described in terms of narrative and focus-field holography can serve the contemporary discussion in moral philosophy as a robust alternative to the seemingly default assumption about a foundational individualism.
Simultaneously, Rosemont, with this same concern in mind, undertook a sustained critique of individualism in his monograph Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion (2015). In this book, Rosemont mounts a compelling argument that foundational individualism in its various iterations has transitioned from a benign, liberating discourse to become what is now a sometimes malevolent ideology implicated in and aggravating many of the pressing ethical, social, and political problems of our time. 3 The overall thrust of Rosemont’s thesis in Against Individualism can be stated rather simply. The industrial democracies, and by extension most of the rest of the world, are dominated by a corporate capitalism whose interests are served largely by a procedural justice grounded in a foundational individualism that compounds the benefits of a few and marginalizes the possibility of realizing a distributive justice for the many. Hence, the more success academic and political forces have in defending and indeed championing the morality that grounds individualism and procedural justice, the less likely we will be able to make gains in social justice. Or put another way, those of us committed to the primacy of social and distributive justice must confront the fact that individual freedom for an elite and privileged few is being purchased at the expense of substantial justice for an increasing number of the world’s peoples.
I join Rosemont’s efforts here in arguing that our default individualism constitutes a major underlying and entrenched conceptual problem that is exacerbating the current human predicament—a predicament that I will have occasion to describe below as “the perfect storm.” Indeed, this foundational individualism is appealed to first in defining what it means to be a moral person and then extended as a determinate of what it means for this putatively moral person to act justly. The presupposition that defines persons ideally as free, autonomous, rational, and properly self-interested individuals is ubiquitous in much if not most of modern Western moral and political philosophy. And it takes on an analogous form at the extended level of corporate culture and the sovereign state. With its deep roots in the Western philosophical narrative, this foundational individualism dilutes our sense of moral responsibility by allowing us to describe, analyze, and evaluate individual persons—psychologically, politically, and morally—in isolation from others. Yet this ostensibly foundational individual is at every level an ontological fiction. We do not live our lives inside our skins. Moreover, the individual so defined has become an insidious fiction, as it provides the moral and political justification for an increasingly libertarian economic and political system. Indeed, it can be fairly argued that this same libertarian economic system, justified as it is by appeal to individual liberty and autonomy, and far from being the cure for the world’s ills, in fact exacerbates the disease itself.
Like Rosemont, I have come to believe that we need to bring into clearer focus the ways in which the Confucian conception of relationally constituted persons, with all of its far-reaching implications, provides an alternative to this individualism. To this end, I have set aside my “justice book” for the time being to join Rosemont in common cause. I have written this present monograph with the express intention of trying to state as clearly as I can what we have both come to see as the holistic, interdependent, and eventful conception of persons being offered in Confucian philosophy. While Rosemont in Against Individualism has focused much of his energies