Too much emphasis on the technical differentials between the two has undermined common wisdom embedded in them. Confucianism and utilitarianism look divergent on this theme. This article proves that the Confucian doctrine of the Mean and the optimality principle are conceptually complementary to each other in terms of their understanding of human nature, regardless of the economic development stages at the time of their emergence: one in a feudalistic society and the other in a capitalistic society.
Confucianism is not an explanation of feudalism or a product of feudalism. Likewise, utilitarianism is not just a product of capitalism. Both precepts of zhong-yong and optimality are the products of an endeavour to understand the economic and ethical nature of human beings and to bridge the arenas of personal morality and social harmony.
This is similar in the utilitarian perspective. Confucianism posits that a whole society can be in zhong-yong equilibrium if every individual member of the society is psychologically and morally in zhong-yong equilibrium. This is the case with utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism is often narrowly understood as upholding an egoistic and materialistic worldly philosophy within the individualistic constituency. In fact, utilitarianism offers a much broader context than individualism Riley , given that utilitarianism concerns the interests of all the affected parties, and whether these are taken into account.
The main arguments of this paper have progressed in the following order. First, the Confucian doctrine of the Mean denotes a timely and optimal choice of action and passion. Second, utilitarianism postulates that people choose a level of action and passion at the point where the total utility from the action and passion is maximised. Third, total utility is maximised when the optimal level of action is chosen.
Finally, the Confucian doctrine of the Mean concurs with the optimality principle. Therefore, the Confucian doctrine of the Mean is not contradictory to the utility maximisation principle in logical terms. These arguments imply that people can adopt both the Confucian doctrine of the Mean and the optimality principle as a worldly philosophy without falling in a self-contradictory situation.
In other words, business sectors do not have to be forced to choose either the Confucian doctrine of the Mean or the utility maximisation principle because these two are not mutually exclusive and can rather be considered to be complementary to each other. The significance of the arguments made in this article may be limited in that it opted to choose quotes mainly from classical utilitarians including Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The assertion that utilitarianism is an adequate description of human behaviour has received a great deal of criticism.
First of all, the ethical theory of utilitarianism that people choose an action that maximises the total net happiness is criticised as consequentialism. If the consequence of an act is an evil to a minority, will pursuing it be an evil to the whole society? Second, the meaning of the greatest number principle is notoriously difficult to decipher due to its ambiguity. Third, a society may adopt the utility principle because it is equitably beneficial to its members, but it is questionable whether the right and wrong ends of acts can be determined by the utility principle.
If the end of an act is an evil, pursuing it can be an evil too regardless of the utility that may be generated. Despite these problems, however, it should not be undermined that zhong-yong as an ethical maxim is in parallel with the utility principle and the optimality principle. Although there is no consensus as to whether Zhong Yong was written solely by Zisi or was edited by multiple figures as time passed, it is widely agreed that the book presents the ethical core of Confucian teachings Sim Any words in brackets were added by the author of this article for clarification purposes.
This article hyphenates the words zhong-yong in lower case in order to distinguish it from the title of the book Zhong Yong. Philosophers in the 18th century endeavoured to establish a fundamental axiom, on the basis of which both politics and law could be reconstructed, appealing to the people as opposed to the monarchs. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation Bentham was published in the year when the French Revolution broke out. In the natural world, in particular, everything teems with discovery and with improvement … Correspondent to discovery and improvement in the natural world is reformation in the moral'.
The utility theory has evolved for more than two centuries into various forms including rule utilitarianism, act utilitarianism, liberal utilitarianism and egalitarian utilitarianism. Aristotle Politics , Book I discussed how to govern within individual households oikoi through appropriate norms nomoi. Aristotle's focus was on economic ethics at the household level Dierksmeier — Pirson , rather than the social relationship between a husband and a wife. Nevertheless, it can be said that Aristotle deemed households as a basic unit of society Vivenza For the historical review of the phrase, the readers are referred to Shackleton and Burns Utilitarianism as an ethical theory was introduced to China by Yen Fu in the late 19th century Li Yen Fu was instrumental in introducing utilitarianism into Chinese thought was a Confucian philosopher.
Edgeworth brought attention to the conflict between egoism and altruism in the determination of individual behaviour. As to whether human behaviour is influenced by the former or the latter, Sen and Tu argued that the latter is more influential whereas Stigler argued that the former is more influential. Aristotle Politics , Book II, Chapter 3, b, 30 stated that everyone thinks chiefly of their own interest, hardly at all of the common interest, and therefore what is in the best interest of the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it.
This phenomenon has translated into prisoners' dilemmas in the social science literature Luce — Raiffa ; Ostrom One of the problems associated with utilitarianism is its inability to measure utility objectively Schubert As a matter of fact, humans can and often do make errors in making choices partly because it is too difficult for them to calculate all the benefits and costs precisely or because their information is incomplete.
Nevertheless, this does not change the fundamental utilitarian proposition fact that humans seek greater happiness wherever they are Stigler This is the reason why there is no dividing boundary between religion and ethics in Confucianism. Zhong Yong denies a dualism of matter versus spirit and humans versus non-humans Tu Allinson , R. Asian Philosophy 2 2 : — Aristotle a : Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Ross, W. In: Hutchins , R. Chicago : Encyclopaedia Britannica , pp. Aristotle b : Politics, translated by Jowett, B.
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Thaler , R. Journal of Economic Perspectives 14 1 , — New York : Norton. The Review of Korean Studies 2 : 25 — Daedalus 4 : — Dao : A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 2 1 : 1 — Vivenza , G. In: Bruni , L. Analects 2. As Philip J. Ivanhoe has written, ritual and music are not just an indicator of values in the sense that these examples show, but also an inculcator of them.
These are examples of the way that ritual fosters the development of particular emotional responses, part of a sophisticated understanding of affective states and the ways that performance channels them in particular directions. Descriptions of the early community depict Confucius creating a subculture in which ritual provided an alternate source of value, effectively training his disciples to opt out of conventional modes of exchange.
The Han period biographical materials in Records of the Historian describe how a high official of the state of Lu did not come to court for three days after the state of Qi made him a gift of female entertainers. When, additionally, the high official failed to properly offer gifts of sacrificial meats, Confucius departed Lu for the state of Wei 47, cf. Analects Confucius repeatedly rejected conventional values of wealth and position, choosing instead to rely on ritual standards of value.
However, here the standard that gives such objects currency is ritual importance rather than longevity, divorcing Confucius from conventional materialistic or hedonistic pursuits.
This is a second way that ritual allows one to direct more effort into character formation. Once, when speaking of cultivating benevolence, Confucius explained how ritual value was connected to the ideal way of the gentleman, which should always take precedence over the pursuit of conventional values:.
Wealth and high social status are what others covet. If I cannot prosper by following the way, I will not dwell in them. Poverty and low social status are what others shun. If I cannot prosper by following the way, I will not avoid them. The argument that ritual performance has internal benefits underlies the ritual psychology laid out by Confucius, one that explains how performing ritual and music controls desires and sets the stage for further moral development.
In this way, the virtues that Confucius taught were not original to him, but represented his adaptations of existing cultural ideals, to which he continually returned in order to clarify their proper expressions in different situations. The virtue of benevolence entails interacting with others guided by a sense of what is good from their perspectives. Examples of contextual definitions of benevolence include treating people on the street as important guests and common people as if they were attendants at a sacrifice It is the broadest of the virtues, yet a gentleman would rather die than compromise it Benevolence entails a kind of unselfishness, or, as David Hall and Roger Ames suggest, it involves forming moral judgments from a combined perspective of self and others.
The Analects , however, discusses the incubation of benevolent behavior in family and ritual contexts. These connections between benevolence and other virtues underscore the way in which benevolent behavior does not entail creating novel social forms or relationships, but is grounded in traditional familial and ritual networks.
The second virtue, righteousness, is often described in the Analects relative to situations involving public responsibility. In contexts where standards of fairness and integrity are valuable, such as acting as the steward of an estate as some of the disciples of Confucius did, righteousness is what keeps a person uncorrupted.
Like benevolence, righteousness also entails unselfishness, but instead of coming out of consideration for the needs of others, it is rooted in steadfastness in the face of temptation.
More specifically, evaluating things based on their ritual significance can put one at odds with conventional hierarchies of value. The tale relates how at court, Confucius was given a plate with a peach and a pile of millet grains with which to scrub the fruit clean. After the attendants laughed at Confucius for proceeding to eat the millet first, Confucius explained to them that in sacrifices to the Former Kings, millet itself is the most valued offering.
Therefore, cleaning a ritually base peach with millet:. While such stories may have been told to mock his fastidiousness, for Confucius the essence of righteousness was internalizing a system of value that he would breach for neither convenience nor profit. In the Analects , portrayals of Confucius do not recognize a tension between benevolence and righteousness, perhaps because each is usually described as salient in a different set of contexts.
In ritual contexts like courts or shrines, one ideally acts like one might act out of familial affection in a personal context, the paradigm that is key to benevolence. In the performance of official duties, one ideally acts out of the responsibilities felt to inferiors and superiors, with a resistance to temptation by corrupt gain that is key to righteousness. The Records of Ritual distinguishes between the domains of these two virtues:. Treating nobility in a noble way and the honorable in an honorable way, is the height of righteousness.
While it is not the case that righteousness is benevolence by other means, this passage underlines how in different contexts, different virtues may push people toward participation in particular shared cultural practices constitutive of the good life.
In the Analects, Confucius is depicted both teaching and conducting the rites in the manner that he believed they were conducted in antiquity. We have seen how ritual shapes values by restricting desires, thereby allowing reflection and the cultivation of moral dispositions.
Yet without the proper affective state, a person is not properly performing ritual. Knowing the details of ritual protocols is important, but is not a substitute for sincere affect in performing them. Confucius summarized the different prongs of the education in ritual and music involved in the training of his followers:.
Raise yourself up with the Classic of Odes. Establish yourself with ritual. Complete yourself with music. That Confucius insists that his son master classical literature and practices underscores the values of these cultural products as a means of transmitting the way from one generation to the next. He tells his disciples that the study of the Classic of Odes prepares them for different aspects of life, providing them with a capacity to:.
In the ancient world, this kind of education also qualified Confucius and his disciples for employment on estates and at courts. The fourth virtue, wisdom, is related to appraising people and situations.
In the Analects, wisdom allows a gentleman to discern crooked and straight behavior in others One well-known passage often cited to imply Confucius is agnostic about the world of the spirits is more literally about how wisdom allows an outsider to present himself in a way appropriate to the people on whose behalf he is working:. The context for this sort of appraisal is usually official service, and wisdom is often attributed to valued ministers or advisors to sage rulers.
In certain dialogues, wisdom also connotes a moral discernment that allows the gentleman to be confident of the appropriateness of good actions. In soliloquies about several virtues, Confucius describes a wise person as never confused 9. While comparative philosophers have noted that Chinese thought has nothing clearly analogous to the role of the will in pre-modern European philosophy, the moral discernment that is part of wisdom does provide actors with confidence that the moral actions they have taken are correct.
The virtue of trustworthiness qualifies a gentleman to give advice to a ruler, and a ruler or official to manage others. While trustworthiness may be rooted in the proper expression of friendship between those of the same status 1. The implication is that a sincerely public-minded official would be ineffective without the trust that this quality inspires.
By the Han period, benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness began to be considered as a complete set of human virtues, corresponding with other quintets of phenomena used to describe the natural world. Some texts described a level of moral perfection, as with the sages of antiquity, as unifying all these virtues.
Prior to this, it is unclear whether the possession of a particular virtue entailed having all the others, although benevolence was sometimes used as a more general term for a combination of one or more of the other virtues e. At other times, Confucius presented individual virtues as expressions of goodness in particular domains of life.
Early Confucius dialogues are embedded in concrete situations, and so resist attempts to distill them into more abstract principles of morality. Confucius believed in the importance of education in order to create this virtuous character.
He thought that people are essentially good yet may have strayed from the appropriate forms of conduct. Rituals in Confucianism were designed to bring about this respectful attitude and create a sense of community within a group. The family was the most important group for Confucian ethics, and devotion to family could only strengthen the society surrounding it. While Confucius gave his name to Confucianism, he was not the first person to discuss many of the important concepts in Confucianism.
Rather, he can be understood as someone concerned with the preservation of traditional Chinese knowledge from earlier thinkers. The most famous of these disciples were Mencius and Xunzi, both of whom developed Confucian thought further.
Confucianism remains one of the most influential philosophies in China. During this time, Confucius schools were established to teach Confucian ethics.
Confucianism existed alongside Buddhism and Taoism for several centuries as one of the most important Chinese religions. In the Song Dynasty — C. However, in the Qing dynasty — C. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.
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