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The universality of virtue ethics — II — Confucianism
Aspects of virtue ethics are found in all major Eastern philosophical traditions
We have recently seen that a case can be made for Buddhism to be understood as a type of non-western virtue ethics, with significant similarities to both Stoicism and Aristotelianism. This is interesting because it may suggest that not only the concept of virtue, but the notion of an ethics of virtue, are not limited to the Greco-Roman-Christian tradition.
Usually, though, it is not Buddhism, but Confucianism that is taken to be a good example of non-western virtue ethics, particularly akin to Aristotelianism. That notion is debated, defended, and criticized in Virtue Ethics and Confucianism, edited by Stephen C. Angle and Michael Slote (Routledge). You can find an in-depth review of the book, by my CUNY colleague Hagop Sarkissian, here.
Confucianism scholars have engaged for a while now in a discussion about whether and to what extent the philosophy is akin to Aristotelian or Humean virtue ethics. Famously, Alasdair MacIntyre, one of the modern authors chiefly responsible for the revival of virtue ethics, suggested that early Confucians advocated ritual training because it was conducive to virtue, thus directly linking two of the crucial concepts of Confucianism and Aristotelianism.
In the book edited by Angle and Slote, however, Lee Ming-huei is critical of virtue ethical interpretations of Confucianism, suggesting instead that “because the distinction between [consequentialist] ethics and deontological ethics is exhaustive and mutually exclusive, logically it is not possible that there exists a third type of ethics. … [Virtue ethics] is so ambiguous a concept, the strategy to interpret Confucianism with it can only make things go from bad to worse” (pp. 50–51). Which is bizarre to say the least. Of course there can be, and there has been for a long time, a third type of ethics that is different from consequentialism and deontology. Indeed, virtue ethics far predates both of the other two, at least as understood nowadays (some type of deontology has been around at least since the Ten Commandments).
Ming-huei seems to make the usual mistake of modern moral philosophers: to conceive of ethics in a…
