Aristotle

The Doctrine of the Mean

Ethical Virtue as Disposition
Aristotle describes ethical virtue as a “hexis” (“state” “condition” “disposition”)—a tendency or
disposition, induced by our habits, to have appropriate feelings (1105b25–6). Defective states of
character are hexeis (plural of hexis) as well, but they are tendencies to have inappropriate
feelings. The significance of Aristotle's characterization of these states as hexeis is his decisive
rejection of the thesis, found throughout Plato's early dialogues, that virtue is nothing but a kind
of knowledge and vice nothing but a lack of knowledge. Although Aristotle frequently draws
analogies between the crafts and the virtues (and similarly between physical health
and eudaimonia), he insists that the virtues differ from the crafts and all branches of knowledge
in that the former involve appropriate emotional responses and are not purely intellectual
conditions.
Furthermore, every ethical virtue is a condition intermediate (a “golden mean” as it is popularly
known) between two other states, one involving excess, and the other deficiency (1106a26–
b28). In this respect, Aristotle says, the virtues are no different from technical skills: every
skilled worker knows how to avoid excess and deficiency, and is in a condition intermediate
between two extremes. The courageous person, for example, judges that some dangers are
worth facing and others not, and experiences fear to a degree that is appropriate to his
circumstances. He lies between the coward, who flees every danger and experiences excessive
fear, and the rash person, who judges every danger worth facing and experiences little or no
fear. Aristotle holds that this same topography applies to every ethical virtue: all are located on
a map that places the virtues between states of excess and deficiency. He is careful to add,
however, that the mean is to be determined in a way that takes into account the particular
circumstances of the individual (1106a36–b7). The arithmetic mean between 10 and 2 is 6, and
this is so invariably, whatever is being counted. But the intermediate point that is chosen by an
expert in any of the crafts will vary from one situation to another. There is no universal rule, for
example, about how much food an athlete should eat, and it would be absurd to infer from the
fact that 10 lbs. is too much and 2 lbs. too little for me that I should eat 6 lbs. Finding the mean
in any given situation is not a mechanical or thoughtless procedure, but requires a full and
detailed acquaintance with the circumstances.
It should be evident that Aristotle's treatment of virtues as mean states endorses the idea that we
should sometimes have strong feelings—when such feelings are called for by our situation.
Sometimes only a small degree of anger is appropriate; but at other times, circumstances call for
great anger. The right amount is not some quantity between zero and the highest possible level,
but rather the amount, whatever it happens to be, that is proportionate to the seriousness of the
situation. Of course, Aristotle is committed to saying that anger should never reach the point at
which it undermines reason; and this means that our passion should always fall short of the
extreme point at which we would lose control. But it is possible to be very angry without going
to this extreme, and Aristotle does not intend to deny this.
The theory of the mean is open to several objections, but before considering them, we should
recognize that in fact there are two distinct theses each of which might be called a doctrine of
the mean. First, there is the thesis that every virtue is a state that lies between two vices, one of
excess and the other of deficiency. Second, there is the idea that whenever a virtuous person
chooses to perform a virtuous act, he can be described as aiming at an act that is in some way or
other intermediate between alternatives that he rejects. It is this second thesis that is most likely
to be found objectionable. A critic might concede that in some cases virtuous acts can be
described in Aristotle's terms. If, for example, one is trying to decide how much to spend on a
wedding present, one is looking for an amount that is neither excessive nor deficient. But surely
many other problems that confront a virtuous agent are not susceptible to this quantitative
analysis. If one must decide whether to attend a wedding or respect a competing obligation
instead, it would not be illuminating to describe this as a search for a mean between extremes—
unless “aiming at the mean” simply becomes another phrase for trying to make the right
decision. The objection, then, is that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean, taken as a doctrine about
what the ethical agent does when he deliberates, is in many cases inapplicable or
unilluminating.
A defense of Aristotle would have to say that the virtuous person does after all aim at a mean, if
we allow for a broad enough notion of what sort of aiming is involved. For example, consider a
juror who must determine whether a defendant is guilty as charged. He does not have before his
mind a quantitative question; he is trying to decide whether the accused committed the crime,
and is not looking for some quantity of action intermediate between extremes. Nonetheless, an
excellent juror can be described as someone who, in trying to arrive at the correct decision,
seeks to express the right degree of concern for all relevant considerations. He searches for the
verdict that results from a deliberative process that is neither overly credulous nor unduly
skeptical. Similarly, in facing situations that arouse anger, a virtuous agent must determine what
action (if any) to take in response to an insult, and although this is not itself a quantitative
question, his attempt to answer it properly requires him to have the right degree of concern for
his standing as a member of the community. He aims at a mean in the sense that he looks for a
response that avoids too much or too little attention to factors that must be taken into account in
making a wise decision.
Perhaps a greater difficulty can be raised if we ask how Aristotle determines which emotions
are governed by the doctrine of the mean. Consider someone who loves to wrestle, for example.
Is this passion something that must be felt by every human being at appropriate times and to the
right degree? Surely someone who never felt this emotion to any degree could still live a
perfectly happy life. Why then should we not say the same about at least some of the emotions
that Aristotle builds into his analysis of the ethically virtuous agent? Why should we experience
anger at all, or fear, or the degree of concern for wealth and honor that Aristotle commends?
These are precisely the questions that were asked in antiquity by the Stoics, and they came to
the conclusion that such common emotions as anger and fear are always inappropriate. Aristotle
assumes, on the contrary, not simply that these common passions are sometimes appropriate,
but that it is essential that every human being learn how to master them and experience them in
the right way at the right times. A defense of his position would have to show that the emotions
that figure in his account of the virtues are valuable components of any well-lived human life,
when they are experienced properly. Perhaps such a project could be carried out, but Aristotle
himself does not attempt to do so.
He often says, in the course of his discussion, that when the good person chooses to act
virtuously, he does so for the sake of the “kalon”—a word that can mean “beautiful”, “noble”,
or “fine” (see for example 1120a23–4). This term indicates that Aristotle sees in ethical activity
an attraction that is comparable to the beauty of well-crafted artifacts, including such artifacts as
poetry, music, and drama. He draws this analogy in his discussion of the mean, when he says
that every craft tries to produce a work from which nothing should be taken away and to which
nothing further should be added (1106b5–14). A craft product, when well designed and
produced by a good craftsman, is not merely useful, but also has such elements as balance,
proportion and harmony—for these are properties that help make it useful. Similarly, Aristotle
holds that a well-executed project that expresses the ethical virtues will not merely be
advantageous but kalon as well—for the balance it strikes is part of what makes it
advantageous. The young person learning to acquire the virtues must develop a love of doing
what is kalon and a strong aversion to its opposite—the aischron, the shameful and ugly.
Determining what is kalon is difficult (1106b28–33, 1109a24–30), and the normal human
aversion to embracing difficulties helps account for the scarcity of virtue (1104b10–11).
5.2 Ethical Theory Does Not Offer a Decision Procedure
It should be clear that neither the thesis that virtues lie between extremes nor the thesis that the
good person aims at what is intermediate is intended as a procedure for making decisions. These
doctrines of the mean help show what is attractive about the virtues, and they also help
systematize our understanding of which qualities are virtues. Once we see that temperance,
courage, and other generally recognized characteristics are mean states, we are in a position to
generalize and to identify other mean states as virtues, even though they are not qualities for
which we have a name. Aristotle remarks, for example, that the mean state with respect to anger
has no name in Greek (1125b26–7). Though he is guided to some degree by distinctions
captured by ordinary terms, his methodology allows him to recognize states for which no names
exist.
So far from offering a decision procedure, Aristotle insists that this is something that no ethical
theory can do. His theory elucidates the nature of virtue, but what must be done on any
particular occasion by a virtuous agent depends on the circumstances, and these vary so much
from one occasion to another that there is no possibility of stating a series of rules, however
complicated, that collectively solve every practical problem. This feature of ethical theory is not
unique; Aristotle thinks it applies to many crafts, such as medicine and navigation (1104a7–10).
He says that the virtuous person “sees the truth in each case, being as it were a standard and
measure of them” (1113a32–3); but this appeal to the good person's vision should not be taken
to mean that he has an inarticulate and incommunicable insight into the truth. Aristotle thinks of
the good person as someone who is good at deliberation, and he describes deliberation as a
process of rational inquiry. The intermediate point that the good person tries to find is
determined by logos (“reason”, “account”) and in the way that the person of practical reason
would determine it. (1107a1–2)
To say that such a person “sees” what to do is simply a way of registering the point that the
good person's reasoning does succeed in discovering what is best in each situation. He is “as it
were a standard and measure” in the sense that his views should be regarded as authoritative by
other members of the community. A standard or measure is something that settles disputes; and
because good people are so skilled at discovering the mean in difficult cases, their advice must
be sought and heeded.
Although there is no possibility of writing a book of rules, however long, that will serve as a
complete guide to wise decision-making, it would be a mistake to attribute to Aristotle the
opposite position, namely that every purported rule admits of exceptions, so that even a small
rule-book that applies to a limited number of situations is an impossibility. He makes it clear
that certain emotions (spite, shamelessness, envy) and actions (adultery, theft, murder) are
always wrong, regardless of the circumstances (1107a8–12). Although he says that the names of
these emotions and actions convey their wrongness, he should not be taken to mean that their
wrongness derives from linguistic usage. He defends the family as a social institution against
the criticisms of Plato (Politics II.3–4), and so when he says that adultery is always wrong, he is
prepared to argue for his point by explaining why marriage is a valuable custom and why extra-
marital intercourse undermines the relationship between husband and wife. He is not making
the tautological claim that wrongful sexual activity is wrong, but the more specific and
contentious point that marriages ought to be governed by a rule of strict fidelity. Similarly,
when he says that murder and theft are always wrong, he does not mean that wrongful killing
and taking are wrong, but that the current system of laws regarding these matters ought to be
strictly enforced. So, although Aristotle holds that ethics cannot be reduced to a system of rules,
however complex, he insists that some rules are inviolable.
5.3 The Starting Point for Practical Reasoning
We have seen that the decisions of a practically wise person are not mere intuitions, but can be
justified by a chain of reasoning. (This is why Aristotle often talks in term of a practical
syllogism, with a major premise that identifies some good to be achieved, and a minor premise
that locates the good in some present-to-hand situation.) At the same time, he is acutely aware
of the fact that reasoning can always be traced back to a starting point that is not itself justified
by further reasoning. Neither good theoretical reasoning nor good practical reasoning moves in
a circle; true thinking always presupposes and progresses in linear fashion from proper starting
points. And that leads him to ask for an account of how the proper starting points of reasoning
are to be determined. Practical reasoning always presupposes that one has some end, some goal
one is trying to achieve; and the task of reasoning is to determine how that goal is to be
accomplished. (This need not be means-end reasoning in the conventional sense; if, for
example, our goal is the just resolution of a conflict, we must determine what constitutes justice
in these particular circumstances. Here we are engaged in ethical inquiry, and are not asking a
purely instrumental question.) But if practical reasoning is correct only if it begins from a
correct premise, what is it that insures the correctness of its starting point?
Aristotle replies: “Virtue makes the goal right, practical wisdom the things leading to it”
(1144a7–8). By this he cannot mean that there is no room for reasoning about our ultimate end.
For as we have seen, he gives a reasoned defense of his conception of happiness as virtuous
activity. What he must have in mind, when he says that virtue makes the goal right, is that
deliberation typically proceeds from a goal that is far more specific than the goal of attaining
happiness by acting virtuously. To be sure, there may be occasions when a good person
approaches an ethical problem by beginning with the premise that happiness consists in virtuous
activity. But more often what happens is that a concrete goal presents itself as his starting point
—helping a friend in need, or supporting a worthwhile civic project. Which specific project we
set for ourselves is determined by our character. A good person starts from worthwhile concrete
ends because his habits and emotional orientation have given him the ability to recognize that
such goals are within reach, here and now. Those who are defective in character may have the
rational skill needed to achieve their ends—the skill Aristotle calls cleverness (1144a23–8)—
but often the ends they seek are worthless. The cause of this deficiency lies not in some
impairment in their capacity to reason—for we are assuming that they are normal in this respect
—but in the training of their passions.
Confucius
Virtues and Character Formation
Many of the short passages from the Analects, and the “Thicket of Sayings” passages excavated
at Guodian, describe the development of set of ideal behaviors associated with the moral ideal
of the “way” (dao 道) of the “gentleman” (junzi 君子). Based on the analogy between the way
of Confucius and character ethics systems deriving from Aristotle, these patterns of behavior
are today often described using the Latinate term “virtue”. In the second passage in
the Analects, the disciple You Ruo 有若 says a person who behaves with filial piety to parents
and siblings (xiao and di 弟 ), and who avoids going against superiors, will rarely disorder
society. It relates this correlation to a more general picture of how patterns of good behavior
effectively open up the possibility of following the way of the gentleman: “The gentleman
works at the roots. Once the roots are established, the way comes to life” (1.2). The way of the
gentleman is a distillation of the exemplary behaviors of the selfless culture heroes of the past,
and is available to all who are willing to “work at the roots”. 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. Five behaviors of the gentleman most central to the Analects are benevolence
(ren 仁 ), righteousness (yi 義 ), ritual propriety (li 禮 ), wisdom (zhi 智 ), and trustworthiness
(xin 信).
The virtue of benevolence entails interacting with others guided by a sense of what is good from
their perspectives. Sometimes the Analects defines benevolence generally as “caring for others”
(12.22), but in certain contexts it is associated with more specific behaviors. 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 (12.2), being reticent in speaking
(12.3) and rejecting the use of clever speech (1.3), and being respectful where one dwells,
reverent where one works, and loyal where one deals with others (13.19). It is the broadest of
the virtues, yet a gentleman would rather die than compromise it (15.9). 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.
Later writers developed accounts of the sources of benevolent behavior, most famously in the
context of the discussion of human nature (xing 性) in the centuries after Confucius. Mencius
(fourth century BCE) argued that benevolence grows out of the cultivation of an affective
disposition to compassion (ceyin 惻隱) in the face of another’s distress. The anonymous author
of the late Warring States period excavated text “Five Kinds of Action” (Wu xing 五 行 )
describes it as building from the affection one feels for close family members, through
successive stages to finally develop into a more universal, fully-fledged virtue. In the Analects,
however, one comment on human nature emphasizes the importance of nurture: “By nature
people are close, by habituation they are miles apart” (17.2), a sentiment that suggests the
importance of training one’s dispositions through ritual and the classics in a manner closer to
the program of Xunzi (third century BCE). The Analects, however, discusses the incubation of
benevolent behavior in family and ritual contexts. You Ruo winds up his discussion of the roots
of the way of the gentleman with the rhetorical question: “Is not behaving with filial piety to
one’s parents and siblings the root of benevolence?” (1.2). Confucius tells his disciple Yan
Yuan 顏 淵 that benevolence is a matter of “overcoming oneself and returning to ritual
propriety” (12.1). 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. Confucius wrote that a gentleman “thinks of
righteousness when faced with gain” (16.10, 19.10), or “when faced with profit” (14.12).
Confucius says that one should ignore the wealth and rank one might attain by acting against
righteousness, even if it means eating coarse rice, drinking water, and sleeping using one’s bent
arm as a pillow (7.16). Later writers like Xunzi celebrated Confucius for his righteousness in
office, which he stressed was all the more impressive because Confucius was extremely poor
(“Wangba” 王霸 ). This behavior is particularly relevant in official interactions with ordinary
people, such as when “employing common people” (5.16), and if a social superior has mastered
it, “the common people will all comply” (13.4). 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.
The perspective needed to act in a righteous way is sometimes related to an attitude to personal
profit that recalls the previous section’s discussion of how Confucius taught his disciples to
recalibrate their sense of value based on their immersion in the sacrificial system. More
specifically, evaluating things based on their ritual significance can put one at odds with
conventional hierarchies of value. This is defined as the root of righteous behavior in a story
from the late Warring States period text Master Fei of Han (Han Feizi 韓非子). 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:
would be obstructing righteousness, and so I dared not put [the peach] above what fills the
vessels in the ancestral shrine. (“Waichu shuo, zuo shang” 外儲說左上)
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.
At times, the phrase “benevolence and righteousness” is used metonymically for all the virtues,
but in some later texts, a benevolent impulse to compassion and a righteous steadfastness are
seen as potentially contradictory. 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:
In regulating one’s household, kindness overrules righteousness. Outside of one’s house,
righteousness cuts off kindness. What one undertakes in serving one’s father, one also does in
serving one’s lord, because one’s reverence for both is the same. Treating nobility in a noble
way and the honorable in an honorable way, is the height of righteousness. (“Sangfu sizhi” 喪服
四制)
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.
While the virtues of benevolence and righteousness might impel a gentleman to adhere to ritual
norms in particular situations or areas of life, a third virtue of “ritual propriety” expresses a
sensitivity to one’s social place, and willingness to play all of one’s multiple ritual roles. The
term li translated here as “ritual propriety” has a particularly wide range of connotations, and
additionally connotes both the conventions of ritual and etiquette. In the Analects, Confucius is
depicted both teaching and conducting the rites in the manner that he believed they were
conducted in antiquity. Detailed restrictions such as “the gentleman avoids wearing garments
with red-black trim” (10.6), which the poet Ezra Pound disparaged as “verses re: length of the
night-gown and the predilection for ginger” (Pound 1951: 191), were by no means trivial to
Confucius. His imperative, “Do not look or listen, speak or move, unless it is in accordance
with the rites” (12.1), in answer to a question about benevolence, illustrates how the symbolic
conventions of the ritual system played a role in the cultivation of the virtues. 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. In the Analects, Confucius says he cannot tolerate “ritual without reverence, or mourning
without grief,” (3.26). When asked about the root of ritual propriety, he says that in funerals, the
mourners’ distress is more important than the formalities (3.4). Knowing the details of ritual
protocols is important, but is not a substitute for sincere affect in performing them. Together,
they are necessary conditions for the gentleman’s training, and are also essential to
understanding the social context in which Confucius taught his disciples.
The mastery that “ritual propriety” signaled was part of a curriculum associated with the
training of rulers and officials, and proper ritual performance at court could also serve as a kind
of political legitimation. 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. (8.8)
On one occasion, Boyu 伯魚, the son of Confucius, explained that when he asked his father to
teach him, his father told him to study the Classic of Odes in order to have a means to speak
with others, and to study ritual to establish himself (16.13). 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:
at home serve one’s father, away from it serve one’s lord, as well as increase one's knowledge
of the names of birds, animals, plants and trees. (17.9)
This valuation of knowledge of both the cultural and natural worlds is one reason why the
figure of Confucius has traditionally been identified with schooling, and why today his birthday
is celebrated as “Teacher’s Day” in some parts of Asia. 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
(12.22), and discriminate between those who may be reformed and those who may not (15.8).
In the former dialogue, Confucius explains the virtue of wisdom as “knowing others”. The
“Thicket of Sayings” excavated at Guodian indicates that this knowledge is the basis for
properly “selecting” others, defining wisdom as the virtue that is the basis for selection. But it is
also about appraising situations correctly, as suggested by the master’s rhetorical question:
“How can a person be considered wise if that person does not dwell in benevolence?” (4.1).
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:
When working for what is right for the common people, to show reverence for the ghosts and
spirits while maintaining one’s distance may be deemed wisdom. (6.22)
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 the Analects, Confucius tells his disciple Zi
Lu 子路 that wisdom recognizes knowing a thing as knowing it, and ignorance of a thing as
ignorance of it (2.17). In soliloquies about several virtues, Confucius describes a wise person as
never confused (9.28, 14.28). 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. In the Analects, Confucius explains it succinctly: “if one is
trustworthy, others will give one responsibilities” (17.6, cf. 20.1). While trustworthiness may be
rooted in the proper expression of friendship between those of the same status (1.4, 5.26), it is
also valuable in interactions with those of different status. The disciple Zi Xia 子夏 explains its
effect on superiors and subordinates: when advising a ruler, without trustworthiness, the ruler
will think a gentleman is engaged in slander, and when administering a state, without
trustworthiness, people will think a gentleman is exploiting them (19.10). The implication is
that a sincerely public-minded official would be ineffective without the trust that this quality
inspires. In a dialogue with a ruler from chapter four of Han’s Intertextual Commentary the
Odes, Confucius explains that in employing someone, trustworthiness is superior to strength,
ability to flatter, or eloquence. Being able to rely on someone is so important to Confucius that,
when asked about good government, he explained that trustworthiness was superior to either
food or weapons, concluding: “If the people do not find the ruler trustworthy, the state will not
stand” (12.7).
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.g., Analects 17.6). 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. As a
result, descriptions of the virtues are embedded in anecdotes about the exemplary individuals
whose character traits the dialogues encourage their audience to develop. Confucius taught that
the measure of a good action was whether it was an expression of the actor’s virtue, something
his lessons share with those of philosophies like Aristotle’s that are generally described as
“virtue ethics”. A modern evaluation of the teachings of Confucius as a “virtue ethics” is
articulated in Bryan W. Van Norden’s Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese
Philosophy, which pays particular attention to analogies between the way of Confucius and
Aristotle’s “good life”. The nature of the available source materials about Confucius, however,
means that the diverse texts from early China lack the systematization of a work like
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
The five virtues described above are not the only ones of which Confucius spoke. He discussed
loyalty (zhong 忠), which at one point is described as the minister’s behavior toward a ritually
proper ruler (3.19). He said that courage (yong 勇) is what compels one to act once one has seen
where righteousness lies (2.24). Another term sometimes translated as “virtue” (de 德 ), is
usually used to describe the authority of a ruler that grows out of goodness or favor to others,
and is a key term in many of the social and political works discussed in the following section.
Yet going through a list of all the virtues in the early sources is not sufficient to describe the
entirety of the moral universe associated with Confucius.
The presence of themes in the Analects like the ruler’s exceptional influence as a moral
exemplar, the importance of judging people by their deeds rather than their words (1.3, 2.10,
5.10), or even the protection of the culture of Zhou by higher powers (9.5), all highlight the
unsystematic nature of the text and underscore that teaching others how to cultivate the virtues
is a key aspect, but only a part, of the ethical ideal of Confucius. Yet there is also a conundrum
inherent in any attempt to derive abstract moral rules from the mostly dialogical form of
the Analects, that is, the problem of whether the situational context and conversation partner is
integral to evaluating the statements of Confucius. A historically notable example of an attempt
to find a generalized moral rule in the Analects is the reading of a pair of passages that use a
formulation similar to that of the “Golden Rule” of the Christian Bible (Matthew 7:12 and Luke
6:31) to describe benevolence: “Do not impose upon others those things that you yourself do
not desire” (12.2, cf. 5.12, 15.24). Read as axiomatic moral imperatives, these passages differ
from the kind of exemplar-based and situational conversations about morality usually found in
the Analects. For this reason, some scholars, including E. Bruce Brooks, believe these passages
to be interpolations. While they are not wholly inconsistent with the way that benevolence is
described in early texts, their interpretation as abstract principles has been influenced by their
perceived similarity to the Biblical examples. In the Records of Ritual, a slightly different
formulation of a rule about self and others is presented as not universal in its scope, but rather
as descriptive of how the exemplary ruler influences the people. In common with other early
texts, the Analects describes how the moral transformation of society relies on the positive
example of the ruler, comparing the influence of the gentleman on the people to the way the
wind blows on the grass, forcing it to bend (12.19). In a similar vein, after discussing how the
personal qualities of rulers of the past determined whether or not their subjects could morally
transform, the Records of Ritual expresses its principle of reflexivity:
That is why the gentleman only seeks things in others that he or she personally possesses. [The
gentleman] only condemns things in others that he or she personally lacks. (“Daxue” 大學)
This is a point about the efficacy of moral suasion, saying that a ruler cannot expect to reform
society solely by command since it is only the ruler’s personal example that can transform
others. For this reason, the ruler should not compel behaviors from his subjects to which he or
she would not personally assent, something rather different from the “Golden Rule”.
Historically, however, views that Confucius was inspired by the same Natural Theology as
Christians, or that philosophers are naturally concerned with the generalization of moral
imperatives, have argued in favor of a closer identification with the “Golden Rule,” a fact that
illustrates the interpretative conundrum arising from the formal aspects of the Analects.