Growing Virtue: The Theory and Science of Developing Compassion from a Mencian Perspective (original) (raw)
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Early Confucian Philosophy and the Development of Compassion
Metaphors of adorning, crafting, water flowing downwards, and growing sprouts appear in the Analects, the Mencius, and the Xunzi. They express and guide thinking about what there is in human nature to cultivate and how it is to be cultivated. The craft metaphor seems to imply that our nature is of the sort that must be disciplined and reshaped to achieve goodness, while the adorning, water, and sprout metaphors imply that human nature has an inbuilt directionality toward the ethical that should be protected or nurtured. I argue that all the metaphors capture different aspects of human nature and how one must work with these aspects. There is much in contemporary psychology and neuroscience to suggest that the early Confucians were on the right track. It is also argued that they point to a fruitful conception of ethical development that is relational and holistic.
2017
My dissertation aims to show that sympathy, when well-cultivated, is adequate to motivate and produce altruistic behavior in a consistent and reliable manner. I do so by creating a dialogue between the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions. I define sympathy as a four-dimensional emotion-including perceptive, visceral, motivational and cognitive aspects. I argue that sympathy in its mature stage is capable of motivating people in a consistent manner, and its role in morality cannot be replaced by other emotions. In addition, I argue that the leap from an unstable reaction to a mature, consistent and reliable emotion is made through proper cultivation. Cultivational methods such as ritual practice, rational persuasion, self-cultivation, etc. are discussed and evaluated. I also discuss the limitations of sympathy and its cultivation towards the end of the dissertation. v
Philosophy Compass, 2019
As a 4th century BCE Confucian text, Mencius provides a rich reflection on moral emotions, such as empathy and compassion, and moral cultivation, which has drawn attention from scholars around the world. This two-part discussion dwells on the idea of natural moral motivation expressed through the analogy of the four sprouts-particularly the sprout of ceyin zhixin (the heart of feelings others' distress)-as the starting point, the focus and the drive of moral cultivation. In Part 1, I presented an integrated view of the sprouts as including cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects. In Part 2, I discuss the cultivation and application of natural moral motivation. I illustrate how the sprouts inform moral deliberation and drive moral cultivation, while also being its subject. I also demonstrate how emotional responses are managed and regulated according to the sprouts, and discuss why moral cultivation is sometimes unsuccessful.
A Genealogy of Early Confucian Moral Psychology
The paper tentatively develops a genealogical interpretation of Early Confucian moral psychology by informing close readings of Early Confucian texts, in particular Mencius and Analects, with research in the mind sciences. This includes examinations of the discussions of emotions and their morality in Analects and Mencius. The paper first analyzes the relationship between Confucian filial piety, genetic kinship and moral emotions. Then the paper analyzes the relationship between Early Confucian ethical principles for interaction with non-kin, empathy, and reciprocal altruism. The paper frames those two issues around a description of the variance between the (high) usage and importance of emotions in the moral philosophy of Early Confucianism and the (low) usage and importance of emotions in the moral philosophy of competing Western moral theories.
Moral Therapy and the Imperative of Empathy: Mencius Encountering Slote
Michael Slote Encountering Chinese Philosophy: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Ethics and Moral Philosophy, 2020
Contemporary discourse on classical Confucianism sometimes characterizes it as a moral therapy. If moral therapy means the curing of moral diseases, it requires a moral doctor and a moral client. But the contemporary discourse is largely confined to the self-cultivation of a moral agent who is simultaneously the moral doctor and the moral client without distinguishing the two whereas a therapeutic model implies such a distinction, at least in the modern sense of the term “therapy.” Here I take seriously the characterization of Confucian moral philosophy as therapeutic and develop a framework of moral therapy to explore the therapeutic aspect of the Mencian moral project. I argue that Mencius, the moral doctor, attempts to change the often implicit but operative script of cost/benefit in his moral clients’ (often a ruler) self-understanding to a moral script through his discussion of moral inclinations exhibited in the clients’ actions. The goal is to push rulers to repair their relationship with the people. In the latter part of the essay, I will engage Mencius with Michael Slote on their defense of partialist vision of justice in order to shed light on the nature of the Mencian sentimentalist project, demonstrated in the Mencian therapeutic practices.
Dao, 2018
This paper challenges the pessimistic view that empathy and other fellow feelings are biased and erratic motivation for morality. By discussing Mencius' account on how empathy could be developed from its biased and erratic beginnings, I argue that empathy can be extended to less common objects, such as non-kin, the faraway, the unfamiliar, and the abstract. The extension facilitated by empathy in turn enhances one's moral cognition towards the sufferings of less common objects; the extension helps to include less common objects into one's circle of care. I respond to critics of empathy such as Prinz by highlighting the dynamic cultivational process of empathy that they overlooked, and further point out that empathy can be cultivated so as to provide a remedy for the biases that no emotion is immune to. This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on moral cultivation in the Chinese philosophy community and the dispute over empathy's role in morality in contemporary ethics.
Mencius, Emotion, And Autonomy
Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 2002
In this paper, I argue for an interpretation of Mencius that emphasizes our dependence on teachers and culture in spite of the goodness of our nature, by examining the relationship among wisdom, emotion, and self-cultivation.
Buddhist Studies Review, 2012
This article is intended to examine and then compare ci bei (‘compassion’) in the Lotus S?tra and ren (‘benevolent love’) in the Analects of Confucius. Despite many similarities, compassion and benevolent love have shown a difference between Mah?y?na Buddhist ethics and the Confucian moral system. This difference is revealed in the content and meaning of compassion and benevolent love, but more importantly through the ways they are practised, followed and expanded. Through different ways or paths, compassion and benevolent love have nevertheless established two different and yet mutually supplementary ideals that guide the spiritual and moral world of China and other parts of East Asia.
The Heart of Compassion in Mengzi 2A6
Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 2019
This paper examines the structural position of Mengzi’s heart of compassion (ceyin zhi xin 惻隱之心) within his theoretical goal of teaching moral self-cultivation. For this aim, I first investigate Myeong-seok Kim’s account that views ceyin zhi xin as a higher cognitive emotion with a concern-based construal. I argue that Kim’s conclusion, drawn from an inductive reasoning, is not sufficiently supported by the text of Mengzi, but is also tarnished by the possibility of constructing a non-cognitivist counter-theory of ceyin zhi xin. Instead, I suggest that David Hume’s causation-based approach to sentiment provides an alternative route to reach the theoretical core of Mengzi’s ceyin zhi xin. People’s uniform moral sentiment as the effect of mental causation implies that there is its natural cause universally engraved in the human heart. As Mengzi’s practical teaching of moral self-cultivation begins with recognizing this heart of compassion, his focus is placed not upon the characteristics of the expressed emotion, but upon the universal presence of its natural cause in the human heart which demonstrates our moral potential to care for others.
The Origin of Human Morality: An Evolutionary Perspective on Mencius’s Notion of Sympathy
Asian Philosophy, 2022
This paper investigates Mencius's notion of sympathy from the perspective of evolutionary biology. First, I point out that Mencius and evolutionary biologists concur that humans are endowed with a unique ability to sympathize with others beyond kin and friends. Subsequently, I offer an analytic account from an evolutionary perspective on how this ability emerged and developed as an innate human quality-especially referencing recent theories that state that cooperation is a crucial factor that helped foster such a quality. Further, this paper addresses in-group/out-group distinction in terms of the scope of sympathy. In particular, I respond to Donald Munro's thesis that this distinction serves as a critical boundary for the workings of sympathy. Finally, I show that Mencius's (and other Confucian thinkers') thoughts on sympathy are not only compatible with modern evolutionary discourses but also contribute to the psychological mechanisms that may have enabled humans to regard others with sympathetic concern. Thus, this essay sheds light on the mechanisms of sympathy that Mencius and other Confucian thinkers illustrated as identifying oneself or one's kin with others. I then surmise that such mechanisms most likely emerged as a fundamental psychological principle for humans initially reaching out to others.