Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

448 Pages·2020·2.921 MB·English

by  Roger T. Ames

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
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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
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For the Berggruen Institute
Good People Doing Good Things

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
Chapter One The Question of Which Questions to Ask 15
Chapter Two How Do the Confucian Canons Say
“Role Ethics”? 59
Chapter Three A Narrative Conception of Human Nature 147
Chapter Four Holography and the Focus-Field Conception
of Persons 205
Chapter Five Relational Autonomy and Thick Choices 275
Chapter Six Holism, Democracy, and the Optimizing of the
Human Experience 317
Chapter Seven From Human “Becomings” to a Process
Cosmology 359
Epilogue Why Theorize Confucian Persons for a
Changing World Cultural Order? 401
Bibliography 409
Index 421

Preface
Whence this monograph? Some years ago, much influenced and encour-
aged 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 collec-
tion 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
1. Henry Rosemont Jr. and Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics: A Vision for the
Twenty-First Century? (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2016).
2. Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (Hong Kong: Chinese Uni-
versity of Hong Kong Press, 2011). Chinese translation: 儒学角色伦理学: 一套特色
伦理学词汇 trans. Benjamin Hammer and Tian Chenshan, 孟巍隆译, 田辰山校译
(Jinan: Shandong Peoples’ Press, 2017).
ix