The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue

✍ Scribed by Jiyuan Yu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 290
• Edition: First Edition
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

As a comparative study of the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Confucius, this book explores how they each reflect upon human good and virtue out of their respective cultural assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and philosophical perspectives. It does not simply take one side as a framework to understand the other; rather, it takes them as mirrors for each other and seeks to develop new readings and perspectives of both ethics that would be unattainable if each were studied on its own.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of virtue
Copyright
Contents
Preface and acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Two revivals
The meaning of comparison
The possibility of comparison
The nature of ethical thinking
The scope of the comparison
The structure of the book
1 Eudaimonia, dao, and virtue
Human good: eudaimonia and dao
Virtue: aretē and de
De and ren
The beginning of ethics
Doing ethics and being pious
The ways of ethics
2 Humanity: Xing and ergon
Human nature and humanity
Function and good nature
Humanity as the foundation of ethics
Justifying humanity
Actualization of humanity
From humanity to virtue
3 Virtue, the mean, and disposition
The mean: inner and outer
Hitting the mean
The inner mean and virtue
Disposition and second nature
The components of virtue
4 Habituation and ritualization
Social value: li and ethos
The training of emotion
Political animal and relational self
Nature and cultivation
Family and virtue
Politics and virtue
5 Practical wisdom and appropriateness
Ethical wisdom and traditional value
The structure of ethical wisdom
Harmony of emotion and reason
Ethical reasoning
Particular virtues
The unity of virtues
6 The highest good and external goods
Virtue, activity, and happiness
Contemplation and self-completion
Being one with God and being one with Heaven
External goods
Virtue and good
7 The practical and the contemplative
Contemplative activity and contemplative life
Self and self-actualization
Self and the others
The value of contemplation
Greek glossary
Chinese glossary
Notes
Selected bibliography
Index of names
Index of subjects