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

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In Human Becomings, Roger T. Ames argues that the appropriateness of categorizing Confucian ethics as role ethics turns largely on the conception of person that is presupposed within the interpretive context of classical Chinese philosophy. By beginning with first self-consciously and critically theorizing the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics, Ames posits that the ultimate goal will be to take the Confucian tradition on its own terms and to let it speak with its own voice without overwriting it with cultural importances not its own. He argues that perhaps the most important contribution Confucian philosophy can make to contemporary ethical, social, and political discourse is the conception of focus-field, relationally constituted persons as a robust alternative to the ideology of individualism with single actors playing to win. Contents Preface Introduction “Rethinking China” (chongsi Zhongguo 重思中國): An Asymmetry in Cultural Comparisons Modernization as Westernization? Chapter One The Question of Which Questions to Ask Setting the Problem: Where Should the Discourse on Confucian Ethics Begin? The Challenge of Our Times: Theorizing Intrasubjective Persons Angus Graham on Abjuring Substance Ontology in Theorizing Confucian Persons Aristotle on Asking the Right Questions A Doctrine of Internal, Constitutive Relations The Discrete “Individual” versus Relationally Constituted “Individuality”: A Significant Distinction Parity Among the Questions: Reinstating Whence and Whither “Aspectual” and “Analytic” Language: Complementarities in the Discourse Chapter Two How Do the Confucian Canons Say “Role Ethics”? Persons as an Achieved Relational Virtuosity Confucian Role Ethics and a Narrative Understanding of Persons Ren 仁 as a Way of Saying “Role Ethics” in the Classical Chinese Canons Xiao 孝 as Another Term for “Role Ethics” in the Confucian Canons Ru 儒 as Role Rather than Doctrine Li 禮, Ti 體, and He 和 as an Aspectual Cluster for “Role Ethics” Chapter Three A Narrative Conception of Human Nature A Human “Being” or Human “Becomings”? A Prelude: A Confucian Conception of Human Culture The “Ontological” and “Developmental” Understandings of the Human “Being” Graham’s Initial Developmental Understanding of the Mencian Xing Graham’s Evolving Narrative Understanding of Xing Familiar Misreadings of the Mencius on Xing Using the Mencius to Restate Graham’s Insights into the Narrativity of Xing Mencius on the Role of Assiduous Personal Cultivation Mencius and Intentional Living Mencius and the Holography of Xin as Xing The Narrativity of Human “Becomings”: A Summary Chapter Four Holography and the Focus-Field Conception of Persons The Confucian Focus-Field Conception of Persons One is Many, Many One Paronomasia: A Confucian Way of Making Meaning Could Socrates and Confucius Be Friends? The Person of Confucius as a Model of Focus-Field Agency Dewey’s Notion of “Individuality”: An Associative Analogy Resonances between Confucian Focus-Field Persons and Classical Pragmatism Chapter Five Relational Autonomy and Thick Choices Taking Stock Reconceiving Autonomy and Choice in a Focus-Field Notion of Agency Sagely Autonomy as the Deep Coalescence (du 度) of Human “Becomings” and Their Worlds Chapter Six Holism, Democracy, and the Optimizing of the Human Experience Contextualism: Abjuring “the Perils of Abstraction” Dewey and the Postulate of Immediate Empiricism Evaluating Roles in Confucian Role Ethics Scenario Rehearsal (shu 恕) as Method for Determining Consummate Conduct (ren 仁) John Dewey and the “Idea” of Democracy Whitehead and the Cosmological Ground of Democracy Tang Junyi’s “Idea” of Confucianism as Optimizing the Human Experience The “Idea” of Confucianism and the Quest for Its Regulative “Forms” Chapter Seven From Human “Becomings” to a Process Cosmology Interpretive Assumptions A Thick Generalization: Distinguishing “Events” from “Objects” A Thick Generalization: Distinguishing “Phases” from “Elements” A Chinese Cosmology with “Its Own Causality and Its Own Logic” Shi 勢: An Aesthetic Alternative to the Logic of “Things” and to an “External Causality” The Book of Changes 易經: A Cosmological Vocabulary Tang Junyi and the Book of Changes Cosmology Epilogue Why Theorize Confucian Persons for a Changing World Cultural Order? Bibliography Index