Teaching and Learning > DISCOURSE

Instilling Virtue: Weaving the One Thread of Confucius' Analects

Author: Christopher J. Panza

Journal Title: Discourse

ISSN: 2040-3674

ISSN-L: 1741-4164

Volume: 5

Number: 2

Start page: 123

End page: 151

Return to vol. 5 no. 2 index page

Getting students enthusiastically engaged with ethics is a difficult and demanding task, especially when they view it as impractical and disconnected from their lives. In this essay, I will argue that this problem can be overcome by applying Confucian 'wisdom'—by adapting one's pedagogical strategy to fit one's knowledge of the particular audience one must address. Specifically, I will argue that we can use our students' concern for their own authenticity and—using the Confucian Analects—show them how achieving authenticity requires an altruistic focus. Thus, I will argue that we can use our students' distinctively egoistic intuitions, and redirect them, with the help of Confucius' text, towards the cultivation of other-regarding virtue.

1. Instilling Chung

In the scholarly literature on Confucius there is much discussion about what is known as the unifying 'one thread' of the Analects. The aphorism containing the 'one thread' reads:

The Master said,“Ts'an! There is one single thread binding my way together.” Tseng Tzu assented. After the Master had gone out, the disciples asked,“What did he mean?” Tseng Tzu said,“The Master's way consists in chung and shu. That is all.”1

It is generally agreed that the 'one thread' emphasises the need for an individual to 'do one's best' (or chung) at cultivating a life informed by 'reciprocity' (or shu). We should expect, then, that the exemplary Confucian individual who embodies the 'one thread' (one who is jen) will possess a deeply motivated commitment to being the kind of person who cares about and for others. This being a worthy goal for any person to pursue, the central question is—as teachers of ethics, how do we instill the 'one thread' into students?

To begin answering this question, Confucius rightfully insists that students must have a strong sense of desire (chung) to 'give of themselves fully to the task at hand'2 as a precondition for moral instruction. The Master suggests:

I never enlighten anyone who has not been driven to distraction by trying to understand a difficulty or who has not got into a frenzy trying to put his ideas into words. When I have pointed out one corner of a square to anyone and he does not come back with the other three, I will not point it out to him a second time. 3

A reading of this passage and others similar to it in the Analects reveals an emphasis on effort; just as some try to solve a problem and come back with three (proposed) corners, others, not driven by a desire for self-improvement (or knowledge), never look for any corners at all. Confucius' reason for requiring chung is evident—rejecting a view of the ethical life that would require a person to simply conform to a set of rules, the Analects portrays moral development as requiring intense and continual introspective analysis. Such self-analysis, Confucius suggests, centres around the difficult task of reflecting on, questioning and assessing the moral worthiness of one's 'ends', these being the goals, purposes, plans, and projects that one intentionally directs one-self to engage in (for the remainder of this paper I will refer to the total-ity of an agent's ends as her cognitive identity).

Getting students to critically engage with their cognitive identities from a moral standpoint is no easy task, and unfortunately, students are not initially open to it. One of the reasons is that they view the ethical theories we teach them as inapplicable to their lived realities, so by a student's lights, such theories fail to provide motivating reasons to engage in the kind of self-analysis Confucius requires. One reason for this, I suspect, is that most college students are psychological and/or ethical egoists,4 a stance that leads them to view the strongly anti-egoistic measuring stick used by most ethical theories to assess ends as too academic, too impersonal, and too disconnected from the world in which they take themselves to live. In part, the consumerist culture that students inhabit has taught them to continually think 'what's in it for me?'—a stance towards the world they (rightly) see ethical theories as criticising.

That said, if Confucius is right that moral development requires chung, and if chung requires having self-directed motivation to engage critically with one's cognitive identity, then, as teachers, our first goal must be to provide motivating reasons to facilitate its development. One way to identify motivating reasons is to appeal to the Analects, which tells us that successful ethical training on the part of the teacher requires 'wisdom,' or 'knowing your fellow man'.5 What Confucius means by this is clear to the reader throughout the Analects, as Confucius uses knowledge of his students' particular strengths, weak-nesses, psychological idiosyncrasies and interests to adjust his peda-gogy in different contexts in order to achieve his lesson goals with maximum efficiency.6

Thus, if we are to use wisdom to get students personally invested in the project of analysing their ends, I suggest that we adapt our pedagogy to the fact that students display an intense, but understandable (at their age) preoccupation with ruminating about their own identities (a phenomenon disparagingly called navel-gazing). Although this self-analysis is not often moral in character, it is often heavily rooted in a desire by students to assure that the contents of their identities reflect, as a product, the workings of an authentic, self-determining subject. No student wants to discover, as a result of such navel-gazing introspection, that they are (in their words) 'a tool' (a follower, or conformist).

These observations reveal to us that students are already busy, although perhaps in a superficial sense, participating in the Confucian project of analysing their own cognitive identities. This suggests to us that there exists a standard that students already use (one that motivates them) to assess themselves. Thus, instead of trying to initially develop chung by asking students to get motivated to assess their ends in terms of whether they pass the muster of duty (the categorical imperative), or of happiness maximisation (the principle of utility), we can have them ask whether their ends, individually or as a whole, express what I will call their ideal identity, or the subset of their cognitive ends that com-prise who the student really wants to be. The main idea is to get students to engage with and further investigate the notion that acting on cognitive ends not reflective of their ideal self is a sure sign of failing to be true to oneself, or of non-authenticity,7 and so to recognize that a commitment to authenticity requires being motivated (chung) to assure that one's cognitive ends do not diverge from who one wants to be.8

Linking cognitive identity analysis with a desire for authenticity is important, not only because it motivates students to self-analyse, but because a Confucian will also demand that a fundamental component of developing moral selfhood involves the project of unifying one's 9cognitive and ideal selves, or of cultivating the virtue of integrity.Thus, adapting and using 'wisdom' at this point already succeeds at involving students in the Confucian project, as the attaining of integrity reflects one important aspect of Confucian moral being. For the remainder of this section, let us look more closely at the requirement of integrity, to see why—beyond its intuitive appeal—it is important to a Confucian that we cultivate it. This will reveal why it is important to get students interested in critically interacting with their own identities in this way.

To explain why integrity is important to virtue ethicists (for the cultivation of virtue, or of jen) or why it should be important to students (for the pursuit of authenticity), it helps to introduce students to a psychological insight often stressed by virtue theorists: namely, that repeatedly attempting to satisfy a certain type of cognitive end always has future consequences for the agent. Specifically, these 'consequences' refer to the development of the habits, traits, dispositions, and beliefs that are required to reliably succeed at that type of end, all of which influence the agent's subsequent ways of interacting with the world. Taken together, these 'consequences' result in the formation of what David Wong has called one's practical identity.10 According to Wong, whereas one's cognitive (and ideal) identity forms the basis for how one intentionally directs oneself towards the world, one's practi-cal identity forms the basis for how one unintentionally sees (interprets) and reacts to the world, both behaviourally and emotionally. To take an example, a person with a practical identity indicative of courage does not merely possess the desire to do a courageous thing or ideally want to be the kind of person who is courageous (both of which are intentional), but is moreover the kind of person who automatically sees (say) a person being mugged as an instance of injustice. This way of seeing is simultaneously associated with having just the right feelings of sympathy for the victim, anger with the perpetrator, and a desire to act on those emotions in ways appropriate to courage and to the situation; namely, to rescue the person from danger (all of which can be seen as more dispositional or habitual than intentional).11 Now, of course, one can have the former (intentions) without the latter (dispositions and habits), or have an end such as wanting to save the person and actually perform such an act without having the practical identity indicative of courage. However, for a virtue ethicist such as Confucius, such a person would not be courageous, since such a description requires that both one's dispositions and one's intentional states be directed at the world in just the right (co-ordinated) way.12

Confucius stresses the importance of having the right practical identity (or 'character'), if one wants to bejen, often in the Analects. Early on in the book, he says:

It is rare for a man whose character is such that he is good as a son and obedient as a young man to have the inclination to transgress against his superiors...The gentleman devotes his efforts to the roots, for once the roots are established the Way will grow where-from. Being good as a son and obedient as a young man is, perhaps, the root of a man's character.13

Here we see Confucius emphasising a point that Wong advances—that the way in which a person lives (the ends one tends to pursue) turns out to be largely a function of the composition of one's previously developed roots or 'habits'. So strong is the relationship between the two that Confucius notes the extreme unlikelihood of a person acting (taking on an end) in a way inconsistent with his practical identity or character. In his example, he suggests that an obedient son later on in life will rarely start a rebellion, a fact that presumably follows from the fact that the obedient and the rebellious will not only tend to see the same situation differently, by picking out different salient aspects as important, but moreover because they will emotionally respond differently to those aspects and so are impelled by their characters to reliably interact with the world in contrasting ways.14

Stressing this connection, and noting the extreme impact that a person's practical identity has over the future choices that person will make, Mencius highlights the importance of cultivating integrity by arguing that one must be very mindful of the cognitive ends that one pursues on a daily basis. His point is this: if one's chosen ends are not reflective of the content of one's ideal self (with jen, or with a desire for authenticity), pursuit of those ends will eventually lead to the development of a practical identity inconsistent with—and eventually undermining—the successful pursuit of who one really wants to be. Warning us to pay close attention to the connection between an end and the practical identity it cultivates, Mencius argues:

How is it that the arrow-maker is less jen than the armour-maker? The arrow maker is worried about people not getting hurt, while the armour-maker is worried if people do get hurt. The situation is the same with the healer and the coffin maker. Therefore, you should be careful about choosing your occupation.15

Other than noting that we need to be mindful about the future psychological consequences of our present choices, what is interesting about Mencius' advice here—and this is what I think is crucial to point out to students—is that he implies that we can be deceived about the kind of practical identity that will result from choosing certain ends. As such, he notes that although we might think that a certain end (here, a career in armour making) is either congruent with or (at worst) neutral to a certain ideal aim we possess (in this case, jen), in reality it is incompatible with it (evidently, Mencius appears to think, because it is not aimed at pro-actively preventing harm) and so it undermines the future pursuit of jen by 'hard-wiring' us to be disposed towards the world in a non-jen way.

At this point it should be clear why it is important to motivate students to develop a chung that is directed towards integrity (unification of one's cognitive and ideal selves), as it results in a consistency between one's practical and ideal selves, and thus creates the ground for one to be reliably sensitive to the world in the ways that one ideal-ly wants. Thus, if we are to instill the 'one thread', or Confucian moral being, students must start by learning to value and pursue the project of closely examining and pruning their cognitive ends to maintain integrity with who they want to be. Applying Confucian wisdom, we can excite students about the project by showing them that being authentic will subsequently require a commitment to integrity. Moreover, once this point is made clear, we can pique students' curiosities by suggesting, in light of Mencius' warning, that they may well already be pursu-ing ends or life goals whose pursuit can set the stage for the undermin-ing of that professed goal for authenticity. To investigate this possibility further, however, I suggest to students that we will need to expand our understanding of Confucian authenticity to see what substantive ends (if any) it directs us to pursue. Since the Analects has a great deal to say on this matter, students are—for self-interested reasons—primed to engage with the text in the hopes of discovering whether they are presently, in their own lives, cultivating or undermining authenticity.

2. Interpreting Jen and Min as Authenticity and Non-Authenticity

The connection between the interests of students to be authentic indi-viduals and the project of the Analects is not difficult to forge. In the original Chinese, the distinction between authenticity and inauthentic-ity can be drawn between those who are min, a term associated with the 'masses' or 'the common', people understood to be 'troubled', 'con-fused', 'stupid', and 'willing to submit'16 and those who are jen, the primary meaning being 'human' and further understood as 'individual' (or authentic) and 'caring'.17

Looking to understand what the authenticity aspect of jen conceptually requires, it helps to note that Confucius treats authenticity structurally as a virtue, suggesting that it lies as a mean between two extremes or vices of non-authenticity (min), a point that highlights Confucius' suggestion that in the moral life 'there is little to choose between overshooting the mark and falling short.'18 This structural treatment allows us to approach the concept of jen as 'authenticity' by analysing first the two opposing vices or states of non-authentic min. Of these, Confucius states:

If one learns from others but does not think, one will be bewil dered. If, on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one will be in peril.19

To understand the non-authentic min-vices of 'bewilderment' and 'peril' we must keep in mind two interdependent core Confucian beliefs, since each vice represents a way of endorsing one belief without the other and so disfiguring it. The first belief stresses the importance of learning. Specifically, Confucius believes that ritual traditions governing the norms of human interaction (in the Analects these are known as the li) embody a collective wisdom about human life that has been slowly gleaned over the ages; as such, he stresses that living rightly or authentically requires that we embrace the fact that an essential component of 'who we are' is communal (involving a connection with not only members of one's present community but also with one's ancestors) and so embedded in ritual tradition. Thus, achieving jen or authenticity requires a way of being immersed in the li in just the right way.20

The second belief stresses the importance of thinking. Here, Confucius argues that lived human experience is embodied and so irreducibly particular, this meaning that no common, reductive, or codified way of understanding the world can be applied to a situation from a third-person point of view in order to completely exhaust its human significance or meaning.21 As such, whereas the li functions to give the individual general action guidance in a specific situation, or provides the individual with a valuable compass with which she can begin to understand the moral significance of a particular situation, only the individual, by critically, creatively, and imaginatively engaging with the li ('thinking') can produce an individualistic response that does justice to the way the specific situation appears to the experiencing agent. Thus, thinking stresses the inherently individual, active, participatory, and subjective aspect of human existence.22

According to these explanations of the two key Confucian beliefs, understanding jen as 'thinking and learning' can now be understood as a specific way of immersing oneself in the li such that it not only shapes one's identity, but so that the immersion reflects an inno-vative and creative adaptation of the li that reflects the unique contribution of one's own particular and individual experience. Authentic living, then, is a portrait of an individual who is self-defining within community.

As I have suggested, the two poles of non-authentic min are represented by ways of taking one, 'thinking' or 'learning', without the other as one's guide to living. Exaggerating the min-vice of 'peril' is marked by 'thinking without learning'. This vice stresses an attempt to define oneself in isolation from one's community and one's inherited traditions (the li), to strive for a kind of isolated individualism that sees identity or selfhood as fundamentally 'atomic' and self-contained. Confucius thinks of this extreme as 'perilous' (and non-authentic) for two reasons. First, since he believes that a part of 'who one is' is communal, separating oneself from the li and from interaction with the community forces one into a perpetual sense of 'alienation' from one's self and one's nature.23 Thus, as we will see in the last section, Confucian authenticity has a necessarily relational aspect not typically seen in Western philosophy (an exception to this might be feminist writing on autonomy).24 Second, since Confucius thinks truths about the 'right' way to live are encapsulated in the li, isolation means dangerously removing oneself from an invaluable source of knowledge about how to live.25

The vice associated with 'bewilderment' stems from 'learning without thinking,' Confucius' description of the typical conformist. Here, instead of critically and imaginatively participating in the li (in a way that dignifies the subjective and participatory aspect of human life), the 'bewildered' strive to form a thoughtless and passive identity that exactly mirrors pre-existing li.Since this path seeks to erase the essentially individual and subjective element of what makes human existence meaningful and significant, it also traffics in non-authenticity. Working through this aphorism (and others like it) the teacher is given a general conceptual landscape with which to discuss authenticity. With it, the teacher can now ask students if, on Confucian grounds, they feel that their cognitive ends are unified with (and their practical identities harmonious with) being jen and being authentic, or with one or both of the two ways of being min. Since self-determination is such an important goal for students, they obviously recoil at the thought of being min in the fashion that Confucius describes (especially the state of bewilderment). For certain, my students do see min in others, and often in class are more than happy to provide anonymous examples of friends and family members who, in their opinion, fail to question, investigate, and/or understand tradition, society, or the normative standards of their peer groups (all things considered, the li of their lives). Speaking of the other pole of min, most students also seem to know at least one 'rebel' who thinks of himself as entirely independent and separate from his environment, someone who 'does not need others' and who seems to struggle daily at the project of assuring that the meaning of his/her behaviour cannot be traced back in any way to the noxious influence of a larger cultural or traditional framework.

During discussion of these issues with students it becomes apparent that they agree with Confucius' view—none of them think authenticity requires conformity and few, if any, think that authentic human living is consistent with not being influenced in any way by others or by tradition. An easy way for students to understand this is to think of it in terms of their parents. Whereas, on the one hand, students do recognise—and embrace—the fact that 'who they are' is (and should be) deeply influenced by the normative structures introduced by their parents, they also understand that they will need to appropriate those structures in a creative sense if they are to breathe a sense of life into their parents' teachings, something that requires that they exist as individuals.

But the question is—are my students authentic individuals? They surely want to be, and they rarely admit to harbouring actual intentions to be non-authentic. Keeping in mind Mencius' warning about unknowingly undermining what one claims to value, how can we ascertain if our identities are unified and harmonious with our goal for self-determination? To examine this question, I propose to students that we search the Analects further to try to ascertain what a Confucian believes the motivational component of min, or non-authenticity, is. From there, students can then analyse their own ends not explicitly in terms of outright desires and aims for non-authenticity, but rather in terms of whether those ends seem to exhibit the psychology of min-motivational structures. This goal leads us to our next task—a textual investigation of min psychology.

Identifying Min—The Psychology of Vice

Pursuing this issue textually, we find that Confucius often ascribes the motivational differences between jen and min to typologies he calls the 'gentleman' and the 'small man'. The difference between the two is, he suggests, that 'the gentleman understands what is moral. The small man understands what is profitable'.27 In short, the suggestion is that the difference between 'virtuous' (authentic) motivation and 'vicious' (non-authentic) motivation is that vicious motivation is always driven by a desire for profit (small man) whereas virtuous motivation is never profit seeking, but rather altruistic in character (the gentleman).

 

One way to understand this distinction is obvious to students. Whereas one person saves the life of another because there will be a likely monetary return for doing so (and so one's motivation is clearly profit seeking and vicious), another does so because she sympathises with the suffering of the person in question (and so it is virtuous). How, though, can we adapt Confucius' points here to students' general con-cerns about learning how to authentically engage in self-definition and likewise how to avoid ends inconsistent with that goal? One aphorism that is helpful on this question has Confucius saying:

Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.28

There are two interrelated points here. The first is Confucius' observation that a person's behaviour can be motivated by external forces or by internal forces.29 Since non-authenticity is often understood as a state that results from being motivated by what is outside 'who one is' (since one's ends in such a case do not express a motivating force exemplify-ing one's ideal self), we can be sure that it, like vice, will always stem from external motivation and virtue and authenticity will be associated with internal motivation. The second point expands on this, suggesting that external motivation—generally understood—always reduces in some way to being motivated to endorse an end because it is a means to achieving a reward or escaping a punishment.

Described in this general way, Confucius' description of min-motivation makes the description of the behaviour of a non-authentic min person sound like a Skinnerian's description of the movement of a rat in an operant chamber. Essentially, Confucius leaves us with a portrait of the non-authentic min that sees them as hedonistic herd animals that will move this way or that way only when they have been sufficiently trained to do so through the pain of the cattle-prod (or perhaps, through the punishments assigned to breaking legal codes), or through the anticipation of reward. In fact, Confucius goes so far as to suggest that the min are incapable of intelligible movement in the absence of external motivation, claiming that '...when punishments do not fit the crimes, the common people will not know where to put hand and foot'.30 Given that the non-authentic min 'move' only on the basis of punishment and reward, Confucius suggests that they 'can be made to follow a path, but not to understand it',31again highlighting the absence of internal motivation.

Given this basic characterisation of min-psychology, as a group we can now apply these points to a few cases of 'ends' or behaviours presented in the Analects to see if they are min in character. Out of the many passages that students and I reflect on in the Analects, I will focus here on a student favourite, one that suggests that 'the gentleman agrees with others without being an echo. The small man echoes with-out being in agreement'.32 On the surface, the aphorism is easy enough for students to understand. 'Echoing' invites images of disembodied voices being carried through a canyon, each repeat more hollow and disembodied than the last. Taken in this way, the metaphor of the 'echo' suggests a voice removed from its human (for Confucius—authentic) component and as such, empty and without significance. Students quickly see 'echoing' as conformist behaviour, and identify it as a case of 'bewilderment'. They recognise that such a person does not agree with the wisdom of the crowd as a result of individual assessment (and so it is an instance of learning without thinking) but rather 'echoes' as a conditioned response to the phonetic speech acts of a crowd (which serve collectively in this case as external stimulus). On the other hand, agreeing (as an end) without echoing suggests that one is not mirroring the collective speech act of the crowd, but agreeing because one is 'internally' motivated to do so as the result of independent critical and imaginative assessment (thus thinking and learning). As a result, in this case 'agreeing' accidentally coheres with what others have said.

How does 'echoing' embody the motivational structure of min we have just discerned? Students quickly connect the dots here. From the Confucian perspective, an echoer's words are motivated by fear of being ostracised, shunned, and by worry about losing the benefits associated with acceptance into a peer group. Seeing the analogy with situations in their own lives, students know personally exactly what Confucius means. Too many times, peer pressure forces them to say 'yes', out of fear, to goals or to normative standards that a larger group has sanctioned. Whether such a reaction is motivated by a desire to avoid pain or by a desire to acquire the rewards of acceptance, students see quickly that in such cases, saying 'yes' is motivated by a hedonistic desire for (social) profit (and as such is externally motivated).

Clearly, authenticity calls upon us to critically assess and come to an individual decision about who to be and what to do. In a world of diverse attitudes and norms, students recognise and identify with Confucius' suggestion that a commitment to integrity and authenticity in such cases will leave one liked by some and disliked by others. In an amusing aphorism, the Analects states:

Tzu-kung asked, 'All in the village like him. What do you think of that?' The Master said,'That is not enough'.'All in the village dislike him. What do you think of that?' The Master said, 'That is not enough either'. 'Those in the village who are good like him, those who are bad dislike him'.The Master said,'That would be better'.33

Obviously, this introduces a real degree of difficulty in unifying one's cognitive ends (should I echo? Not echo?) and one's ideal self (desiring authenticity), since integrity (which says 'do not echo') calls upon one to cause oneself pain as a result of being disliked by some 'in the village'. This is something a superficial hedonist of the min will not countenance. This being the case, students begin to recognise a central Confucian point; namely, that the cognitive end of integrity (a necessary condition for authenticity) cannot be consistent with the cognitive end of superficial hedonism (seen here in echoing behaviour). Moreover, since hedonism will dispose the agent to echo the crowd, the practical identity of hedonism must dispose the agent to the world in a fundamentally different and incompatible way than jen.

Although students do see Confucius' point, and even begin to recognise that they themselves (don't we all?) fall prey to min-type ends of this kind, most resist the conclusion, wondering just how far one should take Confucius' injunction to prune the self. Typically, students will suggest in class that at times it is 'just not worth it' to oppose the crowd. If one's peers make a passing racist joke or a homophobic comment, neither of which one agrees with, is it worth the hassle to object and draw attention to it? Confucius clearly thinks it is:

The Master said,'Cunning words,an ingratiating face and utter ser-vility, these things Tso-ch'iu Ming found shameful. I, too, find them shameful. To be friendly towards someone while concealing one's hostility,this Tso-ch'iu Ming found shameful.I too,find it shameful'.34

When students present such objections to Confucius' 'hardball' approach (almost every time!), it creates an opportunity to reinforce the last point about practical identity by 'bringing the point home' to students and their lives. Essentially, I suggest to students that a Confucian will ask: If we find ourselves framing situations in just this way, think-ing 'is it worth it to be oneself in situation X?' or 'is it worth it to exemplify integrity in this situation?'—then aren't we stating a kind of conditional commitment to authenticity (and integrity), one that has binding force on us only up until it causes a certain level of displeasure? If so, then from the Confucian standpoint we must stand back and honestly ask ourselves: what really is the conceptual lens through which we see the world? Clearing away obvious levels of self-deception, the answer is obvious—talking in this way suggests that we 'see' the world and assess it hedonistically, or in terms of min, a way of seeing that points strongly to the fact that we are already engaging, and have engaged in the past, with ends inconsistent with authenticity (since practical identities for X require the past pursuit of cognitive ends aim-ing for X). So, as the evidence shows, the process of undermining our stated goals of authenticity has already begun.

Recognising that we are assessing large-scale questions such as 'is it worth it to be true to myself?' in terms of a min motivational structure should—and often does—raise a large 'red flag' for students. Should students perhaps rethink their alleged commitment to 'being true to themselves'? The more difficult question that Confucius wants them to ask themselves is this one—are they really just herd animals? Such a discussion does cause all of my students to at least take pause and reconsider what integrity, the foundation of 'being authentic,' seems to require of them and how valuable it is (or perhaps isn't) to them. It also forces them to look at themselves honestly, without self-deception, to see who they really are and to compare this to who they claim they want to be. What students begin to notice is that when the min engage in inauthentic behaviour they are actually showing themselves to be internally weak, as min motivation reveals a kind of person who is internally insecure as a psychological type, one who needs to win (false) security through popularity (via echo). This Confucian insight always wins a great deal of approval from students; namely, that vice and non-authenticity seem to reveal weakness, whereas virtue and authenticity seem to be signs of inner strength.35

By this point, the Analects helps students recognise that their quest for authenticity will require that they be more cautious, to think through the 'why?' of an end before participating in it, to know what motivates it and as such to know what practical identity will eventually develop from it. In this way, they learn to value the development of a real sense of care about the composition of their own identities. That said, it is not my aim to leave students on a negative note here, or to make them feel that since they in all probability do exhibit min-behaviour themselves, they are already like the min and so are lost. Instead, in discussion I try to focus on the fact that beginning to ask these honest questions (developing chung in the process) is the first stage towards developing the right kinds of habits. The reason is obvious— self-analysis is painful and difficult to engage in and so we can be sure that the min will not participate in it when it gets too difficult or uncomfortable. The fact that they are still engaged with the project shows that they are learning to undermine whatever aspects of min-practical identity they might presently embody. Moreover, because what we find may be unsettling to us, a commitment to such introspective activity requires courage,36 further undermining nascent min dispositions and facilitating an emergent practical identity that is consistent with jen or authenticity. So, in beginning to walk this path, one begins to develop now the right ends—self-reflection, self- criticism, a desire for integrity—each of which will, if repeated, develop the development of a skill set of virtues consistent with and supportive of authenticity and which will undermine hedonism. If such a commitment can be maintained, eventually the student will begin to see the world in terms of jen. Or, as Confucius himself remarks, 'is jen really far away? No sooner do I desire it than it is here'.37

3. Instilling Shu

Up to this point I have discussed a way to succeed in getting students motivated to engage in moral evaluation through the project of pruning their own identities in order to achieve their self-professed desire to be authentic individuals. I argued that analysing the text of the Analects provides a support for the connection between student desire for authenticity and jen, the Confucian moral aim. I then suggested that we can also use the text to uncover what Confucius takes to be the motivation of non-authenticity (or min) – hedonism. Armed with this knowledge, students can now analyse the motivations behind their own ends to see if they are unknowingly pursuing the kinds of goals that undermine authenticity. Lastly, I suggested that we can use this discussion to make clear to students that the kinds of virtues required to attain authenticity, such as integrity and courage, require that one strives to prune hedonistic ends from one's identity in order to build up the right kinds of dispositions, or the right kind of practical identity, namely one that supports authenticity by allowing the agent to see the world in terms of jen.

Still, if our aim was to find a way to instill the Confucian 'one thread' into students, one large piece of the puzzle is missing. Since, as we saw early in the last section, being jen requires that a person's ideal self exemplify care or benevolence, 'authenticity' for a Confucian must have an altruistic or other-regarding dimension, otherwise known as shu.

Tzu-kung asked,'Is there a single word which can be a guide to con duct throughout life?' The Master said,'It is perhaps the word,'shu.' Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.'38

In the Confucian system, shu means 'reciprocity,' and as an ethical principle it functions as what we call the 'golden rule'. Taken in the context of the 'one thread', shu demands of us that we identify and remove from our cognitive repertoire of ends those that are inconsistent with what we would not want others to do to us, which in the present discussion will mean pruning any end that seeks to degrade another person's ability to successfully pursue authenticity. This, however, immediately raises the question: Is it even possible to disrupt another person's ability to successfully pursue authenticity (understood in this context as pruning one's ends to make them consistent with who one ideally wants to be)?

Discussing this issue with students in the classroom, I have found that they overwhelmingly seem to believe that the answer is 'no'. Digging deeper into their reasoning, I have found that students often seem to agree with one another that the skills or abilities required to successfully pursue authenticity (critical reasoning might be one such skill) are innate, and also that the expression of those skills or abilities are internal to the person in question. According to most students, to say that such skills are innate is to say that all persons have these abilities or skills simply by virtue of being human. To say that the exercise of those innate skills is internal is just to say that successfully using them is solely a matter of mental willing.

Putting the two points together, students cannot see how the successful achievement of authenticity can be interfered with by others. As far as they see it, it is one thing to say that an innate ability to move one's arm can be impeded by others because the successful exercise of that innate skill depends on the absence of certain external factors, such as another person who physically holds my arm motionless. But how, they think, can another person prevent me from using innate mental abilities? Since students cannot imagine how this could happen, they consequently view failures to attain authenticity—such as our previous example of 'echoing' the crowd—as mere 'failures to will' on the part of the person in question. Since students almost always object over-whelmingly in this way (wanting to see all moral failures as entirely the personal responsibility of the person), the insistence on the centrality of shu to the pursuit of authenticity perplexes them, as it appears to them to be devoid of content.

In class I try to challenge this view by pointing out that Confucius strongly believes that whether or not a person is capable of authenticity depends greatly on the (at least historical) presence of certain external conditions (such as the presence of certain types of quali-ty nurturing relationships) in that person's life (this mirrors the Confucian/Aristotelian focus on the dependence of virtue upon the right moral education of children). To introduce this, I begin by framing the class discussion with the Confucian belief that failing to achieve authenticity can occur for two main reasons, one of which mirrors their own intuitions about holding the non-authentic person personally responsible and one of which points to the possibility of holding other people personally responsible and accountable for those failures (and so this does not mirror their intuitions).

The first way in which one can fail to achieve authenticity is evident, as we have already dealt with it in some detail in section 2. Specifically, and right in line with students' intuitions, Confucius often suggests that whether a person successfully pursues authenticity will often be a function of how hard that person devotes effort (chung) to the task. Many times, Confucius argues, we fail at the project of jen because, being guided by hedonism (and thus by min), we give in to the desire to end the pain that comes with struggle and find ourselves falling into patterns of sloth and laziness, even when such behaviours are highly destructive to the kinds of introspection and self-correction jen (or authenticity) requires. In this particular aphorism, Confucius upbraids a student for his self-deceptive rationalisations concerning his failures:

Jan Ch'iu said, 'It is not that I am not pleased with your Way, but rather that my strength gives out.' The Master said, 'A man whose strength gives out collapses along the course. In your case, you set the limits beforehand.'39

Like the students who asked 'is it really worth it to exemplify integrity in this difficult situation?' there is no doubt that Confucius is clearly arguing that Jan Ch'iu has placed a conditional value on the cultivation of personal excellence. Consequently, his own way of viewing and valuing the world (his practical identity, here obviously the result of past bad choices) is to blame for his failures, not 'inability'. Not surprisingly, Confucius can be just as hard on himself.

It is these things that cause me concern: failure to cultivate virtue, failure to go more deeply into what I have learned, inability, when I am told what is right, to move to where it is, and inability to reform myself when I have defects.40

Of course, it is possible that Confucius—the perennial self-critic—is here suggesting that he, like Jan Ch'iu, at times simply lacks the effort or commitment to be jen. I would like to suggest, however, that the correct way of understanding the meaning of this passage is actually ambiguous. Another way to interpret it has Confucius worried that in certain contexts and situations in the future he might literally lack the ability (at some level of difficulty, not in total) to 'go more deeply into what he has learned' or to 'move to the right' or to 'reform himself when he has a defect'. This second way of interpreting failures to successfully attain authenticity (or jen) does not cohere with students' intuitions that such failures are always explainable in terms of the agent simply 'failing to will' (as was the case with Jan Ch'iu). If we can provide a reading of this passage (and others) that has Confucius suggesting that some failures to achieve jen (or authenticity) can be at least partially traced back to the failures of others, then we will have provid-ed the grounds to show students that shu (treating others in certain ways) is integrally connected to chung, or to the pursuit of authenticity.

Coming at this passage by looking first at other closely related ones, I first ask students to explain what Confucius is saying when he critically states that 'Yen Hui is of little help to me in my pursuit of knowledge and understanding. He agrees with almost everything I say'.41 The first thing that we discuss is that in the Analects, Confucius is generally uninterested in critiquing people on matters not related to the pursuit of jen. As such, it makes sense to read his critique as point-ing to a perceived failure to be jen on Hui's part. How? By the time we reach this issue my students are very familiar with the sad (due to his early death and the textual descriptions of Confucius' grief), yet inspiring character of Yen Hui, Confucius' favorite and (according to him) most accomplished student. Being well acquainted with him, my stu-dents are aware that although Confucius thinks of Yen Hui as closer to jen than anyone else,42 Hui's character flaw is that he is overly deferential. By suggesting that Hui 'agrees with everything I say', Confucius alludes directly to this flaw, reminding students of the phenomenon of 'echoing' we earlier analysed.

With this in mind, one way students read the criticism of Hui's deference is to argue that Hui is too close to the vice of 'bewilderment' and thus does not work hard enough to establish his own individuality, in this instance by critically assessing what Confucius teaches. This interpretation also makes sense of Confucius' attention in the aphorism to the fact that Hui's failure specifically results in a deficiency of 'knowledge and understanding', as these concepts often refer in the Analects to fusing one's subjective perspective with communal ritual (thinking and learning), in order to see the true significance and mean-ing of experienced situations.

Although this would be a legitimate criticism of Hui's deferential character—one that Confucius has surely levelled at him in other places—I emphasise to students that this is actually not the specific criticism Confucius makes in the passage. Rather, Confucius specifically links his critique of Hui to the fact that he has failed to help Confucius to develop his own 'understanding and knowledge'. If my interpretation so far is plausible, then what Confucius is saying is that Hui, in being overly deferential, not only does harm to his own pursuit of authenticity but moreover hinders (in this case) Confucius' ability to become authentic by failing to help him to learn how to fuse his subjective perspective with communal ritual. If this is right, then Confucius seems to be pointing to a way that a person can fail to be jen (himself, in this example) in a way that does not fully reduce to a failure to exert effort or will on the part of the agent. Specifically, under such an interpretation, a person can fail to be jen (at least at times) because of the failure of others to help him or her learn how to do so, or to learn how to achieve 'knowledge and understanding'.

It is with this reading of Confucius' critique of Hui in mind that I suggest we read Confucius' earlier suggestion that he is worried that in certain contexts and situations he simply will fail to 'cultivate virtue', 'move to the right', or 'reform himself when he has defects'. What Confucius is stating there, I would suggest, is that pursuing jen has an individual (and effort driven) component and a communal (developmental) component. In fact, given Confucius' constant reference to what we can call the relational nature of selfhood, it would actually seem out of place for the pursuit of authenticity to not be at least partially dependent upon relational or communal contexts. Thus, regardless of the presence of individual effort, if others around Confucius fail to be shu towards him, he will ultimately fail in his efforts to be authentic. With this in mind, since a person who desires authenticity would not want others to fail to be shu towards him, Confucius' discussion of jen (and thus, by extension, shu) builds in an obviously pro-active stance towards the development of authenticity in others. As Confucius says;

A benevolent man helps others to take their stand in so far as he himself wishes to take his stand, and gets others there in so far as he himself wishes to get there.The method to take as analogy what is near at hand can be called the method of benevolence.43

While I think this makes a good prima facie case to students that Confucius does think we can, in fact, affect another person's ability for authenticity through our own actions, students are still not clear why this is the case. Unfortunately, this essay is not the proper place to enter into an in-depth discussion of this important issue.44 However, in closing, we should say a few brief things about this question.

In class, I suggest to students that although the mental skills required to successfully pursue authenticity are innate, they are innate in the sense that language skills are innate, which just means that learning to actualise those innate propensities in the right way will require just the right relational contexts. So when students suggest that authenticity skills are innate and internally exercised, they miss the fact that although a skill can be internally exercised it is not necessarily the case that the development of that skill is wholly internal in nature and not dependent on others. Just as learning a language well requires being raised in a certain (helpful) community of competent language speakers, developing a competency with authenticity skills requires the presence of those around me who will help me to cultivate and correctly use them myself.

As an example, in class I focus on just one of what I take to be the many skills required for pursuing authenticity—introspective critical analysis.45 I take this to be a central skill—and students agree—because without it the agent cannot participate in meaningfully critiquing and assessing his or her own ends, or perhaps those pre-scribed by cultural norms and traditions in order to 'find one's own path' (through thinking and learning). As a result, our question now becomes: Does the possession of a well developed competence for critical reasoning reduce to a matter of simply 'willing' it to come into existence? Although it is partially true (one must desire to get better and try to do so, and so Confucius and my students rightly emphasise the need to take personal responsibility for at least a portion of one's failures to be a good practitioner of critical reason), it seems odd to say that competence building with respect to this skill is simply a matter of internal effort.

There are two elements of critical reasoning that I think reveal this: first, the fact that people need to be taught how to correctly use reasoning skills. On an amusing note, this particular point is especially salient to the students I have in my required philosophy courses (such as ethics). It is a salient point to them because they know first hand that they often suggest to me that although they try to engage in the kind of critical reasoning that philosophical thinking demands, they just don't seem to be very good at it. When pressed for the origin of their failure, they often will point (correctly, I think) to the fact that their ability to critically think was never really cultivated in the past, either in high school, or even in what is required of them in their everyday lives.

They are right–—we need others around us, others who function as teachers (these can be parents, friends, actual instructors) who help to 'walk us through' particular instances of critical reasoning to show us that this or that purported exercise of the skill is good or bad (and why). In fact, I think it is very easy to read a vast majority of the Analects–—which mostly describes Confucius' pedagogical interactions with his students–—as a chronicle of his attempts to teach his students how to cultivate, develop, and become more comfortable with these sorts of innate, but mostly untapped, abilities.46

As a result, the Analects drives home a central point–—without others around us who do not simply model the correct use of such skills, but who moreover interact with us to help us find the right ways to use them, our admittedly innate authenticity skills will not develop to a degree to which we can claim competency in their use. Thus, returning to Hui's overly deferential stance towards Confucius' teach-ings, I suggest to students that Confucius is worried that Hui is not functioning as a person who will help him (or others) to recognise errors or self-deceptions when they occur in his own reasoning. Unhinging his own critical abilities from their relational dependence, slowly over time Confucius will lose the ability to help himself become jen, a failure that will eventually spill over into an inability on his part to help other people on their own individual paths.

If this very brief sketch of the necessary dependence of authenticity skills on nurturing relational contexts is right, then the directive of shu will not be empty. Since we will not desire that others degrade our ability for authenticity, we cannot, by shu, endorse cognitive ends that result in degrading another's ability to pursue that human good. Moreover, passages in the Analects demonstrate to us a need to not merely avoid a negative stance towards developing others, but rather point to the need to take a positive proactive stance towards helping them 'make their stand' as individuals. Thus, being authentic will require, as Confucius often notes, striving to be an exemplar for others,47 and to embrace the role of teacher (when it is needed) in one's relationships. For a Confucian, shu sometimes requires 'tough love' with others (when they are misguided) and with ourselves–—to be self-critical of our own attempts to sabotage another's pursuit of authenticity because we feel, perhaps, threatened by what that pursuit might pro-duce. Tough love is not a position foreign to the Analects. Recognising that it is written that jen requires one to 'Love your fellow man', we are also told that: 'the Master said, 'Can you love anyone without making him work hard? Can you do your best for anyone without educating him?'' Therefore, embodying the 'one thread' entails that one strives to develop a greater sensitivity towards care, for the health of one's own identity and for the health of the identities of those around one.

Conclusion

I have argued in this paper that one can successfully involve students in seeing and cultivating altruistic natures by first adapting one's ped-agogical strategy to acknowledge what interests students, namely their own authenticity, and then using the Confucian Analects to show that a full unfolding of what it means to be authentic as a person entails that it has a caring, other-directed dimension. Thus, if successful, students can be involved in the task of ethics by appealing to their distinctively Western egoism and redirecting it subtly towards the cultivation of other-regarding virtue.

Endnotes

  1. Lau, D.C, (translator) The Analects. (London: Penguin Classics, 1979). Book IV. 15. Translated by D.C. Lau, (London: Penguin Books 1979). All subsequent quotes from the Analects are taken from the D.C. Lau translation.
  2. This interpretation of chung is from Hall, David and Ames, Roger, Thinking Through Confucius. (New York: SUNY Press 1987). p. 285.
  3. Analects, VII. 8.
  4. For more on this issue, see Putnam, Daniel, 'Virtue Theory and the Self: Thoughts on Addressing Ethical Egoism in Our Students', Teaching Philosophy, Vol. 21, No.2, (June 1998);
  5. Paden, Roger, 'The Natural History of Student Relativism', Journal of Thought, Vol. 29, No. 2 and Shoemaker, Robert, 'Cave Angst', Teaching Philosophy, Vol 1. No. 3, Spring 1976.
  6. See Analects, XII, 22.
  7. See Analects, XI, 22. The Confucian point is that one bends one's lessons in ways that fit the needs of particular students. In this quote, Confucius gives Tzu-Lu and Jan Yu different answers to the same question ('should I always put into practice what I have learned?') in order to help each of them arrive at the same goal. Since Confucius realises that the right answer lies in the middle of 'always' and 'never', he realizes that since Tzu-lu is impetuous, he needs to be told 'no', and since Jan Yu is overly deferential, he needs to be told 'yes'. Without this knowledge of his stu-dents' dispositional histories, Confucius would be unable to counsel them in an effective or useful manner.
  8. As an example, a desire to smoke (an end in one's cognitive identity) may not find expression in one's ideal identity (one may not identify with being a smoker). Of course, here I am thinking of Harry Frankfurt's position on free will from his 'Freedom of the Will —the Concept of a Person,' Journal of Philosophy, LXVIII, (1971) pp. 5–20. The positions are not identical, as Confucius' sense of authenticity is not entirely procedural in nature. In Confucius' case, only the substantive ends reflective of jen would qualify, such that only by pruning one's first-order desires so that one's first and second-order desires (in this case for jen) are consistent could one achieve authenticity.
  9. How the 'end product' of a successful 'unification' of one's cognitive and ideal selves should look will depend on one's views about whether there are ends that are non-normative in character. If one believes that one can pursue an end that is neutral to one's authentic self, say, 'intending to walk across a room to get a glass of water', then the goal will be to have one's cognitive identity reflect one's ideal self when the cognitive ends are not neutral. If, however, one follows Confucius in thinking that all actions have some normative content or impact, then the goal will be to completely unify the cognitive self as a whole with the ideal self, so that they are one and the same, with no divergence at all.
  10. In fact, Hall and Ames identify chung as not simply meaning 'to do one's best' but moreover to commit oneself to doing one's best 'as an authentic self'. Hall and Ames, in suggesting this possible translation, also note that an element of chung does appear to mean 'integrity'. Hall, David and Ames, Roger, Thinking Through Confucius. (New York: SUNY Press 1985).
  11. Wong, David. 'On Flourishing and Finding One's Identity in Community', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XIII, (1998), pp. 324–350.
  12. Rosalind Hursthouse makes this important point clear, suggesting that '...possessing the virtue of charity (or benevolence) [will mean] being very prone to feel-ing these emotions on suitable occasions...[and] being very prone not only to feeling but to acting from the emotions of sympathy, compassion, and love, prompted by the desires associated with them.' See her On Virtue Ethics, (New York: Oxford University Press 1999), pp. 100.
  13. In her discussion of the difference between Aristotelian continence and virtue, Hursthouse points to the necessity of (for virtue) Aristotle's 'state requirement', namely, that the '...fully virtuous are better disposed in relation to their emotions than the self-controlled'. Further in On Virtue Ethics, she claims that a necessary condition for 'acting morally' is 'predictability', see pp. 107 and 134.
  14. Analects, I. 2.
  15. Confucius reminds us at Analects, IV. 2, '...The benevolent man is attracted to benevolence because he feels at home in it.' I would submit that part of what Confucius means here is that people with jen or benevolent practical identities are disposed to seeing and being emotionally directed at the world in a jen way. As such, and like Aristotle's distinction between continence and virtue, people who have the right practical identities in this example do not have to fight against con-trary internal desires or emotions. Being jen is, in a way, simply natural to such people (they are 'at home' in it). 15 Lau, D.C. (translator) The Mencius. (London: Penguin Classics 1970). section 2A7
  16. Hall and Ames, in Thinking Through Confucius, pp. 140-141.
  17. Hall and Ames explicitly contrast jen and min as opposites, suggesting that the min are characterised by being an 'indeterminate mass' of people, one 'without character or structure' and the jen are described as singular individuals who are 'particular' in nature (see Thinking Through Confucius, p. 139). In correspondence, Henry Rosemont has pointed out to me that in drawing such a distinction we need to be clear which conception of jen, is being contrasted with min. Rosemont is referring to the distinction between the two different Chinese graphs both understood as 'jen', one of which translates as 'benevolence' and the other of which translates as 'authoritative'. Rosemont suggests that it is the latter sense, not the former, that would be more properly placed in this contrast. I agree with Rosemont, although for the purposes of this paper I have collapsed this distinction and treated all uses of jen in the text as the same. My reasoning is primarily due to the pedagogical function of the paper, but I also believe that failing to draw the distinction when contrasting jen with min is not particularly harmful. My reasoning is as follows. The usage of the term jen in the sense of 'authoritative' is meant to refer to a person who stands as a true exemplar of right living. Being 'authoritative', however, supervenes on the existence of jen as 'benevolence', which refers more accurately to an inner disposition or way of being motivated towards other people in the world. Simply put, a person acquires authoritativeness by being benevolent. If the true contrast with min is with 'authoritative', then, this can only be understood as meaning that min types fail to acquire or exemplify the inner state of benevolence. As such, if authenticity is a 'state' (of being authoritative) it can only be understood as the kind of state that entails being authentically disposed towards the world (benevolence).
  18. Analects, XI, 16, and VI, 29.
  19. Analects, II. 15.
  20. On the subject of the rites and their relationship to being an authentic person, Steven Wilson writes, '[without the rites] one cannot express anything human, much less anything as complexly human as one's unique innermost aspirations, without recourse to them'. See Wilson's 'Conformity, Individuality, and the Nature of Virtue: a Classic Confucian Contribution to Contemporary Ethical Reflection', in Confucius and the Analects: New Essays, ed. Bryan Van Norden (New York: Oxford University Press 2002), p. 95. Further, Tu Wei-Ming writes that 'By implication, the centrality of learning must also be interpreted as a process of training the self to be responsive to the world and culture at large. Thus, one studies poetry as a means to acquire 'language' as a necessary means of communication in the civilized world and ritual in order to internalize the 'form of life' characteristic of one's com-munity.' p. 68.
  21. I take this requirement to be reflected by the virtue ethical belief that ethical behaviour cannot be reduced to rules. In addition, moral wisdom or phronesis is required. See Hursthouse, pp. 39 and 42. 22 For more on the relationship between jen and li, see Shun, Kwong-Loi, 'Ren and Li in the Analects' in Bryan Van Norden (Ed) Confucius and the Analects: New Essays. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 53-73.
  22. On this point, Tu Wei-Ming writes that, '...the multiplicity of paths in realizing the pursuit of the Way necessitates a continuous process of symbolic exchange through the sharing of communally cherished values without selves'. He further notes that the 'manifestation of the authentic self is impossible except in matrices of human converse'. See Wei-Ming, Tu, Confucian Thought: Self as Creative Transformation (New York: SUNY Press 1984), p. 85.
  23. For more on feminist relational autonomy, see MacKensie, Catriona and Stoljar, Natalie. (Eds) Relational Autonomy. (New York: Oxford University Press 2000).
  24. The classic aphorism in the Analects on this issue is at XVII, 8. There, Confucius says, 'To love benevolence (jen) without loving learning is liable to lead to foolish-ness. To love cleverness without loving learning is liable to lead to deviation from the right path. To love trustworthiness in word without loving learning is liable to lead to harmful behavior...' Here Confucius reminds us that a desire, say, for courage without an understanding of when and in what situations and in what way we are directed to act in such ways we are liable to, for example, fight wrongly to defend tyrants. Thus, without recourse to the 'collective' identities of one's ancestors, (the li), we are left without a way of understanding what 'the right or true' path is, and without this, we cannot 'find our place' within the world (authenticity).
  25. This is a controversial definition of conformity that I obviously cannot argue for in detail in this paper. I acknowledge, however, the existence of contrary views here; Kwong-Lui Shun suggests that some adhere to the 'definitional' interpretation of the relationship between jen and li which sees jen behaviour as seeking to acquire exact conformity with the Zhoi li, the traditions of an earlier past generation that Confucius has great respect for. I disagree with this interpretation, preferring Kwong-Lui Shun's belief that while jen requires a way of acting in accord with the li, jen can also be used to adjust or correct the li, and so jen is not defined by a given set of rules and codes.
  26. Analects, IV. 16.
  27. Analects, II. 3.
  28. This distinction, and the way in which it is used to differentiate virtuous and vicious motivations, reminds one of the example of 'playing chess' that Alastair MacIntyre uses in his After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1984). There, MacIntyre draws the analogy between virtue and the way one plays chess when one is in pursuit of 'internal goods'. He suggests that although children begin to play chess only by external motivation—namely, because they are promised a reward if they play or if they win, after a while the child (if they become a real chess player) will be motivated simply by a desire to acquire the 'internal goods' of the game (to become more skilful, knowledgeable, etc.) and in so doing will no longer need external motivation to engage with the game. Similarly,although all virtue ethicists think that children must be morally educated in the beginning with punishment and reward, the goal is that a state can be achievedwhen the person is eventually motivated by the 'internal goods' of the good life (and thus will meet the necessary condition for virtue), say, a desire to be morecourageous, or to better exemplify integrity, and so the person will no longer need external stimuli to be motivated by this pursuit.
  29. Analects, XIII. 3.
  30. Analects, VIII, 6.
  31. Analects, II, 23.
  32. Analects, XIII. 24. The two poles of min are clearly represented here. 'Bewilderment' seeks to 'positively' conform by adapting the exact content of those around one. 'Peril' also seeks to conform, but in a negative sense by adapting the reverse of the content of those around one. As a result, the bewildered seek to be loved by all and the perilous seek to be hated by all. In the end, both poles are motivated by the same thing—being directed towards achieving the kinds of reactions from others that makes the person feel good about him/herself.
  33. Analects, V, 25. The Chinese graph here is xin, which Rosemont and Ames translate as 'trustworthy', and which describes the need for one's words and behaviour to be consistent. See Rosemont, Henry and Ames, Roger, The Analects of Confucius, A Philosophical Translation, (New York: Ballantine Publishing 1998) p. 58.
  34. It is an interesting question how well Confucius' stance here—and the very distinction between min and jen types—would fit into what Michael Slote, in his Morals From Motives (New York: Oxford University Press 2001), calls a 'cool agent based' approach to virtue ethics. Specifically, Slote says that 'cool agent basing' sees the aretaic value of a motive as grounded in whether or not it is an expression of inner strength on the part of the agent. Thus, one might be reminded here of Nietzsche, who does not seem to criticise the action of compassion, but rather attacks the Christian motivation behind it, which he sees as fundamentally rooted in psychological weakness. On the other hand, Nietzsche praises and lauds compas-sionate acts that are expressions of what he sees as an abundance of inner strength.
  35. As Michael Slote reminds us, '...it takes courage to face some of one's own deepest fears and desires, and to the extent wisdom as a life good requires facing one's inner demons the important connection between wisdom and courage is further underscored'. Morals from Motives, (Oxford University Press: New York 2001), p. 159.
  36. Analects, VII. 30
  37. Analects, XV, 24.
  38. Analects, VI, 12.
  39. Analects, VII, 3.
  40. Analects, XI, 4.
  41. Yen Hui, according to Confucius, has the 'record' for consistent uninterrupted exemplification of jen. He says, 'in his heart for three months at a time Hui does not lapse from benevolence. The others attain benevolence in fits and starts'. Analects, VI. 7.
  42. Analects, VI. 30.
  43. There is a large literature, especially in feminist scholarship, on this question. For further reference on the relational context dependency of authenticity skills, see Diana Meyers' Self, Society and Personal Choice (New York: Oxford University Press 1984), pp. 76–98; Marilyn Freidman's Autonomy, Gender, Politics, (New York: Oxford University Press 2003), pp. 81–98; Catrina MacKensie's 'Imagining Oneself Otherwise' in Relational Autonomy, ed. MacKensie and Skolar (New York: Oxford University Press 2000).
  44. I am thinking here of the work of Diana Meyers' discussion of what she calls 'autonomy' or 'agentic' skills in her Self, Society and Personal Choice, pp. 76-98.
  45. In her discussion of the necessary conditions of full moral being, Marilyn Friedman notes that some agents fail in their critical abilities due to severe lack of confidence in themselves as autonomous reasoning agents. In such situations, we typically find that such agents are unwilling to trust the results of their own analyses (which could be correct) and so will seek to defer the analysis of her ends to another agent(s) or, in what reduces to an overuse of the relational context in which critical reasoning emerges, the agent might exceedingly defer the judgment of the worthiness of her own analyses to other agents. See Friedman's 'Moral Integrity and the Deferential Wife', Philosophical Studies, Vol. 47 (1985), pp.141-150.
  46. Confucius' insistence on such issues is clear. At II, 1 he suggests that 'the rule of virtue can be compared to the Pole Star which does command the homage of the multitude of stars without leaving its place' and at XII, 19 he explains the function of exemplification, suggesting that '...the virtue of the gentleman is like the wind, the virtue of the small man is like grass. Let the wind blow over the grass and it is sure to bend.'

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