Ideas of the Good in Confucian & Aritotelian Traditions

The purpose of this research is to examine the ideas of the good in human experience in the Confucian and Aristotelian traditions. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which the Greek and Chinese versions of the concept emerged, and then to compare and contrast the content of the views of Confucius and Aristotle.

Aristotle's conception of what makes a good man or woman surfaced in the fourth century B.C., just following the Periclean Age of Greece, and partly in response to the views of his teacher Plato. The conception is elaborated in his theory of ethics as one of the practical sciences, which is to say that ethics is something that has application to real life, beyond the merely theoretical. Ethics therefore involves action as well as a discussion about contingent ethical decisions. Just as ethics involves something beyond theory, any actions undertaken have a practical purpose beyond their mere ethical nature. Actions on this view point in the direction of what eventually come to be called goods. "It makes no difference," Aristotle says, "whether the ends of the actions are the activities themselves or something apart from them." It is in that sense that Aristotle's conception of the good can differentiate between the good person and the good citizen, even as there may be a connection between the two. Along the same lines, throughout much of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle seems concerned to eliminate what is apparent about ethics with a view to

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on" (I.vii.76-7). It is on this basis that Aristotle develops the view that virtue is functional, practical, indeed purposeful, and that purpose, which is the highest good of happiness, is always moving toward the highest expression of happiness. This expression is eventually determined to be in politics, but that does not mean that good is to be found only in the political sphere or that political good will be identical to musical or social good. The Confucian answer to the question of whether the good man or woman is the same as the good citizen must be answered with reference to the structure of society and moral philosophy of China. Of particular importance is the body of rituals and codes of behavior known as li, which surfaced in importance in the Chou period (1025 B.C.), which Confucius, a rough contemporary (500 B.C.) of Pythagoras, referred to as the golden age of China. Li is important to Confucian doctrines of filial piety, righteousness, propriety and self-cultivation, benevolence, perfect virtue, and moral and ethical character; the Confucian "response" to the li of China's golden age constitutes the Confucian conception of the good. Bodde's describes the Chou dynasty "the creative age of China's great classical and p

Category: Philosophy - I