Introduction ROGER T. AMES
Confucian Role Ethics,
08/2011
Book Chapter
The philosopher and teacher, Kongfuzi 孑夫子, latinized as “Confucius,” lends his name to the English (but not the Chinese) expression of this tradition called “Confucianism.” Confucius was certainly a ...flesh-and-blood historical person who lived, taught, and died some twenty-five centuries ago, consolidating in his own time a formidable legacy of wisdom that has been passed down and applied through the ages to shape the character of an entire culture. In and of itself, the profoundly personal model of Confucius remembered by his protégés through those intimate snapshots of his life collected in the middle chapters of the Analects has its
Epilogue Ames, Roger T
Confucian Role Ethics,
08/2011
Book Chapter
In this monograph I have tried to offer an interpretation of Confucian role ethics that allows the vocabulary of this enduring vision of the consummate life to speak for itself. This effort has been ...based on the premise that before either endorsing or rejecting a philosophical position, we must first apply the principle of charity and try as best we can to understand it on its own terms. But having attempted in these pages to give Confucian role ethics its most compelling argument, I am ultimately obliged to ask perhaps the most important philosophical question: Do we owe Confucian role
Whatis a human “being”? This was the perennial Greek question asked in Plato’sPhaedoand in Aristotle’sDe Anima. And perhaps the most persistent answer from the time of Pythagoras was an ontological ...one: The “being” or essence of a human being is a permanent, ready-made, and self-sufficient soul. And “know thyself”—the signature exhortation of Socrates—is to know this soul. Each of us is a person, and from conception, has the integrity ofbeinga person.
In what waydoes a personbecomeconsummately human? This was the perennial Confucian question asked explicitly in all of the
The adversary system excuse that dominates academic debate in legal ethics today, in keeping with the broader tradition of impartialist moral thought to which it belongs, devotes no independent ...attention to charges that lawyers lie and cheat. Instead of refuting these charges directly, it merely excuses vices that it (implicitly) acknowledges lawyers display, citing the impartially justified division of moral labor that requires lawyers to display them. But this approach cannot satisfy lawyers, who naturally resist these charges and wish not just to excuse the lawyerly vices but rather to deny that they display them at all. Moreover, lawyers’ natural
Democratic regimes share with all regimes a source of rule and authority. This operational source of authority can be distinguished from the more distant sources of regime legitimacy (Kemp 1988). ...Public leadership in contemporary Australia broadly takes two forms. One form illustrates the theme of ruling by detailing the ways that different centres of authority (political, bureaucratic, civic) contribute to public leadership. The other form illustrates the theme of legitimacy by tracing out less direct ways that ‘the public’ or the people collectively contribute to leadership. To simplify: public authority generally reflects the leadership of elected rulers, while public legitimacy
