Two Virtuous Actions Cannot both be Completed

Rethinking Value Conflicts in Early Confucian Thought

Bibliographic Data

ID14760573
AuthorsMichael D K Ing (corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume44
Issue4
Pages659-684
Publication date2016-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Religious Ethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0384-9694 • E-ISSN: 1467-9795
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/jore.12156
OpenAlexW2547553100
LanguageEN
References cited16

This essay highlights an alternative tradition of understanding value conflicts in early Confucian thought. In contrast to a prominent position among interpreters that argues for the resolvability or harmonization of conflicting values, I argue that some early Confucians conceptualized value conflicts as irresolvable. In other words, when meaningful aspects of a situation come into tension with each other and values are threatened to be either left unfulfilled or harmed, early Confucians put forth a variety of views. Some believed that all values could be tended to as long as one had the moral imagination of a sage, whereas others saw the world as a place where irreconcilable conflicts between values could occur for even the most profound people. Within this diversity, I take up a view about irresolvable value conflicts where the confrontation with a deep value conflict leaves behind a moral remainder that can mar even the character of a sage

Aesthetics · Character (mathematics · Diversity (politics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Interpreter · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Value theory · Variety (cybernetics · Anthropology · Chinese history and philosophy · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy

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