Xunzi’s Ritual Program as a Response to Han Feizi’s Criticism of Confucianism

Bibliographic Data

ID22322872
AuthorsColin J Lewis (0000-0002-6754-0066, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume34
Issue0
Pages129-153
Publication date2020-08-31
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1598-267X • E-ISSN: 2734-1356
PublisherInstitute of Confucian Philosophy and Culture (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.22916/jcpc.2020..34.129
OpenAlexW3115772696
LanguageEN
References cited18

One of Han Feizi’s most subtle criticisms of Confucianism targets a central feature of its moral cultivation program, namely an appeal to modelling oneself on ancient sages. According to Han Feizi, this ideal of model emulation is doomed to failure due to imperfect knowledge of past exemplars, the fact that certain ideals of practice may not be applicable to (or catastrophic for) some practitioners, and the additional fact that one cannot always rely on past examples to provide good guidance for future events. As Eric Hutton points out, this line of critique bears striking similarities to one offered by Bernard Williams against virtue ethics. Accordingly, this emulation problem poses difficulties not only for Confucianism, but also more generally for virtue ethics. This paper argues that the emulation problem can be overcome by appealing to the Confucian Xunzi’s account of the role of ritual (li) in moral cultivation. Specifically, the ways in which ritual promotes moral development provide the Confucians (and, by association, virtue ethics) with the means of devising a sufficiently sophisticated account of emulation to meet the challenge lobbied by Han Feizi and Williams

Appeal · Criticism · Emulation · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Imperfect · Political science · Sociology · Virtue · Virtue ethics · Chinese history and philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access