ABSTRACT
In a recent paper, the Chinese philosopher, Liu Yuedi, indirectly questioned the comparative approach to Confucius and Adam Smith proposed by Zhang Weibin (2000) concerning emotion, sympathy, and their respective role in human society. Liu analysed the role of emotions (情, qing) as ontology in Confucian political
philosophy, focusing on the question of how they are transmitted from ‘inside the self’ to ‘outside the self’ and how they relate to human nature or to factual realities. Liu concludes that emotions are developed in self-cultivation, through aesthetical education, and then expanded to society through families and kinship. However, this is not a factual judgement but a logic necessity, since society would not function if emotions were not transposed and did not establish ‘social morality’ and thus social harmony. It was among his goals to show a distinct propriety of Confucian philosophy and to contrast this withWestern approaches, which he calls ‘rationalist’. In this very broad sense, this paper concurs with Liu’s position – except for his treatment of Adam Smith. Liu acknowledges some similarities with the Confucian position in Smith’s
Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). He stresses, however, that Smith considers emotions to be a corrective to self-interest. Thus, Smith’s social philosophy lacks a proper ontology of emotions. In this chapter, a different reading of the TMS is proposed. It highlights the
similarities of Smith’s concept of emotion and sympathy with Confucius, while maintaining Liu’s conclusion that Smith lacks a proper ontology of emotions. Reading moral self-cultivation as inherent to Smith’s theory is the cornerstone of this analysis. In the first section, the relevance and central positions of the TMS are outlined; in the second section, they are contrasted with Confucius’s propositions; a final section answers the question of whether Liu’s judgement ofAdam Smith can be rectified. The goal of this chapter is to examine the parallels of both philosophies, not to
concur with the philosophical quality of their arguments.
