Roles and Virtues

This chapter examines the current debate between interpretations of early Confucian ethics as a form of “role ethics”, or alternatively, a form of virtue ethics. It argues that the virtue ethical readings are more accurate, but still only partially recognise the significance of roles and role-specific obligations in early Confucian social ethics. This chapter explores the fundamental normative justification for early Confucian social ethics and political theory, to show the interrelated place of reflection on roles and virtues to both. Against the widely discussed recent statements of early Confucian role ethics by Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont, the chapter argues that the early Confucians were not radical particularists, eschewing all generalised normative theorising; nor were they committed to the extreme and misguided view that the self is nothing but the roles it inhabits, without an “internal” centre of judgment and consciousness capable of adjudicating conflicts between role requirements or other values. Roles, and the corresponding relationships that define them, are what the early Confucians call “positions”, which can only be properly fulfilled by those who are virtuous. Role fulfilment helps train people into virtue, but it also addresses early Confucian concerns to uphold just social order and support flourishing communities that makes possible a humane life for every member of each community. Early Confucian theorising is worthy of contemporary interest in part because of the way it integrates reflection on family roles with analysis of political and professional offices, providing a noteworthy example of how role ethics may be combined with virtue ethics and obligation centred accounts of morality and law.