ABSTRACT

Chinese ethical traditions are characterized by a mode of ethical reflection that exhibits two related features—the primacy of practice and the centrality of outlook. The former concerns how this mode of reflection is driven primarily by a concern to make a direct ethical difference to our lives, rather than to understand our ethical lives as an object of study. The latter concerns how, on this mode of reflection, a main ethical task has to do with the development of certain ethical outlooks. These are shared features of three main traditions of thought in China—Confucianism, Daoism (as exemplified in the Zhuangzi), and Chan (or Zen) Buddhism (as exemplified in the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch)—though the discussion of the chapter will focus on Confucianism. After elaborating on these two features and how they stand in contrast to certain common strands in contemporary moral philosophizing, the chapter concludes with a discussion of some implications of this mode of reflection for the contemporary teaching and learning of ethics.