Publication Type

Book Chapter

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

1-2008

Abstract

Contemporary discussions of Confucian philosophy may tend to privilege certain key ethical concepts such as “benevolence“ (ren 仁) and “filial piety” (xiao 孝), but in traditional China much of the Confucian hermeneutical and philosophical enterprise revolved around the figure of the ideal “sage” (shengren 聖 人 ). Virtues are neither abstract nor self-existing; they are seen to cohere and find profound expression in the being of the sage. In this context, “sagehood“ thus emerges as a critical concern in Confucian self-understanding. Can sagehood be attained? Can the “average person” (zhongren 中人), indeed, become like Confucius, the sage par excellence, who embodies the height of virtue? Would it not seem more likely that sagehood is determined by a special inborn “nature” (xing 性) that is categorically different from that of the common people? In this discussion, I propose to explore the nature of the sage and specifically the place of the emotions (qing 情) in it. Does the sage share the same nature -- taking xing in the more restricted sense as referring to human nature -- as ordinary human beings? Despite Mencius’ confident and rhetorically powerful claim that “the sage and I are the same in kind,” prior to the rise of Neo-Confucianism probably the majority of Confucian scholars would find it difficult to imagine that ordinary individuals could match the extraordinary attainment of Confucius. In particular, the average person seems to be always trapped in a web of desire and emotions that renders ethical progress at best a painfully slow and uncertain proposition. The sage ideal reaches deep in the Confucian imagination, but sagehood ironically seems an unreachable goal, unless a person is so “ordained” by “heaven,” that is to say, endowed with a “sage nature” that is “tranquil” or “still” on account of its “purity“ and thus free from the corrupting stirrings of desire. It would not be an overstatement that questions and debate on the nature of the ideal sage helped shape the course of Confucian philosophy.

Discipline

Ethics and Political Philosophy | Philosophy

Research Areas

Integrative Research Areas

Publication

Confucian ethics in retrospect and prospect

Editor

Vincent Shen & Shun Kwong-loi

First Page

113

Last Page

135

ISBN

9781565182455

Publisher

Council for Research in Values and Philosophy

City or Country

Washington

Copyright Owner and License

Publisher

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