In this paper, I focus on analyzing the manifestation and significance of respect. I first illustrate the two meanings of jing 敬 and their connection in Confucian classical texts, which is helpful to understand the Confucian phenomenology of respect. The two meanings are seriousness as a mind-state and respect as an intentional feeling. After clarifying this point, I undertake a phenomenological analysis of respect, in order to show that respect helps one to achieve moral pursuit. This analysis takes the Kantian (...) notion of respect as a starting point but further is accomplished by the phenomenology of value and feeling. The respect for duties and affairs, the respect for personhood and dignity, and the respect for the worthy with merit motivate one to take moral actions. For example, respect contributes in taking one’s duties seriously, appreciating human beings’ spiritual values and good tendencies even when they have not been actualized, supporting the worthy to play a role, and emulating the worthy to make a contribution and serve others. In Subsequently, I clarify how respect helps one to achieve religious pursuit in one form of Christianity, in light of Max Scheler’s discussion on humility and reverence. Through revering God one respects others; through serving God and participating in God’s humble spirit one serves others. I elucidate the Confucian classics’ discussions on religious experience, in order to show how respect helps one to achieve religious pursuit in one form of Confucianism, and how it is similar and different from Max Scheler’s clarification. The concrete relation between respect and li 禮 in the Confucian tradition will be treated in another work. (shrink)

Mèngzǐ’s 孟子 advice to King Xuān 宣 to take up his feeling of compassion for an ox and apply it to his people (_Mèngzǐ_ 1A7) is equivocal, and can be understood in two markedly different ways: on one hand, to take immediate care of the people’s needs by performing a kind of (mental) act of applying compassion; on the other hand, to engage in a long-term project of cultivating compassion for them. These views, moreover, when combined with the assumption that (...) emotion is the sole motivator of moral action, give us a perplexing picture of Mèngzǐ as urging the king to do exactly what he cannot—namely, acting out of compassion for his people that he falls short of feeling enough of. This essay explicates the Mengzian model of moral extension (_tuī_ 推) through a solution to this puzzle, specifically by explaining how one’s immediate performance of moral actions are conducive to cultivating related moral emotions. (shrink)

David Nivison has argued that Mèngzǐ 孟子 postulates only one source of moral motivation, whereas Mèngzǐ’s rival thinkers such as Gàozǐ 告子 or the Mohist Yí Zhī 夷之 additionally postulate “maxims” or “doctrines” that are produced by some sort of moral reasoning. In this essay I critically examine this interpretation of Nivison’s, and alternatively argue that moral emotions in Mèngzǐ, basically understood as concern-based construals, are often an insufficient source of moral action, and an additional source of moral motivation, specifically (...) a conviction or judgment of what is the right thing to do in a certain situation in question, is often necessary for one to complete a moral action. This implies that Mèngzǐ should be interpreted to postulate two sources of moral motivation just as his rival thinkers do, namely moral emotion on one hand and judgment and practical reasoning on the other. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Meng Zi’s idea of yi as a virtue. In it, I first briefly examine two influential interpretations of yi – the “appropriateness” approach that views yi as a disposition to do what is fitting in a given situation and the shame-centered approach that understands yi as a disposition to avoid what is shameful in the moral life. The first approach is too thin to distinguish yi from acting properly in general and the second reading confines the (...) definitive feeling involved in yi to a too moralized understanding of shame. Moreover, both fail to pay enough attention to the reliance of yi on social norms to receive its content. Through textual analysis, I show that in addition to a sense of shame, respect as an attitude of prioritizing other persons in the way specified by the relevant norms also serves as an important emotional core of yi as a virtue. In the end, I highlight the potential contribution of the Mengzian idea of yi to virtue ethics. The two-faceted structure of yi points to a way to account for rule-related virtues – virtues that have rule-conformity as a component. Equipped with thick descriptions of rule-related virtues, virtue ethics will be in a better position to guide actions. (shrink)