As a comparative study of the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Confucius, this book explores how they each reflect upon human good and virtue out of their respective cultural assumptions, conceptual frameworks, and philosophical perspectives. It does not simply take one side as a framework to understand the other; rather, it takes them as mirrors for each other and seeks to develop new readings and perspectives of both ethics that would be unattainable if each were studied on its own.

The Joy of Philosophy is a return to some of the perennial questions of philosophy--questions about the meaning of life; about death and tragedy; about the respective roles of rationality and passion in the good life; about love, compassion, and revenge; about honesty, deception, and betrayal; and about who we are and how we think about who we are. Recapturing the heart-felt confusion and excitement that originally brings us all to philosophy, internationally renowned teacher and lecturer Robert C. Solomon offers (...) both a critique of contemporary philosophy and an invitation to engage in philosophy in a different way. He attempts to save philosophy from itself and its self-imposed diet of thin arguments and logical analysis to recover the richness and complexity of life in thought. Solomon defends the passionate life in contrast to the life of thoughtful contemplation idealized by so many philosophers, attempting to recapture the kind of philosophy that Nietzsche celebrated as a "joyful wisdom.". (shrink)

Introduction to the work David Hume described as the best of his many writings.

Some democratic theorists have argued that contemporary people should practice only a civility that recognizes others as equal persons, and eschew any form of deference to authority as a feudalistic cultural holdover that ought to be abandoned in the modern era. Against such views, this essay engages early Confucian views of ethics and society, including their analyses of different sorts of authority and status, in order to argue that, properly understood, deference is indeed a virtue of considerable importance for contemporary (...) democratic societies and the citizens who constitute them. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the role of manners and morals. In particular, what is the connection between emotional demeanor and the inner stuff of virtue? Does the fact that we can pose faces and hide our inner sentiments, i.e., 'fake it,' detract from or add to our capacity for virtue? I argue, following a line from the Stoics, that it can add to our virtue and that, as a result, moral education needs to take seriously both a commitment to (...) good character and a commitment to the 'aesthetic' of character. (shrink)

‘What is philosophy?’ is a question that every professional philosopher must ask themself sometimes. In a sense, of course, they know: they spend much time doing it. But in another sense, the answer to the question is not at all obvious. In the same way, any person knows by acquaintance what breathing is; but this does not mean that they know the nature of breathing: its mechanism and function. The nature of breathing, in this sense, is now well understood; the (...) nature of philosophy, by contrast, is still very much an open question. One of the reasons this is so is that the nature of philosophy is itself a philosophical question, so uncontentious answers are not to be expected—if philosophers ever ceased disagreeing with one another our profession would be done for. Moreover, it is a hard philosophical question. Many great philosophers, including Plato, Hegel, and others, have suggested answers to it. But their answers would now be given little credence. In the thirty or so years that I have been doing philosophy there have been two views about the nature of philosophy which have had wide acceptance. These are the views of the later Wittgenstein and of Derrida. In the first two parts of this paper I will describe these views and explain why I find them unsatisfactory. I will then go on, in the final part of paper, to outline a view that inspires more confidence in me. (shrink)

Mundane and often subtle forms of bias generate harms that can be fruitfully understood as akin to the harms evident in rudeness. Although subclinical expressions of bias are not mere rudeness, like rudeness they often manifest through the breach of mannerly norms for social cooperation and collaboration. At a basic level, the perceived harm of mundane forms of bias often has much to do with feeling oneself unjustly or arbitrarily cut out of a group, a group that cooperates and collaborates (...) but does not do so with me. Appealing to the subtle but familiar choreography of mannered social interaction, I argue, makes it easier to recognize how exclusion can be accomplished through slight but symbolically significant gestures and styles of interaction, where bias manifests not in announced hostility but in an absence of the cooperation and collaboration upon which we rely socially. (shrink)

Etiquette writer Judith Martin is frequently faced with “etiquette skeptics,” interlocutors who protest not simply that this or that rule of etiquette is problematic but complain that etiquette itself, qua a system of conventional norms for human conduct and communication, is objectionable. While etiquette skeptics come in a variety of forms, one of the most frequent skeptical complaints is that etiquette is artificial.The worries Martin canvasses are frequently also raised in more philosophical work as reasons to doubt the moral significance (...) of etiquette. See, e.g., Sarah Buss, “Appearing Respectful: The Moral Significance of Manners”, Ethics 109.4 : 795–826; Nancy Sherman, “The Look and Feel of Virtue”, in Christopher Gill, ed., Virtue, Norms, and Objectivity: Issues in Ancient and Modern Ethics ; and Karen Stohr, On Manners , especially Chapter 1. “Artificial” typically operates in this context as a catch-all te .. (shrink)

The moral vision of the "Analects" notably includes among our moral responsibilities the need to style behavior such that the propriety of one's dispositions is evident in one's manner and demeanor. While the sage effortlessly fulfills this responsibility, the moral learner must actively strive to shape her demeanor and manner. This essay considers her resources for doing so where becoming effortlessly sagely is a distant, if not unreachable, possibility. While the "Analects" clearly proffers the li as the principal mechanism for (...) developing an appropriate style, the models provided by Zigong and Zilu, two of the text's most vividly depicted moral learners, demonstrate what an improvement in the domain of style requires and significantly indicate an account of moral style in which formal propriety must be vouchsafed by the personally revelatory. (shrink)

The concept of tact has so far received only little theoretical attention. The present article suggests three levels on which the idea of tact may be approached: (1) The epistemological problem: the etymology of the term ?tact? is taken seriously, namely its relation to the sense of touch and tactility. An analysis of the position of touch in the ranking of the five senses according to various parameters is shown to be highly relevant to the understanding of the idea of (...) tact. (2) The logical problem: tact is described as a skill which cannot be exhausted in the knowledge of principles or general rules. Like ?judgment? it is concerned with the particular, with sensitivity (analogical to that of the sense of touch) to the uniqueness of a human situation. (3) The ethical problem: tact is shown to lie between ethics and etiquette, that is to say it is more than just a rule of politeness or good manners, but it is ?less? than a fully fledged moral duty or principle. Its position between the obligatory and the merely conventional opens the way to characterize it as supererogatory. (shrink)

We seem less likely to endorse moral expertise than reasoning expertise or aesthetic expertise. This seems puzzling given that moral norms are intuitively taken to be at least more objective than aesthetic norms. One possible diagnosis of the asymmetry is that moral judgments require autonomy of judgement in away that other judgments do not. However, the author points out that aesthetic judgments that have been ‘borrowed’ by aesthetic experts generate the same autonomy worry as moral judgments which are borrowed by (...) moral experts. The author then explores various approaches to accepting the testimony of moral experts and concludes that the asymmetry may best be explained by (1) the conditions for moral expertise being more difficult to satisfy than those of aesthetic expertise and (2) the intuitive greater seriousness of accepting the moral judgments of others, since moral norms are generally viewed as more binding than aesthetic norms. (shrink)

I suggest that civility is the display of respect, tolerance, or considerateness. Social norms enable us to successfully display these basic moral attitudes, and social consensus sets the bounds of civility, i.e., what views and behaviors are not owed a civil response. Because tied to social norms, there is no guarantee that standards of civility will exempt us from civilly responding to what, from a socially critical moral point of view, is tolerable. I raise and addresses the question: How could (...) civility be a moral virtue if it is so thoroughly governed by social norms? (shrink)

At the confluence of the philosophy of education and social/political philosophy lies the question of how we should educate the next generation of philosophy professors. Part of the question involves how broad such an education should be in order to educate teachers with the ability to, themselves, educate citizens competent to function in a diverse, globalized world. As traditional Western education systems from elementary schools through universities have embraced multicultural sources over the last few decades, philosophy Ph.D. programs have bucked (...) this trend, clinging tightly to traditional Western sources and problems. While this claim will come as no surprise to those working in the field, there is little published evidence or discussion of the tacit rejection of multiculturalism by philosophy Ph.D. programs, and few people outside the field realize how Eurocentric these programs remain. This article provides evidence and discussion of this fact, focusing on the case of Chinese philosophy in American Ph.D. programs. (shrink)

In this work, Robert Solomon tries to put the fun back in philosophy, recapturing the heart-felt confusion and excitement that originally brings us all into philosophy. It is not a critique of comtemporary philosophy so much as it is an attempt to engage in philosophy in a different kind of way, beginning with a re-evaluation of Socrates and the nature of philosophy and defending the passionate life in contrast to the calm life of thoughtful contemplation so often held up as (...) an ideal by traditional philosophers. In short, it is an attempt to recapture the kind of philosophy that Nietzsche celebrated as a "joyful wisdom". The author tries to break down the walls between academic philosophy and its lost audience, between thin logic and thick rhetoric, between philosophical reason and philosophical passion, between 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy, between philosophy and life. (shrink)

Li (禮) and yi (義) are two central moral concepts in the Analects. Li has a broad semantic range, referring to formal ceremonial rituals on the one hand, and basic rules of personal decorum on the other. What is similar across the range of referents is that the li comprise strictures of correct behavior. The li are a distinguishing characteristic of Confucian approaches to ethics and socio-political thought, a set of rules and protocols that were thought to constitute the wise (...) practices of ancient moral exemplars filtered down through dynasties of the past. However, even while the li were extensive and meant to be followed diligently, they were also understood as incapable of exhausting the whole range of activity that constitutes human life. There were bound to be situations in life where there would be no obvious recourse to the li for guidance. As part of their reflections on the good life, the Confucians maintained another moral concept that seemed to cover morally upright exemplary behavior in these types of situations. This concept is that of yi or rightness. In this chapter, I begin with a brief historical sketch to provide some context, and will then turn to li and yi in turn. In the end, I will suggest how li and yi were both meant to facilitate the supreme value of social harmony that pervades much of the Analects and serves as its ultimate orientation. (shrink)

Many otherwise enlightened people often dismiss etiquette as a trivial subject or—worse yet—as nothing but a disguise for moral hypocrisy or unjust social hierarchies. Such sentiments either mistakenly assume that most manners merely frame the “real issues” of any interpersonal exchange or are the ugly vestiges of outdated, unfair social arrangements. But in _On Manners_, Karen Stohr turns the tables on these easy prejudices, demonstrating that the scope of manners is much broader than most people realize and that manners lead (...) directly to the roots of enduring ethical questions. Stohr suggests that though manners are mostly conventional, they are nevertheless authoritative insofar as they are a primary means by which we express moral attitudes and commitments and carry out important moral goals. Drawing primarily on Aristotle and Kant and with references to a wide range of cultural examples—from Jane Austen’s _Pride and Prejudice_ to Larry David’s _Curb Your Enthusiasm_—the author ultimately concludes that good manners are essential to moral character. (shrink)

In this study, Olberding proposes a new theoretical model for reading the _Analects_. Her thesis is that the moral sensibility of the text derives from an effort to conceptually capture and articulate the features seen in exemplars, exemplars that are identified and admired pre-theoretically and thus prior to any conceptual criteria for virtue. Put simply, Olberding proposes an "origins myth" in which Confucius, already and prior to his philosophizing knows _whom _he judges to be virtuous. The work we see him (...) and the _Analects'_ authors pursuing is their effort to explain in an organized, generalized, and abstract way _why _pre-theoretically identified exemplars are virtuous. Moral reasoning here begins with people and with inchoate experiences of admiration for them. The conceptual work of the text reflects the attempt to analyze such people and parse such experiences in order to distill abstract qualities that account for virtue and can guide emulation. (shrink)

In this book, Bryan W. Van Norden examines early Confucianism as a form of virtue ethics and Mohism, an anti-Confucian movement, as a version of consequentialism. The philosophical methodology is analytic, in that the emphasis is on clear exegesis of the texts and a critical examination of the philosophical arguments proposed by each side. Van Norden shows that Confucianism, while similar to Aristotelianism in being a form of virtue ethics, offers different conceptions of “the good life,” the virtues, human nature, (...) and ethical cultivation. (shrink)

This paper answers a call made by Anita Allen to genuinely assess whether the field of philosophy has the capacity to sustain the work of diverse peoples. By identifying a pervasive culture of justification within professional philosophy, I gesture to the ways professional philosophy is not an attractive working environment for many diverse practitioners. As a result of the downsides of the culture of justification that pervades professional philosophy, I advocate that the discipline of professional philosophy be cast according to (...) a culture of praxis. Finally, I provide a comparative exercise using Graham Priest’s definition of philosophy and Audre Lorde’s observations of the limitations of philosophical theorizing to show how these two disparate accounts can be understood as philosophical engagement with a shift to a culture of praxis perspective. (shrink)

The Analects is a series of glimpses into how Confucius and his students engaged in their projects of moral self-cultivation. This chapter seeks to describe the way in which the outlines of a moral psychology arises from the text and how the text poses issues that came to be central to the Chinese philosophical tradition. It will be argued that the text provides exemplars of moral self-cultivation, that it makes emotion central to virtue and therefore makes emotional self-cultivation a central (...) focus of moral development, that it highlights the relational nature of moral cultivation as a process that is conducted with others, that it raises difficult and crucial issues about the relation between intuitive and affective styles of action on the one hand and on the other hand action based on deliberation and reflection, and that it has some useful approaches to the problem of situationism that has recently been raised for virtue ethics. (shrink)

Natural talent and diligent practice regularly lead to effortless virtuosity in many fields, such as music and athletics. Can the same be true of morality? Confucius’s wonderfully terse autobiography in the Analects suggests that, given the right starting materials and an appropriate curriculum of study, a program of moral self-cultivation can indeed lead to effortless moral virtuosity. But can we make sense of this claim from a contemporary perspective? This paper evaluates the plausibility of the moral ideal in the Analects (...) using resources from contemporary moral psychology. (shrink)

Moral philosophers of late have been examining the implications of experimental social psychology for ethics. The focus of attention has been on situationism—the thesis that we routinely underestimate the extent to which minor situational variables influence morally significant behavior. Situationism has been seen as a threat to prevailing lay and philosophical theories of character, personhood, and agency. In this paper, I outline the situationist literature and critique one of its upshots: the admonition to carefully select one’s situational contexts. Besides being (...) limited in application, this strategy accentuates an untenable person/situation dichotomy. The deeper lesson of situationism lies in highlighting the interconnectedness of all social behavior—how we are inextricably involved in the actions of others, and how minor tweaks in our own behavior can lead to major payoffs in our moral lives. Situationism is better seen as an opportunity for moral progress than a threat to individual autonomy. (shrink)