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This chapter responds negatively to the question entitling it. While the vocabulary of virtue ethics for describing the early Confucian vision of the moral life (dào) is superior to those linked to Kantian or utilitarian principle-based ethical theories, that vocabulary, too, forces the Master and his followers more into the mold of Western philosophical discourse than they ought to be placed and hence makes it difficult to see the Confucian vision as a genuine alternative to those with which we are most familiar. The chapter claims that early (pre-Buddhist) Confucianism is best described as a role ethics. This role ethics is sui generis in both philosophy and religion, East and West, and it embodies a specific vision of human beings as relational persons constituted by the roles they live rather than as individual selves.

This book is a philosophical translation of the Xiaojing (Classic of Family Reverence). It articulates a specifically Confucian conception of “role ethics,” which takes as its starting point and as its inspiration the perceived necessity of family feeling as ground in the development of the moral life. This introduction discusses the historical, philosophical, and religious dimensions of the Classic of Family Reverence and presents a lexicon of key terms. It first explains why we should study the Classic of Family Reverence before turning to Confucius’s insights about family reverence, friendship, education, and community as well as Master Zeng’s compilation of the Classic of Family Reverence. It then examines family reverence, or xiao, in classical Confucianism, along with its sociopolitical, ethical, and religious dimensions. It also looks at some of the key terms employed in classical Chinese philosophical discourse that have immediate relevance for understanding the language of the Classic of Family Reverence.

This chapter introduces early Chinese history, texts, and thought sufficiently to make the rest of the work intelligible to nonspecialists, and positions this study in relation to current debates in Chinese philosophy and the study of early China. The main argument is that we should stop seeing “China” as an inverted mirror image of the West, and let go of the enduring myth of Chinese and specifically Confucian authoritarianism. The chapter criticizes extreme versions of Confucian role ethics put forward by Ames and Rosemont, in favor of a Confucian relational self that possesses a conditioned form of autonomy, as advocated by Wong.

This chapter places master-student relations in the context of Confucian social theory, focusing on issues of obedience, remonstration, and respect for different sorts of authorities. It surveys Confucian accounts of the good society centered on role relations, personal development, and flourishing, both individual and communal. It then examines the question of autonomy within these relationships, looking closely at remonstration, obedience, and disobedience. It concludes with a broader discussion of human dependence, placing Confucian conceptions in dialogue with Kittay, Fineman, and MacIntyre. All three, like the Confucians, see dependency relations as central to human life and the problems of politics, in sharp contrast to most liberal views that imagine a social contract between autonomous, free, and equal individuals. Confucians view extreme dependence as a special case of the pervasive interdependence of all human beings on each other, with family relations serving in many respects as the model for other relations.