Ethics Lecture Eight

Ethics - Lecture Eight 23/11/05


Today we will look how tradition and community affect the formation of self – particularly as it appears in Confucius and in relation to Aristotle.

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We will look at three areas:

(1) Community and tradition are factors in the formation of the ‘self’.

(2) How communities and traditions form the ‘self’ is a major deciding factor in the excellence of the ‘self’.

(3) Confucius gives a very good account of this process – especially as it progresses in advance education.

We will look at the early stages – childhood – in the development of self. Then look at the formation of self during the teenage years and how one becomes a really good person.

The Development in Childhood of the Foundation of Self

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“the community often underestimates to what extent a long and intricate childhood history has restricted a youth’s further choice of identity change”
- Erik Erikson, Identity, Youth, and Crisis (1968).

Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics – is full of comments on the ethical importance of early upbringing and on how it should be managed.

Confucius’s leading student Master Yu has much to say on this:

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“Those who in private life behave well towards their parents and elder brothers, in public life seldom show a disposition to resist the authority of their superiors” – Master Yu, Analects

“We ought to be brought up in a particular way form our very youth, as Plato says, so as to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought …” – Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

“In educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain …” – Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Good family relations are the trunk of goodness.

It is developing the right “habits” in childhood that is central for Aristotle – those “habits” are created by steering the young with the rudders of pleasure and pain.

In other words, good habits need to be associated with pleasure and bad habits need to be associated with pain.

But this idea of developing habits by connecting them with pain has its limits – they seem to have power when the circumstances are familiar and less power when the circumstances are not familiar – such as war.

For Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics - a good set of habits only gives us the foundation of personal goodness – it is not the goodness itself - the habits should come before hearing the philosophy of good.

In the Nichomachean Ethics talks about how a good child becomes a good person:

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“The soul of the student must first have been cultivated by habits for noble joy and noble hatred, like earth which is to nourish the seed …The character, then, must somehow be there already with a kinship to excellence ...” – Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics.

But how do we create good children?

This is where Aristotle and Confucius are very different – Aristotle thought what were needed were the right laws.

It is well-known that Confucius did not think that it was laws that brought about ethical development – ethics.

(quote 5)

“I could try a civil suit [court case] as well as anyone. But better still to bring it about that there were not civil suits” – Confucius, Analects

“Govern the people by regulations, keep order among them by punishments, and they will flee from you, and lose all self-respect” – Confucius, Analects

To Confucius the law should be there as a last resort – Confucius would say that any society or community that needs to use laws to maintain good and ethical relations between people has become corrupted.

Confucius would have rejected Aristotle’s emphasis on rules in the upbringing of children – what were more important were good role models – good examples.

When talking about leaders Confucius says that it is the leader’s own goodness which changes and makes good the behavior of those around him.

Confucius would say that if there is greed among our leaders that this only encourages a feeling of greed that causes crime in the general community.

Just as leaders should be good role models – set a good example – so should parents be a good example to their children – good parents – like good leaders encourage goodness in children – Confucius thinks that punishment is a undesirable last resort.

What is central is for Confucius is that tradition and community values enter the lives of children through their parents.

For Confucius – a major role of parents was to show children how the child’s actions may be seen by other in the community – this is the educating of the child in basic social life.

Though tradition – particularly the songs and stories of the community that the child learns – they find out about all the ways of being good and of being bad – and what actions are rejected by the community.

Many psychologists and philosophers would say that a child’s personality is formed by the time that they become teenagers.

Jean-Paul Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, says that the choice of self in childhood structures all the rest of the choices that we make throughout the rest of lives – for Sartre, this is what makes people very predictable.

The freedom that is central to Sartre’s philosophy is either variations on what is shaped by the self we choose in childhood – or the idea that we could rechoose this childhood choice of self – and so begin to behave differently.

We may think that the personality is largely formed by the time we are teenagers – but if we think of virtue or goodness as being a part of that self – then we can see the further development of character leaves much to be decided.

Becoming Really Good

Confucius thought that this further development of goodness – from the partly formed self of the child going into their teenage years – required ethical education.

Confucius thought that in teaching the student that the teacher should just give the student some of the subject and allow them to complete the rest – this was important especially in ethical instruction – because it made the student active rather than passive – which is important if the student is to make the ethics their own.

This making of ethics you own Confucius saw as a very gradual process – many, many, adjustments to our character.

All of this requires though – a self that is close to goodness – and this is what should be accomplished during the childhood period.

There was a progression to this ethical education:
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“Let a man be first incited by the Book of Songs, then give a firm footing by the study of ritual, and finally perfected by music” – Confucius, Analects

To Confucius good music was ethically important – it was more than “bells and drums” and had the power psychologically to balance us and make us more ethically aware.

One of the ways in which we can begin to see more clearly the role of tradition and community in the Confucian process of making a person good – is if we continue our contrast of Confucius with Aristotle.

But first – let’s just review what we have looked at so far:

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- a basic way of thinking and acting in the world is formed by our parents, community, and tradition by the time that we are teenagers – learning to love what is good and hate what is bad.
- ethical education beyond this is seen by both Aristotle and Confucius as intellectual
- for Aristotle this ethical education is based on being able to make better choices
- for Confucius this ethical education is based on training in emotion and ritual

So one of the ways that we can begin to see the differences between them is to think of having to make an important decision:

- for Aristotle there will be a range of choices – and along with your own ability to choose well – you may also get advice from friends, etc – but the important thing is to judge and choose well.
- for Confucius it is important to see that there are more than one person involved in the decision.

Training in ritual and music helps not to have narrow views – to be able to see the other person’s point of view –why? – because Confucius thought ritual and music often involve performance by more than one person – so that one learns to relate to others – but Confucius also thought that ritual and music help us to understand performance and to Confucius ethics was as much about performance more than it is about thought.

It was tradition that, Confucius thought, was a presentation of a good self – not only as a source of advice and inspiration – but also a role-model.

Confucius saw the parent-child relationship like this – the child models themselves on the good example of the parents – who have modeled themselves on their parents, etc.

Confucius thought that ritual and music capture and express styles of behavior – when performing music or ritual – one enters into these and makes them part of themselves.

Confucius thought community important because our choice takes place in the context of a variety of points of view – like David Hume, Confucius thought that we should take seriously the opinions of others in the community – they may see something about ourselves that we cannot.

There are some philosophers in the Western tradition for whom community and tradition are important:

Alasdair MacIntyre
David Wong – who argues that effective agency requires relationships within the community.
Hume and Hegel - both give importance to tradition and community in ethics.

But it is Confucius for whom tradition and community are very important in the later stages of development of a good self.

Confucius believes that the self that a person develops will be based on a layer of imitation of parents (who have imitated their parents – tradition) as well as behavior that has been encouraged by parents.

It at this stage that the child becoming an adult – can enter into the advanced education of ritual and music – as the basis of building the good self.