Confucians regard the social world as sacred, whereas Taoists disdain it.” Is this a fair assessment of both traditions?

Introduction

Confucianism is an ethical system practiced in China and other East Asian countries such as Japan and Korea. Confucian ethics arose in the turbulent “axial age” in ancient China (ca. 600-200 BCE), when warring states violently fought for dominance, creating a climate for Confucius and other scholars to seek answers to questions about human nature, morality, and social harmony.

In seeking to build a harmonious society, Confucius found his answer in Ren, humaneness, the highest level of virtue encompassing a variety of lesser virtues, such as reverence, tolerance, trustworthiness, keenness, and kindness. Attaining Ren, thus, involves achieving other virtues, such as courage, prudence, cautiousness in talking, and propriety (Yao, 20). Taoist virtue ethics mostly takes its inspiration from Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher. Aristotelian virtue ethics, embodied in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, aims at achieving personal eudaimonia, meaning “flourishing” or “success,” through the cultivation of moral traits such as prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Confucianism, however, differs from Aristotelian virtue ethics in significant ways. Instead of eudaimonia, Confucianism strives for interpersonal harmony in a hierarchical society. Confucian Ren, to a large extent, entails vertical virtues: Ren is not expected to be cultivated to an equal extent across social hierarchies (Tucker, 89).

For instance, an emperor is expected to achieve a higher form of Ren than his subject does. Ren is, therefore, specific to one's social station in the society. Aristotelian virtue ethics, in contrast, having evolved in a democratic society, placed largely equal expectations on the citizens in the city-states in terms of cultivation of virtue ethics, although the citizens with full voting rights did not include women, slaves, foreigners, children, and senior citizens.

Discussion

The practice of proper conduct that nurtures human-heartedness includes fulfilling the requirements of one's diverse social roles. Filial relationships provide the archetype for all other kinds of social relationships, because human-heartedness finds its first expression in the home. Rather than beginning with a set of abstract ethical principles, Confucians work with what is initially available—the child, with an innate incipient moral sense, in the family—and gradually extend the child's moral world and moral competence.

In contrast, For the Chinese, death means becoming either an ancestor who has a continued relationship with its family or a ghost that endangers society. In either case, the spirit or soul exists to have an interactive relationship with the living. Because ancestor reverence is the cornerstone of Chinese cultural belief and social structure, death rituals are of serious concern and are the most important of Chinese religious practices. With death, a family member has the potential for becoming a beneficent ancestor, and funerals are the ritual means of accomplishing this transition. A well-disposed corpse will have a safe, peaceful spirit that will reward its family with good fortune for many generations. Corpse and spirit disposition are also community concerns because the improper disposal of the dead will produce an unhappy spirit that will cause havoc and ...