Offers an in-depth exposition of the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics.
2021 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
In Human Becomings, Roger T. Ames argues that the appropriateness of categorizing Confucian ethics as role ethics turns largely on the conception of person that is presupposed within the interpretive context of classical Chinese philosophy. By beginning with first self-consciously and critically theorizing the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics, Ames posits that the ultimate goal will be to take the Confucian tradition on its own terms and to let it speak with its own voice without overwriting it with cultural importances not its own. He argues that perhaps the most important contribution Confucian philosophy can make to contemporary ethical, social, and political discourse is the conception of focus-field, relationally constituted persons as a robust alternative to the ideology of individualism with single actors playing to win.
Table of Content
Preface
Introduction
1. The Question of Which Questions to Ask
2. How Do the Confucian Canons Say ‘Role Ethics’?
3. A Narrative Conception of Human Nature
4. Holography and the Focus-Field Conception of Persons
5. Relational Autonomy and Thick Choices
6. Holism, Democracy, and the Optimizing of the Human Experience
7. From Human ‘Becomings’ to a Process Cosmology
Epilogue: Why Theorize Confucian Persons for a Changing World Cultural Order?
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Roger T. Ames is Humanities Chair Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Peking University. His published works include translations of the Chinese philosophical canons and several interpretive studies.
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