Research On Taoist Virtue Ethic

The motivation for this work stems from three aspects.First,to consider the frontier academic topics: virtue ethics is an emerging perspective of normative ethics,which needs to draw useful resources from different intellectual traditions and is more open and inclusive than the well established deontology and consequentialism(utilitarianism);virtue ethics is concerned with the subjects of virtuous person,well-being,meaningful life(the value of life),virtuous characters,and virtue cultivation,and these subjects carry more classical and enduring significance.It is obvious that Daoism also considers these issues in depth.Second,inquiry Daoist ethics from a comparative perspective: a growing number of scholars have begun to explore virtue ethics in Confucian and Buddhist thought,yet little attention has been paid to the unique virtue ethics resources of Daoism;Confucian ethics studies are based on a large number of texts by Confucius and Mencius and Neo-Confucianism,and Buddhist ethics studies are based on a large number of Buddhist texts,and if Daoist ethics studies are solely revolves around the texts of Daodejing and Zhuangzi,it will be too thin;the study of Daoist ethics should at least rely on a large number of Daoist texts of later times,such as the Daozang.Third,seeking new perspectives on Daoist studies: most Daoist studies use methods such as historiography,intellectual history,bibliography,and sociology to explore issues in the fields of Daoist history,Daoist thought,Daoist literature,and Daoism and society that are limited by these methods;most previous Daoist ethics studies also present as studies of Daoist ethical thought,and are somewhat limited in conceptual analysis and logical argumentation,and do not focus on ethical justification.The research on Daoist virtue ethics emphasizes research methods(conceptual analysis),theoretical perspectives(virtue ethics),and scope of application(dialogue with contemporary ethical theory and practice).Since the Daoist canonical texts are intended to provide pragmatic norms and guidance for moral behaviors rather than direct semantic conceptual knowledge,they do not offer a clear and robust concept of virtue.Attempts to define the concept of Daoist de/virtue merely based on the canonical texts tend to encounter serious limitations.Moreover,efforts to define de/virtue through the Dao are also ineffective because of the potential for confusing Daoist theological propositions with axiological propositions.For this reason,conceptual analysis is warranted to define the Daoist concept of de/virtue coherently,taking into account the Daoist perspective.The Daoist concept of virtue refers to the state of mind of people regarding self-sufficient value judgments.The self-sufficient value judgment of Daoist is the belief that "the immortals can be learned".The Daoist list contains a series of items of virtues and vices that can be distinguished into two categories: other-related and self-related,with the main style of practice for other-related virtues being the accumulation of goodness and the main style of practice for self-related virtues being meditation.The list of Daoist virtues is wide-open and pluralistic.The criteria followed by Daoist philosophers in judging and selecting virtues include: aptness,quietness,and responsiveness to the world.The normative rationale for Daoist virtue ethics suggests that the Daoist intellectual heritage provides a rich and well-rounded moral world for the practice of morality or the cultivation of virtue.An analysis of moral discourse and moral beliefs has shown that Daoist advocates modest moral abolitionism and quietism at the meta-ethical level.At the normative ethical level,first,people’s desire for health and longevity can be interpreted as psychological egoism or life-valuing egoism;second,the concept of inheritance implies that people are concerned more with the inter-generational accumulation and inheritance of familial virtue;third,Daoist provides people with the moral role models of immortals and genuine men;and finally,Daoist is also concerned with moral examination,which comes from the communication between the three corpses(san shi,三尸)and the heavenly officials.Given a large number of monastic precepts,books of exhortation(quan shan shu,劝善书),and grammar of merit and demerit in the Daoist canon,an analysis from a Kantian deontological lens will inevitably suggest that the precepts texts are merely divine commands or religious ethics,and are intrinsically distinct from the secular norms of ordinary morality.This view ignores the abundant ordinary moral language that can be found in Daoist precepts texts and also exaggerates the difference between the content of precepts and ordinary moral norms.The concerns of Daoist precepts texts are highly relevant and similar to those of virtue ethics.According to the content of the precepts,the virtue rules in the precepts can be divided into three categories:situational virtue rules,reward and punishment virtue rules,and coherent virtue rules.Situational virtue rules focus on the virtue rules that virtuous persons should follow when facing different targets in different situations;reward and punishment virtue rules focus on the rewards or punishments that will result when people follow or violate virtue rules;and coherent virtue rules focus on the coherence and compatibility between specific virtuous characteristics and other value norms.The true observation(zhen guan,真观)articulated in the treatise On Sitting in Oblivion can be read as the Daoist concept of practical wisdom or prudence.As for whether sitting in oblivion can constitute a virtue quality of a virtuous person,there are two opposing arguments,one that sitting in oblivion is an unmotivated forgetting,and the other that sitting in oblivion can be a kind of forgetting based on motivation.The latter can prove that sitting in oblivion is a virtue that can be cultivated,whereas the former cannot,but the latter needs to solve"the problem of forgetting",to which the dual-processing theories of virtue epistemology and cognitive psychology contribute.Motivation-based sitting in oblivion could be interpreted as the normative and guiding of higher-order cognition to lower-order belief attitudes.As a kind of metacognition,sitting in oblivion characterizes the possible progression of the practitioner from"knowing what he does not know",a kind of intellectual and moral humility,to true knowledge.The contemporary debates on humility have drawn the attention of virtue ethics and virtue epistemology to this classical virtue,by focusing on the relationship between humility and ignorance,a relation that can be more plausibly captured in the notion of sitting in oblivion.Wu wei(non-interference)is closely related to the Daoist concept of virtue action,but the notion of wu wei involves a dominant paradox.While one view doubts whether wuwei could sustain the Daoist ethical theory and concept of virtue action,another view argues that wu wei does not involve a paradox,but rather a riddle about moral cultivation that can be achieved if one finds the answer to the riddle.This view received further objection.Some have argued that the paradox of wu wei should be confronted and have proposed some informative solutions responding to it.Based on the criticism of the solutions available,it is plausible that if the connotation of wu wei is to be properly understood,it should be placed in specific situations and context.wu wei requires that the agent has a corresponding psychological motivation,yet this motivation does not produce continuous interference with the purpose of the action.As an evaluation term for behavior in Daoist ethics,wu wei corresponds to Daoist moral anti-realism and moderate moral abolitionism.Interpretation of Daoist environmental ethics from the perspective of deep ecological ethics has been in an unreflective situation.A critical analysis suggests that the coupling of deep ecological ethics and Daoist,i.e.,Daoist deep ecological ethics,run into serious logical and practical dilemmas,including the fallacy of the natural wilderness,the naturalistic fallacy,and the redundancy of the intrinsic value of all things.The implicit opportunity theft theory(yin fu dao ji lun,阴符–盗机论)is expected to provide a more plausible environmental ethical justification for people’s environmental attitudes and practices.Implicit opportunity theft theory can avoid three shortcomings of Daoist deep ecological ethics.First,implicit opportunity theft theory ontologically asserts that nature is not a wilderness without human intervention,but rather a situation in which the"three powers steal from each other"from the beginning to the end.Second,the implicit opportunity theft theory does not require reducing value judgments about natural things to fact judgments but asserts that the value of all things in heaven and earth(including human beings)lies in the ability to utilize and nourish each other and that such interrelationships inherently have no moral value.Nonetheless,if the ethical theory requires one to talk about value proposition,then one can grudgingly claim that this relationship reflects the value of all things—relationships among all things reflect the value of all things themselves,which is a self-sufficient value.Third,implicit opportunity theft theory recognizes that the factor that plays a role in environmental action is the person,not the intrinsic value of all things.A logical analysis of the various themes of Daoist virtue ethics helps to expand the theoretical horizon of contemporary Daoist studies and deepen modern understanding of ancient Daoist ethical thought on the one hand and to enrich the dialogue sources of contemporary ethics and provide distinctive moral perspectives and moral reasons for some meaningful topics on the other.Theoretical reconstruction of Daoist virtue ethical thought will facilitate contemporary people to draw instructive intellectual resources from Daoist virtue ethics in cultivating virtue and pursuing a good life.