Confucian Virtue Ethics Criticism From The Perspective Of Situationism

One of the most meaningful themes in the development of modern western ethics is the revival of virtue ethics.The revival of virtue ethics has a complex social reality and practical background and causes of cultural theory. It also has met with a lot of opposition, the most powerful one comes from Situationism, which is strongly advocated by John Doris. He critiqued the core concepts of virtue ethics, arguing that the very notion of moral character—the bedrock of any virtue ethic—has been empirically discredited. He boiled down character to a kind of " global" characteristic quality, which has three characteristics,namely:consistency, stability and evaluative integration. In other words, such "global" character traits will maintain consistency and stability across time and situations, and has an impact on the propensity of actors. This is the interpretation of behavior tendentious by virtue ethicists,they believe that the character trait is reality and effectiveness, which can influence the behavior of actors tendentious. However there have been suggestions that social psychological findings concerning the apparent weakness of character traits in the face of situational pressures might call into question the very possibility of "virtues"as stable character traits. If the Situationist critique established, then the character traits of virtue ethics about reality and effectiveness of the identification and inference will be in a failure situation. In other words, not only the experience level of virtue ethics has come across a huge challenge, it may also overturn the mode of moral behavior and moral training advocated by virtue ethics.This paper focus on the dispute between Situationism and Virtue ethics, describing the positive and negative aspects of the character traits,and arguing that character traits are alive and excellent, which means the cognitive foundation of virtue ethics is, in fact, in rather good shape. And I will go on to suggest that, there are features of the early Confucian virtue ethics tradition "Deliberative Situational Embeddedness"of"de"that can be seen as effective and empirically plausible responses to even this more significant challenge. Firstly, from the highest" de "Moderation of Confucian, the view comes out that the the Confucian virtue’s "de" will also accord with the "global" character, that critiqued by situationism the fit proved that Confucian ideal personality will also face the same situation doctrine criticism. Secondly, although Confucianism believes that robust character traits will give the actors the ability to be independent in situations outside, it also realize that situational support is essential to moral training, and the formation of the ideal personality is also manifested through appropriate situational factors. That is to say, Confucian is sensitive about situation. Finally, the focus of situation to Confucianism is ultimately considerations of "li", this situational considerations inherent in large numbers among the hierarchy of Confucian moral development, and the " Deliberative Situational Embeddedness " of " de " have also replied to Situationism’s critique on virtue ethics.