The Dialogue Between Confucian Jen Ethics And Feminist Care Ethics

There is a typical tendency of male chauvinism in traditional confucianism, and it has been regarded as the evil source of male superiority to female, man-eating manners and despising or oppressing women. Feminism, originated from European in the 19 th century, makes it its business to explore the root causes of gender inequality, criticize that how men oppress women in a patriarchal society and eradicate the social discrimination against women. Confucianism and feminism seem to have become a thought theory that can’t be made a compromise,even some radical feminists treat confucianism as its opposite to strongly criticize. Therefore, it has great theoretical value and practical significance for highlighting the vitality and age coherence of confucianism and reestablishing confucianism to confront and respond to the challenges of feminism, discuss the problem of feminism and actively make a dialogue with feminism.Based on the historical data, this thesis mainly makes a comprehensive and comparative study between confucian Jen ethics and feminist care ethics with the method of comparison research. First of all, it analyzes the reasons and foundations of the dialogue between confucian Jen ethics and feminist care ethics. Here it clarifies the concept of dialogue, confucianism, Jen ethics, feminism and care ethics. It also illustrates confucian gender description in each historical periods and the challenge of feminism to confucianism. In addition, it inspects the conjunction point between confucian Jen ethics and feminist care ethics on paying attention to care, emphasizing different love, the explanation and way to the ideal personality development process and ecological ethics etc. Then it studies the means and approaches to the dialogue between confucian Jen ethics and feminist care ethics, focusing on the importance of reflections on confucianism and learning from the core knowledege of feminist care ethics. Finally, this paper tries to get the results of the dialogue between confucian Jen ethics and feminist care ethics, and explores its theoretical value and practical significance through above mentioned analyzing. Confucian Jen ethics and feminist care ethics can be compatible and make a dialogue.The innovation of this paper lies in the following aspects. It makes an attempt to clarify the similarities between confucian Jen ethics and feminist care ethics and points out that inner intellectual resources contained in confucianism can provide possibility for the dialogue between confucian Jen ethics and feminist care ethics. Besides, the possibility of women’s liberation will no longer be confined to the west theoretical framework. At the same time, the combination of Confucianism and feminism makes gender issues not be ignored in the confucian ethical investigation and expands theoretical horizon of feminism. In addition, a more comprehensive feminist analysis for confucianism also helps to build female philosophy with Chinese characteristics.