About Us

MACHS Seminar

The Confucian Philosophy of Family Feeling

儒學的親情哲學

Speaker: Prof. Roger T. Ames 安樂哲教授
(Peking University Berggruen Research Center北京大學哲學系博古睿研究中心)

Moderator: Prof. TANG Siu Fu 鄧小虎教授 (School of Chinese, HKU)

Date: November 20, 2024
Time: 16:30 – 18:00 (HKT)
Language: English
Venue: CPD-2.58, 2/F, Central Podium Levels, Centennial Campus, HKU

Abstract:
Philosopher Michael Walzer in his Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad continues to endorse a politics of difference. But at the same time, he wants to describe and defend a kind of thin universal moral minimalism that resides within each thick and particularist morality. What Walzer wants from this minimalism is nothing less than a limited and yet hugely important sense of solidarity that can bring the people of the world together. And as for the substance of this thin morality, for Walzer such minimalism does not mean minor or emotionally shallow morality; on the contrary, thinness and intensity come together for him as “morality close to the bone.” While Walzer himself would look to a common, garden variety of “justice” expressed in resonant rules and principles as a possible source of this moral minimalism, I want to suggest an alternative answer to the same problem drawn from the Confucian tradition. While China’s diversity is truly profound, at the same time there has been enough of a shared minimalist morality to hold it together as a cultural and political entity.

I will argue it is the cluster of terms surrounding the prime moral imperative of “family reverence” (xiao) that has made family feeling not only the ground of the Confucian minimalist morality, but also the root and the substance of the living Confucian social, political, and global order that continues today.

哲學家邁克爾·沃爾澤（Michael Walzer）在他的《厚與薄：國內外的道德爭論》（Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad）一書中不斷地宣揚一種不同的政治 (a politics of difference)。但與此同時，他想要描述並捍衛一種稀薄的、最低限度的普世道德綱領，它存在於每一種個殊、豐厚且互不相容的道德系統之中。沃爾澤想從這一最低綱領中得到的，正是一個有限的但意義重大的，能夠使得全世界的人民聯合在一起的團結感。至於這種稀薄道德的實質，對沃爾澤而言，這樣的最低綱領並不意味著次要的或者感情淺薄的道德；相反，稀薄道德和強烈情感的結合對他來說就像「骨子裡的道德」一樣。沃爾澤自己關注的是一種普通、為常人所接受的「正義」品種，其體現在合轍的規則與原則中，並能夠作為最低道德綱領的一個可能來源。可是我想對這一相同問題從儒家傳統給與另一種答案。一方面中國的這種多樣性是真正深刻的，但同時也有足夠共享的最低道德綱領將這種多元化作為一種文化與政治實體維繫在一起。我想說，正是圍繞著以「孝」為本的道德基礎要求而形成的一系列特定語匯，使得親情不僅成為儒家最低道德綱領的基石，也是延續至今依舊生生不已的儒家社會，政治以及天下秩序的根源和依據。

About the Speaker:
Roger T. Ames 安樂哲 is Humanities Chair Professor at Peking University, Senior Academic Advisor of the Peking University Berggruen Research Center, and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Hawai’i. He is former editor of Philosophy East & West and founding editor of China Review International. Ames has authored several interpretative studies of Chinese philosophy and culture: Thinking Through Confucius (1987), Anticipating China (1995), Thinking from the Han (1998), and Democracy of the Dead (1999) (all with D.L. Hall), Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (2011), Human Becomings: Theorizing Persons for Confucian Role Ethics (2020), and most recently, Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology as First Philosophy (2024). His publications also include translations of Chinese classics: Sun-tzu: The Art of Warfare (1993); Sun Pin: The Art of Warfare (1996) (with D.C. Lau); the Confucian Analects (1998) and the Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: The Xiaojing (2009) (both with H. Rosemont), Focusing the Familiar: The Zhongyong (2001), and The Daodejing (with D.L. Hall) (2003). He has most recently completed the new Sourcebook in Classical Confucian Philosophy (2024) with its companion A Conceptual Lexicon for Classical Confucian Philosophy (2021), and in promoting Philosophy of Family as a subdiscipline in philosophy.

Notice:
1) All those who would like to attend the seminar are required to register online (Click HERE) on a first-come, first-served basis;

2) Email of confirmation will be sent to the registered email addresses and participants have to show the screenshot or print-out version of the email for entry to the seminar venue;

ALL are welcome*
*Pre-registration (Click HERE) is requested.