Choice, Freedom, and Responsibility in Ancient Chinese Confucianism
Myeong-seok Kim
Philosophy East and West, Volume 63, Number 1, January 2013, pp.
17-38 (Article)
Published by University of Hawai'i Press
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2013.0012
For additional information about this article
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pew/summary/v063/63.1.kim.html
Access provided by National Taiwan University (17 Jul 2013 03:15 GMT)
CHOICE, FREEDOM, AND RESPONSIBILITY IN ANCIENT
CHINESE CONFUCIANISM
Myeong-seok Kim
Academy of East Asian Studies, Sungkyunkwan University
Fingarette and Graham on Choice and Responsibility in Confucius
In his short but influential book Confucius — The Secular as Sacred, Herbert Fingarette presents an impressive view that Confucius did not have the concepts of choice
and responsibility as these are understood in the West, that is, as involving the ultimate power of the individual to choose from genuine alternatives, create one’s own
destiny, and be morally responsible for one’s choices. Fingarette suggests that the
ancient Chinese conception of punishment was that of a “stern lesson” for preventing
future misconduct rather than holding the wrongdoer responsible for his deeds and
enforcing retributive justice, and choice in Confucius was between the right and
wrong ways rather than a selection of one from “several equally real options” (my
emphasis). Fingarette says that Confucius not only lacked a language to talk about
choice and responsibility in these Western terms but also had no serious concern
with the moral realities that such words designated in the West.1
According to Fingarette, this important “omission” is nicely illustrated by the fact
that dao 道, one of the most important concepts in the Analects, primarily meaning
the proper way of life and government, is often understood through the metaphor of
the path or the road, whereas this path imagery is never developed in the Analects
into its derivative image of the crossroads, implying choice from multiple options.
This lack of the metaphor of the crossroads and the related concept of choice in the
Analects, Fingarette continues, is due to the Confucian commitment to the idea that
Heaven embodies a single, definite order, because this in turn leads to the further
idea that there is only one correct Way of life for human beings, and digression from
it means only disorder and chaos: “Thus there is no genuine option: either one
­follows the Way or one fails. To take any other ‘route’ than the Way is not a genuine
road but a failure through weakness to follow the route. Neither the doctrine nor the
imagery allows for choice, if we mean by choice a selection, by virtue of the agent’s
powers, of one out of several equally real options.”2
Scholars in Chinese philosophy have proposed various kinds of arguments both
for and against this position, and Benjamin I. Schwartz is one who has criticized
Fingarette’s view of choice in Confucius by pointing out that Stoics and a number of
medieval thinkers in the Judeo-Christian tradition had, as much as Confucius, conceived choice to mean choosing between the known good and evil rather than selecting between “value-systems” or creating one’s own values.3 On the other hand,
while acknowledging this criticism of Schwartz’ to be fair, Angus C. Graham con­
tinued to emphasize that unlike in the West, “Confucius does not think in terms of
Philosophy East & West Volume 63, Number 1 January 2013 17–38
© 2013 by University of Hawai‘i Press
17
choices between ends,” and he “is not in the habit of posing alternatives at all.”4
­According to Graham, Confucius is very much concerned with desires (yu 欲) and
intent (zhi 志) but does not have any separate word for the goal of desire or intent.5
Instead of choice between ends, Graham argues, Confucius has in mind some sort of
natural reorientation of one’s conflicting desires as one’s learning progresses:
In place of choice between ends he has likes and dislikes spontaneously altering as learning progresses: you leave behind ignorant preferences as the Way becomes clearer and
see them retrospectively as deviations from the Way. . . . The overriding imperative is to
learn and arrive at knowledge; once you know, orientation towards action may be left to
take care of itself as confused inclinations sort themselves out.6
It is in this light that Graham concurs with Fingarette in interpreting Confucius’
conception of huo 惑, “confusion,” as not “of a mind in doubt as to which course to
choose but of a person being inconsistent in his desires or acts.”7 That is, when asked
to explain the state of huo, Confucius says that it is something like wanting someone
to live when loving her but wanting her to die when hating her (Lunyu 12 : 108), or
like risking not only one’s own safety but that of parents in a moment of rage (Lunyu
12 : 21). According to Graham, these cases describe not a mind deliberating at the
intersection of alternatives but a mind deluded by inconsistent desires or misguided
emotions, and this inconsistency or delusion will simply fade away as the sun of
wisdom or knowledge arises in one’s mind, so to speak. As can be seen in Confucius’
autobiographical remark, one’s desires conforming to one’s knowledge of the Way is
indeed the highest Confucian ideal (Lunyu 2 : 4), and Graham says that such an agent
can be compared not to the weigher (of alternatives) but to the arm of the balance
itself.9
This notion that Confucius lacks the conception of choice as choosing from genuine alternatives has also been applied to interpreting Lunyu 13 : 18. In this passage
the magistrate of She 葉 tells Confucius about somebody in his village called “­Upright
Kong” (literally, “straight body”), who testified against his father for stealing someone
else’s sheep, and Confucius replies to the magistrate that those who are upright in his
village cover up for their fathers and sons in such cases and adds that (true) uprightness resides in such acts as of those in his village. As has been well pointed out by
Fingarette, Confucius here does not seem to reveal any trace of thought on the possible conflict between the obligation to protect one’s family members and the obligation to respect the law. Fingarette says Confucius simply tells the magistrate how he
sees things, and the confidence in his tone seems to imply that he thinks this is the
only way to view the situation correctly. And Fingarette argues that there is no better
proof than this passage that the issue of genuine choice among real alternatives never came to Confucius’ mind as a fundamental moral problem.10
The Concept of Choice in Confucius, Mencius, and Han Chinese Literati
This could be the case, and perhaps it would be quite difficult to prove otherwise for
Confucius. However, Fingarette’s and Graham’s arguments summarized above seem
18
Philosophy East & West
to be at least partly based on the controversial claim that the speakers of a language
that lacks lexical equivalents of foreign terms such as “choice,” “responsibility,” and
“ends” also themselves lack the insight into the realities that these terms designate.
David Hall and Roger Ames do not object to this view,11 and Henry Rosemont, Jr.
strongly insists that the classical Chinese language not only lacks the terms just
­mentioned but is missing all of the following: “freedom,” “moral,” “duty,” “rights,”
“utility,” “dilemma,” “autonomy,” and even “ought” in the sense of prudential or
obligatory.12 That is, Rosemont thinks that the classical Chinese language does not
just lack a few Western philosophical terms or concepts but systematically lacks the
concept cluster that is necessary for discussing morality as conceived in modern
Western society, and this thought has probably led him to say that Fingarette’s anal­
ysis, which is confined to the Analects, is no less true in Mencius.13
There is not enough space here to show that every item on Rosemont’s list has a
lexical equivalent (either exact or approximate) in classical Chinese, but perhaps this
is not necessary because similar concepts could be discussed in a number of different ways across cultures, and it would often be no more than a merely interesting
coincidence that we find a term in an exotic culture that seems to correspond exactly to a philosophically important concept in our culture. In other words, my view
is that in Chinese philosophy there can be significant conceptual equivalents, if not
lexical ones, to most of the terms listed by Rosemont above,14 and here I will focus
on discussing freedom, choice, and responsibility. However, the perceptive reader
will realize at the end of this essay that by doing so I will also have discussed, at least
indirectly, other related concepts such as morality, duty, utility, dilemma, and
­autonomy — that is, most of the items on Rosemont’s list.
Now let me start by examining Graham’s argument that Confucius does not think
in terms of choices between ends, or is not in the habit of posing alternatives, partly
because he has words for “desires” and “intent” — that is, yu 欲 and zhi 志,
­respectively — but does not have a separate word for the “goal” of desire or intent. As
we have already seen above, based on this claim Graham further argues that what
Confucius has in mind instead of the choice between ends or goals is one’s likes and
dislikes spontaneously altering themselves as one gets closer to the understanding of
the Way. However, Graham’s very claim that Confucius does not have the concept of
choice among different ends because he does not have a word for “ends” or “goals”
is highly controversial, because it is a logical corollary from one’s having certain
desires or intentions that one’s acting on those desires or intentions is for the purpose
of realizing what one desires or intends to achieve, and we should think that what
Confucius’ agent would desire or intend to achieve is her end or goal.
Can we then talk about choice between ends in Confucius because Confucius’
agent has “likes and dislikes” or competing desires or intentions that pull him toward
different ends? Graham would still say no for the reason provided in the last paragraph and earlier in this essay — namely that one’s desires would sort themselves out
according to one’s knowledge of the proper way things should be and the concept of
choice is not needed, but the ground for his thinking this seems no more than Confucius’ autobiographical remark that “at the age of seventy I could follow my desires
Myeong-seok Kim
19
without transgressing rule” (Lunyu 2 : 4). However, if this state of mind is an ideal that
is extremely hard to reach for many people and Confucius himself only reached it at
the age of seventy, what shall we expect from those who frequently find themselves
with competing desires but have not yet reached this state? I think that what we can
expect from them is that, if they are already on the way of Confucian self-cultivation
and have a basic grasp of the proper way of life, they would wish to organize their
competing and even sometimes capricious desires according to their knowledge of
the Way, and trying to choose the right thing to do in every situation would actually
help them change their emotional or desiderative makeup.
For example, when Confucius suggested to his disciples that they each tell him
their goals or aspirations (zhi 志), Zilu 子路 says that he wishes to share his carriage,
horses, clothes, and furs with his friends and have no regrets even if they are worn
out (Lunyu 5 : 26). We know that Zilu was one of Confucius’ most advanced disciples,
but from his remark we could derive that when he said this there was still some discrepancy between what he aspired to be and what he currently was, or that his desires did not fully conform to his knowledge of the Way. In other words, the fact that
Zilu felt some regret for having shared his belongings with his friends tells us that he
was still drawn by the material value of his possessions to some extent and was probably feeling some internal conflict between the value of his goods and that of friendship. In such a situation, Zilu’s knowledge or his self-cultivation practice up to that
point in his life was not enough to make his desires sort themselves out and could
only work as an aide to his conscious and voluntary decision or choice of friendship
as embodying a higher value than horses and clothes.
To take another example, in Lunyu 5 : 12 Zigong 子貢, another of Confucius’
advanced disciples, tells Confucius that he wants not to do to others what he does not
want them to do to himself, but Confucius retorts that this is a goal that Zigong cannot yet reach. “Not doing to others what one does not want them to do to oneself” is
an important maxim that Confucius regards to be an indispensable constituent of his
highest virtue, ren 仁 (humaneness), and Confucius’ saying that Zigong is not ready
to live up to this maxim can be especially puzzling given that on another occasion
Confucius recommends this very maxim to Zigong as one worth practicing throughout one’s lifetime (Lunyu 15 : 24). How shall we interpret this inconsistency in Confucius’ advice to his disciple? My solution is that Confucius is not inconsistent at all:
in his view, Zigong is good enough to strive to live according to this principle, but he
has not yet reached the spiritual level where he could want to live this way spontaneously and wholeheartedly.15 In order for Zigong to reach such a level, he would have
to make a continuous effort to choose the right course of action that will help him
keep his diverse desires in the proper order and shape his character into the right
form.
With this point in mind, then, let us move on to the interpretation of Lunyu
13 : 18. As has been summarized above, Fingarette argues that Confucius in this passage does not reveal any sign of internal conflict between the obligation to protect
one’s family members and the obligation to respect the law, and concludes that Confucius does not have the conception of genuine choice among real alternatives.
20
Philosophy East & West
­ dmittedly, I think this is a plausible interpretation of Confucius; he seems to think it
A
obvious that one’s family has greater value than one’s state, and the former has
­always to be one’s top priority. However, it is a historical fact that there was a
­magistrate of She and other “Legalist-minded” people representing the state interests
vis-à-vis Confucius and his group, and I think that no matter how confident Confucius was on this issue, this conflict between two social groups each supporting a
different order of values is somehow internalized by later Confucians and is reflected
in their social discourse as two competing — but equally indispensable — principles
in one’s ethical outlook. Consider the following passage from the Mengzi:
Tao Ying 桃應 asked, “When Shun 舜 was emperor and Gao Yao 皋陶 was chief minister
of justice, if Gu Sou 瞽瞍 had killed a man, what would have been done?” Mencius said,
“[Gao Yao] would have arrested him; that’s all.” “Then, wouldn’t Shun have stopped [it]?”
[Mencius] said, “How could Shun have stopped it? He [i.e., Gu Sou] had [done] something that justifies his receiving that [kind of treatment].” “Then, what would Shun have
done [in such a situation]?” [Mencius] said, “Shun would have regarded abandoning the
world as throwing away a worn shoe. He would have secretly fled carrying [his father] on
his back, and having reached a seashore, would have lived there happily until the end of
his life, being joyful and not caring about [the affairs of ] the world.”16 (Mengzi 7A : 35)
Tao Ying is one of Mencius’ disciples, and Gu Sou is the notorious father of the
legendary sage-king Shun, who is considered the paragon of filial piety in the Confucian tradition. Now Tao Ying is postulating a hypothetical situation where Gu Sou
kills somebody, and asks Mencius what Shun would do in that situation as emperor
but at the same time as the son of a murderer. Tao Ying’s intention behind formulating
his question this way is clear: he is curious about the exemplary Confucian agent’s
choice when his duty to society conflicts with his duty to family. Mencius’ initial response is that Shun will let his father be arrested for the reason that Gu Sou’s wrongdoing deserves such a punishment, but Mencius goes further and says that Shun will
eventually abandon the post of emperor and flee to the end of the world with his
father. Now, Shun’s final decision to save his father at the expense of the state is
­exactly what Confucius recommends, but it is important to note that Shun’s deliberation process as explained by Mencius seems to involve the following steps: (1)
holding in view two different perspectives — the public or impartial standpoint and
the private or partialistic standpoint; (2) appreciating the ethical demands that
these standpoints illuminate, respectively; (3) weighing the relative weight of these
demands; and (4) eventually coming to the decision that the latter should have the
upper hand in the situation. I believe all these steps clearly point to the existence of
vivid awareness, in the minds of Mencius and his contemporaries, of the possible
conflict between duties and the concept of choice among genuine alternatives.17
If Mencius thought that the conflict between state duty and personal obligations
is not easily avoidable but definitely resolvable, the elite culture of Han China, especially that of the Eastern Han (25–220 c.e.), seems to have found itself in quite a bit
of a dilemma. In the Hou Hanshu 後漢書 (History of the Later Han), we find a story
about someone named Zhao Bao 趙苞 (fl. 168–190 c.e.), who was Great Prefect of
Myeong-seok Kim
21
the frontier province Liaoxi 遼西 in Northeast China and fought against the Xianbei
(­鮮卑) invaders there. Coincidentally, Zhao Bao’s mother, wife, and children were
passing near the area that the Xianbei tribes had invaded, and they were taken hostage by them. The Xianbei showed Zhao Bao his mother in order to make him surrender, but Zhao Bao’s mother urged her son to stay loyal to his lord and perform his
official duty. Zhao Bao, thinking in tears that he could not but carry out his public
duty as a high official, moved his troops forward and fought the enemy, and his
mother and wife were killed. He won the battle and was amply rewarded, but when
he returned home to bury his mother he said the following to his neighbors: “Avoiding hardship while living off an official salary is not loyalty, but fulfilling one’s duty
by killing one’s mother is not filiality. Being such a man, what face do I have to stand
upright under Heaven!” After saying this, the story ends, he spat blood and died.18
In my view, this story implies the following idea: human beings can sometimes
be tragically torn between two seemingly incompatible obligations. One cannot fulfill both obligations simultaneously, and is forced to choose to fulfill one. However,
no matter how well one’s decision is justified — either by one’s conscious thought or
by the state ideology or by both, the ethical demand of the unchosen option is so
great and real that it keeps the agent deeply troubled.19 And I think that all of these
various pieces of evidence from the Lunyu, Mengzi, and Hou Hanshu clearly show
that the ancient Chinese had a philosophically substantial conception of choice that
we can meaningfully compare to its Western counterpart.
Freedom and Responsibility in Mencius and Xunzi
The concept of choice is typically related to freedom and responsibility in such a way
that a genuine choice can only be made by a free agent who is responsible for her
choice. As has been argued above, the conception of choice as a selection between
ends or among things of different kinds of values is implicit in Confucius’ thought.
However, as Fingarette and Graham have correctly pointed out, the metaphor of the
crossroads or the scales does not appear in the Analects,20 and we do not find in the
same text any explicit discussion of the notions of freedom and responsibility as related to choice, either. The Mengzi and the Xunzi, though, contain a number of passages that seem to talk about one’s freedom to make a choice through a deliberation
process unaffected by any internal or external constraints, and there are other passages in these texts that seem to allow us to interpret Mencius and Xunzi to propose
that one can either flourish or perish, or be honored or shamed, depending on what
type of life one chooses to lead, and one is fully responsible for one’s choice. For
example, Mencius says the following:
As for one’s person, every part of it is to be cared for by oneself. If every part [of oneself ]
is equally an object of one’s care, [it is also the case that] they are equally to be nurtured.
So, if there is not one foot or one inch of skin that one does not care for, there is not one
foot or one inch of skin either that one does not nurture. [Then,] how could there be any
other way to see whether one is doing well or not in one’s [caring and nurturing oneself
than seeing] what one chooses for oneself?
22
Philosophy East & West
The parts of oneself differ in rank and importance. One should not harm the more
important parts [of oneself ] because of the less important parts, and should not harm the
noble parts because of the ignoble parts. For one becomes a petty man by nurturing one’s
parts of lesser importance, and becomes a great man by nurturing one’s parts of greater
importance. . . . Those who care only about food and drink are despised by others, and it
is because they nurture what is less important at the expense of what is more important.
(Mengzi 6A : 14)21
In this passage, Mencius points out that although every constituent of one’s
­ erson — whether one’s body parts such as fingers, shoulders, and back or one’s
p
mental functions such as memory, deliberation, desire, and emotion — is important
and equally an object of one’s care for one’s well-being, it is not that every constituent of oneself deserves an equal amount of attention. As Mencius says in Mengzi
6A : 15, and says here, too, some parts of one’s person are of greater importance (da
大) than other parts of the same person, and this makes the former noble or of higher
value (gui 貴) than the latter. However, Mencius adds, it is not only that everyone has
both great and petty or noble and ignoble components in oneself, but also that a
whole individual can become a nobleman or a petty man depending on which part
of one’s person one chooses to value more and take care to develop. Now, we know
that what enables one to make such a choice in Mencius is one’s faculty of the mind
to think, which can function without being interrupted by distractions arising from
the interaction between one’s sensual desires and their objects.22 As I see it, this view
of the mind as having some autonomy in its relation to other parts of the person,
combined with the idea that the mind has the power to judge which among competing values should be given more consideration, entails a further idea that one is responsible for one’s choice of what kind of person to become and, consequently, for
how one’s character is shaped as a result of such a choice, at least to some extent.
This notion of responsibility as interrelated with the concept of choice by an
autonomous agent is presented more explicitly in the Xunzi. First, concerning the
mind’s freedom from external constraints, Xunzi says the following:
The mind is the ruler of one’s body and the master of one’s spirit and intelligence. It issues
orders, but does not take orders from anything. It forbids oneself [to do certain things],
orders oneself [to do certain things], voluntarily takes [certain things] away, voluntarily
chooses [certain things for oneself ], moves oneself, and stops oneself. So, the mouth can
be threatened and made to be silent or to speak, the body can be threatened and made to
bend or to extend itself, but the mind cannot be threatened and made to change its opinions. It will accept what it considers to be right, and reject what it considers to be wrong.
So, it can be said that the mind works in such a way that its choice will clearly display
itself because nothing hinders the mind from making a choice.23
That is, while acknowledging the existence of external constraints on one’s ­autonomy
such as a physical threat, Xunzi believes that they do not really affect one’s genuine
freedom. Of course under threat one can promise, testify, or act against one’s will,
but in Xunzi’s view the power of the mind to examine situations, form opinions, and
make choices is not compromised.
Myeong-seok Kim
23
Then, what about internal constraints such as desires and emotions? Xunzi has
something to say about them, too. First, about desires:
The occurrence of desires does not wait upon the possibility of fulfilling them, but those
who seek to fulfill them follow what they approve. That the occurrence of desires does not
wait upon the possibility of fulfilling them is something which is received from Heaven.
That those who seek to fulfill them follow what they approve is something that is received
from the mind. . . .
Life is what people most desire, and death is what people most despise. However,
when people let go of life and bring about their own death, this is not because they do not
desire life and instead desire death. Rather, it is because they do not approve of living
under these circumstances, but do approve of dying under these circumstances.
Thus, when the desire is excessive but one’s action does not match it, this is because
the mind prevents it. If what the mind approves conforms to the proper patterns, then
even if one’s desires are many, what harm would they be to good order? When the desire
is lacking but one’s action surpasses it, this is because the mind compels it. . . .24
In this passage Xunzi argues that the strength of one’s desire is not proportionate to
the likelihood of one’s action. As Xunzi observes, one can act in a certain way even
when one’s desire for acting that way is not strong enough, and one can refrain from
acting in a certain way even if one has a strong, or even excessive, desire for acting
that way. As Xunzi sees it, this is because the true source of motivation for one’s
­action is not desire but the mind’s approval of one’s action. That is, one’s mind has
the power to assess an ethically relevant situation and see whether a certain way of
acting in that situation is ethically approvable or not, and the mind’s approval or
disapproval of the action under consideration provides one with sufficient motivating
power either to perform it or to avoid it. In short, the mind (xin 心) in Xunzi has full
authority to make one engage in or refrain from certain kinds of actions regardless of
the relative strength of one’s desires, and in his view this explains why people sometimes choose righteous death instead of shameful or immoral life while desiring life
most and hating death more than anything else.
In the chapter “On the Rectification of Names” (Zhengming 正名) of his book
Xunzi says that the mind has control not only over one’s desires and aversions
(hao 好 and wu 惡) but also over particular emotions such as joy (xi 喜), anger
(nu 怒), sorrow (ai 哀), and pleasure (le 樂):
Desire, aversion, joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure [which arise from] one’s nature are
called affective responses. When there is an affective response and the mind makes a
choice with regard to it, it is called deliberation. When the mind deliberates and one’s
abilities put it into practice, it is called conscious efforts.25
What I have just translated as “affective responses” is qing 情 in the original, and it
was a consensus among a number of Warring States (475–221 b.c.e.) and early Han
Confucian texts such as the Xing zi ming chu (性自命出), the Xunzi, and the Liji 禮記
that qing as affective responses arise from one’s inborn nature (xing 性) in response
to the stimulation of external things. According to Xunzi, these affective responses
including particular emotions such as joy and anger are not always appropriate, and
24
Philosophy East & West
the proper ways of responding to external objects need to be discerned and promoted by the mind. For example, Xunzi highly criticizes picking a private fight out of
rage (see Lunyu 12 : 21, mentioned above) as extremely misguided, for the reason
that it is not only risking one’s own life but also endangering that of one’s parents and
kin — in ancient China there was a state regulation prohibiting private fights, and the
entire family related to the violator of this rule deserved punishment.26 On another
occasion, Xunzi comments on excessive sorrow. According to him, the filial son is
supposed to feel deep sorrow at his parent’s death, which is an admirable feeling in
Xunzi. However, Xunzi also says that it is not recommendable, all things considered,
if the filial son’s sorrow makes him want to stay in mourning indefinitely, because it
can cause problems to his health, and harming oneself even out of sorrow at one’s
parent’s death is neither what one’s parent would want to see nor what the ideal of
filiality is supposed to promote. Such an emotion, though good in itself, has gotten
excessive and needs to be duly curbed.27 Then, we could say that one of the functions of the mind in Xunzi is to assess the appropriateness of various emotions and
choose the right ones to act on, while condemning wrong or misguided emotions
and suggesting adjustments for excessive emotions.
In addition to the freedom of the mind from external and internal constraints, the
notion of responsibility requires the principle of alternate possibilities, namely that “a
person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done
­otherwise.”28 In other words, the idea is that one is morally responsible for one’s
deed if one had an alternative option in the situation in question and did what one
did as a result of voluntary and conscious choice.29 Now, this concept of choice as a
voluntary and conscious movement of the mind does not have to be confined to the
realm of one’s action; it can also be applied to the formation of one’s character. That
is, one is morally responsible for one’s act not only when it was done as a result of
one’s voluntary choice but also when it was determined by one’s character if, sufficiently long before the formation of one’s character, one had control over what kind
of person one could be and was capable of making successful efforts to shape
one’s character into the desirable or estimable form, and also had the choice not to
do it. And I think that we can find a version of this idea in the following remarks by
Xunzi:
What does it mean that [even ordinary] people on the street can become a Yu 禹? Answer:
In general, the reason that Yu can become a Yu is his practicing morality and norms. [Then
it must be the case that] in principle morality and norms can be understood and practiced. Now ordinary people on the street are so equipped as to be able to understand
morality and norms and be able to practice them. Then, it is clear that they can become
a Yu. . . .
Now, if they devote themselves to the study [of morality and norms] wholeheartedly
focusing their intention on it, reflect on and carefully examine [morality and norms]
searching for [their meanings], and do not cease to accumulate goodness for a long
­period of time, then they can be connected to spiritual intelligence and form a triad with
heaven and earth. So, [it can be said that] the status of the sage is what human beings
bring about [for themselves] through their accumulated [efforts].30
Myeong-seok Kim
25
Yu was an ancient sage-king, described by Xunzi here as an ideal human being
who became virtuous by practicing morality (renyi 仁義) and correct social norms
(fazheng 法正). In this passage, Xunzi makes it clear that Yu could become a virtuous
person not because he was a special kind of human being but because (1) Confucian
morality and norms are intelligible and practicable in principle and (2) every human
being has the capacity to understand and practice such norms and morality. This
means that everyone has the potential to become virtuous; but then why is it not the
case that everyone does actually become virtuous? Xunzi says:
[It is because everyone] can [become virtuous] but cannot be made [to do so]. Thus, a
petty man can become a nobleman, but does not approve becoming a nobleman; a
­nobleman can become a petty man, but does not approve becoming a petty man. It is not
impossible that the petty men and noblemen become each other; but [the reason] that
they do not [actually] become each other is that [they] can [become each other] but cannot be made [to do so]. Therefore, it is true that ordinary people on the street can become
a Yu, but it is not necessarily the case that they will [actually] become a Yu. Even if they
do not [actually] become a Yu, there is no difficulty in their being capable of becoming a
Yu.31
Xunzi’s point in this passage is that what hinders one from becoming virtuous despite
one’s inborn moral potential on the one hand and the intelligibility and ­practicability
of moral norms on the other is nothing but one’s own refusal to apply one’s moral
capacity. According to Xunzi, the petty man is capable of becoming the morally cultivated nobleman but does not approve (bu ken 不肯) of his becoming a nobleman;
he thinks that the recommended ideal of the nobleman is not worth pursuing or not
the right means to bring about his goals, such as satisfying his bodily desires, pursuing profit and honor, and avoiding harm and disgrace.32
In Xunzi’s view, the nobleman and the petty man are the same in pursuing these
goals; the only difference between them is that whereas the former understands that
morality is the proper and optimal means for bringing about the comfortable and
glorious life for everyone, the latter does not understand it and goes against ­morality.33
However, Xunzi argues that this difference between the nobleman and the petty man
does not result from their difference in intelligence: “If you observe well how intelligent the petty people are, you will be able to see that they have more than enough
[of intelligence] that enables them to do what the nobleman does.”34 Rather, the difference is due to the pettiness (lou 陋) of the petty man’s perspective or his lack of
experience: “If you become a Yao or Yu, [your life] will always be comfortable and
glorious; but if you become a Jie or Zhi, [your life] will always be dangerous and
disgraceful. . . . But why is it that most people make every effort to become the latter,
while there are only a few who [try to] be the former? It is due to their pettiness.”35
As Xunzi sees it, though, this pettiness of perspective is not difficult to correct. He
makes this point by comparing one’s ethical outlook or perspective on morality to
one’s taste for food:
Suppose that there is a person who has never in his life seen any pastured or grain-fed
animals and fine grains such as rice or millet, but has only seen beans, bean leaves, dregs,
26
Philosophy East & West
and husks; such a man would consider the latter to be most satisfying. However, if someone arrives shortly with a well-arranged [platter of the meat of ] pastured and grain-fed
animals, rice, and millet, he would look at them with astonishment and say: “What
strange things these are!” But when smelled, they are pleasing to the nose; when tasted,
they are sweet to the mouth; when eaten, they are comfortable to the body. Then, there
would be no one who does not abandon the latter and choose the former.
Now, by using the former kings’ Way and their system of morality, human beings can
live together in society, support and nourish each other, hedge against fixations and refine
each other, and make each other’s [life] comfortable and secure. [When we compare
them] to the ways of Jie and Zhi, how could we consider the distance between them to
be no more than that between pastured and grain-fed animals, rice, and millet on the one
hand and dregs and husks on the other! But why is it that most people make every effort
to have the latter, while there are only a few who pursue the former? [It is because they
are] petty. Pettiness is the public worry of [everyone in] the world, and a great disaster and
harm for human beings.
Therefore, it is said: the humane person delights in telling and showing people [the
right way]. By telling and showing them [the right way], by letting them take it easy while
[sometimes] urging them [to pursue the Way] hard, and by giving them warm advice and
repeating it time and again, those blockheaded people suddenly become clearheaded,
myopic suddenly become broadminded, stupid suddenly become wise. . . . Given this,
how wouldn’t it be the case that human beings by nature can definitely follow [the sagekings] and become like them while also being capable of following [the vicious rolemodels] and becoming like them?36
In this passage, Xunzi compares Confucian morality to fine food, and this analogy
reveals Xunzi’s thinking that just as the fragrance, flavor, and healthfulness of fine
food are highly satisfactory to one’s appetitive desires and naturally attract even a
most impoverished rustic who has never tasted such food before, so the prospect of
the social benefits that Confucian morality will bring about such as enjoying sufficient provisions and cultural refinement in a secure, harmonious society should be
attractive enough to those who want to live a pleasant and glorious life and are
­capable of a basic calculation of likely gain.37 According to Xunzi, the pettiness or
lack of experience on the part of the rustic and the narrow-minded ordinary people
leads them initially to resist the introduction of fine food and Confucian morality,
respectively. However, just as the rustic would change his attitude toward fine food
as soon as he finds out that it is pleasing to his palate and good for his health, so the
ordinary people, originally preoccupied only with pursuing their self-interest, would
accept morality once they see that practicing Confucian norms is actually the best
means to realize their personal goals. The minimum requirement for such a change,
on the part of the rustic, is to try some of the fine foods and see how he likes them,
and, on the part of self-interested ordinary people, it is to try practicing Confucian
norms for some time and see how this changes their ethical outlook as informed
­egoists.
As Xunzi sees it, since everyone has enough intelligence to calculate the relative
gain and loss involved in practicing morality on the one hand, and they have the
capacity to put morality into practice and shape their character accordingly once
Myeong-seok Kim
27
having decided to do so on the other hand, changing one’s perspective on morality
and viewing it favorably is as easy and natural a task as one becomes fond of the fine
foods that one has never had before. This being the case, we can also say that Xunzi’s
agent has sufficient control over what kind of person he could be, and is therefore
responsible for his character as well as his actions issuing from it. For as Xunzi ­clearly
says in the quotations above, if the change in one’s ethical perspective is not difficult
in the first place for the reasons just provided, and if there are kind and clear instructions available from well-meaning noblemen in case one does not immediately see
the point of morality, what should really be seen as accountable for one’s failing to
become virtuous and enjoy related accolades is neither one’s ignorance nor one’s
external adversities but one’s own voluntary refusal to apply one’s intellectual and
moral capacities.
Strawson and a Confucian Libertarianism on Freedom and Responsibility
So far, I have argued that ancient Chinese Confucian thinkers such as Confucius,
Mencius, and Xunzi conceive freedom, choice, and responsibility in a way that is
comparable to the Western perspective on these concepts. As was mentioned at the
outset, the self is commonly conceived in the West as a free agent that has the power
to choose from genuine alternatives and is responsible for one’s choice, and my
­belief is that we can more or less ascribe this kind of view to the ancient Chinese
thinkers examined above. However, this ordinary or commonsense understanding of
free choice and moral responsibility has been under close scrutiny in the West, and
it can be philosophically less meaningful or even naïve if one does not specify which
freedom or what kind of responsibility one is talking about.
One might think that one’s freedom to choose between different ends in Confucius, one’s capacity to weigh competing options and choose from them in Mencius,
and the mind’s autonomy from external and internal constraints in Xunzi can all be
considered to imply a compatibilist view of freedom and choice. For according to
Galen Strawson’s descriptions, freedom in the compatibilist sense is “a matter of not
being physically or psychologically forced or compelled to do what one does,”38 and
this sense of freedom preserves enough room for one’s deliberative choice of what
one thinks to be the best among available options. However, what is crucial about
compatibilism is the idea that one’s freedom of choice and action is compatible
with determinism even though it follows from determinism that important aspects of
one’s character are already determined and beyond one’s control, and this means
that one can only “choose and act in the way one prefers or thinks best given how
one is.”39
As Strawson argues, though, this conception of freedom as compatible with determinism is not genuine or ultimate freedom (“U-freedom” in his terms) and cannot
guarantee that we are fully responsible moral agents, because genuine responsibility
for one’s choice and action requires one to be responsible not only for how one
chooses and acts but also for how one is — in other words, one should be self-­
determining not only in one’s choice and action but also in one’s character in order
28
Philosophy East & West
to be a fully responsible moral agent.40 Given the brief description of compatibilism
just provided, this picture of things is unacceptable to the compatibilists, and I ­believe
that this in turn leads us to think that the ancient Chinese Confucian view of freedom
and moral responsibility is closer to the incompatibilist, libertarian view of them. For
as we have seen above, Xunzi clearly argues that all persons have sufficient control
over what kind of person they could be, and are therefore fully responsible for their
character as well as their actions issuing from it, and a similar idea can be found in
Mencius.
However, it is a separate question whether this kind of genuine freedom and
­responsibility is actually possible for us human agents, and Strawson has presented a
strong argument against such a possibility based on the purported impossibility of the
self’s being causa sui or self-caused in terms of one’s character formation.41 One version of the argument goes as follows:
(1) Interested in free action, we are particularly, even if not exclusively, interested in rational actions (i.e. actions performed for reasons), and wish to show that such actions are or
can be free actions. (2) How one acts when one acts rationally (i.e. for a reason) is, necessarily, a function of, or determined by, how one is, mentally speaking. (3) If, therefore, one
is to be truly responsible for how one acts, one must be truly responsible for how one is,
mentally speaking — in certain respects, at least. (4) But to be truly responsible for how
one is, mentally speaking, in certain respects, one must have chosen to be the way one is,
mentally speaking, in certain respects. (It is not merely that one must have caused oneself
to be the way one is, mentally speaking; that is not sufficient for true responsibility. One
must have consciously and explicitly chosen to be the way one is, mentally speaking, in
certain respects, at least, and one must have succeeded in bringing it about that one is
that way.) (5) But one cannot really be said to choose, in a conscious, reasoned fashion,
to be the way one is, mentally speaking, in any respect at all, unless one already exists,
mentally speaking, already equipped with some principles of choice, ‘P1’ — with preferences, values, pro-attitudes, ideals, whatever — in the light of which one chooses how to
be. (6) But then to be truly responsible on account of having chosen to be the way one is,
mentally speaking, in certain respects, one must be truly responsible for one’s having
these principles of choice P1. (7) But for this to be so one must have chosen them, in a
reasoned, conscious fashion. (8) But for this, i.e. (7), to be so one must already have had
some principles of choice P2, in the light of which one chose P1. (9) And so on. True selfdetermination is logically impossible because it requires the actual completion of an infinite regress of choices of principles of choice.42
In other words,
(1) It is undeniable that one is the way one is as a result of one’s heredity and experience.
(2) One cannot somehow accede to true responsibility for oneself by trying to change the
way one is as a result of heredity and experience. For (3) both the particular way in which
one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of one’s success in the attempt at
change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and experience.
(And any further changes that one can successfully bring about only after certain initial
changes have been brought about will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by
heredity and experience.)43
Myeong-seok Kim
29
As Strawson says in the first quotation above, what we typically consider to be
free actions are rational actions or the actions performed for reasons, and Strawson
also thinks that reasons for action are either beliefs or desires.44 Now, given that the
primary business of beliefs is to match the way things are as much as possible and
thus to be true beliefs, it seems unlikely that the freedom of one’s action stems from
the agent’s “freedom” in terms of her beliefs — that is, being either undetermined or
self-determined (e.g., wishful thinking) with respect to the content of her beliefs. For
Strawson this means that the faculty of desire is more promising than the faculty of
belief as a place to seek the origin of freedom of action, and a successful libertarian
theory of human action and moral responsibility must be able to make its case by
rejecting at least the determination of those desires that lead to the occurrence of any
particular action.45 Strawson correctly points out, though, that it is not sufficient for
freedom of action that some of the agent’s desires are simply undetermined by things
external to her; what is also necessary is that those desires be determined by the
agent herself. There is no freedom of action without this self-determination of
­desires.46
For example, suppose that I come home from work and see a plate of California
rolls on the dining table, and consequently have a desire to eat them. In this case my
desire to eat the rolls does not necessarily determine that I eat the rolls, because it is
always possible for me to want to refrain from eating them and actually choose to do
so. However, one might doubt that my decision to refrain from eating the rolls is a
free choice: I may refrain from eating them if I find out that the rolls have some ingredients that I am allergic to, or I may choose to wait until the rest of my family members come home so that I can share the rolls with them. In either case, as the critic
might argue, my choosing to refrain from eating the rolls (at the moment) is a result
of either of these higher-order desires — that is, a desire to stay healthy or a desire to
share goods with my family members. However, would it not be the case that I can
also be somehow “self-determining” with respect to these second-order desires?
This might appear to be a hard case to make concerning my desire to stay healthy,
because this desire is deeply interrelated with the principle of self-love and it seems
very hard to imagine my wanting something other than my own well-being, ­especially
when the food I was about to eat turns out to be harmful to my health. However, I
think that this desire for self-preservation in a physical or biological sense is not impossible to override, because one can think of a special kind of self-­preservation that
would make it possible that the principle of self-love does not necessarily ­support one’s
desire for preserving one’s biological self. For example, in a passage quoted above
Xunzi points out that life is what people most desire but there are situations where
they choose to die instead, and this is because they do not approve of living under
those circumstances.47 As I see it, this shows that one can create (or find, or develop,
depending on one’s theory of self) a spiritual or moral self that is distinct from one’s
biological self and identify more with the former than with the latter, and this in turn
shows that I can be self-determining with respect to my desire to stay healthy.
Then, what about my desire to share the food with my family members? It seems
that this desire is based on my valuing of my family members, but since I may well
30
Philosophy East & West
have acted according to other principles (such as giving the food, say, to a boy who
lives next door and happened to miss his lunch or even donating the food for the
victims of the recent earthquake in Japan if I lived there), it seems that I can be selfdetermining with respect to my desire to share the food with my family — in other
words, I could choose whether or not to act on my desire to share the food with my
family, which would, once I endorse it, motivate me to refrain from eating the food
right away. Would this not be sufficient for my claiming to have genuine freedom and
moral responsibility with regard to this higher-order desire?
As Strawson sees it, though, genuine freedom and moral responsibility are not
guaranteed by this point. For in the example discussed above, my deliberate choice
of acting on my desire to share the food with my family members (i.e., refraining from
eating it right away) is based on my view that my family members are important and
that their importance must be recognized by treating them appropriately, but according to Strawson, this view of mine would be further grounded in my deeper-rooted
desires, such as to protect my family members and promote their well-being. Moreover, Strawson would argue that this desire to protect my family and promote their
well-being could either be further grounded in my natural tendency to protect my kin
or have its origin in my particular way of upbringing and experience in the past, and
this shows that my principle of choice, which led me to decide to share the food with
my family instead of having it all to myself, is probably based on factors that I did not
deliberately choose to have but are part of myself now and that have their own deterministic chain of events traceable to a point even beyond my birth.
However, it is not clear to me whether this kind of infinite regress in determining
principles of choice, which make us view our voluntary choices as ultimately no
more than a result of our heredity and past experience, is actually unavoidable. Obviously many of our psychological and physical features have nothing to do with our
decision but belong to us anyway, but Strawson himself concedes that we do not
have to be self-determining in every respect in order to be a free and responsible
moral agent — we only have to have “consciously and explicitly chosen to be the
way” we are, “mentally speaking, in certain respects.”48 To apply this statement to my
example above, I think it sufficient for my being a free agent that I choose to defer my
eating the California rolls until my family members come home based on my explicit, all things considered view that it is best to do so. As we have seen in the last
paragraph, however, one might want to attribute this view of mine to my natural
tendency to protect my kin or to my past experience of being inculcated with, say,
Confucian ideas that emphasize the value of the family.
However, this move does not seem to be warranted under a finer conceptual
distinction, namely that between value and desire. In accordance with Plato’s insights, Gary Watson defines these two concepts as follows:
Plato was calling attention to the fact that it is one thing to think a state of affairs good,
worthwhile, or worthy of promotion [i.e., to value it], and another simply to desire or
want that state of affairs to obtain. . . . It is because valuing is essentially related to thinking or judging good that it is appropriate to speak of the wants that are (or perhaps arise
from) evaluations as belonging to, or originating in, the rational (that is, judging) part of
Myeong-seok Kim
31
the soul; values provide reasons for action. The contrast is with desires, whose objects
may not be thought good and which are thus, in a natural sense, blind or irrational. Desires are mute on the question of what is good.49
Of course, an object can look good if one desires to have it, and it can even be legitimate to consider that object to be good for the reason and to the extent that one
desires it — for by having it one can satisfy one’s desire to have it. However, the crucial distinction being made here is between what is (or is considered) good because
one desires it and what is (or is considered) good because one judges it to be good.
And in the latter case one’s evaluative judgment is based on one’s conscious appraisal of the worth of the object, and it is possible that after this appraisal process
one can come to desire what one originally did not want, or, on the contrary, one can
stop desiring what one has wanted to have. For example, a monk who has just ­entered
a monastery to pursue his religious goals might for a while sometimes feel sexual
inclinations or the desire for good food, but his evaluative judgment tells him that the
loss of these worldly goods is something that he would gladly accept in consideration
of the invaluable gain of the enlightenment he is pursuing.50
Now, back to the discussion of my refraining from eating California rolls. I think
that my conscious thought that my family members are important and that they
should be treated accordingly — let us call this my Principle of Choice P1, following
Strawson — is an evaluative judgment rather than a desire in the senses just described,
because it is consciously made in awareness of other competing principles of choice
(such as valuing nonfamily members in difficulty more than family members in
­safety). This being the case, I believe it unlikely that this kind of judgment is causally
determined by such factors as my natural tendency to protect my kin or my past
­education with emphasis on the importance of the family — call these Principles of
Choice P2. For although my natural tendency or schooling in the past might be influential factors that incline me to value my family members and act accordingly, it is at
least theoretically possible that I, realizing that they have become part of me in the
past without my prior approval (I was born with a tendency to take care of my kin and
was indoctrinated into believing in the value of the family), treat them as no more
than one or two considerations that I will take into account before forming my evaluative judgment on the importance of my family.
As I see it, this means that while Strawson’s Principles of Choice P2 can be prior
to Principle of Choice P1 in terms of temporal existence, P2 and P1 are never in such
a relationship that the former completely determines the latter. Rather, the fact that I
could have chosen otherwise than acting as motivated by my natural tendency or
inculcated doctrines makes it highly plausible that I preserve the capacity to be selfdetermining with respect to those factors despite their being important parts of what
I am now. And given that I can determine whether to act on such factors as my natural tendency or my inculcated values after active assessment of their importance visà-vis other considerations in a relevant situation, my Principle of Choice P1, if it has
been chosen by me through this kind of deliberate process, can be considered to occupy a higher status than my Principles of Choice P2. Therefore, I believe that Straw-
32
Philosophy East & West
son’s “infinite regress” in identifying the ultimate principles of choice does not really
occur, and perhaps the same point was implied by Xunzi’s remark: “When the desire
is excessive but one’s action does not match it, this is because the mind prevents it.”51
One may still wonder, though, whether my distinguishing between value and
desire would really save us from Strawson’s infinite regress problem. For one can
think that even if we assume that evaluative judgments are formed by a distinct faculty that exercises — at least ideally — some control over the faculty of desire, Strawson will still ask where I got my Principle of Choice P1, by which I determined that
my desire to eat the California rolls should be overridden. As Strawson sees it, I must
have chosen P1 on the basis of some other principle that led me to conclude that P1
was what I ought to follow in deciding whether to eat the California rolls or not, but
this principle itself — call it P2 — has to be what was chosen in a preceding rational
deliberative process that employed yet another principle. However, this process of
choosing the way I mentally am cannot be extended infinitely back into the past, and
consequently I must have started with a certain set of natural inclinations or an educational environment that caused me to make a series of particular evaluative judgments concerning my principles of choice.
This objection seems to make an implicit assumption that a principle of choice
established in a rational deliberative process — let us call this process R1 — must be
grounded by another principle that guided this process, and this second principle of
choice must be explicable by reference to a third principle that had supposedly
guided another process of rational assessment that precedes R1 — call it R2 — and so
forth. According to this picture, then, my principle of choice, that I should share the
food with my family members, is due to my finding them important, but the process
of rational assessment that produced this evaluative judgment of mine on the importance of my family is guided by another principle (whatever it is), which is in turn
grounded in a series of further intermediary principles of choice and is eventually
traced back to or caused by a set of natural inclinations of mine or an educational
environment that I was born into. In short, this objection seems to contain two claims.
It proposes, first, that determining one’s principle of choice through a rational assessment process is grounded in a chain of other principles and their corresponding
­assessment processes, and second that this whole chain of deliberate choice of principles is ultimately caused by involuntary factors such as one’s natural inclinations or
environment.
However, I believe that the distinction between value and desire and the nature
of a rational deliberative process under consideration here can make these claims
quite problematic: as has been explained above, valuing something is different from
merely desiring it in that only the former is justifiable by rational grounds, and the
process of rational assessment producing an evaluative judgment and a corresponding principle of choice is constrained by rational considerations (including the consideration of matters of fact as relevant to one’s evaluative judgment). And in my
view, once the agent’s principle of choice is produced by such a process — that is, the
examining of the relevant factors and assessing their relative weight in deciding
what to value more and how to act accordingly, it is not necessary for the agent to
Myeong-seok Kim
33
attempt further to find the justifying ground of one’s principle in yet another ­principle,
let alone trying to find a justification in one’s desires or inculcated beliefs that, as I
have argued above, are merely some of the factors that the agent considers vis-à-vis
other factors in determining one’s principle of choice.52
Concluding Remarks
So far, I have argued that ancient Chinese Confucian thinkers such as Confucius,
Mencius, and Xunzi can be interpreted to conceive freedom, choice, and responsibility in a way comparable to the Western perspective on them. Specifically, I have
tried to refute the controversial claim that the speakers of a language that lacks ­lexical
equivalents of foreign terms such as “choice,” “responsibility,” and “ends” also lack
the realities that these terms designate by arguing that (1) a sensible reading of the
Analects supports the interpretation that Confucius thought about choices among
different ends or alternatives, that (2) the notion of choice through deliberation involving the assessment of the relative weight of different alternatives is quite explicit
in Mencius and Xunzi, and that (3) the concept of freedom from external and internal
constraints in the agent’s choice behavior and the responsibility entailed by such
freedom of choice are also well discussed in these thinkers.
As has been pointed out above, though, it is an open question whether this kind
of view of free choice and responsibility is actually possible for us human agents, and
there has been a strong objection that genuine freedom and responsibility are only
possible for a person if she is responsible not only for her deliberate choice of action
but also for the formation of her character. We have previously seen that Mencius
and Xunzi do think this way, but it was not clear how they would defend this
­libertarian position. In the last section of this essay I have tried to provide a concrete
argument along this line against Strawson’s position that there is an infinite regress in
determining the ultimate principles of choice of our action and consequently that
genuine freedom and responsibility are not possible for us human agents, by arguing
that (1) one’s choice of the principles by which one chooses to act in a particular way
can be made through a deliberation process that examines what Strawson seems to
consider as higher-order principles of choice in comparison to other possibilities,
and that (2) this fact makes it possible that the infinite regress does not really occur.
If this argument of mine is plausible, this essay could be considered to have
made a small contribution toward the defense of the libertarian position on the issue
of choice, freedom, and moral responsibility, which I think is the position to which
the ancient Chinese Confucian thinkers would also have agreed.
Notes
1 – Herbert Fingarette, Confucius — The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper and
Row, 1972), pp. 18–19.
2 – Ibid., pp. 19–20, 21.
34
Philosophy East & West
3 – Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 78–79.
4 – Angus C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient
China (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989), p. 27.
5 – Ibid.
6 – Ibid., pp. 27–28.
7 – Fingarette, Confucius — The Secular as Sacred, p. 22.
8 – The chapter and passage numbers of the Analects (Lunyu 論語) in this essay ­follow
Yang Bojun 楊伯峻, Lunyu yizhu 論語譯注 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1992).
9 – Graham, Disputers of the Tao, p. 28.
10 – Fingarette, Confucius — The Secular as Sacred, p. 23.
11 – David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking Through Confucius (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1987), p. 265.
12 – Henry Rosemont, Jr., “Kierkegaard and Confucius: On Finding the Way,” Philosophy East and West 36, no. 3 (1986): 206.
13 – ——— , Review of Confucius — The Secular as Sacred, Philosophy East and
West 26, no. 4 (1976): 469–470.
14 – Bryan Van Norden labels such a position as assumed by Rosemont the “lexical
­fallacy” and provides an explicit argument against it in his Virtue Ethics and
Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 21–23.
15 – An elaborate explanation of this point can be found in my article “Ho-o
kaenyŏm ŭi todŏk simnihak chŏk punsŏk” 호오 (好惡) 개념의 도덕심리학적 분
석 (A moral psychological analysis of the concept of haowu), Tongyang ch’ŏrhak
동양철학 (Asian philosophy) (Seoul: Society for Asian Philosophy in Korea),
no. 31 (July 2009): 113–117.
16 –“桃應問曰：
‘舜爲天子，皋陶爲士，瞽瞍殺人，則如之何？’孟子曰：
‘執之
‘然則
而已矣。’
‘然則舜不禁與？’曰：
‘夫舜惡得而禁之？夫有所受之也。’
舜如之何？’曰：
‘舜視棄天下猶棄敝蹝也。竊負而逃，遵海濱而處，終身訢
然，樂而忘天下’
”(Mengzi 7A : 35). The chapter and passage numbers of the
Mencius (Mengzi 孟子) in this essay follow Yang Bojun 楊伯峻, Mengzi yizhu
孟子譯注 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1960).
17 – For a further discussion of this passage in terms of Mencius’ conception of quan
權 (reflective thinking) and wisdom (zhi 智), see my article “Is There No Distinction between Reason and Emotion in Mengzi?” forthcoming in Philosophy East
and West 64, no. 1 (2014).
18 – Wang Xianqian 王先謙, Hou Hanshu jijie 後漢書集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua
­Shuju, 1984), pp. 940–941. I have found this story in Miranda Brown, “Sons
Myeong-seok Kim
35
and Mothers in Warring States and Han China, 453 b.c.e.–220 c.e.,” Nan Nü 5,
no. 2 (2003). My narration of the story is based on p. 152 of this article and the
original text of the Hou Hanshu.
19 – One might think that this troubled feeling is probably guilt, which Fingarette
claims is not found in ancient China, in the case of Zhao Bao for sacrificing his
mother and wife to fulfill his duty to the state.
20 – Graham, Disputers of the Tao, pp. 27 and 59.
21 –“人之於身也，兼所愛。兼所愛，則兼所養也。無尺寸之膚不愛焉，則無尺寸
之膚不養也。所以考其善不善者，豈有他哉？於己取之而已矣。體有貴賤，
有大小。無以小害大，無以賤害貴。養其小者爲小人，養其大者爲大人……
飮食之人，則人賤之矣，爲其養小以失大也”(Mengzi 6A : 14).
22 – See Mengzi 6A : 15.
23 –“心者，形之君也，而神明之主也。出令而無所受令。自禁也，自使也，自奪
也，自取也，自行也，自止也。故口可劫而使墨云，形可劫而使詘申，心不
可劫而使易意。是之則受，非之則辭。故曰，心容：其擇也無禁，必自
見”(Li Disheng 李滌生, Xunzi jishi 荀子集釋 [Taibei: Xuesheng Shuju, 1979],
p. 488. I changed the character 現 to 見, according to Wang Xianqian 王先謙,
Xunzi jijie 荀子集解 [Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1988], p. 398).
24 –“欲不待可得，而求者從所可。欲不待可得，所受乎天也;求者從所可，所受
乎心也……人之所欲生甚矣，人之所惡死甚矣。然而人有從生成死者，非不
欲生而欲死也，不可以生而可以死也。故欲過之而動不及，心止之也。心之
所可中理，則欲雖多，奚傷於治! 欲不及而動過之，心使之也……”(Li Di­
sheng, Xunzi jishi, p. 527; translation is from Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van
Norden, eds., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy [New York: Seven
Bridges Press, 2001], pp. 282–283. I changed “heart” in the original translation
to “mind”).
25 –“性之好惡喜怒哀樂，謂之情。情然而心爲之擇，謂之慮。心慮而能爲之動，
謂之僞”(Li Disheng, Xunzi jishi, p. 506). Hao 好 and wu 惡, probably “liking”
and “disliking” here, can be used interchangeably with yu 欲 and wu 惡, which
refer to one’s long-term desire and aversion, respectively, and are expressed as
the emotional responses of liking and disliking to various objects.
26 – Li Disheng, Xunzi jishi, p. 57.
27 – Ibid., p. 445.
28 – Harry G. Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of
Philosophy 66, no. 23 (1969): 829.
29 – For the possibility that one acted in a certain way when one could not have
done otherwise but is still responsible for one’s act because acting that way was
not because one could not have done otherwise but because one wanted to do
so, Frankfurt argues that the principle of alternate possibilities is false and needs
to be replaced by the following principle: “a person is not morally responsible
36
Philosophy East & West
for what he has done if he did it only because he could not have done otherwise” (Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” pp. 836–
839; my emphasis).
I agree that what matters for the issue of responsibility is not so much the
existence of alternate possibilities as one’s intention or voluntariness in one’s
choice, but it is normally when more than one option is available to the agent
that we talk about his freedom of will because the former entails the latter. And
as long as we do not have a convincing reason to believe in the truth of determinism, I think that the principle of alternate possibilities is a reliable enough
criterion for one’s responsibility if we apply it sensibly when interpreting other
people’s actions and use it honestly when explaining our own actions.
30 –“塗之人可以爲禹，曷謂也？曰:凡禹之所以爲禹者，以其爲仁義法正也。然
則仁義法正，有可知可能之理。然而塗之人也，皆有可以知仁義法正之質，
皆有可以能仁義法正之具，然則其可以爲禹明矣……今使塗之人伏術爲學，
專心一志，思索孰察，加日縣久，積善而不息，則通於神明，參於天地矣。
故聖人者，人之所積而致也”(Li Disheng, Xunzi jishi, p. 552).
31 –“可以而不可使也。故小人可以爲君子，而不肯爲君子；君子可以爲小人，而
不肯爲小人。小人君子者，未嘗不可以相爲也，然而不相爲者，可以而不可
使也。故塗之人可以爲禹，則然；塗之人能爲禹，則未必然也。雖不能爲
禹，無害可以爲禹”(Li Disheng, Xunzi jishi, p. 554).
32 – For example, see Li Disheng, Xunzi jishi, pp. 60 and 64.
33 – Ibid., pp. 60–61.
Disheng, Xunzi
34 –“孰察小人之知能，足以知其有餘，可以爲君子之所爲也”(Li
jishi, p. 61).
35 –“爲堯禹則常安榮，爲桀跖則常危辱……然而人力爲此而寡爲彼，何也？曰：
陋也”(Li Disheng, Xunzi jishi, p. 65). Yao, like Yu, is an ancient sage-king and
the Confucian ideal of the virtuous person. Jie, the last ruler of the Xia 夏
­dynasty, founded by Yu, is a stock example of the licentious and unsympathetic
ruler in Confucianism. Zhi is a legendary thief and used here as a model of the
unruly and immoral person.
36 –“今使人生而未嘗睹芻豢稻梁也，惟菽藿糟糠之爲睹，則以至足爲在此也。俄
而粲然有秉芻豢稻梁而至者，則瞲然視之曰：
‘此何怪也！’彼臭之而嗛於
鼻，嘗之而甘於口，食之而安於體，則莫不棄此而取彼矣。今以夫先王之
道，仁義之統，以相羣居，以相持養，以相藩飾，以相安固邪。以夫桀跖之
道，是其爲相縣也，幾直夫芻豢稻梁之縣糟糠爾哉！然而人力爲此而寡爲
彼，何也？曰：陋也。陋也者，天下之公患也，人之大殃大害也。故曰：仁
者好告示人。告之示之，靡之儇之，鈆之重之，則夫塞者俄且通也，陋者俄
且知也，愚者俄且知也……如是者，豈非人之情固可與如此，可與如彼也
哉！”(Li Disheng, Xunzi jishi, p. 65).
37 – My description of this passage in this paragraph draws on Aaron Stalnaker’s
splendid work Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in
Myeong-seok Kim
37
Xunzi and Augustine (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006),
pp. 187–188.
38 – Galen Strawson, “Free Will,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London:
Routledge, 1998, 2004), accessed on 10 August 2010, from http://www.rep.
routledge.com/article/ V014SECT1.
39 – Ibid., emphasis is original.
40 – Galen Strawson, Freedom and Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986),
pp. 26–27.
41 – Ibid., pp. 28–29.
42 – Ibid.
43 – Ibid., pp. 29–30.
44 – Ibid., p. 43.
45 – Ibid., pp. 43­­­–44.
46 – Ibid., p. 46.
47 – See note 24 above. And instead of Xunzi, one could quote Kant: “[T]he irresistibility of its [i.e., nature’s] power certainly makes us, considered as natural
­beings, recognize our physical powerlessness, but at the same time it reveals a
capacity for judging ourselves as independent of it and a superiority over nature
on which is grounded a self-preservation of quite another kind than that which
can be threatened and endangered by nature outside us, whereby the humanity
in our person remains undemeaned even though the human being must submit
to that dominion” (Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans.
Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000],
p. 145; italics are mine).
48 – Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, p. 28.
49 – Gary Watson, “Free Agency,” in Free Will, ed. Gary Watson (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003), p. 340.
50 – This example was adapted from Watson, in his “Free Agency,” p. 342.
51 – For more context, see note 24 above.
52 – I thank Mark Siderits for raising this issue and giving me an opportunity to think
about it. I am also grateful to him for his other comments throughout this essay
that were very helpful for refining my arguments.
38
Philosophy East & West