Chris Fraser 方克濤

This paper is a draft of my contribution to Justin Tiwald, ed., Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy, Oxford University Press. The paper attempts to draw out some of the radical implications of remarks on "benevolence and propriety" found in Daoist texts. The full draft is available here. An abstract follows.

A Daoist Critique of Morality

Chris Fraser

March 2014

A striking passage from the Daoist classic Zhuangzi likens devoting oneself to benevolence and propriety and seeking to distinguish right from wrong to suffering the ancient Chinese corporal punishments of tattooing the convict’s face and amputating the nose. Commonsense morality is not merely a mistake, the passage implies. It mutilates us, leaving us blind to the features by which to navigate the Way. This astonishing rejection not just of a particular understanding of morality but of the very idea of morality as a guide to action is representative of an intriguing thread of discourse that winds through several of the classical Chinese philosophical anthologies. According to this discourse, benevolence and propriety obscure the Way and impair our ability to follow it. They are a sign of pathology, they interfere with people’s spontaneous capacities, they are redundant, and they are an obstacle to adroit action. This talk aims to elucidate these themes, explain their significance in the context of early Chinese ethics, and relate them to ethical discourse today. I explain how, given early Daoists’ understanding of the structure of action and of the factors that guide it, their critique may be surprisingly plausible. I attempt briefly to situate the Daoist critique in relation to well-known ‘morality critics’ in the West, including contemporary writers such as Nagel, Wolf, and Williams and nineteenth-century figures such as Nietzsche and James. I then consider potential objections to the Daoist position and tentatively suggest how Daoists might respond.

The following paper is forthcoming in a special edition of Philosophical Topics on comparative studies of happiness, edited by my colleagues Edoardo Zamuner and Timothy O'Leary.

Update: This has been published as "Happiness in Classical Confucianism: Xunzi," Philosophical Topics 41.1 (2013), 53–79.

I set out to write a general explanation of why happiness is not an especially prominent topic in early Chinese thought but quickly concluded the topic was much too ambitious for a single journal article. I found that most of my points could be made more effectively through a careful study of a single ethical system. The result is a detailed, and I hope informative, exploration of Xunzi's ethics with a relatively unusual orientation, offering an interesting interpretive twist on the grounds for Xunzi's views.

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Happiness in Classical Confucianism: Xunzi

Abstract

This essay contributes to comparative inquiry concerning happiness through a case study of Xunzi, a major Confucian thinker. Xunzi's ethical theory presents values and norms that fill the role of happiness indirectly, through the ideal figure of the gentleman. However, his working conception of psychological happiness and individual well-being turns on aesthetic values that go beyond the universal prudential values to which his ethical theory appeals. Hence I argue that his implicit conception of happiness actually revolves around a way of life grounded in what Susan Wolf has called ‘reasons of love.’

Download full draft of the paper here.

This summer I finally completed the revised version of the companion paper to my 2011 article "Emotion and Agency in Zhuangzi." The new paper is entitled "Wandering the Way: A Eudaimonistic Approach to the Zhuangzi."

The more recently completed paper was actually written first and is cited in the 2011 article and a few other places. An earlier version was presented at a conference in 2009, but because plans for an anthology based on the conference fell through, there was a long delay before I finally submitted the paper to a journal. It is now forthcoming in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy.

The new paper uses textual materials from the Zhuangzi to construct a "eudaimonistic" Zhuangist ethical ideal. By "eudaimonistic" here, I refer to a conception of the good or ideal life that is grounded in a view of human flourishing or healthy functioning. I suggest that Zhuangist eudaimonism is distinct from virtue ethics, in that the conception of human flourishing involved does not center around virtues, as they are usually understood.

In 2008 I published a preliminary study of conceptions of xu 虛 (emptiness, blankness, insubstantiality) in the Zhuangzi. I've recently completed a follow-up study tying the Zhuangzi concept of xu to Foucault's notion of "ethical work," the tasks or practices by which agents reshape themselves to become ethical adepts. Along the way I make a few remarks as well about how the concept of "flow" popularized by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi might relate to Zhuangist ideals. There's still a lot more to say about the practical side of Zhuangist thought, but I hope this latest study helps to fill in a few more pieces of the puzzle.

An extended abstract and a preprint of the full paper can be found here.