Relational and Intrinsic Moral Roots: A Brief Contrast of Confucian and Hindu Concepts of Duty

摘要

The recent debate sparked by LIU Qingping劉清平 and GUO Qiyong郭齊勇 over the ethicalnemphasis placed on filial piety (xiao 孝) in passages of the Analects and Mengzi highlightsnpivotal features of Confucian ethics. The classical texts Analects 13.18 and Mencius 5A3nand 7A35 prompted Liu to assert that, according to Warring States Confucian authors, whennconfronted with a choice of whether to protect family members guilty of criminalnmisconduct or turn them in for prosecution by the state, loyalty to the family had to benobserved first, at the expense of the more general virtue of “co-humanity” (ren 仁) and thenrights of the general public (Liu 2007:5–7).n1nThough Guo rejects Liu’s contentions thatnthese texts enjoin only filial piety at the unqualified expense of the general public and thatnthe ethical obligations of xiao 孝 are corrupt, he agrees that not only the texts in questionnbut also Chinese law codes from Qin to the Republican period obligate children to shieldntheir elders from legal actions (Guo 2007:32–33). I wish in this brief essay to contrast thenorganically relational conception of moral virtue that led classical Confucians to see familynloyalty as essential to the upholding of the public order with a well-known classical Hindunorganically intrinsic conception of moral virtue that evaluates this priority very differentlynwhen the demands of these two spheres come into conflict. This contrast is intended tonhighlight how diametrically opposed metaphysics of personhood in these respectiventraditions significantly underwrite their opposed moral imperatives. I will conclude with anbrief assessment of the relative merits of these two positions.