MacIntyre's Essay

In Alasdair MacIntyre’s essay, MacIntyre seeks in part to summarize and reflect upon the previous essays featured in the collection, while at the same time offering what he sees as a strong candidate for the solution to the problem at hand, namely, the problem of reconciling Confucian communal ethics with Western rights-based ethics. For MacIntyre, the solution lies in a combination of the two, allowing for the flourishing of Confucian community in the context of the Western conception of rights.
MacIntyre begins his essay by expressing his appreciation of the previous essays in that they represent a move away from the “cultural narrowness” that had previously relegated the study of Confucian ethics to specialists in that particular field, without any regard for its relevance to Western philosophy and ethics. In order for Western (and specifically American) philosophy to flourish, he argues, it needs to become more of a conversation between diverse voices from conflicting backgrounds, where the Chinese voices especially have an important place. Another reason he welcomes these essays is that “we now inhabit a world in which ethical inquiry without a comparative dimension is obviously defective (pg. 203).” Along with this he makes mention of Chad Hansen’s view of how to discern if and when our ethical system is truly challenged by that of another group or culture and that most Westerners will indeed find that Chinese moral thought makes several claims that cannot be ignored. Nevertheless, it is most likely that Westerners will take these claims seriously in certain kinds of situations and not in others, and the same is true for any Chinese who encounter elements of Western thought and culture. As there are nowadays more and more situations of these kinds of encounters it will be necessary, as the previous essays illustrate, to discern what resources can be provided by philosophical enquiry as to confronting the questions of comparative ethics at a practical level.
The editors of the collection of essays, MacIntyre explains, could not have avoided making the issue of rights central in comparing contemporary Confucian and Western modes of thought and practice. Despite this fact and the high quality of the articles dealing specifically with that issue, he argues against the editors’ decision to begin by raising this issues. He claims that the debates about rights between Confucians and Western supporters of any conception of rights have been unproductive because both parties have relied upon background assumptions which predetermine their attitudes in those debates. To answer the questions about rights, it will be necessary to begin with an understanding of such background assumptions before seeking answers to questions about rights. Here he draws upon Kwong-loi Shun’s essay in explaining how the differing conceptions of the self between Confucians and Westerners have to be understood before discussion between the two sides can effectively begin. MacIntyre argues that it is necessary to distinguish between what is actually found in the central Confucian texts and what we can construct from the materials provided by these texts in order to understand the challenging areas of fundamental Confucianism and only from there to draw conclusions as to how certain notions might be similar between Confucian and Western moral thought. This is the basis for his critique of Chung-ying Cheng’s essay, which MacIntyre sees as “premature.” He writes,

“For it is that in Confucianism which is most distinctive and east easy to assimilate to familiar Western views that needs to be reckoned with first, if we are to understand adequately the difficulties that confront attempts to generate a conversation in which each of the opposing parties may be able to learn from their opponents (pg. 206).”

To this he adds that Shun’s description of the early Confucian conception of human agency provides the ideal starting point for this study, explaining that the question that stands in need to answering is that of the reason individuals capable of self-direction initially have for directing themselves in one way rather than another, in this case, toward conformity to the Confucian ideal or away from it. The reason cannot be derived from Confucian virtues not yet obtained by the individual, but as the individual is self-directed, a reason is required.
MacIntyre recognizes the contribution of both Joel J. Kupperman and Bryan W. Van Norden toward answering the above question, stating that what they provide are characterizations of several important aspects of the mature Confucian self who approximates to the Confucian ideal. This then sheds light upon the end-state to be desired by those embarking on a Confucian path and the question now becomes that of the reasons individual have to move from the starting-point described by Shun toward this end-state. From the discussions of these three scholars an over-arching theme shines through: human nature is seen by Confucian writers as such that it is developed most properly when it is guided both from without and by the self into the habitual practice of the virtues, being understood in Confucian terms, and discharged into social relationships governed by distinctively Confucian norms of conduct. Confucianism, as an entirely distinct tradition of moral thought from that of the West, has within it great agreements between different of its writers including those things which it rejects. These rejections include any conception of society as an arena in which competing individuals try to promote their own self-interest and any conception of morality as a set of restrictions upon self-interest whether in the name of duty, utilitarianism or a social contract. Confucianism not only includes a rejection of Western deontology and utilitarianism but also, in line with Kupperman’s comparison of Aristotelian and Confucian views, a rejection of the basic assumptions of most Western virtue ethics.
Yet another stumbling block lying in the way of an open conversation between Confucian and Western ethics lies in the failure of modern Confucians to discuss the crisis existing within Confucianism sufficiently amongst themselves. Discussion of this crisis began to take place in response to Western critiques of the oppressive nature of the hierarchical Asian societies in which Confucianism had flourished for so long. Confucians, however, had no good reason to accept the Westerners premises from which their critiques were derived. Despite this, Confucians should have recognized that the acceptance of these hierarchical social, political and economic structures as legitimate was deeply incompatible with a purely Confucian view of human nature. That “All people are by nature good” and potentially members of a harmonious Confucian society was something that Mencius and Xunzi were very much in agreement on, although the traditional hierarchical structures of Confucian society involved a practical denial of this nature for the vast majority of those whose work sustained them, that is, women, farmers, fishing crews, and those engaged in manual labor. MacIntyre explains,
“There was generally and characteristically in traditional Confucian society no recognition of the presence of the Mencian four sprouts in such individual sand no assumption of any responsibility for the frustration of their moral development, let alone for their subjection and exploitation (pg. 210).”

He argues further that the Confucian way of life was always to a significant degree at odds with and often in stark contradiction with the presuppositions of the social forms in which it has historically been embodied. In doing so he raises the question of what sort of social, political and economic form would a non-oppressive and non-exploitative Confucianism take. This question, he tells us, is a necessary prerequisite for any constructive Confucian enquiry into how concepts of rights might be applicable to a Confucian framework.
Drawing from the Craig Ihara’s essay, MacIntyre agrees that a Confucian society does not need to make use of any conception of individual rights, as individuals’ sense of self-worth and dignity comes from being regarded as someone who is by nature fulfill his or her role in a harmonious and well-ordered society. As far as any notion of rights within Ihara’s imagined society is concerned, all that it requires is that individuals are left free to call attention to violations of rules, if and when it seems good to them to do so. To use the “idiom of rights” in this case, claiming that individuals in such a society have a “right” to this, would only be to use this idiom as a way to disguise the absence of a concept of individual rights. “Rights” so described are not the rights of individuals as individuals, as understood in Western thought, but rights attaching to individuals only insofar as they occupy certain roles into society. The right therefore attaches to the role and not to the individual. But how can roles be reconsidered in such as way a to provide a different place for people groups (i.e. women, manual laborers) than that supplied by tradition? To this MacIntyre answers that not only the kinds of roles need to be reconsidered, but the possibility of mobility between roles as well. This movement must be likened to the “life-long learning” pointed to in Confucius’ remarks as to how much he himself still had to learn. In order for this to take place, every member of society, including the hitherto excluded, must have the opportunity to realize to the fullest extent the potentialities of their human nature so that “the four sprouts grow into the four virtues in as many human beings as possible (pg. 213).”
In order to bring this kind of change about, he argues that the understanding of communal life among Confucians must be altered and that the lessons learned from the classical texts and the ways in which they are transmitted will have to be altered to make for a more inclusive community. Through such transformations the traditions will be preserved, he claims, in such a way that radical innovation will in the end be conservative in effect. In order for these new changes to take effect and for the community to become for inclusive, a kind of rights system must be initiated, albeit very different than the Western model. For this reason, those belonging to the oppressed groups, and all individuals for that matter, must be treated as possessors of a right to be educated for and a right to find a place within the roles of a harmonious social order. This conception of MacIntyre’s might perhaps best be described as a universal “right to harmonize,” as this harmonization carried with it a sense of its communal context. These rights, in sharp contrast with several Western models, are what Wong calls “communally grounded” rights, recognizing each individual as a potential contributor to the goods of a harmonious social order and recognizing also their right to receive that which they need in order to become such contributors.
The answer to the question of how Confucian ethics and a Western conception of rights can be reconciled is supplied by MacIntyre as one in which there is a coexistence between the two in a form of “dual-citizenship.” Modern political societies, he argues, cannot be communities of any kind, Confucian or otherwise, due to the disunity and disagreement that exists between their members and the inability for the attitudes and polices of government of express the common mind of the community. For these reasons it is impossible for modern nation-states to give expression to genuinely communal values. Nevertheless, local communities whose members share allegiance to a common good and to virtues aimed as achieving that good, although living within the boundaries of a state, are able to live a kind of double life in which purely communal values and rights are upheld within the local community of which they are members, while at the same time they will have to appeal to a different set of rights in dealing with the environment existing outside of their local community.