Book section · January 1, 2026
The relation between metaethical relativism—the thesis that there is more than one true morality—and normative relativism—the thesis that one ought to tolerate or not interfere with people who act on moral beliefs that are fundamentally different from one’ ...
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Book section · January 1, 2025
Mengzi and Xunzi sometimes state their views in ways that make them look diametrically opposed to each other: the former says that human nature is good, while the latter says that human nature is bad. This chapter details how both explain their views in mo ...
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Book section · January 1, 2025
This lecture contains a detailed reconstruction of the dynamic interplay of classical Confucianism and Daoism. It first explains the reason for the claim that the Daoist texts Dào Dé Jīng and Zhuāngzǐ, with greater emphasis on the latter, respond to arguab ...
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Book section · January 1, 2025
This lecture discusses musical and culinary metaphors of harmony that have an overtly aesthetic dimension to them. Early Confucian thinkers use them to conceptualize and articulate an ideal of harmony. The lecture explains this ideal: it is a conception of ...
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Book section · January 1, 2025
This lecture begins with a discussion of the metaphor of forming one body with the ten thousand things. It explores the meaning of the concept of value in neo-Confucian texts and uses this as an occasion for discussing how one can admire and deeply respect ...
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Book section · January 1, 2025
Metaphor and analogy are not merely poetic devices but are fundamental to human thought, shaping how we perceive the world. In the Chinese tradition, metaphors are especially vivid and sustained, playing a crucial role in expressing complex ideas. Metaphor ...
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Book section · January 1, 2025
Mèngzǐ and Xúnzǐ offer contrasting views on moral cultivation, with Mèngzǐ using the plant metaphor to symbolize natural growth, while Xúnzǐ employs the craft metaphor to emphasize deliberate shaping. However, the difference between their theories is more ...
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Book section · January 1, 2024
This essay expands on my interpretation of the Zhuangzi, which I have called “constructive skepticism.” I have drawn upon the Zhuangzi to defend my own theory of morality that I have called “pluralistic relativism.” There is danger that people might become ...
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Book section · January 1, 2023
One of the most intriguing features of the Mencius lies in its claims about the path to goodness: they are eloquently defended but also articulated in ambiguous ways. It is clear that a major role for feeling or emotion is envisaged, but is the relevant so ...
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Book section · January 1, 2023
This chapter will use responsibility as a “bridge” concept between the Confucian and Western moral and political traditions. A key feature of the concept lies in its root meaning “to respond.” Confucian thought focuses on how the responder is entrusted and ...
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Book section · January 1, 2022
In this essay I further develop an interpretation of the Zhuangzi 莊子 as an enactment of “constructive skepticism” (previously articulated in Wong 2005, 2009, 2017). This is not a declarative skepticism that makes a claim about the state of human knowledge ...
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Book section · March 10, 2021
This chapter explains how early Confucianism can ground a distinctly relational perspective on intergenerational ethics. The Analects of Confucius foregrounds intergenerational relations by rooting ethics in relationships between parents and children and p ...
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Book section · 2019
Human relations to place cannot be easily or simply characterized. As a species, we have long been both settled and mobile, with some rooted in place and others more migratory. Mobility is not a new feature of human life; however, economic globalization ...
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Book section · January 1, 2018
Moral universalists hold that there is a single true or most justified morality. Moral relativists deny universalism holding instead that there can be a plurality of true or equally justified moralities insofar as two contradictory moral claims can both be ...
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Book section · 2018
This chapter is about Confucian and Daoist views of love in the classical age (6th - 3rd c. B.C.E.). For the Confucians, love is the core of a central moral virtue. Family love is the foundation for developing an inclusive love for all human beings. Whet ...
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Book section · September 30, 2017
Sentimentalism. in. Early. Confucian. Thought. David. B. Wong. This essay is an
exploration of what Mencius (fourth century BCE) and Xunzi (fourth and third
centuries BCE) in the classical Confucian tradition have to say about cultivating
goodness in pe ...
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Book section · June 1, 2017
In this volume, leading scholars across a range of disciplines attempt to answer such questions by clarifying the presently murky history of "dignity," from classical Greek thought through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment to the present ... ...
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Book section · January 1, 2017
"Dignity" in the Western tradition typically connotes the inherent and unearned worth that entitles each person to respectful attitudes and treatment. Confucian and Buddhist thought contains concepts that overlap with this concept, making possible a three- ...
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Book section · November 9, 2016
such a famous classical master living shortly before unification by Qin in 221 BCE
.7 More surprising (and no less significant) are the number of indirect citations of
Xunzi's work in Han essays and poems. But evidence of Xunzi's influence does&nb ...
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Book section · February 5, 2016
In this chapter, we provide (1) an argument for why ethics should be naturalized, (2) an analysis of why it is not yet naturalized, (3) a defense of ethical naturalism against two fallacies - Hume's and Moore's - that ethical naturalism allegedly commits, ...
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Book section · 2015
This paper is a development of earlier attempts of mine to interpret what conception of the moral development of natural compassion is contained in the Mencius. I bring crucial features of this conception into dialogue with contemporary science on the deve ...
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Book section · 2014
This is a book of commentaries on my book Natural Moralities, and includes my responses to the commentators. Present in press, awaiting proofs. ...
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Book section · January 1, 2014
The Analects is a series of glimpses into how Confucius and his students engaged in their projects of moral self-cultivation. This chapter seeks to describe the way in which the outlines of a moral psychology arises from the text and how the text poses iss ...
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Book section · January 1, 2013
From David B. Wong, Moral Relativity, Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1984, pp. 160–61, 165–75, 180–90, and 232–34. ...
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Book section · 2012
Practicing critical hermeneutics throws us into the tension between two requirements: first, to construe others as being like us; and second, to open ourselves to ways they may differ fundamentally from us and pose challenges to our treasured truths. In th ...
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Book section · August 2011
This paper was read at a conference on ethics in ancient China and Greek and Roman antiquity held at the University of Munich. Aristotle, the Analects, the Daodejing, and the Zhuangzi are discussed in relation to the values of complexity and simplicity. It ...
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Book section · August 2011
I discuss the value of agon or contest in Greek thought and the value of he or harmony in Chinese thought. I argue that these values, often thought to be mutually exclusive, actually imply one another. ...
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Book section · April 20, 2011
Some relativists might hold, in light of the pervasiveness of disagreement even within groups that largely agree on morality, that the truth - conditions for a moral judgment refer to the moral reasons and norms accepted by the individual speaker. Others m ...
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Book section · 2011
I examine three cases of moral conversion: the fictional case of the Staasi agent in East Germany as depicted in the film, "The Lives of Others," Oskar Schindler, and a leader of the Ku Klux Klan who joined with a militant black activist in the effort to d ...
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Book section · 2009
I develop a new "conversational" conception of culture that accommodates the characteristics of fluidity and internal diversity of values that have been highlighted by cosmopolitan and postmodern critics of the the essentialist conception of culture. I the ...
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Book section · 2007
This article continues development of the theme that Confucian ethics both recognizes and the relational nature of human identity and furthermore prizes relational identities that are also morally autonomous. I explore the formation of morally autonomous i ...
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Book section · 2006
This essay is about the moral psychology of those who do evil as they wage war upon evil. My focus is the “morality of conviction” that simplifies and polarizes for the sake of meaning, certitude and decisiveness. My primary example will be the downward sp ...
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Book section · 2006
This paper discusses Davidson’s guiding principle for the interpretation of what others believe, desire, and value. Davidson holds that we use ourselves as models for understanding others, and since we regard our own beliefs as true, our own desires as the ...
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Book section · November 2004
This paper argues that there is a basis in the Confucian moral tradition for defending a right to dissent and to free speech, but that this right would be defended on a "communal" ground that such a right would help to promote the common good, rather than ...
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Book section · January 1, 2004
East-West comparative ethics has drawn increased attention in recent years, especially comparative discussion of Confucian ethics and Western thought. Such interest stems in part from a growing concern with the political systems of Asian countries, which a ...
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Book section · 2003
About the Chinese philosophers Zhuangzi and Xunzi, and the way that the dialectic between them on questions of universalism and relativism bears on the dilemmas of value commitment for contemporary liberals in the West. ...
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Book section · 2003
A discussion of different kinds of relativism that involve cultural difference, an assessment of the arguments for and against each kind, and discussion of the normative implications for these relativisms with special reference to issues of cultural confli ...
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Rights to speech and dissent have a basis in the Confucian tradition, but not in the value of autonomy. Rather, they have a basis in the value of speech and dissent to the communal good. ...
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Book section
Both Confucianism and feminist philosophy have recognized in a way that standard liberal views have not the relevance of family relationships for the moral quality of a society, I explore strengths and problems for their approaches. ...
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Book section
Major features attributed to morality are identified and discussed. They fall into two main categories: formal and material. Formal features include prescriptivity, universalizability, overridingness, non-authority dependence, and being about objective fa ...
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