The routledge companion to ethics

The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Second Edition Edited by Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes The Routledge Companion to Ethics Edited by John Skorupski The Routledge Companion to Philoso

The Routledge Companion to Ethicsis an outstanding survey of the whole field ofethics by a distinguished international team of contributors Over 60 entries aredivided into six clear sections:

The history of ethics

The Routledge Companion to Ethicsis a superb resource for anyone interested inthe subject, whether in philosophy or related subjects such as politics, education,

or law Fully indexed and cross-referenced, with helpful further reading sections,

it is ideal for those coming to the field of ethics for the first time as well asreaders already familiar with the subject

John Skorupski is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of

St Andrews, Scotland His books include Ethical Explorations (1999) and TheDomain of Reasons(forthcoming in 2010)

ROUTLEDGE PHILOSOPHY

COMPANIONS

Routledge Philosophy Companionsoffer thorough, high quality surveys and ments of the major topics and periods in philosophy Covering key problems,themes and thinkers, all entries are specially commissioned for each volume andwritten by leading scholars in thefield Clear, accessible and carefully edited andorganized, Routledge Philosophy Companions are indispensable for anyone coming

assess-to a major assess-topic or period in philosophy, as well as for the more advancedreader

The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Second Edition

Edited by Berys Gaut and Dominic Lopes

The Routledge Companion to Ethics

Edited by John Skorupski

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion

Edited by Chad Meister and Paul Copan

The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Science

Edited by Stathis Psillos and Martin Curd

The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy

Edited by Dermot Moran

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film

Edited by Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Psychology

Edited by John Symons and Paco Calvo

The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics

Edited by Robin Le Poidevin, Peter Simons, Andrew McGonigal, and

Ross Cameron

The Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Philosophy

Edited by Dean Moyar

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music

Edited by Andrew Kania and Theodore Gracyk

The Routledge Companion to Epistemology

Edited by Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard

The Routledge Companion to Seventeenth Century PhilosophyEdited by Dan Kaufman

The Routledge Companion to Eighteenth Century PhilosophyEdited by Aaron Garrett

The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology

Edited by Søren Overgaard and Sebastian Luft

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Mental DisorderEdited by Jakob Hohwy and Philip Gerrans

The Routledge Companion to Social and Political PhilosophyEdited by Gerald Gaus and Fred D’Agostino

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language

Edited by Gillian Russell and Delia Graff Fara

The Routledge Companion to Theism

Edited by Charles Taliaferro, Victoria Harrison, and Stewart GoetzThe Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law

Edited by Andrei Marmor

The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy

Edited by Richard C Taylor and Luis Xavier López-Farjeat

PRAISE FOR THE SERIES

The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics

“This is an immensely useful book that belongs in every college library and onthe bookshelves of all serious students of aesthetics.” – Journal of Aesthetics andArt Criticism

“The succinctness and clarity of the essays will make this a source that individualsnot familiar with aesthetics will find extremely helpful.” – The PhilosophicalQuarterly

“An outstanding resource in aesthetics … this text will not only serve as a handyreference source for students and faculty alike, but it could also be used as a textfor a course in the philosophy of art.” – Australasian Journal of Philosophy

“Attests to the richness of modern aesthetics … the essays in central topics –many of which are written by well-knownfigures – succeed in being informative,balanced and intelligent without being too difficult.” – British Journal ofAesthetics

“This handsome reference volume … belongs in every library.” – Choice

“The Routledge Companions to Philosophy have proved to be a useful series ofhigh quality surveys of major philosophical topics and this volume is worthyenough to sit with the others on a reference library shelf.” – Philosophy andReligion

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion

“ … a very valuable resource for libraries and serious scholars.” – Choice

“The work is sure to be an academic standard for years to come … I shallheartily recommend The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion to my stu-dents and colleagues and hope that libraries around the country add it to theircollections.” – Philosophia Christi

“With a distinguished list of internationally renowned contributors, an excellentchoice of topics in thefield, and well-written, well-edited essays throughout, thiscompendium is an excellent resource Highly recommended.” – Choice

“Highly recommended for history of science and philosophy collections.” –Library Journal

“This well conceived companion, which brings together an impressive collection

of distinguished authors, will be invaluable to novices and experience readersalike.” – Metascience

The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy

“To describe this volume as ambitious would be a serious understatement …full of scholarly rigor, including detailed notes and bibliographies of interest toprofessional philosophers.… Summing up: Essential.” – Choice

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film

“A fascinating, rich volume offering dazzling insights and incisive commentary

on every page… Every serious student of film will want this book … SummingUp: Highly recommended.” – Choice

The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics

“The Routledge Philosophy Companions series has a deserved reputation forimpressive scope and scholarly value This volume is no exception… SummingUp: Highly recommended.” – Choice

TO ETHICS

Edited by John Skorupski

First edition published 2010 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2010 John Skorupski for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors for their contributions

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised

in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The Routledge companion to ethics / edited by John Skorupski.

p cm – (Routledge philosophy companions)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1 Ethics I Skorupski, John, 1946 –

BJ21.R68 2010

170 –dc22 2009050204

Hbk ISBN 13: 978-0-415-41362-6

Ebk ISBN 13: 978-0-203-85070-1

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s

collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

ISBN 0-203-85070-X Master e-book ISBN

12 Adam Smith 133CRAIG SMITH

25 The open question argument 286THOMAS BALDWIN

37 Consequentialism 444BRAD HOOKER

50 Responsibility: Intention and consequence 596SUZANNE UNIACKE

(iii) Human life

62 Animals 742ALAN CARTER

ANDREW BRENNAN AND NORVA Y S LO

(v) Current issues

MARY KATE MCGOWAN

JULIAN SAVULESCU AND TONY HOPE

66.1 Distribution of global household income converted at current market

66.2 Consequences of choosing a level and baseline year for the

Peter Adamson is Reader of Philosophy at King’s College London His mainareas of interest are ancient philosophy (especially Neoplatonism) and medie-val philosophy (especially in Arabic) He is the author of The Arabic Plotinus,and has published articles on Plotinus, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Avicenna and otherfigures from Greek and Arabic philosophy

Robert Audi is Professor of Philosophy and David E Gallo Chair in Ethics,University of Notre Dame He writes on epistemology, philosophy of actionand philosophy of religion as well as on moral and political philosophy Hisrecent books include Religious Commitment and Secular Reason (2000), TheArchitecture of Reason (2001), The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition andIntrinsic Value (2004), Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision (Routledge,2006), and (as editor) The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (1995, 1999).Thomas Baldwin is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of York, havingbeen previously a lecturer in philosophy at Cambridge University He is cur-rently editor of Mind

Christopher Bennett is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, University

of Sheffield His work has mainly concerned the moral emotions, punishmentand criminal justice

Simon Blackburn is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge,and Research Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Hisbooks include: Spreading the Word (1984), Essays in Quasi-Realism (1993), TheOxford Dictionary of Philosophy (1994), Ruling Passions (1998), Think (1999),Being Good (2001), Lust (2004), Truth: A Guide (2005), Plato’s Republic (2006)and How to Read Hume (2008)

Andrew Brennan is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at La Trobe University,Melbourne, Australia, having previously been Professor and Chair of Philo-sophy at the University of Western Australia and Reader in Philosophy at theUniversity of Stirling, Scotland

Samantha Brennan is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department ofPhilosophy at the University of Western Ontario She works in con-temporary normative ethics and political philosophy, including feministapproaches to both Brennan co-edited, with Anita Superson, Feminist Philo-sophy in the Analytic Tradition, a special Issue of Hypatia (2005), and editedFeminist Moral Philosophy, a Canadian Journal of Philosophy supplementary(2003)

Tom Campbell is Professor Fellow at Charles Sturt University and Convenor

of the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, an AustralianResearch Council Special Research Centre He has written extensively onlaw and legal philosophy He is author of Adam Smith’s Science of Morals(1971), The Left and Rights (1983) and Justice (1988, 2nd edn forthcoming

in 2010) His Routledge book, Rights: A Critical Introduction, was published

in 2006

Erik Carlson is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Uppsala University Hisareas of research include axiology, measurement theory, normative ethics, theproblems of free will and determinism, and decision theory He has publishedone book, Consequentialism Reconsidered (1995), and about thirty papers injournals and anthologies

Alan Carter is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow He

is the author of numerous articles and three books: A Radical Green PoliticalTheory, The Philosophical Foundation of Property Rights and Marx: A RadicalCritique He is also joint editor of the Journal of Applied Philosophy

Maudemarie Clark is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California–Riverside She is the author of Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (1990), co-translator and -editor of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (1998), andco-author of a work in progress on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil

Stephen R L Clark is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool.His most recent book is G K Chesterton: Thinking Backward, Looking Forward(2006), and his present work deals with the third-century Neoplatonist,Plotinus

Randolph Clarke is Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University He isthe author of Libertarian Accounts of Free Will and of numerous articles onagency, free will and moral responsibility

Matthew Clayton is Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University ofWarwick He works on issues concerning distributive justice and liberal poli-tical thought His recent work includes Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing(2006) and he has co-edited The Ideal of Equality (2002) and Social Justice(2004)

John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University ofReading, Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, University ofLondon, and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford He is (since1993) editor of the journal Ratio His books include The Rationalists (1988),Western Philosophy (2nd edn 2007), Philosophy and the Good Life (1998) andThe Spiritual Dimension (2005), and his edited collections include (with BrianFeltham) Partiality and Impartiality (forthcoming in 2010)

Stephen Darwall is the Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy at YaleUniversity He has written broadly on the history and foundations of ethics.His books include Impartial Reason, The British Moralists and the Internal

“Ought,” Philosophical Ethics, Welfare and Rational Care and most recently TheSecond-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability With DavidVelleman, he is a founding co-editor of The Philosophers’ Imprint

Fred Feldman, University of Massachusetts at Amherst Author of IntroductoryEthics(1978), Doing the Best We Can: An Essay in Informal Deontic Logic (1986),Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value ofDeath (1992), and Pleasure and the Good Life: On the Nature, Varieties, andPlausibility of Hedonism(2004)

Andrew Fisher is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Nottingham Hisresearch is primarily in meta-ethics and he has published in this area He teaches

a large number of students on a wide range of subjects including meta-ethics He

is co-editor with Simon Kirchin of Arguing about Metaethics (Routledge, 2006)

R G Frey is Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University andSenior Research Fellow in the Social Philosophy and Policy Center there He

is the author (and editor) of numerous books and articles in normative andapplied ethics

John Gardner is Professor of Jurisprudence and a Fellow of University College,Oxford An occasional Visiting Professor at Yale Law School and a Bencher

of the Inner Temple, he was formerly Reader in Legal Philosophy at King’sCollege London (1996–2000) He serves on the editorial boards of the OxfordJournal of Legal Studies, Legal Theory, Law and Philosophy, The Journal of MoralPhilosophy, The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, The Journal of Inter-national Criminal Justice and Criminal Law and Philosophy

Bernard Gert is Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, Emeritus,Dartmouth College He is the author of Morality: Its Nature and Justification(revised edn, 2005), Common Morality: Deciding What to Do (2004) and Hobbes:Prince of Peace (2010); first author of Bioethics: A Systematic Approach (2006),and editor of Man and Citizen (1972, 1991)

Michael B Gill is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University ofArizona He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina atChapel Hill and is the author of The British Moralists on Human Nature and theBirth of Secular Ethics (2006) He has also published numerous articles in thehistory of philosophy, meta-ethical theory and medical ethics

Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of theSussex Centre for Intellectual History, University of Sussex He has publishedextensively on early modern moral, legal and political philosophy and edits alarge series of natural law works

CONTRIBUTORS

xviii

Vinit Haksar is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and an HonoraryFellow, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University

of Edinburgh His publications include Equality, Liberty and Perfectionism(1979), Indivisible Selves and Moral Practice (1991) and Rights, Communities andDisobedience: Liberalism and Gandhi(2003)

James A Harris is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of StAndrews He is the author of Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate inEighteenth-Century British Philosophy(2005) He is the editor of the forthcomingOxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, and (with AaronGarrett) of the “Enlightenment” volume of A History of Scottish Philosophy(general editor Gordon Graham)

Christopher Heathwood is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University

of Colorado at Boulder He is the author of several articles on welfare andother topics in ethics

Thomas E Hill Jr, Kenan Professor at University of North Carolina, ChapelHill, is the author of Autonomy and Self-Respect; Dignity and Practical Reason inKant’s Moral Theory; Respect, Pluralism, and Justice; and Human Welfare andMoral Worth He edited the Blackwell Guide to Kant’s Ethics and, with ArnulfZweig, co-edited Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals Recentessays concern Kantian constructivism, duties to oneself, virtue, revolution,humanitarian interventions, and the treatment of criminals

Brad Hooker is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Reading.His book Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Moralityappeared in 2000 He has published articles on intuitionism, Kantianism,particularism, human rights, desert, world hunger, impartiality, the demand-ingness of morality and friendship His research monograph will be onfairness

Tony Hope is Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Oxford, orary Consultant Psychiatrist, and Fellow of St Cross College He founded theEthox Centre He has carried out research in basic neuroscience, Alzheimer’sdisease and clinical ethics His books include the Oxford Handbook of ClinicalMedicine (editions 1–4); Manage Your Mind; Medical Ethics and Law; MedicalEthics: A Very Short Introduction; and Empirical Ethics in Psychiatry

Hon-Nadeem J Z Hussain is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at StanfordUniversity He specializes in meta-ethics and the history of late nineteenth-century German philosophy He assessed the resurgence of fictionalism incontemporary meta-ethics in“The Return of Moral Fictionalism” in PhilosophicalPerspectives (2004), and defended a fictionalist interpretation of Nietzsche in

“Honest Illusion: Valuing for Nietzsche’s Free Spirits,” in Nietzsche and Morality(2007)

T H Irwin is Professor of Ancient Philosophy in the University of Oxford and

a Fellow of Keble College From 1975 to 2006 he taught at Cornell University

He is the author of Plato’s Gorgias (translation and notes 1979), Aristotle’sNicomachean Ethics (translation and notes 1999), Aristotle’s First Principles(1988), Classical Thought (1989), Plato’s Ethics (1995) and The Development ofEthics, 3 vols (2007–9)

Richard Kraut is the Charles E and Emma H Morrison Professor in theHumanities at Northwestern University He is the author of Socrates and theState and How to Read Plato, and has edited the Cambridge Companion to Platoand Plato’s Republic: Critical Essays

Rahul Kumar is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University,Canada He is a co-editor of Reasons and Recognition: Essays on the Philosophy

of T M Scanlon and is the author of several papers on Scanloniancontractualism

James Laidlaw is a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and a University Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge

He has conducted research in India, Inner Mongolia and Taiwan Hispublications include Riches and Renunciation (1995); a two-volume collection

of the writings of the social anthropologist Edmund Leach, The EssentialEdmund Leach (2001); and two collections, both jointly edited with HarveyWhitehouse: Ritual and Memory (2004) and Religion, Anthropology, and Cogni-tive Science(2007)

Michael LeBuffe is Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University His recentwork includes“Spinoza’s Normative Ethics,” in Canadian Journal of Philosophy(2007), and “The Anatomy of the Passions,” in the Cambridge Companion toSpinoza’s Ethics (forthcoming)

Anthony J Lisska, Maria Theresa Barney Professor of Philosophy at son University, has published Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law and essays andreviews on natural law Past President of the American Catholic Philoso-phical Association, he received the Carnegie National Professor of the Yearaward

Deni-A Deni-A Long is Professor of Classics, Irving Stone Professor of Literature, and

affiliated Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley He

is author and editor of many books on ancient philosophy, including mostrecently Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life and From Epicurus toEpictetus: Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy

Norva Y S Lo is Lecturer in Philosophy at La Trobe University, Melbourne,Australia, having previously worked at the University of Hong Kong and theChinese University of Hong Kong

CONTRIBUTORS

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Mary Kate McGowan is Class of 1966 Associate Professor of Philosophy atWellesley College She has published in metaphysics, philosophy of language,philosophy of law and analytic feminism and she is especially interested infree speech issues in their intersection.

Sean McKeever is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Davidson College,North Carolina He is interested in contemporary moral theory, the history ofethics and political philosophy He is the author, with Michael Ridge, ofPrincipled Ethics: Generalism as a Regulative Ideal (2006), which critiques moralparticularism while developing and defending a generalist alternative

Alexander Miller is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham

He is the author of An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics (2003), phy of Language (Routledge, 2nd edn 2007) and co-editor (with CrispinWright) of Rule-Following and Meaning (2002)

Philoso-Tim Mulgan is Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of

St Andrews He is the author of The Demands of Consequentialism (2001),Future People (2006) and Understanding Utilitarianism (2007)

Stephen Mulhall is Professor of Philosophy at New College, Oxford His currentareas of research include Nietzsche, Sartre, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, thephilosophy of religion, and philosophy of literature Recent publicationsinclude The Wounded Animal: J M Coetzee and the Difficulty of Reality inLiterature and Philosophy (2009) and The Conversation of Humanity (2007).Thomas Pogge received his PhD from Harvard He is Leitner Professor ofPhilosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, Professorial Fellow atthe Australian National University’s Centre for Applied Philosophy andPublic Ethics, Research Director at the Oslo University Centre for the Study

of Mind in Nature, and Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Health and SocialCare of the University of Central Lancashire

Jesse Prinz is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University ofNew York Graduate Center His research areas are philosophy of psychology,philosophy of mind, aesthetics, consciousness and cognitive science Hisbooks include The Emotional Construction of Morals (2007), Gut Reactions: APerceptual Theory of Emotion(2004) and Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and TheirPerceptual Basis (2002)

Peter Railton is John Stephenson Perrin Professor of Philosophy at theUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor His main research has been in ethics andthe philosophy of science, focusing especially on questions about the nature

of objectivity, value, norms and explanation A collection of some ofhis papers in ethics and meta-ethics, Facts, Values, and Norms, was published

in 2003

Andrews Reath is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California,Riverside He has worked extensively on Kant’s moral philosophy and

is author of Agency and Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory (2006) Hehas co-edited two anthologies: with Barbara Herman and ChristineKorsgaard, Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls (1997); andwith Jens Timmermann, A Critical Guide to Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason(2010)

Michael Ridge is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.His main research is in moral and political philosophy, though he also hassubstantial research interests in action theory, the philosophy of mind and thehistory of philosophy He is the author, with Sean McKeever, of PrincipledEthics: Generalism as a Regulative Ideal(2006)

Simon Robertson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on the Nietzscheand Modern Moral Philosophy project at the University of Southampton Hismain research interests lie at the intersection of normative ethics, meta-ethicsand practical reason

David Rodin is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, where heco-directs the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, andSenior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethic and International Affairs inNew York His publications include War and Self-Defense (2002), which wasawarded the American Philosophical Association Sharp Prize, as well as ofarticles in leading philosophy and law journals and a number of edited books,including Preemption (2007) and Just and Unjust Warriors (2008)

Frederick Rosen is Professor Emeritus of the History of Political Thought andHonorary Research Fellow at the Bentham Project, University CollegeLondon He was formerly Director of the Bentham Project and GeneralEditor of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham He is currently writing abook on the moral and political philosophy of John Stuart Mill

Michael Ruse is Lucyle T Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida StateUniversity He is the author of many books on the history and philosophy

of science, including Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in EvolutionaryBiology, Can a Darwinian be a Christian? The Relationship between Scienceand Religion and most recently Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith

in the Age of Science

Alan J Ryan was Warden of New College, Oxford, from 1996 to 2009 He iscurrently a Visiting Scholar at Princeton University Professor Ryan haswritten extensively on liberalism and its history, on theories of property, and

on issues in the philosophy of the social sciences; among his books are LiberalAnxieties and Liberal Education (1998), John Dewey and the High Tide ofAmerican Liberalism(1995) and Russell: A Political Life (2003)

CONTRIBUTORS

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Julian Savulescu is Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics and Director of the OxfordUehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford He is alsoDirector of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and of the Program onthe Ethics of the New Biosciences at the University of Oxford ProfessorSavulescu is the author of over 200 publications and has given more than 100international presentations.

Geoffrey Scarre is Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, UK, where heteaches and researches mainly in the areas of moral theory and applied ethics

He has recently published books on death and on Mill’s On Liberty; his mostrecent book is On Courage (Routledge, forthcoming in 2010)

Henry Shue is Senior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, andProfessor of Politics and International Relations His research has focused onthe role of human rights, especially economic rights, in international affairs,and, more generally, on institutions to protect the vulnerable He is bestknown for his book on international distributive justice, Basic Rights

John Skorupski is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of

St Andrews His books include John Stuart Mill (Routledge, 1989), EthicalExplorations(1999) and The Domain of Reasons (forthcoming in 2010)

Michael Slote is UST Professor of Ethics at the University of Miami He hasrecently been working at the intersection of virtue ethics, care ethics andmoral sentimentalist thought, and has just published three books: Moral Sen-timentalism (an account of normative ethics and meta-ethics in sentimentalistterms); Essays on the History of Ethics (containing discussions of both ancientand modern views); and Selected Essays (a collection of published articles andsome new papers)

Craig Smith is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews He isthe author of Adam Smith’s Political Philosophy: The Invisible Hand andSpontaneous Order (Routledge, 2006), and is book review editor of the AdamSmith Review

Robert Stecker is Professor of Philosophy at Central Michigan University He is theauthor of Artworks: Definition, Meaning, Value; Interpretation and Construction: Art,Speech and the Law; and Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: An Introduction.Philip Stratton-Lake is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading.His main research interests are Kant, ethical intuitionism, meta-ethics andnormative ethics His book Kant, Duty and Moral Worth was published byRoutledge in 2000

Nicholas L Sturgeon is a Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University He haspublished a number of articles on foundational issues in meta-ethics and onthe history of modern moral philosophy

John Tasioulas is Reader in Moral and Legal Philosophy at the University ofOxford and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford His research interestsare in moral philosophy, legal philosophy, and political philosophy He iscurrently engaged in a project on the philosophy of human rights funded by aBritish Academic Research Development Award.

Christopher Taylor is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Oxford University,and an Emeritus Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Suzanne Uniacke is Reader in Applied Ethics at the University of Hull Beforemoving to the United Kingdom in 2001 she taught philosophy in Australia.She has published widely in normative moral theory, applied ethics and phi-losophy of law

Jonathan Webber is a lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University He is theauthor of The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre (Routledge, 2009), and numer-ous philosophical articles on moral psychology and applied ethics

Henry R West is Professor of Philosophy at Macalester College, Saint Paul,Minnesota His publications on Mill include An Introduction to Mill’s UtilitarianEthics (2004), The Blackwell Guide to Mill’s Utilitarianism (2006) and Mill’sUtilitarianism: A Reader’s Guide (2007)

Kenneth R Westphal is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kent,Canterbury He has published widely on both Kant’s and Hegel’s theoreticaland practical philosophies, in both systematic and historical perspective Heedited The Blackwell Guide to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (2009)

Allen W Wood is Ward W and Priscilla B Woods Professor at StanfordUniversity He has also been on the faculty of Cornell University and YaleUniversity, has held visiting appointments at the University of Michigan andthe University of California, San Diego, and has held fellowships from theGuggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities

He is author and editor of numerous books and author of numerous articles,chiefly on topics in ethics and on the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Hegel andMarx

Yang Xiao is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Kenyon College, USA Hehas published essays on Confucian moral psychology, philosophy of language

in early Chinese texts and Chinese political philosophy He is currentlyworking on a book manuscript on early Chinese ethics

Michael J Zimmerman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of NorthCarolina at Greensboro He is the author of both books and articles onthe conceptual foundations of human action, moral responsibility, moralobligation and intrinsic value

CONTRIBUTORS

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A companion to ethics should be a companion for two kinds of inquirers Thefirst consists, of course, of students and teachers of philosophy The secondcomprises a much wider group– anyone who is interested in the state of philo-sophical ethics today, and the history of how we got to where we are

Philosophical ethics is only a small part of the general ethical discussion thatgoes on in any society at any time However, it can and should make a vitalcontribution to that wider discussion Furthermore this is especially true in thecase of ethics, for various reasons that do not apply, or do not apply as much, toother parts of philosophy To be sure, some cogent philosophical questionsabout ethics are quite abstract, and cannot so easily be made accessible to widerethical discussion Philosophy does, after all, have an obligation to follow wher-ever its questions lead A comprehensive companion to ethics should try toconvey what is currently being said about such questions Yet it should also, asone of its main aims, engage with the wider discussion, and be as helpful aspossible to anyone seriously interested in ethical questions – across all theirwidth and depth In designing the structure and content of this Companion wehave tried hard to keep these aims in mind

I should mention that we have in the end been unable to obtain two chaptersthat we would very much like to have had: in Part I, on medieval ethics, and inPart VI, on ethical questions about the beginning of life We regret this and hope

to include chapters on these topics in future editions

My personal thanks must go in the first place to our authors, for theirpatience and diligence Apart from anything else, I have learnt an enormousamount about ethics and its history from their work Tony Bruce at Routledgesuggested the idea of a Companion to Ethics to me, and has been truly helpfuland encouraging throughout I am also very grateful to Adam Johnson and JamesThomas for their editorial efficiency and hard work Finally, my thanks to RogerCrisp, Andrew Fisher and two anonymous readers for Routledge for their sen-sible advice on my initial ideas about the shape that this Companion should have

John Skorupski

St Andrews

HISTORY

of thought and their founding texts: Confucianism (the Analects, the Mencius,and the Xunzi), Mohism (the Mozi), Daoism (the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi),and Legalism (the Book of Lord Shang) There are two reasons for this choice.First, Chinese philosophers from later periods often had to present their ownthoughts in the guise of commentaries on these founding texts; they spoke aboutthem as well as through them Second, this choice reflects the fact that earlyChina is still the most scrutinized period of the history of Chinese philosophy byscholars in the English-speaking world, and that most of the important textsfrom this period have been translated into English.

It must be borne in mind that the early period lasted for about 300 years,which may still be too long for such a brief chapter to cover My goal is not toprovide an encyclopedic coverage or standard chronological account of ethicalthought in early China Rather, I want to identify important and revealingcommon features and themes of the content, style, and structure of ethicalthought in this period that have reverberated throughout the history of Chinesephilosophy, and have uniquely defined and characterized the tradition as awhole In other words, this will not be a historian’s, but rather a philosopher’s,take on the history of Chinese ethical thought

In this chapter I use terms such as“Chinese philosophy,” “Chinese philosophers,”and “Chinese ethics,” which some scholars may find problematic There hasbeen an ongoing debate about whether there is “Chinese philosophy” (Defoort

2001 and 2006) Some scholars have argued that Confucianism is not a“philosophy”(Eno 1990), that there is no such thing as“Chinese ethics” (Mollgaard 2005), and that

Confucius is not a“philosopher of ethics” and has no “normative ethical theory”(Hansen 1992) This is obviously a complicated issue The reality is that inChina we canfind both normative ethical theory and ethical practices such as self-cultivation through spiritual exercise In what follows, I first address the uniqueproblem of style in Chinese ethics; I then discuss the structure of the normativeethical theories of the four main schools of thought I end with a discussion ofthe idea of philosophy as spiritual exercise, as well as a brief conclusion.

The problem of style in Chinese ethical thought

One main reason that Chinese philosophical texts are difficult to understand isour unfamiliarity with their styles For example, when a contemporary readerpicks up a copy of the Analects, she might find it very easy to understand theliteral meaning of Confucius’ short, aphorism-like utterances; however, shemight still be baffled because she does not know what Confucius is doing withhis utterances

In his theory of interpretation, Davidson argues that an utterance always has atleast three dimensions Besides its “literal meaning,” which is given by a truth-conditional semantics, it also has its “force” (what the speaker is doing with it,whether the speaker intends it to be an assertion, a joke, a warning, an instruc-tion, and so on), as well as its“ulterior non-linguistic purpose” (why the speaker

is saying what he says, what effects the speaker wants to have on what audience,and so on) (Davidson 1984a, b, 1993) We may say that the literal meaning is the

“content” of an utterance, and the force and purpose are the “style” of theutterance This theory might help us understand that whenever we do notunderstand an early Chinese text it is often not because the author is an“orientalmystic,” but rather because we do not know enough about the historical back-ground to understand what the author is trying to do We as scholars oftenmisunderstand Chinese philosophers because of our projected expectationsabout what they must have been trying to accomplish; as Bernard Williams puts

it,“a stylistic problem in the deepest sense of ‘style’ … is to discover what youare really trying to do” (Williams 1993: xviii–xix)

We now know a great deal about the historical background of early Chinesephilosophy (Hsu 1965; Lewis 1990; Pines 2002; Lloyd and Sivin 2002; vonFalkenhausen 2006); the most important aspect might be that the early philoso-phers were primarily trying to solve practical problems in the real world thatseemed to be governed only by force and violence To get a concrete sense ofhow extremely violent their time was, here are some revealing statistics Con-fucius, the most important Confucian philosopher, lived around the end of theSpring and Autumn period (722–464 BCE); during the 258 years of the period,there were 1,219 wars, with only 38 peaceful years in between (Hsu 1965: 66) All

of the other philosophers discussed in this chapter lived during the Warring

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States period that lasted for 242 years (463–221 BCE), during which there hadbeen 474 wars, and only 89 peaceful years (Hsu 1965: 64; also see Lewis 1990).Although there were fewer wars during the Warring States period, they weremuch longer and intense, and with much higher casualties As we shall see, thisfact has an important impact on how the early Chinese philosophers constructtheir ethical theories.

However, this turbulent time was also the golden years of early Chinese losophy Confucian philosophers such as Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi, thephilosopher Mozi (the founder of Mohism), Daoist philosophers such as Laoziand Zhuangzi, and Legalist philosophers such as Shen Buhai, Shang Yang, ShenDao, and Hanfeizi all lived through great political uncertainties and the brutalities

phi-of warfare, and their philosophies, especially their ethics, were prphi-ofoundlyshaped by this shared experience We canfind passages in these thinkers’ workthat show how they were traumatized by the wars and the sufferings of the people,and it should not come as a surprise that almost all of them saw themselves as

“political agents and social reformers” (von Falkenhausen 2006: 11) They veled from state to state, seeking positions with rulers, such as political advisers,strategists, and, ideally, high-ranking officials One of the central problems theywere obsessed with was the following: What must be done in order to bringpeace, order, stability, and unity to the chaotic and violent world? Their solution

tra-to the practical problems of their time is a whole package, in which individual,familial, social, economic, political, legal, and moral factors were seamlesslyinterwoven In fact, they did not have a distinction between ethics and politics,

as we do today They seemed to take for granted that questions about how one ought

to act, feel, and live cannot be answered without addressing questions aboutwhat a good society ought to be like This is why the terms“ethics” and “moralphilosophy” should be understood in their broadest sense in this chapter, whichincludes“political philosophy” as well as “legal philosophy.”

The structure of Chinese ethical theories

There are various ways to characterize the structure of an ethical theory It seemsthat one way to characterize Chinese ethical theories is to articulate at least threecomponents:

(a) A part that deals with a theory of the good or teleology which indicates whatgoals or ends one ought to pursue, as well as ideals one ought to imitate oractualize (Skorupski 1999)

(b) A part that provides an account of the factors that determine the moralstatus of an action (or a policy, an institution, a practice, etc.) They areroughly what Shelly Kagan calls “evaluational factors” or “normative fac-tors” (Kagan 1998) For instance, if one takes the consequences of an action

as the only normative factor to determine its moral status, one would be a

In the next four sections, I discuss the ethical theory of each of the four schools

of thought according to the following sequence First, I discuss (a) its theory ofthe good on the level of the state, as well as on the level of the individual.Second, I discuss (b) its account of normative factors Third, I discuss (c) how itjustifies its normative claims

More specifically, when I discuss (b), I pay attention to two issues: First, how

it defines virtuous actions, whether it is “evaluational internalist” or tional externalist” (Driver 2001: 68) – that is, whether a virtuous action is defined

“evalua-in terms of factors “evalua-internal to the agent, such as belief, “evalua-intention, desire, tion, and disposition (hence an internalist), or in terms of factors external to theagent, such as the consequence (hence an externalist) We shall use“internalism”

emo-as a shorthand for “evaluational internalism” in the rest of this chapter; oneshould not confuse it with a very different view also labeled “internalism,” whichcan be found in the debate regarding whether reason for action must be internal

or not Second, I shall pay special attention to the issue of whether an ethicaltheory is “deontological” in the sense that it regards “constraints” (the moralbarriers to the promotion of the good) as an evaluational factor (Kagan 1998)

Confucian ethical theory

Let us start with Confucianism (Schwartz 1985: 56–134, 255–320; Graham 1989:

9–33, 107–32, 235–67) The Confucians, most famously Confucius (551–479BCE)(Van Norden 2002), Mencius (385–312 BCE) (Shun 1997; Liu and Ivanhoe 2002),and Xunzi (310–219BCE) (Klein and Ivanhoe 2000), have a theory of the good onthe level of the state, as well as the level of the individual With regard to thestate, they believe that it is important for a state to have external goods, such asbeing orderly, prosperous, having an extensive territory, and a vast population.However, the Confucians believe that an ideal state must have“moral character”

in the sense that the state should have no other end than the perfection ofhuman relationships and the cultivation of virtues of the individual, and that themorality of the state must be the same as the morality of the individual This is

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arguably the most important feature of Confucian ethics, which the Legalistssuch as Hanfei would eventually reject by arguing that private and public mor-ality ought to be different, and that Confucian virtues could actually be publicvices The Confucian ideal society that everyone ought to pursue should have atleast the following moral characteristics:

(1) Every one follows social rules and rituals (li) that govern every aspect of life

in the ideal society (Analects 1.15, 6.27, 8.2, see Lau 1998; Xunzi 10.13, seeKnoblock 1988)

(2) Everyone in the ideal society has social roles and practical identities thatcome with special obligations; for instance, a son must havefilial piety (xiao)towards his father (Analects 1.2, 1.11, 2.5–8, 13.18, 17.21), an official musthave loyalty (zhong) towards his or her ruler (3.19), and a ruler must have ben-evolence (ren) towards his or her people (Mencius 1A4, 1A7, 1B5, see Lau2005; Xunzi 10.13) A junzi (virtuous person, or gentleman scholar-official) musthave a comprehensive set of virtues, such as ren (humanity, benevolence, orempathy), yi (justice, righteousness), li (social rules and rituals internalized

as deep dispositions), zhi (practical wisdom), xin (trust), yong (courage), andshu(reciprocity, or the golden rule internalized as a deep disposition).(3) “Benevolent politics” (ren-zheng) is practiced when the state adopts just andbenevolent policies regarding the distribution of external goods, as well aspolicies that may be characterized as“universal altruism” in the sense that

a virtuous person cares about everyone in the world, including both thosewho are near and dear and those who are strangers, especially the weak andthe poor (Mencius 1A4, 1A7, 1B5)

(4) “Virtue-based politics” is practiced when the ruler wins the allegiance andtrust of the people not through laws or coercion, but through the trans-formative power of virtuous actions (Analects 2.1, 2.19, 2.20, 12.7, 12.17,12.18, 12.19, 13.4, 13.6, 12.18, 14.41; Mencius 2A3, 3A2, 4A20, 7A12–14).(5) The unification of the various states in China is not achieved through forceand violence, but through the transformative power of virtue (Mencius2A3; 4B16, 7B13, 7B32; Xunzi 9.9, 9.19a, 10.13, 18.2)

The central idea here is that it is not enough for a state to be strong and perous; it must have moral character, such as justice and benevolence– virtuesintimately connected with politics I shall use the term“virtue politics” (de-zheng)

pros-in a broad sense to refer to the Confucian ethical-political program as a whole

On the level of the individual, the Confucians also have a theory of externalgoods The external goods include wealth, power, fame, and worldly success.They claim that these external goods are not under one’s control, but rather areallotted by fate or Heaven, and they have no intrinsic value, hence one shouldnot be concerned with them (Analects 12.5, 14.35; Mencius 1B14, 5A6, 5A8,6A16–17, 7A3, 7A42, 7B24) Furthermore, one’s actions should not be motivated

by the desire to obtain these external goods (Analects 2.18, 15.32, 19.7, 15.32) Insharp contrast to external goods, “virtue,” “will,” and “true happiness” are notsubject to luck, and are under the agent’s control (Analects 7.30, 9.31, 9.26, 6.11).Virtuous persons take pleasure in doing virtuous actions, even when they live inpoverty (Analects 6.11).

In general, the Confucians are“internalists” in the sense that they define virtuousactions in terms of factors internal to the agent, such as the agent’s intentions,motives, emotions, or deep dispositions, rather than defining them in terms offactors external to the agent, such as external goods or consequences Among allthe Confucians, Mencius might be the most persistent advocate for an internalist

definition of virtuous actions For example, in Mencius, we find an vist” definition of benevolent actions, which is that an action is benevolent if it is

“expressi-a n“expressi-atur“expressi-al “expressi-and spont“expressi-aneous expression of one’s deep dispositions of compassionfor the people (Xiao 2006b) The deep disposition of compassion is whatMencius calls the“heart that cannot bear to see the suffering of others” (2A6):The reason why I say that everyone has the heart that cannot bear to see the

suffering of others is as follows Suppose someone suddenly sees a childwho is about to fall into a well Everyone in such a situation would have afeeling of empathy, and it is not because one wants to get in the good graces

of the parents, nor because one wants to gain fame among one’s bors and friends, nor because one dislikes the sound of the child’s cry

neigh-(Mencius 2A6; see Lau 2005; translation modified)Mencius believes that this “heart” is innate and universal, and it is what dis-tinguishes a human being from a non-human animal One might argue thatMencius’ account of the virtue of benevolence is similar to Michael Slote’saccount of virtue in his agent-based sentimentalist virtue ethics (Slote 1997,2007) However, it is not clear whether Slote’s theory as a whole applies toMencius’ accounts of other virtues, such as justice, ritual propriety, and wisdom

It might be possible that, in theory, Mencius could have given an account ofthese virtues in terms of benevolence and empathy, as Slote has done However,such an account seems to be missing in the Mencius

The Confucians are “deontologists” in the sense that they believe in the tence of constraints on the promotion of the good Both Mencius and Xunzi usealmost the same words to emphasize the existence of such moral barriers to thepromotion of the good:“if one needs to undertake an unjust action, or to kill aninnocent person, in order to gain the whole world, one should not do it” (Mencius2A2; Xunzi 11.1a) Mencius claims that the rulers who send people to die inaggressive wars or take away people’s livelihood through heavy taxation are no

exis-different from those who kill an innocent person with a knife (Mencius 1A3, 1A4,3B8), and that scholar-officials should not help the rulers make the state prosper-ous by means other than the virtue politics of benevolence (Mencius 4A14, 7A33)

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The Confucians have at least two types of justification for their normativeclaims about virtue and virtue politics: (a) arguments based on a theory ofhuman nature, and (b) pattern-based, consequentialist arguments.

The first type can be found only in the Mencius It relies on what we may callMencius’ perfectionist and expressivist theory of human nature, which consists

of two main ideas: (1) everyone’s “human nature” (xing) is rooted in his or herheart–mind, which is the innate dispositions of virtues such as benevolence,justice, ritual propriety, and wisdom, and this is what distinguishes humans fromnon-human beasts; (2) human nature is a powerful, active, and dynamic force;

it necessarily expresses itself in the social-political world In other words,the inner nature must manifest itself in the outer (the human body as well as thesocial world) This is why, for Mencius, virtue politics is not just a normativeideal; it is also real, and it necessarily becomes reality in human history

Mencius sometimes uses “xing” as a verb, which means to “let xing be thesource of one’s action.” He claims that the sages (virtuous persons) always letxing be the motivational source of their virtuous actions; their virtuous actionsflow spontaneously from xing In other words, when human nature expressesitself as human action, it would necessarily be virtuous action

This reconstruction of Mencius’ view as an argument based on an essentialisttheory of human nature is certainly not the only way to interpret the Mencius Infact, some scholars have argued that Mencius does not have an essentialisttheory of human nature (Ames 1991) There has been a more general debateabout whether the Confucians have rational arguments based on metaphysicaltheories of human nature, and the debate often takes place in the context of

a comparative study of Confucian and Aristotelian ethics (MacIntyre 1991,2004a, b; Sim 2007; Yu 2007; Van Norden 2007) There has also been a debateabout how to understand the concept of human nature (xing) in Chinese philo-sophy, whether it should be translated as “human nature” at all, and whether it

is an innate disposition or a cultural achievement (Graham 2002; Ames 1991;Bloom 1997, 2002; Shun 1991, 1997; Liu 1996; Ivanhoe 2000; Lewis 2003;Munro 2005; Van Norden 2007)

The second type of justification, namely the pattern-based, consequentialist mode

of arguments, can be found in the Analects, the Mencius, and the Xunzi The mostcrucial premise of the argument is based on observations of patterns in socialreality, from which the Confucians conclude that virtue politics is the best or neces-sary means to achieve the Confucian ideal society (Analects 2.1, 2.19, 2.20, 12.7,12.17, 12.18, 12.19, 13.4, 13.6, 12.18, 14.41; Mencius 2A3, 3A2, 4A20, 7A12–14).From this premise, it follows that, if one wants to pursue the end of theConfucian ideal society, one ought to (i.e., it is instrumentally rational to)practice virtue politics In other words, this consequentialist mode can also belabeled as an “instrumentalist” mode of argument A good example of such ajustification is the following passage from the Mencius: “If a ruler, equippedwith a heart that cannot bear to see the suffering of others, practices a politics

of compassion and empathy, he will rule the world as easily as rolling it onhis palm” (2A6).

It can be shown that the pattern-based, instrumentalist mode of justification isone of the most popular among all the Chinese philosophers, even though they

do not use the technical terms we have been using here, such as “the good,”

“means,” “end,” and “instrumental rationality.” However, the lack of the generalterm does not imply the lack of the concept Confucius, Mencius, and Xunziwere the first in China to use various concrete paradigm cases of instrumentalirrationality to talk about people who desire an end, yet refuse to adopt thecorrect means to the end (Mencius 1A7B, 2A4, 4A3, 4A7, 5B7; Xunzi 7.5, 16.4).For instance, since Confucius did not have a general term for “rational” or

“irrational,” when he spoke of a case in which someone desires an end and atthe same time does not want to adopt the necessary means to that end, Con-fucius would say that this person is just like someone who “wants to leave ahouse without using the door” (Analects 6.17)

Mohist ethical theory

Let us now turn to Mohism (Schwartz 1985: 135–72; Graham 1989: 33–64; VanNorden 2007: 139–98) Mozi (480–390 BCE), the founder of Mohism, livedsometime after the death of Confucius and before the birth of Mencius Thefounding text of Mohism, the Mozi, is a very complex text with many layers Itwas certainly not written by a single author; there are at least three sets of ideas,representing the views of three subgroups of Mohists (Graham 1989) Mohism as

a school of thought was once the only rival to Confucianism, before the rise ofDaoism and Legalism But Mohism disappeared around the early years of theHan Dynasty (206 BCE to AD 220), until it was rediscovered by scholars in theQing Dynasty (AD 1644–1911)

Like the Confucians, the Mohist notion of the ideal society is that it must havenot only external goods – such as the state being orderly and prosperous (Mozi

126–8, see Yi-Pao Mei 1929) – but also moral character However, their cations of the moral character of their ideal society are not always the same.Both the Confucians and the Mohists believe in universal altruism, which is thatthe scope of a virtuous person’s caring should be universal, which implies that he

specifi-or she should care about not only those who are near and dear but also thosewho are strangers However, they have different views about the intensity ofthe caring: for the Confucians, one should care about the near and the dearmore than strangers, but the Mohists insist that one must care about everyone inthe world equally and impartially They are the first ones in China to haveargued for the general obligations of “impartial caring” (jian-ai) (Wong 1989)

In terms of how to evaluate the moral status of actions and policies, some ofthe Mohists are factoral consequentialists Unlike the internalist Confucians,

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who emphasize internal factors such as emotions and dispositions of the agent,some of the Mohists claim that a policy ought to be adopted if, judging from animpartial point of view, it promotes benefits for all people Hence, unlike theConfucians, these Mohists are “externalists” in the sense that they define rightactions in terms of consequences external to the agent.

Like the Confucians, some Mohists are “deontologists” in the sense that theybelieve in the existence of moral barriers to the promotion of the external goods.For instance, a ruler should not adopt“unjust” actions or policies such as taking theland that belongs to other states, or“cruel” actions or policies such as killing innocentpeople (Mozi 158) They claim that all aggressive wars are unjust, and that only self-defensive wars can be justified, and they believe it is their obligation to help smallstates to defend themselves against aggressors (Mozi 98–116, 128, and 257–9).Some of the Mohists have a program for the realization of an ideal society, buttheir recommendation is not Confucian virtue politics They do not considervirtue politics to be the best means to achieve their ideal society, and they arethefirst theorists in China to give a systematic account of how to design politicalinstitutions to guarantee peace and civil order Unlike the Confucians, they donot believe that virtue has transformative power; instead they believe that insti-tutions with a mechanism of reward and punishment need to be created toguarantee that there will be uniformity of opinions about justice and morality,that good deeds will be rewarded and bad ones punished, and that good andcapable people will be promoted

Some of the Mohists justify this program by appealing to their theory ofhuman nature, which is radically different from the Mencian theory of the innategoodness of human nature The Mohist theory is somewhat akin to a Hobbesianview, which is that human beings naturally seek rewards and avoid punishments

In their justification of the institutional solution to the practical problem of how

to bring civil order to the world, the Mohists assume that people’s strongestmotives are their desire for reward and aversion of punishment, and they believethat people will behave rationally and morally when certain institutions withmechanisms of reward and punishment are in place

Mohism and Confucianism are similar in terms of their belief in the existence

of moral constraints, as well as their conviction that an ideal society must havemoral character As we shall see, both are in sharp disagreement with the Legal-ists, who deny the existence of any constraints

Legalist ethical theory

Let us now turn to Legalism (Schwartz 1985: 321–49; Graham 1989: 267–92).Legalism as an ethical theory was not formulated and articulated systematicallyuntil Shen Buhai (d 337BCE), Shang Yang (d 338BCE), Shen Dao (ca 350–ca 275

BCE), and Hanfeizi (d 233BCE) Here I focus primarily on Shang Yang’s version of

Legalism For twenty-one years (359–338 BCE), Shang Yang was the architect ofwhat was later known as Shang Yang’s reform in the state of Qin, abolishingConfucian virtue politics (de-zheng) and replacing it with Legalist “punishment-based politics” (xing-zheng) Shang Yang was mainly responsible for having madeQin into the most powerful state among the warring states; he laid down thefoundation for its eventual unification of China in 221 BCE Although Legalismwas tremendously influential as a political practice, as a school of thought it wasnot as widespread as Confucianism and Daoism; very few philosophers labeledthemselves Legalists.

The Legalists were often powerful officials or advisers to rulers, and theirtheory of the good is that a ruler ought to pursue only one end, namely theexternal goods of the state, such as order, prosperity, dominance, and strength(Book of Lord Shang 199, see Duyvendak 1963) By a state being orderly, theymean that crimes should be completely abolished (203), and they do not hesitate

to punish light crimes with heavy punishments, especially the death penalty Tomake their state dominant, they advocate aggressive warfare at the expense of thewell-being of ordinary people In achieving such ends, the Legalists do not carewhether the state has moral character, such as whether it has a just legal system.The Legalists are “factoral consequentialists” in the sense that they determinewhether an action or policy ought to be adopted by looking at whether it pro-motes the external goods of the state Since what determines the Legalists’evaluation of the moral status of actions is external to the agent, they are

“externalists.” They deny that there are constraints on a ruler’s actions; the rulercan do anything necessary to promote their goals, including adopting policiesthat are unjust

The Legalists rely on a theory of human nature to justify their based politics (xing-zheng) The basic idea is that human beings have only twobasic desires or emotions: greed and fear, which is why they like rewards anddislike punishment (Book of Lord Shang 241) From this Shang Yang claims thatthe following pattern exists: if a ruler governs by punishment, people will befearful, and will not commit crimes, out of fear (Book of Lord Shang 229–30) Inother words, the best means to achieve the legalist ideal society is to rely onphysical force, as well as the threat of physical force

punishment-This is in stark contrast with the Confucian belief that the best means toachieve the Confucian ideal society is through virtue, not force Shang Yangturns the Confucian idea upside down:“Punishment produces force; force pro-duces strength; strength produces awe; awe produces virtue [Therefore], virtuecomes from punishment” (Book of Lord Shang 210) And he further concludes,

“In general, a wise ruler relies on force, not virtue, in his governing” (243) In theLegalists’ justification, they are making two bold assumptions about humannature:first, fear is the strongest moral emotion; second, people’s actions can becompletely controlled by inducing fear The Legalists also reject the Mencianidea that human beings’ innate dispositions are the only source for morality

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The debate between Confucian de-zheng (virtue politics) and Legalist xing-zheng(punishment-based politics) is one of the most important and long-standingdebates in the history of China, which arguably still has great relevance to theethical and political life in China today.

Daoist ethical theory

The two main founders of Daoism (Graham 1989: 170–235; Schwartz 1985: 186–254) are Laozi (Csikszentmih and Ivanhoe 1999) and Zhuangzi (Kjellberg andIvanhoe 1996) Unlike in the case of the Confucians, the Mohists, and the Leg-alists, it is still disputed by scholars today whether Laozi is a real historicalfigure However, it is commonly acknowledged that Zhuangzi might have been areal figure, although we are unsure of his dates (he might have lived beforeXunzi) Despite the lack of knowledge of Laozi and Zhuangzi as historicalfigures,the two texts that are attributed to them, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, havebeen immensely influential throughout Chinese history They are read not only

by the Daoists but also by the Confucians, and when Indian Buddhism wasintroduced to China, many Buddhist concepts were first translated into Daoistterms The later development of Chinese philosophy owes much to both Daoismand Buddhism, although Confucian ideas still remain the core of the philoso-phical canon

The Daoists radically disagree with everybody else’s notion of the idealsociety Laozi rejects the Legalist regime in which, as Laozi puts it,“the ruler isfeared.” However, Laozi claims that the Confucian regime, in which “the ruler isloved and praised,” is only the second best, and the best is the Daoist statewhere the ruler is “a shadowy presence to his subjects” (Daodejing Ch 17,see Lau 1964) In other words, like the Confucians, the Daoists are opposed tothe Legalists’ emphasis on punishment, but they are also opposed to the Con-fucians’ emphasis on virtues and social rules, and they ridicule the Confucians’and Legalists’ obsessive aspiration to unify China

Laozi’s justification for the Daoist ideal society and its political program ispattern-based In fact, almost every chapter of the Daodejing contains pattern-statements Laozi believes that patterns in nature are the best model for under-standing patterns in human affairs Based on his observations of patterns both

in society and in nature, Laozi rejects the Confucian idea about the necessity ofsocial rules and rituals; he thinks that the best way to bring about an idealsociety is through the power of moral exemplars, or “teaching without words”(Daodejing Chs 2, 43, 56)

Laozi’s argument against the Legalists’ punishment-based politics is also tern-based He claims that the empirical patterns actually show that fear of deathdoes not deter people from committing crimes, as the Legalist would have usbelieve: “When the people do not fear death, why frighten them with death?”