Awesome. Thanks for this intricate post that even a mere undergrad can understand and grapple with.

Lots to think about here.
You may be right that Fingarette is making an argument like your (4). But, if that is the case, I think it is an inaccurate interpretation of pre-Qin Confucianism.
To start, Mencius would very much complicate this story (Fingarette is not really referring to him). There, it seems to me, is to be found some rather explicit examples of choice (a point we have rehearsed before..).
But let’s just focus on what you have here. I do not think that the Confucian self is quite what Fingarette assumes. Yes, the self is dependent on social context for its definition – but social context is also dependent on the presence and coincidence of several selves for its definition (a chicken and egg thing: which came first self or context? Can’t really have a social context without the presence of selves…). I think it is better to frame this relationship in terms of interdependence (and that is what makes the Confucian notion of the self distinct from liberalism, which assumes a fuller individual autonomy). Given interdependence, the critical dynamic may be an internal-external one; that is, when a person enters into a social context she must engage constantly in reflection upon the external social reality she observes (who is in the room, what the social circumstances are) and her internal understanding of how to respond to that context. Discernment, in other words, requires a kind of internal moral self-consciousness (one that is, however, always embedded in and in constant interaction with social context).
I think that Kupperman is right in that Fingarette suggests that some people are so good at the internal-external negotiation that it comes naturally (like a handshake). But even for such accomplished noble-minded people, there must be hard cases when some social circumstances require a bit more internal deliberation on the question: what is the right thing to do here? Think of Shun. The story of his determination to marry without telling his parents, a seemingly unfilial act to accomplish a higher filiality, is recounted (by Mencius and not in The Analects) precisely because it is a non-self-evident outcome. Most noble-minded people (and maybe Shun is super-noble-minded) would have to think about it for a bit.
So, if you are right and Fingarette is reaching for (4), I think, then, that Fingarette is wrong.
And if we wanted to go a bit further, what about Xunzi? Seems to me that his reading of Confucius is all about moral choice – that is why we need punishments and rewards and a strict adherence to Ritual: to bend “bad human nature” toward the good, to encourage people to make the right choices…
From either a Mencian or Xunzian perspective, I think (4) fails as an interpretation of the Analects.

Mark,

Thanks. Maybe all that work on the Existentialism book helped me to get better at making complex ideas more accessible! Hopefully you are enjoying Greece — I’m teaching there in Summer of 2010, and have been following your pictures/adventures to get a better idea of what we’ll be in for, and how things work over there.

Sam,

You might be right on Mencius and Xunzi — but as you know, these folks aren’t Fingarette’s target, just Confucius.

I think you are right on the independence/interdependence distinction (I just gave a lecture on this very subject yesterday, using the social psychologist Heine’s interesting materials/empirical studies). But I think that Fingarette *is* operating with interdependence in mind. Or at least that’s what I have in mind when I’m reading him. In fact, the independence/interdependence model fits nicely over Fingarette’s discussion of guilt/shame, with the former pairs and latter pairs matching up easily.

I’m not sure about your next point, though. I do think that there is obviously a reflective component to the Analects (I think Fingarette agrees too). Part of interdependence is the capacity to discern in just the way you suggest what is “yi” (in Fingarette’s terms: “what is situated within Li given my context/situation”). But Fingarette, I think (and I think I agree with him here) would argue that this “inner” reflective dimension (if you want to call it that) should not entail the existence of *moral* self-consciousness. I think there may be different notions of “I” at work here. Surely a particular ancient Confucian made use of “wo” as a term, and was able to say “I, as opposed to that other person over there” but this “I” is different from the “I” presupposed by, say, “guilt” or by the western liberal notion of selfhood.

Also, I don’t disagree with Joel’s larger point. The ability to acquire a kind of “naturalness” (as he likes to call it) is surely a significant chunk of the aim of Confucianism. But that said, Joel seems to think that the agent needs to move *from* making choices to not making them (being more “embodied”). I just think Fingarette would say: “sure, but the agent needs to move from deliberate activity — which should not be read as *genuine* choice making — to non-deliberative activity”. A slightly different point, no?

OK, I can see how “reflection” might not be “choice” – if it is a matter of perceiving the context. But I am still hesitant to accept (4) as the best reading of Confucius. It is simply too rigid to expect that there can only be one appropriate action for any given social circumstance. There may be a range of appropriate possibilities (just as there are obviously a range of inappropriate possibilities). The noble-minded person will opt for an appropriate response, but there may still be several possibilities. Perhaps the “choice” is not between right or wrong, but between variations of right. I am thinking here of Hall and Ames’ notion of the “virtuoso,” which suggests a kind of creativity and agency in Confucian ethics (and I think we can say “ethics,” in the general sense of doing the right thing, for the pre-Qin period). To suggest their is no “choice” is to remove agency from the noble-minded….

Hi Chris & Sam,

You know I remain extremely resistent to this idea that “there are no choices” in Confucius. And, I don’t think I would buy into any of the four options as you have them stated above. My issue is this (and I will be repeating many of the always-loving responses that I left for you on my blog too):

To say that Confucius did not philosophize in terms of “psychological concepts” seems like a very wise and helpful thing to say. But to then extrapolate from this to say that there was no inner theater or that there is no choice- could be seen as inappropriate. The reason is the question itself is so firmly based in the psychological ontology that you would only get a partial answer since the question is in a big sense missing the point (a point of emphasis)

Others have made this same point far better than I ever will be able to do, but Fingarette is going through elaborate steps to present the analects in such a way as to bypass the ideas of self that are inherent to our modern, secular understanding. I don’t think, however, by trying to bypass modern understandings of self that means there is no self (no self meaning a self is conflated to a person’s action which seems to be the move you are trying to make) .

In fact, I would argue the way you have set up the question is very firmly- inherently- tangled up in that self-same concept (sorry!)

And not only do I think that Confucius is not saying “there are no choices” I don’t even think Fingarette is saying that.

The moment you make the move to emphasize the action not the actor; daily life over transcendent Belief; group over individual commitment- well, you have already made issues like you are talking about inappropriate (or not really all that helpful) I would say. And because your definitition of choice is bound up with this definition of psychological descriptions of the self, this may be why Sam just intuitively feels that saying there is no choice is too strong.

I completely agree.

Let’s take an example outside Confucian thought. I was reading an excerpt from Bill Porter’s book, Zen Baggage, about a visit he made to Shaolin temple. In it, there was a quote from the temple’s main monk in charge of martial arts. Almost a cliche, the monk is talking about how their philosophy is not knowleable in terms of books. It is only knowable in the way they live their daily life: the way they eat, sweep the garden, kick and spar- that is their meditation and philosophy.

Check this out on Shaolin

I think it proves without a doubt that all individuals have an inner life.

So, then to ask- so there are no choices that could affect Self is in some sense to miss something.

because there is always a valid choice and even in the creative expression of that choice there are a myriad small choices. And that these choices affect Self is to my mind not necessarily knoweable. All we can know is what is valued highly or emphasized in that cultural understanding. So, what kinds of choices were emphasized as good or bad? And then figuring that out we can then understand where the idea of sincerity/authenticity comes in (?)

**
This goes for the lack of inner theater too. The phrase itself is so a part of the psychological understanding that when we go try and apply it to Confucius or Dido or Odysseus, it is a real slippery slope, I think.

It is also very bound up in the Judeo-Christian idea of history (choice=exodus=history=moving forward)

Really if you aren’t careful it comes to seem that a self in any pre-Cartesian worldview is 100% conflated with their actions- for that would be the only real way to make this move that no choices exist or moral conscience, right?

But do you really want to make that move? And how could one ever prove it?

And then why do we have notions which seek to (at least partially) subjectively reconcile subjective inner world with social context ?????, ?etc.

Group-oriented existentialism?

**
Yes,
A Moment of Zen

Sam,

I think Fingarette and Hall and Ames occupy pretty distinct “poles” within Confucian scholarship! A bit like oil and vinegar in some ways, it seems to me.

In any case, though, if you noticed, I did try to draw a distinction between two cases:

1. There is only one appropriate option *within* Way.
2. There is only one appropriate option when faced with “the Way and the Ditch.”

I noted that I am not sold on the case for (1): that there is but one path of Yi that can be associated with “Way”. I think Fingarette does want to make this case, but I put it off because there’s a more clear cut case available, which is #2. If Fingarette can’t make the case for #2, then #1 is out of the question. So I want to say (to you): “maybe #1 is false”. But I’m not sold either way. At the moment I’m unconvinced by arguments either way.

But I think that Fingarette *does* have a solid (or at least a substantially more solid) case for #2. And if so, then he has his foot in the door. If the “option” between “the Way” and “the Ditch” is not *genuine* such that the agent is not really making *a choice* (in the sense that Fingarette is concerned with), then his argument for #1 will at least have a launching pad (so to speak).

As I argued above, I think he has the launching pad, at least from within the Analects. Whether he can “fire the rocket” from the pad (of #2) to the more radical conclusion of (#1), that’s another story.

That said, I’ve read Hall and Ames’ book a few times, and the more I read it, the more I am not convinced that “aesthetic harmony” or “creativity” in the sense that they discuss requires a robust “choice model” of the type that I think you want. So I’m not opposed, at some level, to seeing Fingarette’s point about non-choice and Ames’ argument about creativity as consistent. Of course, at other levels they are not compatible at all.

Peony,

Interesting reply! There’s a lot there, let me try to chew off some parts.

First, in terms of the “inner theater”: Fingarette is famous for denying the “interiorization” of the Confucian agent. I don’t know, at this point, what precisely to make of all that, or how far to push it. I think it is clear (to me) that Confucians reflected. That they had ideas. That they recognized “I am thinking of an apple right now that you can’t see” and that sort of thing. I would be very surprised if these more basic notions of self did not exist for them.

What I think — my view anyway — is that Fingarette is not after this. He’s after a different notion of “self”. Perhaps the notion of self that one might think of as one’s “personal identity” in a way as opposed to a notion of self that refers merely to psychological mechanisms (such as deliberation, or thinking, or imagining, or whatever). Another way to put it might be this: perhaps Confucians believed that the agent *wills* this or that. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the agent *as a particular identity* wills this or that.

Perhaps, when we are talking in terms of “guilt” we are talking about a way of conflating “will” with “personal identity”. So in a particular case, it’s not just that “this or that was willed by that entity over there” but rather that “Chris willed it”. In that sense, you would say that “Chris” is fully formed and present at the moment of willing. So when Chris does wrong, Chris is a transgressor; Chris’ self is wicked in some way. The “personal identity” of the willing agent needs cleansing.

Perhaps “shame” works differently. Here, “personal identity” and “will” come apart. An entity can will something wrong (or inappropriate), but when this happens, it signals not a sick or wicked self, it signals a missing self (one that is incomplete, one that has “lost face” or whatever). This would make more sense if personal identity (as opposed to willing) is a social phenomenon (as Sam notes above in his first reply). If my *personal identity* is something that is *completed* (for the moment) within Li-governed interactions, when a miscue or a misstep in that performance would signal that my personal identity (not my will) is not fully present. As such: retribution (associated with guilt) is improper; instead, what is needed is *re-education* (as Fingarette notes).

Fingarette often seems to associate this re-education with knowledge, not choice. So he says that in the case of a misdeed, it’s not that the agent choose wrongly, it’s that the agent did not discriminate properly. And that’s what re-education seeks to do: to help the agent to better discriminate, to get a better sense of *who* he/she is in specific Li-governed situations. In future, hopefully, the agent will learn to discriminate without even needing to overly reflect on it (and here there is a reference to more specific psychological mechanisms). But that’s a different point in my reading, not the central one (that’s more Joel’s reading of Fingarette, but I think he’s wrong there).

Hopefully some of that made some sense!

Hi Chris,

I ran into a huge problem with Fingarette’s chapter 3. I am going to respond to that and your comment above in a post at my place as soon as I get a chance– maybe tomorrow or the next day. I hope to try and make sense of it my own way and maybe even persuade you too to come around to my way of thinking

To say that “yu” （憂）is the opposite of “jen” is problematic (to say the least) and then to use that as the foundation for your argument is well… let’s just say the whole thing makes me feel very very “yu”

Chris,

This is a very thoughtful explication and interpretation of Fingarette’s ideas.

Just a few thoughts (I haven’t taken the time to read Fingarette’s book afresh, which I certainly need to do):

I think both Fingarette and Kupperman would want to avoid talk of discrete “moral situations,” indeed, that is one of their most fundamental critiques of Western ethical theory as it developed in the modern period: that “the moral” is somehow incarnate in particular situations involving moments of (deliberative) choice. Of course for descriptive and illustrative purposes we may speak of “situations,” but it seems important to somehow communicate the proposition that the moral life in a Confucian sense is not confined to “situations.”

Re: “*within* the Way there is but one possible performance in a given situation” and that “for Fingarette, the Confucian notion of selfhood is event-oriented, not substance-oriented (I’ll treat the latter claim first):”

Here I think Fingarette’s essay, “The Problem of the Self in the Analects,” Philosophy East and West 29, No. 2 (April 1979) (reprinted in The Moral Circle and the Self, 2003, edited by Chong, Tan and Ten), is of some help. There Fingarette clarifies the extent to which he believed Confucius relied on a concept of personal will, hence,

“when in comes to control over activating the will, regulating its intensity and persistence, and selecting its direction, everything depends upon the *use* of powers uniquely and distinctively controlled by the self. [....] Another way…to express this is by saying that…our will is inherently a *personal* will. In saying this I mean that in these respects the concept of a particular will makes a necessary reference to a particular person. [....] What is *personal* to me, then, in the sense at issue, is what makes essential reference to me as the unique individual that I am. [....] [Confucius] is insisting that to the respect in which the will is inherently personal it is for us to affirm that will, to exercise it, assert it–and in so doing, of course, to affirm, to assert our self as individual, as unique.”

This goes against the idea that for Fingarette at any rate (and contra Hall and Ames), he Confucian notion of selfhood is “event-oriented…” Indeed, that would would be true of Hall and Ames’ interpretation but is not, I think, correctly attributed to Fingarette.

So, the question is to how to square this with submission to or realization of “the Way.” Fingarette now speaks of a “ground” of willing that is distinguishable from the aforementioned dimensions of personal will that “need not be personal.” Thus,

“It is true that I and only I can will *my* will but it may be that *what* I will is called for by the li, or by jen…or–to put it most generally–by the dao, and that my reason for willing is precisely that this *is* what the dao calls for. [....] So, while the will that I direct to the dao is personal regarding its initial locus of energy, control over the arousal, intensity, direction and persistence, when it comes to the ground on which I choose and justify the direction of my will, and on which I elect to maintain that will vigorously and wholeheartedly, that ground–the dao–is in no way one that has reference to me personally.”

Now, as to the question of “one possible performance,” here Confucius comes close to Hall and Ames in a way I suspect they failed to acknowledge or appreciate in their endeavor to provide a plausible and coherent alternative to Fingarette’s approach to Confucius.

Fingarette believes Confucius gave expression to a notion of unique individuality and character (or ‘personality’ in an expansive and deeper sense than usual):

“Consider a fine violinist’s presentation of the Bach Chaconne, or consider Zhi, the Chief Musician, and his performance of the ‘Ospreys.’ Plainly what governs–especially when this is an artistic performance and not an excuse for mere showmanship–is the musical conception brought forth by Bach, the poetic-musical conception of the ‘Ospreys.’ It is this musical concept, corresponding to the dao, that transcends individual will, and that constitutes the ground of the will for each ideal performer. The essential conception is *encoded* in the musical score, or in the Book of Songs; but the musical concept itself is embodied, actualized, in the developing structure of sound, or word-in-sound, through time. Ideally, the performer’s willed conduct is the medium *through* which the musical concept get embodied, becomes actual.

Yet we know that there are legitimate personal aspects of the musical performance, aspects that are irreducible and valuable. Without the wholehearted and and unwaveringly diligent will to follow through properly, there is *no* performance, or it simply breaks down. Beyond this, the personal dimension of style, temperament, and interpretation shine in and through the embodied Chaconne. Zhi’s performance is singled out by Confucius for its special brilliance. Yet, although style and interpretation may be unique to the performance, that is, personal, it remains basic that the true artist’s style *serves* the work; the personal interpretation is a genuine interpretation *of* the work. Style and interpretation must not dominate, obscure, or distort the concept of the Chaconne or the ‘Ospreys.’ Confucius remarks that though the musicians in ancient times were given a certain liberty, the tone remained harmonious, brilliant, consistent, right to the end.

Unique personality has a role because, no more than any concept, even that of the dao–the musical concept cannot resolve unambiguously *every* aspect of the concrete reality to be actualized.”

I’m now reading through chapter 2, hence:

I might have said that the above reveals a notion of “choice” within the Way (recall the section where he says we can use the notion of the Confucian ‘task’ to cover the relevant notion of choice within Confucianism: i.e., the task of objectively classifying the prima facie alternative paths within the order of li, of discovering which is the true Path…), but Fingarette’s focus in the chapter under discussion is on the idea of choosing between “equally valid [moral] alternatives.” This would seem to suggest Fingarette had in mind something along the lines of the notion that we sometimes need to make choices, say, between liberty and equality, whereas for Confucius and the Way, there would be (were these the relevant moral principles), no necessary or inherent conflict between these (perhaps there are ‘tradeoffs’ of sorts, but these would be conceptualized or rationalized through the Way), were we to genuinely instantiate the Way. Similarly, there is no Sartrian-like conflict (or ‘tragic choice’) between answering the call of conscription or taking care of one’s ill mother (if I’ve correctly recalled the example he uses): the Confucian would know the right thing to do *if* she is embodying the Way. And the fact that “the moral” is virtually co-extensive with daily living, with the life in the daily round, further renders inappropriate the idea in Western ethics of genuine moral choice (of the two sorts mentioned above): with li as a necessary but not sufficient condition of jen (‘presuming one has mastered the skills of proper ceremonial action’), “either one does or does not conduct oneself toward others ‘as though in the presence of an important guest,’ as though ‘officiating at an important sacrifice,’ in short as though others have the same fundamental dignity as oneself.”

I apologize if this contributes nothing substantial to the discussion and is merely a use of this forum for “thinking aloud,” but….

Patrick and Chris,
I wonder how each of you, working through Fingarette, might interpret Analects 15.29: “The Master said: ‘People can make the Way great and vast. But the Way isn’t what makes people great and vast.”
子曰：“人能弘道，非道弘人.”
To me, this suggests a certain human agency; and it is hard to conceive of agency without some notion, significant notion of choice….

Sam,

There’s choice aplenty (and a notion of personhood and thus a certain kind of ‘human agency’) in Confucianism but Fingarette is specifically arguing against a particular kind of moral choice in the Western ethical tradition which I think may be lost in our discussion if it is not made clear. Human agency is indeed developed or cultivated in the process of acquiring the requisite moral sense in light of the Way. Moral self-cultivation is a process exemplifying moral agency which involves, for instance, acquiring “sophisiticated powers of discrimination,” the refinement of “initial impulses toward sympathetic understanding,” “like the jade cutter who cuts and files, chisels and polishes, the precious material” (Nylan). Fingarette is not arguing against the notion of choice simpliciter insofar as that makes for human agency. The path of self-cultivation would appear to involve any number of choices and decisions with ethical resonance or implications but they are not on the order of “moral choice” as canonically found in the ethical literature in the West (no doubt there are exceptions, in the virtue ethical tradition, perhaps in the ‘moral sense’ school of the Scottish philosophers of the Enlightenment, etc.). Insofar as Confucius provides us with a developmental or perfectionist (or ‘perfectibilist’) ethic, there are choices to be made, but they lack the character of deliberative choice or (ex ante) practical reasoning, or character of some decision procedure, in addition to the model of moral choice that appears common to both utilitarian and deontological ethics. The relevant choices are “within” the Way (cf. Michael Nylan’s discussion of how the Odes are learned and recited in The Five ‘Confucian’ Classics, 2001) and of course the original choice is made in favor of the Way itself:

“One can be truly following the Way at whatever the level of one’s personal development and skill in the Way, whatever the level of one’s learning–for a wholehearted commitment to learning the Way is itself the Way for those who are not yet perfected in the Way. However, although the learner may be following the Way for the learner, he cannot rest; for his burden is heavy for he is the apprentice, not yet the Master, the jen man, the man perfected in li, the truly noble man.”

Thus human agency in the conventional sense is wholly appropriate for the apprentice (the vast majoirty of us), although it perhaps fails to capture the sense in which the Master has given himself wholly over to spontaneously and naturally (in the sense of ‘second nature’ used by Kupperman) realizing the Way through his unique self or individuated personhood.

I think my first comment above was a nice illustration of precisely how people “can make the Way great and vast” for, after all, in a very basic sense, our understanding of the Way depends on its concrete instantiation (through li, etc.) by unique individuals, a point made several times by Fingarette and a prominent theme in the work of Hall and Ames (again, I think they failed to appreciate how this is found in Fingaretter as well). Human agency is central to proper performance of li (think of how jen and the individual are necessary here in a way that would again appear to exemplify human agency and a ‘significan notion of choice,’ albeit not the kind of ‘ethical choice’ Fingarette argues is absent in the theory of Confucius), which is intrinsic to “mak[ing] the Way great and vast.” In the context of music and the rites, as Nylan explains, choices are part and parcel of how one finds the proper or harmonious balance between one’s unique individuality “and the equally pressing need to uphold larger societal concerns” (Nylan).

I hope this speaks to your concerns.

Please pardon all the typos above as I typed this rather quickly….

Patrick,
Thank you. Your comments are quite helpful to me.

Hi Chris and Patrick:

Chris, I attempted to respond to this issue of choice and self. I hope I made some sense of it. Patrick, I wanted to add your response to my post and included the quote on Bach above but unfortunately wasn’t sure where that quote came from– is it from the same book?

Anyway, this is just one shot. I love the book– and yet I do think Fingarette took a wrong– or at the very least ambiguous– turn in his presentation of the “personal.”

Like Sam, I also really appreciated your comments Patricks. They were very helpful to me too.

Peony,

The quote on Bach was from Fingarette’s essay, “The Problem of the Self in the Analects,” Philosophy East and West 29, No. 2 (April 1979), reprinted in the book, The Moral Circle and the Self (2003), edited by Chong, Tan and Ten. Fingarette says something close to this in the second chapter, but I think it’s better formulated in the above article.

I’m glad to learn the comments were of some help as I was quite reluctant to comment at all, believing I had little or nothing to add to the discussion.

Peony,

BTW & FWIW, I do hope to read your posts soon.

Patrick,

BTW & FWIW, I look forward to that and for chatting with you someday more.

I look forward to that. It just so happens that, apart from obligations and overdue work projects, I’m caught up in a very different sort of discussion at the Legal Ethics Forum (if perchance anyone is interested in such things): http://www.legalethicsforum.com/blog/2009/03/sanctions-for-former-olc-lawyers.html#comments

Patrick — thanks for showing up to the conversation! Great comments!

I wish this flurry had occurred yesterday, when I wasn’t in between visiting this and that PRC governmental agency to cut red tape. I’ll try to Patrick’s addition as soon as possible.

Quickly, though, I’m fairly sure that Patrick and I are in disagreement on some central issues, so I want to clarify where and why later on. After reading very quickly through, my guess is that we will wind up disagreeing about the role of “agency” in Confucius and the role it plays in “choices”. Even though we both agree that Joel’s thesis of “naturalness” (spontaneity) is of central importance in Confucianism, we part on its relevance to the “choice” question in Fingarette, and I’m interested to see how that disagreement pans out. I also think we disagree about the event-substance business with respect to selfhood. That said, I think we agree about some things and that too is not as clear as it should be. In any case, I’ll need more time to reread what Patrick said, and the text he is citing, so I’ll hold off until I have time to do it justice.

I can respond to Sam more quickly: I don’t have an argument for this as of yet, but I wonder why we need to think that “choice” is required for “creativity” in the sense that I think you are implying. Human beings broadening the Way (as opposed to the Way broadening man) does not seem, to me anyway, to require any notion of robust choice between equally valid (“genuine” in Fingarette’s terms) alternatives. It may be that those genuine alternatives exist (as I said, I’m not sure which way to go on that issue) but even if they did, it’s unclear to me why they need to for “creativity.”

In fact, my intuition is that this model is particularly “Western”. It seems to me that if an agent performs a li-governed task in a way that adds his/her own distinctiveness to the distinctiveness of this-or-that “related other” (whatever the situation might be, mother-son, etc) in a way that exemplifies harmony, then a moment of creativity has transpired. This moment need not incorporate “choice” in the robust sense. It seems to require that differences have been made harmonious (perhaps in a way that has not yet been given that particular form), as opposed to “sameness” exemplified. Why the former emphasis on harmonizing differences requires “choosing” is not clear to me. Perhaps it does require it — but I don’t see why.

Patrick,

Here’s a late-night attempt at some thinking though all of your various helpful suggestions and points. I’ll number the responses, but this is more for me (so I can keep track).

1. I agree on Joel and Fingarette regarding morality. I think I tried to make that clear above, but perhaps we are not in agreement on it? My suggestion about was that using the term “morality” would likely be problematic in the text. Instead, I suggested that we just use “li-governed interaction” as the realm over which Fingarette seems interested.

2. On “event-substance”. My thinking here on Fingarette is rudimentary, and is mostly due to hunches here and there. Still – and confining myself to the book – the treatment strikes me as ‘event’ oriented in some ways similar to the ways that H&A use the term in their own work. What I mean is this: H&A seem to suggest that whether a person’s self is actualized in a given moment is reliant upon whether they “appropriate” a given Li-governed interaction in the right way. You know the particulars here, so I won’t belabor that point. What’s important is just the main idea: that “selves” in the sense in which they are understood to be “relational” and not “atomic” are seen by H&A (on my reading) as events. I may, given by way of interacting in this situation, actualize who I am; in another situation, I may not, and fail to do so. I’m contrasting this to the view where one’s “self” survives throughout, and so would be seen as a substance of some sort. In the book, I think Fingarette’s treatment seems more H&A oriented. It seems to me that he has a similar idea (well, it would be his first): that selves are constructed, not given. Now in the article (1979), I agree that he talks about a substance-oriented notion of zhi (one’s personal will). I do not doubt that this notion is consistent with the claims that I think Fingarette is making in the book. There’s no need to dismiss a substance-related concept of will when trying to underwrite the other claim that relational selves – which I take to be the significant understanding of “self” in the Analects – are events. I may be wrong here, but that’s my reading. Obviously, as you noted yourself, there are a lot of notions of “self’ running around here, and we need to clarify which ones are which!

3. On the question of submission to the Way: again, I think Fingarette’s claim in the article is still consistent with the claim that there are no choices. I tried above to argue that I did not think Fingarette was saying that people don’t engage in deliberations, or will things. That’s not his object. Instead, the question is whether willing in a particular instance is choosing in the particular sense that Fingarette has in mind in the chapter (2) of the book. So even if it is “my” will that wills “what is not my will (the Tao)” this doesn’t entail that the agent has made a choice regarding the content of “his/her will” in the sense that I think Fingarette means.

4. I like Fingarette’s view of the violinist a great deal! It’s a fine example to use. But here again, what I see here is Fingarette arguing (persuasively) that a true Li-performance adds the distinctiveness of the agent performing the “piece” (ritual). This would mean, as you note, that “Fingarette believes Confucius gave expression to a notion of unique individuality and character”. I totally agree. But, that said, I don’t see where this requires that there be more than one possible performance available to the agent at the time (that is in accord with the Way). I’d like to be persuaded on this point, but I don’t see it yet. Why does a required creativity on the part of the Li-performer requires numerous options? Creativity (as I was noting to Sam above) can simply mean the fact that the agent has added his/her own distinctiveness to the performance. And that might be consistent with there being only one such performance available for that agent. So basically here I’m very open to the need (in Fingarette) for the need for the addition of unique personality (it squares with my own reading of Confucius too). I’m just not sold on this entailing “multiple paths through Tao for agent in that situation” nor on the suggestion that it entails that agent must in fact make robust “choices”.

5. I take Fingarette to be suggesting, when he says that the task is to discriminate how a number of prima facie alternatives are locatable “within the order of li”, that some of the those alternatives are not locatable, and that some are only partially locatable. The task is to find the one that fits best. On my reading, this is consistent with saying that there is but one such alternative, whether we find it or not. The other paths are not “genuine” alternatives, but mere “prima facie” alternatives.

6. I’m curious: what precisely do you mean when you say that: “Fingarette is not arguing against the notion of choice simpliciter insofar as that makes for human agency”? This seems like an important point between us, so I want to make sure I get your meaning.

7. I agree, by the way, that Joel’s insistence on the need for non-deliberative performances at the level of the moral junzi or sage is correct. I tried to stress that above. And that to get to this point, the agent needs to make a lot of “choices” (in the loose sense). For example, the Olympian gymnast must make a lot of deliberative choices in order to practice the routines that, hopefully, will one day become second-nature or “natural” as Joel puts it. My point is somewhat different. As the agent moves along that path of “filing and pruning” alternatives will open up for the agent: “should I choose A? or B?” “A” might be “the Way” whereas “B” is “the Ditch”. In such cases, where “B” leads one astray away from the path towards unreflective spontaneity in accord with Li, one cannot be thought of as “making a choice” in the sense that one could say “such a self must be sick, or must be impure; it must cleanse itself”. Instead, such a self, as Fingarette suggests, needs to be re-educated. Partly I take Fingarette’s claim here to be: such an agent did not have a choice in the first place (not in the robust way). As a result, there is no “self” to be cleansed. Instead, there is a broken-down self that needs to be repaired (via re-education). And that, when the system works effectively, sounds like shame.

8. I agree that “commitment” is essential and that, as Fingarette points out: “One can be truly following the Way at whatever the level of one’s personal development and skill in the Way, whatever the level of one’s learning–for a wholehearted commitment to learning the Way is itself the Way for those who are not yet perfected in the Way.” But this commitment itself is yet another alternative, next to “do nothing” or “sit on your butt all day like Zaiwo”. Commitment is “the Way” whereas the others are “the Ditch”. If you follow “the Way” then your “self” is actualized then and there; the next task is to keep it up (as opposed to the typical “fits and starts” of ren for most people). Again, though, a failure to commit is a moment of shame, not guilt, and I take it that this is because none of those options are “choices” (robustly). One leads to human selfhood, the others do not.

It’s late here, and I think I was getting tired towards the end there (the last few numbers anyway). So I’m guessing that some of that might not be clear (I sensed myself drifting into the ether of sleep)! In any case, just let me know if that’s true and I’ll try to clarify some of those points, some of which were at the heart of the discussion. Thanks again for the comments, by the way – very helpful to the conversation!

Chris,

By way of a preface and so as to diminish any unrealistic expectations, I want to make clear my lack of formal training in Chinese philosophy in general and Confucianism in particular (when I was a TA for Fingarette my training was in Indic religions and Islam), so I’ll happily defer to your expertise or plead ignorance on many fronts. Still, my avocational interest in the topic leaves me with strong impressions and intuitions, even if perhaps the requisite evidence or compelling argument is unknown or lacking. That said…with regard to

1. That’s fine, perhaps I did not read carefully enough. I’m nonetheless comfortable using the term morality here although admittedly there are more than a few connotations that are inappropriate (and I’m not drawn to any of the alternatives).
2. This is an enormously complicated topic presumably requiring acquaintance with the literature on personal identity. I’m not convinced by Hall and Ames’ construal of “self” in Confucianism as I think it’s too beholden to their endeavor to distance the tradition from what they take to be canonical positions in Western metaphysics, etc. I don’t like the “event” conception insofar as it seems uncomfortably and inaccurately similar to Buddhist notions of personal identity and not close enough to conventional and philosophical understandings of human beings in Chinese civilization in general (at least inasmuch as I understand them). At the same time, I’m not fond of the “substance” designation and am unclear as to precisely what that in fact means in this case. Fingarette discusses various Chinese terms for “self” (and willing) in Confucianism in the aforementioned essay (‘The Problem of the Self…’!). I don’t think the Confucian understanding of self is captured solely in terms of “relations” as several of the terms (in this case, ji) reference the notion of oneself as a subject and as an agent, among other things, and involves a degree of reflexivity (the person as, in Finagrette’s words, ‘self-observing’ and ‘self-regulating’) not central to the relational conception. So too with shen (‘body’), which “seems to embody a reference to the self more as an objective phenomenon than as a subject, yet also involving a capacity for self-observation. In short, we agree on the need for clarification but disagree on the “relational” conception, which is, by my dim lights, more an artifact of a polemic against “atomistic” conceptions of self, which are in fact quite rare (indeed, I think the atomistic conception is often a virtual strawman…psychological pathologies like narcissism or solipsism are, however, all too real) even in Liberalism! Your particular description of a relational self here strikes me as more persuasive than what I recall from Hall and Ames and I have no real trouble with it.
3. Provided we stick close to what Fingarette wrote about “ethical choice,” I think we’re in agreement on this point, although, as I said, I still think there is room for choice of a kind and even a kind of “autonomy” in the sense described by Fingarette and others, like Kim-chong Chong.
4. Again, we’re probably closer than apart here, although, and again I think we can make sense of possible choices of a sort, which could be evident, say, in a course of several consecutive performances which evidence differences within the constraints, the differences being different on each occasion. In any case, we’re both more or less content if not fond of the example which, I think, hits all the rite notes (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
5. Nothing to say here.
6. I tried to give examples above of the rather dramatic ethical choice I believe Fingarette had in mind, which is of a different order or type than the myriad or more modest (but not inconsequential) choices one makes in the daily round on the path of self-cultivation that are constitutive of human agency in the broadest sense (and you broach the subject in 7). To elaborate or explain further would require me thinking a bit more and reading a bit more than I can at the moment, so however unsatisfactory, this will have to suffice from my end.

Perhaps I’m getting tired but there’s nothing in 7. or 8. I want to quibble or argue with, at least for now (!). I’m convinced you’ve thought through these things far more than I have and I’ve not made up my mind in several respects (even if, when writing, I take cover with rhetorical confidence!).

Thanks for all the food for thought. I look forward to reading more from you and others.

After reading a response to Ames by Fingarette in Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility: Essays Dedicated to Herbert Fingarette (1991), edited by his former student Mary Bockover, I now would re-write my response in 2. to in a way that reflects more clearly my own interpretation of Confucius which, in the end, does appear to differ from Fingarette’s. Cf. for instance the following, which Peony, I think rightly, has problems with (but perhaps for different reasons: Peony believes, if I understand his recent post correctly, that Fingarette got Confucius wrong on this score, I’m not sure about that, although I hope he did, but if he did not, then I would have problems with the Confucian conception of ‘self’):

“We ought to speak of a person as acting, but not suggesting by ‘person’ this notion of an Actor who somehow embraces inwardly a moral or psychic core which is then expressed in action. On the contrary, the fundamental moral-human reality is (as Ames and I agree), the social nexus, and persons along with many other things receive their specific, humanly relevant nature, as well as their humanly relevant location, by reference to and as a result of the communal life-forms.”

On this conception, as Fingarette proceeds to explain, the “person” is an abstraction while “social reality” is “the concrete reality.” Reading this brings out the Stoic and Kantian in me (or even the Jew, the Christian, the Muslim…). This does seem dangerously close if not identical to a species of behaviorism. I know Fingarette was put off (to put it mildly) by images of society or social cooperation as derived from a social contract (Hobbesian-like) model of self-centered individuals in a “state of nature” discovering it is in their self-interest to engage in some form of cooperation. Now perhaps he took this hypothetical model too seriously but it is certainly possible to have a conception of personhood and fundamental moral identity intrinsic to that concept which at the same time stresses the importance of social relations and community in the development of an individual without dissolving the individual’s identity in social relations (a self-transcendence or denial of the ego of sorts but not the sort of transcendence I think we should pursue!). Fingarette’s conception would, in the end, make mincemeat of, for instance, the meaning of intrinsic dignity and self-worth has it has developed in the West and which happens to be the basic presupposition or axiomatic core of human rights doctrine (don’t get me wrong, I believe any number of non-Western worldviews, perhaps even the Confucian, can begin with their own unique axiomatic principles and reason to an endorsement or justification of human rights principles). As I understand Fingarette, his notion of “the self” is perfectly compatible with recent work in “communitarian” philosophy (e.g., Sandel, MacIntyre, Bellah…). Unlike Fingarette, I believe, with the late David L. Norton, “that the route to the just and good society lies in the cultivation and the perfection of individuality, not in its suppression or extinction.” There are of course any number of “individualisms,” but communitarianism is, by definition, anti-individualist, as is Fingarette’s interpretation of Confucius on this score. Norton, for example, writes of a “eudaimonistic” (inspired by classical Greek philosophy) individualism in which the “right community and tradition are *necessary* to individuality,” and in which individual self-actualization is inherently social. I think this is perhaps closer to what Confucius had in mind but what Fingarette fails to appreciate. Norton explains:

“[E]udaimonism recognizes persons as inherently social beings from the beginning of their lives to the end but contends that the appropriate form of association undergoes transformation. As dependent beings, persons in the beginning of their lives are social products, receiving not merely material necessities but their very identities from the adult community. The principle of association is the essential uniformity of associates, usually expressed in terms of basic needs. Subsequent moral development leads to self-identification and autonomous, self-directed living, but is associative as an interdependence based in a division of labor with respect to realization of values. The self-fulfilling life of each person requires more values than he or she personally realizes and and dependent upon others for these values. The principle of this form of association is the complementarity of perfected differences. Accordingly, the meaning of ‘autonomy,’ if the term is to be applicable, must be consistent with interdependence. …[I]t means, not total self-sufficiency, but determining for oneself what one’s contributions to others should be and what use to make of the values provided by the self-fulfilling lives of others. To follow the lead of another person in a matter he or she understands better than we is not a lapse from autonomy into heteronomy but a mark of wisdom. [....]

…[E]udaimonism is not ethical subjectivism. It is true that it exhibits great concern for the subject–the self of each person–for example, by insisting upon the importance of self-knowledge and self-development. But the self is here conceived as a task [something Fingarette appreciates], a piece of work, namely the work of self-actualization [something Fingarette rejects]. And self-actualization is the progressive objectivizing of subjectivity, ex-pressing it into the world. [....] For eudaimonistic individualism, it is the responsibility of persons to actualize objective value in the world. [....]

Accordingly for every person there is a ‘natural community’ comprising those others who recognize, appreciate, and can utilize his or her worth in their own welf-actualizing enterprises. The obligation of the individual to relate to this community is identical with with the inherent moral obligation of self-actualization; her choice of herself is her choice of this community [communitarians would deny the fundamental significance of this 'choice' here, preferring instead to bind us to the communities and traditions of our birth or within which we were socialized in the first instance]; and the choice(s) must be true commitment(s) if it (they) is to fulfill her inherent moral obligation. [....]

Eudaimonistically conceived, there is in the same way a ‘natural tradition’ for every person and also a ‘natural meta-tradition.’ The self-directed life of any given person is necessarily a life of a particular kind. Such a person has predecessors in the general enterprise of self-directed living, and predecessors also in the particular chosen course of life [both of which can be appreciated by Confucians]. The former comprise his meta-tradition, and the latter his tradition. Therefore to ‘choose oneself’ is inevitably to choose one’s meta-tradition and one’s tradition, and the moral imperatives to self-actualization and to identification with one’s traditions are identical–they are the same thing viewed in different and complementary ways. Moreover the imperative to self-awarely recover and avail oneself of one’s natural traditions are evident, for to grow and ultimately to excel in one’s chosen course demands the acquisition of skills, tools, resources, and virtues that traditions gather, conserve, improve, and bequeath. This is equally the case with the tradition and the meta-tradition.”

Pardon the abundant quoted material, but I think it highlights what I think Fingarette fails to appreciate and may, in the main, be closer to the spirit if not letter of what Confucius was up to in the Analects. It is in fact an attempt to show the complementary nature of something on the order of a Thomistic conception of the common good with a Kantian-like stress on the fundamental importance of moral autonomy. Like the communitarians, Fingarette seems to conceive of the self that in the beginning is a sociopolitical product and in fact will remain just that in the end: again, he speaks of the “person” as an abstraction while according “concrete reality” to “social reality”! This troubles Peony and, on further reflection, me too. We are not social products wholly without remainder, however cooperative or “virtuous” such end-products may be. Thus, with Norton, and perhaps with Confucius as well, what is fundamental is the appreciation of the fact that “the strength of community and tradition are dependent upon the strength of character in individuals as individuals,” and thus communities and traditions exist to serve individuals, not the other way around, the latter appearing to be how communitarians and Fingarette (Hall and Ames?) would have it. Alas, Fingarette says in the Bockover volume, “I now suspect that we distort Confucius’s thought at the outset by imputing to him any concept of ‘the self’ at all.”

I believe (as Peony does) that Fingarette gets Confucius wrong in this regard…or at least I hope he did.

I don’t know if Peony is a he or a she so I trust I’ll be forgiven for using “he” in the default mode.

Patrick,

First off – no need to even disclaim yourself here! I’ve always been very, very impressed with your knowledge of the secondary literature in the field and by your patient and thoughtful analysis. I remember reading your comments at Manyul’s site a long time ago and always learned quite a lot from them. Second, you might be right and I might be wrong here. Mostly I seem to end up wrong, so what the hell! So go right ahead and pursue your intuitions here!

That said, I’m rushed as hell lately. You would think that being on sabbatical would mean free time at every turn, but not so (well, being in Beijing complicates things). So below I’m listing a bunch of quotes that I think support my overall way of interpreting chapter 2. It’s going to be light on comment, heavy on quotes, just for the sake of time, unfortunately. Also, I see your comments to Peony above, I haven’t had a chance to read them yet:

1. “To be specific, Confucius does not elaborate the language of choice and responsibility as these are intimately intertwined with the idea of the ontologically ultimate power of the individual to select from genuine alternatives to create his own spiritual destiny…” (18)

Here, I emphasize the notion of an “ontologically ultimate power”. Sounds to me like he’s saying that the person has the power to determine, at any given moment, which path to take. That said, the person’s identity itself (the individual) can survive these different paths or choices. As a result, the self choosing would be responsible for whatever path is actually chosen. But Fingarette denies this; seemingly, he’s denying both ideas: (a) different “genuine alternatives” and (b) the “ontologically ultimate power”.

2. “It is easy…to develop this path-imagery to bring in the notions of choice, decision, responsibility. We should need only to introduce the derivative image of the crossroads, an obvious elaboration of the Tao imagery to us. Yet this image…is never used in the Analects”

And

3. “That is, the only alternative to the one Order is disorder, chaos.” (20)

The “way” doesn’t have multiple “genuine” alternatives. There are no “forking paths” in the Tao.

4. “There is no ‘genuine’ option: either one follow the Way, or one fails. To take any other route than the Way is not an genuine road but a failure through weakness to follow the route. Neither the doctrine nor the imagery allows for choice, if we mean by choice a selection, by virtue of the agent’s powers, of one out of several equally real options.” (21)

and

5. “Any task that is as conceivable as that of choosing can also be formulated instead in terms of the Confucian task. This is the task of objectively classifying the prima facie alternative paths within the order of Li, of discovering which is the true path and of detecting which is only an apparent path.”

Lots in there, but highlight the “not a genuine road” and “several equally real options”. Fingarette keeps highlighting the prima facie reality of multiple paths. Really there is just one.

On the notion of an “independent” an “Atomic” self that makes choices, Fingarette seems to deny this explicitly:

6. “It is not, as in guilt, a matter of an inward state, of repugnance at inner corruption, of self-denigration, of the sense that one is as a person and independently of one’s public status and repute, mean or reprehensible.” (30)

To me, this says: responsibility for the deed does not attach to a “pre-public self”. Instead, deeds are public and are attachable to relational-type selves. Which is more applicable to “shame” than “guilt.” Here again, right after:

7. “The Confucian concept of shame is a genuinely moral concept, but it is oriented to morality as centering in Li, traditionally ceremonially defined social comportment, rather than to an inner core of one’s being”, “the self”. (30)

I read this: “choice” language rests on the notion of the “inner core” concept of selfhood. There is no such conception in Confucianism; thus, no choices. Only “Li-self” or “public self” which requires a different language (the “no crossroads” talk with respect to Tao).

So “who” is responsible for the choice, if not the “choosing self”? Fingarette:

8. “The proper response to a failure to conform to the moral order (li) is not self-condemnation for a free and responsible, though evil, choice, but self-reeducation to overcome a defect, a lack of power, in short a lack in one’s “formation”

I read “formation” here as “self-formation” or “the task of being who I am” (in a given situation, relationally). Mistakes thus point to mis-formed selves, and shame – not already formed selves making evil choices. Thus, re-education is the right path; one should help to prod that mis-formed self to gain the powers (discriminatory ability) to be “what it is” (relationally).

Some loose ends – I missed a few. Like this one on “alternatives”:

9. “Instead, one may suppose that the notion of equally valid alternatives is not implied, that there is presumed to be only one right thing to do, and that the question then means in effect, ‘What about this, is it right, is it the Way?’ Put in more general terms, the task is not conceived as choice, but as the attempt to characterize some object or action as objectively right or not.” (22)

Also, and finally, this very powerful claim about the very composition of Tao (and it’s relation to “lots of alternatives”):

10. “…only the most profound commitment to the idea of the cosmos as basically unambiguous, as a single, definite order, could make it possible to ignore in the metaphor of the image of the crossroads as a challenge to the traveler on the Way. The Confucian commitment to a single, definite order is also evident…”

I read this as suggesting that Fingarette thinks the Tao is unambiguous, that it points to a single path, a single road in a given situation, not multiple alternatives.

I had to rush there through these – my apologies. I have to run to class. If I had more time, I would have walked through these more patiently. Also, I don’t list these to say “see, there it is!” but rather just to throw out the text that I think I am working with in my own head, just to situate my view in the text. The hope is that we might jump on any one of these citations and perhaps see if it does support what I think might.

Thanks for your patience, everyone!

Quick note: in reading fast over some of those quotes, it strikes me that some of the first ones seem compatible with “alternatives *within* Tao” but not with there being a genuine choice between “Way and the Ditch”. The latter quotes (some of them) seem more restrictive, and seem to rule out even the “alternatives within the Tao” perspectives. Or at least it seems.

Patrick,

I think your point/comment that the “social self” is the reality for Fingarette (in Confucianism) is right — or at least that’s what I was pushing above in my reading. The components of the self that you mentioned a few comments ago — the will, self-reflexivity, etc — can be read as “the self” but not, I think in Confucius, the parts which contain what is of *human significance*. The xiao ren (petty) have these components but yet they are not, in the important sense that Fingarette and H&A seem to highlight, “human selves” in that they do not actualize their other-relatedness. I think it’s the “human” part that they want to stress is key.

I think there is an “individual” aspect to the self, however. You ask “is there anything other than the social levels of relatedness” to the self? I know that Henry Rosemont pushes this: he stresses that “we are nothing more than our role-relatedness to specific others” (and he stresses the “nothing more than” part in verbal discussions). But is there an individual component? I think so, but it’s not the atomic identity that possesses a will. I think it’s rather the specific particularity of a given person’s embodied existence. To speak in an I’m not sure clear enough way, although the li govern the son-father relationship, it’s not enough to just be “a son”. There are lots of “sons”. But clearly I’m a specific son — Chris. And exemplifying the virtue of “shu” (on my reading) requires my father to do his best to adjust and apply the li in a way that allows what makes me different to thrive in harmony with what makes him different as a dad. That’s why, as I take it, “man broadens the Tao” as opposed to “the Tao broadening man”. Since new instantiations of this or that way of being related continually come into being, new ways of responding within a relationship (in a way that is meaningful) will need to be created. Thus, new li or at the least new ways of performing pre-existing li (geez, am I channeling H&A here or what?). But this is a different way, I think, of suggesting that “the individual” matters as well as “the social”. I think it’s a different way of understanding “the individual”.

Still, although there is a *particularity* to a given role-related being, I don’t think that particularity composes the ground for an individual agent that “wills” things. Perhaps a bad way to put it might be this: in the liberal tradition, the atomic self has the primary reality, and then social relatedness “decorates” that self (Hobbsean, perhaps, as you note). In the Confucian tradition, I take it that a self cannot exist *merely* as a role-related being (uninstanted universals don’t exist in this way in Confucius as I take it). Rather, a role-related being must take on particular features. But those particular features have significance or reality only from within the role-related framework, which is primary. Perhaps another way to continue this line is to say that whereas in the liberal tradition the role-relatedness is not required for the reality of the atomic self, for the Confucian self the particularity is required, but it itself is not the primary ground of what the self is, role-relatedness performs that job.

Personally, I don’t think Fingarette makes these points clear in chapter 2. But I think the points are there, mostly forming the backdrop of the guilt/shame discussion. “Guilt” only works for the liberal conception of the self as existing pre-socially (or pre-li). No manner of interaction (whether in accord with li or not) should affect the basic ontology of the self if guilt is involved (the existentialists seem to hold to this: the self is always “guilty!” because it is always either falling out of authenticity or in the process of preparing to. That said, for the Existentialists, inauthenticity doesn’t alter the ontological ground of the self qua chooser. That’s what allows for “guilt”. For shame, it’s different: if we’re working with a social conception, then Li *is* integral to the actual existence of the self. So what might look like a “wrong choice” actually results in the disintegration of the self in the midst of the performance. As a result, there’s no self to hold responsible. Only a decayed incomplete self that needs fixing (via education).

It’s late — hopefully some of that muddle makes sense.

Chris,

Yes, that makes eminent sense and helps clarify how much I disagree with Fingarette’s interpretation of Confucius (or perhaps Confucius himself) on this subject. It is a different way of understanding the individual and yet I think, again a la the likes of the Stoics and Kant (or Mill for that matter), that it is an insufficient account, metaphysically and morally speaking. There’s a nice account of “individuality” that mirrors your description here (and one I’m troubled with for the same reasons) in David Weissman’s A Social Ontology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). The more I think about it I’m amazed how much it may in fact be perfectly compatible with Fingarette’s and possibly Confucius’ understanding of “the self” (so to speak)!

Re: “Guilt” only works for the liberal conception of the self as existing pre-socially (or pre-li). No manner of interaction (whether in accord with li or not) should affect the basic ontology of the self if guilt is involved….

I don’t think that’s true, nor do I think that is an accurate account of what Fingarette is saying (and I’ll leave the existentialists aside, as so much depends if one is speaking about, say, Kierkegaard, Marcel, or Sartre). Discussions of guilt (and shame too in the case of Velleman) I’ve found helpful are found in works by J. David Velleman and John Deigh. And I think guilt and shame, while distinct, are much closer in function and effect than Fingarette would have it. Incidentally, how does a “disintegrated” self experience shame? I would think the self-knowledge/awareness that would appear to be one of the necessary conditions of shame requires a fairly coherent or minimally integrated sense of self. And I think the shame sanctions as anthropologists and sociologists have come to understand them are in many respects akin to punishments of a kind and thus for this and other reasons the manner in which Fingarette attempts to drawn the distinction between guilt and shame seems mistaken. Again, this involves myriad complex issues so it will have to suffice for me to simply say that I’m not at all persuaded by Fingarette’s discussion of the distinctions between guilt and shame, etc.

Lastly, I reiterate my dissent from the view that claims Liberalism depends on an “atomistic conception of the self,” even if there’s a few nods in that direction, largely by Hobbes. Stephen Holmes’ works on Liberalism are a nice antidote to such oft-heard accusations (essentially strawman arguments), but one might also look at Peter Berkowitz’s Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (1999). Part of the confusion here arises from a failure to do justice to the various conceptions of autonomy found in the Liberal tradition and quite tendentious accounts of the meaning of “self-interest,” among other problems.

Well, I’ll leave it at that.

Thanks again for taking the time to thoughtfully read and respond to my comments. I do look forward to further discussion of the remaining chapters.

Patrick –

Thanks again for the comments and input – all very helpful. I’ll have to take a look at Weissman’s work. I’m not familiar with it.

I should clarify that my point here in the thread/post is not to lay out a definitive account of guilt/shame. It could well be that Fingarette’s account is flawed, for example. My purposes are different — I just want to get to the bottom of what he’s saying, and uncover what motivates the thinking behind it. I think it’s instructive that Fingarette talks repeatedly about the non-existence of *genuine* alternatives for the Confucian agent. I take it here that he is assuming that for guilt to exist, there must be at least two such genuine alternatives. I think his discussion of Li in the constitution of self and his view of the Tao as highly determinate lead to a prima facie argument that there are no “crossroads” in the Tao. In addition, I think my argument relies heavily on the degree to which Fingarette suggests that selfhood is itself a construct that arises from Li-performances. If there is only one such performance available only one choice, etc. Of course, I might be over-reading this connection in Fingarette, though I don’t think so.

I’m not sure that my suggestion above means that the disintegrated self cannot experience things. It’s not that the agent “blanks out” phenomenologically. Shame may well be experienced in a similar way that Fingarette talks in chapter 3 about “yu” — as a situationally based “unsettledness”. I’m not sure Fingarette needs to agree that the *social self* (which is, I think, the notion of self he’s after here) needs to be “whole” for the agent to experience things. As you know, there are a lot of different types of “selfhood” at work here. Part of the task before him, me, and you (or anyone discussing this topic) is to start to disambiguate all of them!

On the atomic self: I know, there are other accounts of autonomy. Specifically, there are many who argue for relational-self based autonomy (feminist authors, specifically). Still, even in this case, I think if the Confucian wants to suggest that there is “autonomy” in the Analects (a claim that Henry Rosemont would in the strongest terms reject), I suspect it will be an autonomy that will still, in the end, not ground the kind of guilt-theoretic talk that Fingarette rejects for Confucians. It would, I think, involve a kind of shift about “self-interest” such that, in a way, the divide between “my interest” and “yours” collapses into a false dichotomy. Here, it seems that the more such dichotomies actually seem applicable to a situation, the more a threat to autonomy there is (for the Confucian — here I would think that the xiao ren would be more than happy to talk about ‘my interests’ and ‘your interests’, say).

I’ll also take a peek at Peter Berkowitz’s work. If you know of a JSTOR-accessible article, let me know — I can get those easily from here (Beijing), whereas the whole books are not so easy to get.

Thanks!