Confucianism’s similarities to virtue ethics Essay

Confucianism, the ancient kindly philosophy of China, would afford had no ethical parallel in the double-u as puny as 30 years ago. There argon some small similarities that it holds with utilitarian ethical motive and deontology. There is very little in ethical egoism or relativism that lines up with Confucianism. I reckon that celibacy ethics, however, as laid out in Alasdair MacIntyres give-and-take After Virtue bears a striking resemblance to Confucianism. One classic feature of Confucianism, according to John Koller, is that it is an basically humanist philosophy in other words, human beings are the ultimate source of values.This is in juxtaposition to Supernaturalismwhich claims that values in the end come from God, and naturalismwhich believes that values come from nature. Thus, Confucianism, answers the question of How can beneficialness and harmony be achieved? by smell for exemplars and principles in humanity itself. This is strikingly similar to the picture t hat Alasdair MacIntyre paints of the world. According to MacIntyre, virtually of the ethical language and arguments that are thrown around between ethicists and raze everyday people is fundamentally incomprehensible or incoherent.Ethical prescriptions utilise to be based on a common belief in God and the ways in which He has ordered the universe. In directlys world, however, we no longer share that common belief, plainly we have kept the structures and language of our old ethical systems without the foundation stones on which they were earlier built. To remedy this ailment, MacIntyre proposes going back to a kind of virtue ethics, an essentially humanist philosophy that defines virtuous behavior as what a good man would do. Like Confucianism, virtue ethics looks to neither God nor nature, but rather humanity to find the principles by which to live.Furthermore, both Confucianism and virtue ethics focus less on the rightness of actions themselves, but rather on the development o f virtuous people. Koller, notes The Confucian idea that virtue, rather than law, should be the al-Qaeda of government . Similarly, virtue ethics sees ethical behavior as ultimately driven by character, not by rules (deontology) or consequences (utilitarianism). Both Confucianism and virtue ethics are interested in cultivating people skillful in doing good as the basis of a stable society.