Reason vs. Ritual and the Development of Character
(from my presentation at the 2019 Belmont Undergraduate Research Symposium on behalf of the Asian Studies department)
For the sake of this presentation, I am going to be looking at May Sim’s Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius. While reading the book, I was curious as to which of the two ethical frameworks she tackles had a basis that seemed more accurate regarding the processes behind how character is formed. If what is at stake in both Aristotelian and Confucian ethics is the development of a virtuous character, then having a firm grasp of how we develop character in the first place is important, and from there we can establish what the most effective basis for an ethics in general is.
For Aristotle, ethics begins with reason. Virtue for Aristotle is a mean state defined by reason, reason being key because the rational component of our soul is what distinguishes humans from other creatures; it unites and organizes all that we do. We are not always exercising this part of our soul, and hence it is the possession of it and not the constant use of it that constitutes human nature. To achieve this mean state in any given instance, we must develop practical reason so that we may discern where the mean is and how to reasonably implement it in a situation.
For Confucius, the basis of ethics comes from ritual. Society is built around ritual and through observing ritual, we become authoritative in our conduct. Confucians believe that Ren, the highest cultivated virtue, directly issues from li which means ritual propriety, or conforming to the ritual norms of a society. This means that, unlike with Aristotle, the telos of human virtue is something external that one must adopt whereas Aristotle’s reason is already a part of an individual human’s constitution.
However, Confucius is less focused on the individual than he is on the way in which an individual is embedded into a given society. Ritual is composed of the roles one must play within a society, and it would be easy to reduce our ethical imperative to simply fulfilling those roles. But what is really happening is that Confucius is shifting our focus away from our own isolated existences and towards our social relations which account for the complex ways in which we are always in communion with other people and the ways in which our ethics should be oriented towards other people, not just ourselves.
In regard to which basis is more effective in establishing an ethics, many will point towards Aristotle’s model as its rational approach makes more sense to Westerners considering the weight we place on reason as being the primary criteria for validity. Validity means not only are a sequence of prepositions true but that they also correctly follow formal logic. But that is part of my issue with using reason as a basis for ethics; reason is just that. It is a form, a structure. The contents of that structure are wholly malleable, and, as I believe has been exhibited time and time again, you can rationalize near anything if there is no concrete standard criteria for whether or not certain propositions are true. The criterion for truth tends to be that something corresponds with reality, but in situations like ethics where concepts like courage and love and honor and honesty are the content of our prepositions, how do we measure those up against reality? How do we define reality in those instances when they are in the realm of ideals? Granted, the sort of flexibility this allows for in regard to the exercising of virtues is something I can appreciate as opposed to having some sort of system with strict prescriptive norms, but if any system of ethics can be rationalized because there is no actual means of saying it is true, we run into a clear problem.
Confucius’ model, on the other hand, has a more concrete basis which is that of the rituals of a given society, assuming those rituals align with “the way.” “The way” itself may be problematic for similar reasons to Aristotle’s model, but I believe that having ritual as the basis for its expression is a much more effective means of establishing an ethics because of the way in which ritual is embedded in narrative. This is probably just the result of me having drank the Lyotard Kool-Aid, but narrative is the basis of societies and knowledge; they are powerful in the ways that they permeate almost all facets of our essence. We have meaning because of the ways in which we embed ourselves in narratives, and the same goes for whole societies.
As has already been mentioned, rituals require that we fulfill roles, and those roles only have meaning insofar as they are embedded in a narrative that lets them have meaning. Without a narrative granting roles and rituals importance, they do not matter. Narrative is what perpetuates them and gives them historical weight, that they have existed within a story that has unfolded across time. This is why I think the Confucian model is so effective. The narratives of ritual condition us in such a way that we adopt our roles within those rituals almost unconsciously because of how rooted our societies and cultures are in them.
I do not think we develop our character primarily by means of reasoned deliberation regarding what type of character is the most virtuous, especially not as children when we are most malleable and not cognitively developed enough to think that abstractly. We develop it based on the expectations and roles impressed upon us from birth by the societies we find ourselves in, expectations and roles embedded in rituals we take for granted and that reflect larger narrative structures that govern how those societies function. This is not to say that one form is more objectively “ethical,” just that one is more effective because it more closely resembles the way in which we develop character in general. Because of this, I think we should focus less on trying to create ethical individuals by means of rationally convincing them a certain way of life is more virtuous and instead focus on creating new social rituals that reflect more ethical narratives as a means of developing individuals’ virtuous character.
