Confucian Role Ethics

A Moral Vision for the 21st Century?

By (author) Henry Rosemont Jr. By (author) Roger T. Ames

Book cover: Confucian Role Ethics

Extent: 175 pages

Publisher: V&R unipress

Subjects: Asian/Pacific Studies & Religions, Philosophy

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(July 2016)

ISBN: 9783847106050

6.5 x 9.53 inches

Price: $69.00

Out of stock

Associated living is a fact; autonomy is a fiction – Confucian role ethics


The essays collected in this volume establish Confucian role ethics as a term of art in the contemporary ethical discourse. The holistic philosophy presented here is grounded in the primacy of relationality and a narrative understanding of person, and is a challenge to a foundational liberal individualism that has defined persons as discrete, autonomous, rational, free, and often self-interested agents. Confucian role ethics begins from a relationally constituted conception of person, takes family roles and relations as the entry point for developing moral competence, invokes moral imagination and the growth in relations that it can inspire as the substance of human morality, and entails a human-centered, atheistic religiousness that stands in sharp contrast to the Abrahamic religions.

  • By (author) Henry Rosemont Jr.
  • By (author) Roger T. Ames