Filial Obligations: Confucianism and Beyond
This project studies the nature of filial obligation from the perspectives of Confucianism. It builds bridges between Confucianism and other normative theories, such as Consequentialism and Contractualism. As a result, the project will strengthen the theoretical structure of Confucian ethics with considerations from the two analytic theories. The analytic theories (Consequentialism and Contractualism) will also be benefited by the rich observations of parent-child relation from the Confucian tradition.
Project Start Year: 2019, Principal Investigator(s): SIN, Wai Lam William 冼偉林
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Wu Song, Bruce Lee, and the Trolley Problem
Wu Song is a major character in the novel of the Water Margin. In the novel, Wu Song has the virtue of being able to act in a straightforward manner in times of desperation.
Bruce Lee is probably the most important martial artist. He is the founder of Jeet Kune Do – a school of fighting. He proposes that the traditional, fixed style of fighting will mislead the practitioner of martial arts. The best strategy to fight, he argues, is to adopt a simple and straightforward approach. And the combatant should be prepared to die if he desires to win or survive in a fight. Now, in my propose project, I argue that it is possible to identify a list of virtues from Wu Song and the teaching of Bruce Lee in response to the dilemma arising from the case of the Trolley Problem.
The Trolley Problem presents a moral dilemma, and has received wide attention in the field of moral philosophy in the last few decades. In the case, a runaway trolley lost control, and was rushing downhill, threatening the lives of five persons. A bystander could save the five by diverting the trolley onto a sidetrack; however, he would inevitably sacrifice the one person who could not escape from the sidetrack. The mainstream analyses of the Trolley Problem have been focusing on explaining the condition of moral permissibility for the agent to proceed in the scenario. I believe that it has omitted an important phenomenal aspect in the case. – That is the stressing nature of the scenario and the trauma which the bystander may experience if he decides to act to kill the innocent person (in order to save the five).
I believe that through my analyses of Wu Song’s moral character in the Water Margin, and of Bruce Lee’s philosophy of combat, I will be able to identify a list of virtues, which explain how an agent can act well in the case of Trolley. This will fill in a gap which has been overlooked by the major discussants of the Trolley Problem in Western analytic moral philosophy.
Project Start Year: 2015, Principal Investigator(s): SIN, Wai Lam William 冼偉林
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Consequentialism, Contractualism, and the Demands of Filial Obligations
What would we do if our parents fell ill and became dependent on us on a long-term basis? How far does morality require adult children to make sacrifices on behalf of their parents? In this project, I will answer these questions by illustrating an explanation of the nature of filial obligations in the case of long-term caregiving. I believe that a good explanation will have to fulfill three criteria. First, the explanation should tell us about the strength of filial obligation in relation to the
demands of other obligations. Second, as the demands of long-term caregiving may have an indefinite nature, we should be able to determine the circumstances in which adult children are morally permitted to stop assisting their parents. Third, the explanation should be sensitive to cultural diversities and expectations regarding the provision of filial care.
In the literature, we may find discussions regarding the nature of filial obligation in analytic philosophy. There is a range of “analogy-based views”, including the debt theory, the gratitude theory, the friendship theory, and special goods theory, etc. However, in the proposed research, we will review these theories and leave them to oneside, because they cannot fulfill the above-mentioned criteria.
The proposed research will focus on the implications of two normative theories, namely,Consequentialism and Contractualism. According to Consequentialism, adult children have strong duties to support their parents if their general compliance with this rule promotes the overall good. According to Contractualism, adult children have strong filial duties if their caregiving actions involve a moral principle that no one can reasonably reject.
Consequentialism and Contractualism can provide explanations of filial obligation from an overall profile of an ethical framework; they allow us to assess the strength of filial obligation in relation to the obligations of other demands, generate reasons for adult children to resist the potentially limitless requirements of long-term caregiving, and may prescribe different moral codes to people living under different cultural circumstances.
Project Start Year: 2015, Principal Investigator(s): SIN, Wai Lam William 冼偉林
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Filial Morality: East and West
How far does morality require adult children to make sacrifices on behalf of their aging parents? In this project, I will demonstrate how we may respond to this question by drawing reference to rule-consequentialism, Contractualism, and Confucianism. By using these ethical theories to explain the demands of filial obligations, I believe that we may analyse the strength of reason from various perspectives, and can learn about the demands of filial obligations versus those of other aspects of the adult children’s lives. I think this approach is superior to specific accounts of filial obligations, such as the debt theory, the gratitude theory, the friendship theory, and the special goods theory. These accounts may tell us about the nature of filial obligations, but are weak in explaining the level of moral demands which filial obligations will impose on agents.
Project Start Year: 2014, Principal Investigator(s): SIN, Wai Lam William 冼偉林
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The Ethics of Zen
Zen is a branch of Buddhist Philosophy. All Buddhist thoughts talk about ways for an agent to live a good life. A good life, or a life with Eudaimonia, from the Buddhist point of view, is a life in which the agent is free of suffering, a life in which the agent will no longer cause suffering to himself.
Zen distinguishes itself from other Buddhist schools in the way that it does not encourage practitioners to follow certain ascetic practices; in fact, it discourages even sitting meditation, which has been a distinctive Buddhist practice over a thousand years.
Zen teaches the practitioners how to live fully the ordinary life which they have been living. So, instead of regular practice of sitting meditation or other disciplinary practices, the Zen practitioners are more like poets than monks, who gather gems of wisdom from the “garden” of their own living environment.
In recent decades, the Anglo-American intellectual world begins to absorb and develop a number of themes from the ancient Chinese and Japanese Zen traditions. In my research, I would like to see what exactly we may learn from Zen as an ethical theory, what criteria of moral rightness and wrongness we may derive from its teaching, and if it may provide us with a kind of virtue theory, how it may differ from, e.g., the Aristotelian concept of virtue, etc.
My work will involve three parts. First, the reading and summarizing of the traditional scriptures from the Buddhist and Zen schools; second, the studies and selection of research articles in regard to Zen from recent Anglo-American analytic theorists; third, the actual elaboration of the ethical substance of Zen, according to my interpretation.
Project Start Year: 2014, Principal Investigator(s): SIN, Wai Lam William 冼偉林
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