Shu and z hong as the virtue of the Golden Rule: a Confucian contribution to contemporary virtue ethics.

I aim to show how Confucian philosophy can contribute to the contemporary resurgence of virtue ethics education by arguing that it has the resource to address a lacuna in Aristotelian ethics. Aristotelian ethics, which is arguably the main resource of contemporary virtue ethics, lacks a virtue that corresponds to the notion of loving each person as one’s self or the Golden Rule. To be more precise, Aristotelian ethics has no virtue about lovingallpeople as one’s self, althoughphiliacomes close but is precisely limited because it lacks universality. However, I believe that Dai Zhen’s interpretation of the Confucian virtues ofshuandzhongdoes have this universal scope whichphilialacks. For Dai, the ground for loving another is not any characteristic that a particular group of people have in common, such as, in the case ofphilia, being virtuous. Rather, the ground is universal human nature itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]