2025/01/01 by Shuchen Xiang · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Categorization, perception, and language #Cultural Differences and Values #Embodied and Extended Cognition
paper · pdf · doi:10.5840/pga20261292
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2026/01/03 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article shows how Confucian thinking about normativity or the ethical is premised on culture (wen, 文). Underlying this relationship between culture and normativity is the Confucian assumption that humans are instinctively social. For Confucianism, humans are socio-cultural beings who have the sprouts of an other-regarding instinct internal to them. This defining attribute of humanity, however, is not constant but requires acculturation to be realized. This realization depends upon a collective cultural life that instills a cultivated sensitivity toward our interdependence with others and a proactive responsiveness to them. This paradigm of personhood is antithetical in important respects to the liberal account of personhood and its relationship of the self to society. This critique highlights the characteristics of the Confucian account of self by contrasting it with the apotheosis of the liberal view of self in Hobbes, Kant, and Freud. Under the liberal view, society is incompatible with human nature since human nature is innately antagonistic toward the social other. An external law is needed to force humans to live peacefully alongside each other.