Methods of moral inquiry in the earliest Chinese texts : a comparative analysis with Socrates in Plato's dialogues

Abstract

‘How should I live my life?’ Inquiry into this question has the longest history in both ancient Greek and Chinese ‘philosophy’. The inquiries began with Socrates in Greece and Kongzi in China, although neither enterprise was documented by its originator. Inspired by Socrates, Plato is the founder of the notion of philosophy (philosophia φιλοσοφία) to exclusively mean his own type of investigation. On the other hand, no equivalent to Greek ‘philosophia’ or English ‘philosophy’ is found in the Lunyu or any other early Chinese text. However, Kongzi, like Socrates, does ask himself and his followers what life they should live and how they can become a better person. The Daodejing also offers sophisticated contemplations on the relation between dao (道) and human morality. And finally, with Mozi and his followers, strategic argumentative methods to discuss moral concerns are developed. This thesis looks closely into these very beginnings of the histories of moral inquiry to uncover their methodological differences. My research especially focusses on the problem of the identification of moral values, such as aretē (ἀρετή) on one hand, and ren (仁) and yi (義) on the other, in their respective relations with truth (alētheia ἀλήθεια) and dao (道). Establishment of these notions are crucial to the two traditions, since neither is able to discuss how to acquire or cultivate these moral values without a consensus on what they are. The research lays out a few strategies for approaching and comparing these texts composed in completely different intellectual contexts. The distinction between the authored texts and the masters they depict is one thing, but to regard the texts as presenting evolving doctrines is another. In light of the latter, differences in presentation become less pronounced by seeing inconsistency as the outcome of continuous reflections on and modifications of their own doctrines by single or multiple authors. The research essentially aims at understanding what the authors are doing through these texts, rather than to force the proposed ideas into stereotypical argumentative frameworks derived from modern philosophical contexts. In the end, I hope to show that these two traditions in ancient Greece and China methodologically come closest in Socratic definition and Platonic Forms (eidos εἶδος or idea ἰδέα) in Plato’s early and transitional dialogues and Mohist fa (法) and shi (實) in the Mozi. These notions contribute to the systematization of moral inquiries based upon complete definitions of each moral value. Nonetheless, their fundamentally distinctive views of the role of language in investigating moral truth and for practicing human dao eventually leads their endeavours in different directions. The Greek side, including Aristotle and the Stoics, develops formal logic as a propaedeutic to philosophical investigations, while the Chinese side appears to abandon Mohist moral realism and leans towards a distinctly pragmatic account of regulating and rectifying names (ming 名).