Confucian Role Ethics and a Holistic Conception of Justice Introduction

Roger T. Ames

doi:10.4312/as.2026.14.1.17-37

Authors

Roger T. AMES Peking University, China

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2026.14.1.17-37

Keywords:

justice-as-principle, zhengyi 正義, ontological thinking, zoetological thinking, holistic conception of justice, power, Confucian role ethics, individualism, human becomings

Abstract

In the last half of the nineteenth century, a Chinese-character language was created in East Asia to synchronize East Asian cultures with the “new knowledge” being produced by Western modernity. Like Buddhism and other forms of Western learning that took root in China, this new vocabulary has been sinicized to express an indigenous worldview captured in the distinction between classical Greek ontological thinking as the science of being, and zoetological thinking as the art of living. While the language of Western modernity was being domesticated in East Asia, at the same time, beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the Western philosophical narrative took a zoetological turn captured in Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead”, and in different philosophical movements, has repudiated its own traditional commitment to onto-theological thinking. In this essay I use a holistic conception of justice as a specific case to illustrate an incremental convergence between the contemporary Chinese and Western philosophical worldviews.

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