Abstract
The harmony thesis about a virtuous person, widely held by neo-Aristotelians, supposes that someone highly vulnerable to temptation is not virtuous at all. However, is that the only plausible picture of a virtuous person’s psychology? This essay aims to offer an alternative picture by discussing the account of virtue in the thought of Mengzi 孟子 and his conception of moral exemplars. First, I analyze the Mengzian moral exemplar as depicted in Mengzi 1A7—specifically, the susceptibility of the nobleman (junzi 君子) to compassion and the relevant temptation. Then, I explain how this differs from neo-Aristotelian virtue ethical theories. This passage shows that there is a certain price to being virtuous in Mengzi’s virtue theory. By examining various ways of addressing this challenge, I explore Mengzi’s solution to it, which will shed light on Mengzi’s own way of specifying virtue and its significant advantage as a potential alternative to certain other approaches.
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Acknowledgments
My greatest thanks are to Eric Hutton, who has consistently guided me in completing this essay. I also appreciate Chrisoula Andreou, Anne Peterson, Natalia Washington, and Bryan Van Norden for their help in improving this work. In addition, I would like to thank Andrew Ruble for his feedback on this essay. I am also grateful to Myeong-seok Kim for his thorough comments on the earlier draft of this essay.
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Lee, J. Temptation in Mengzi 1A7. Dao (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-024-09956-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-024-09956-5