Confucius and Aristotle on Virtue
Introduction
Both Aristotle and Confucius are famous philosophers in the world's history. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher while Confuse was a Chinese philosopher. The important thing about the two philosophers is that both were great thinkers and their philosophical works on virtues and ethics influenced their ancient society. Though they differ in some aspects and ideas on virtue and ethics, the nature of their philosophical works was similar as they focused on morality and good conduct, and more importantly they linked the happiness and virtue. Even though both Aristotle and Confucius have similar concepts on virtual and happiness, they hold differences which are rooted from the ideologies of culture. Since they come from different cultures that is, Ancient Greek and Ancient Chinese, they differ regarding the approaches used to approach virtues. In general, Aristotelian ethics and Confucianism ethics are based on enlightenment and modern Western morality but, they differ in that the former focus on character and virtue as two elements that guide people in achieving happiness (character-based ethics) whereas the latter focus on rules and principles as two elements that guide moral actions (rule-based ethics).
The similarity between the Aristotle's and Confucius ethics is apparent since their ethics hold similar characteristic. For example, focusing on good ethical character and conduct, Aristotle focuses on the notion of practicality and practical in ethics means that the role of ethics is not only to inform but also to transform. On the notion of practicality, he adds that to achieve the supreme good or rather the happiness, a human being needs to have practical reasoning to have a good upbringing and a good character (Yu, 2013). Similarity, Confucius is interested in elements that guide a person into becoming a good person or in other words, a person needs a dispositional character for him to become a good person. Example of dispositional character includes the doctrine, the social custom, the moral education, the virtue politics, the reasoning and more. Confucian's notion of action-guiding rule corresponds to the Aristotle ideas in that people need practical reasoning or practical wisdom in deciding what is appropriate. In other words, a human being should not only rely on rule-application procedure, but they should also focus on appropriateness as the important element in becoming an excellent person (Yu, 2013). They both agree that actions are needed to gin happiness, but the actions taken are not similar due to the diversity of cultures.
However, their distinct perspectives are controlled by the cultural contexts. Both Analects and Nicomachean contain philosophical work of Aristotle and Confucius, but it is important to note that the latter comprise substantive doctrinal discussions whereas the former has aphoristic sayings on moral wisdom. In other words, Aristotle ethics is analytical and causal whereas the Confucian ethics is all about correlative thinking and metaphorical meanings (Curzer, 2012). The point is that both focus on good life but Aristotle focus on what is happiness whereas Confucius focus on which ways should people follow to become a good person?. Aristotle argues that all activities aim to achieve happiness and so happiness is an end in itself, and it is a supreme good. To achieve the supreme good, a person needs to adhere to rationality and good behaviors. Rather than relying on reasoning and instruction, a person should form a habit and practice. On the other hand, Confucius does not focus on character development but tends to answer the question ‘how can one live genuinely happy? Rather than focusing on person's specific actions or the ‘rightness of action,' he argues that a person cannot exist alone, but there should be relationships which would support mutual development (Confucius & Dawson, 2005).
On ancient Chinese and ancient Greek culture, the findings suggest that the Chinese philosophy lies on moral performance and argue that the role of ethics is to guide people by providing rules and instructions. In other words, the Chinese culture focus on an action-guiding rule which governs the people toward achieving the happiness. People need to be motivated and ruled by a person who is virtuous or who possess a charismatic power. The acting-guiding rule means that the rule should have a strong moral character for other people to follow (Confucius & Dawson, 2005). On the other hand, the Greece culture argues that ethics cannot provide universal principles or guidance not because it is incapable but because there is no need of providing the subject matter of ethics since human actions are indeterminate. Thus, it is the role of agent to make practical reasoning and rational choice in different situations (Curzer, 2012). Though both philosophies hold similar ideas on virtue approach to ethics, they differ merely because Aristotle focuses on character-based ethics whereas Confucius focus on rights-based ethics.
From the comparison, the ideas of virtue can be applied in a modern setting such as the diverse workplace. One idea is that when people exercise virtue, they gain happiness. In a diverse workplace, people should have virtuous behaviors since this is the only way of aiming at happiness. As workers in diverse workplace achieve happiness, they create teamwork, increases performance and high productivity which results in business success (Yu, 2013). The other point is that friendship is a virtue and people need to cultivate virtue by all means to achieve physical and mental wellbeing.
Conclusion
The ancient Greeks cultures believe that people should direct all the activities toward achieving happiness. To achieve the happiness, people should adhere to the rational principle or in other words they should reason and live according to the true nature. Confucius also agrees with Aristotle that human beings are part of nature and all people should relate to each other to gain happiness. These philosophers differ on how they present the notion of happiness in that Confucius argue that happiness does not need an inner struggle but people need to invest in relationships. In the relationship, people need to show kindness and humaneness and more importantly adhere to the golden rule. On the hand, Aristotle argues that a person should possess own personal powers and increase his self-cultivation to gain happiness.
References
Yu Jiyuan. (2013). The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue. Routledge Studies in Ethics
and Moral Theory. Routledge
Curzer, H. J. (2012). Aristotle and the virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Confucius, ., & Dawson, M. M. (2005). The ethics of Confucius. New York: Cosimo Classics.
