Lobsitz, Kaitlyn

Daoisms Inconsistency With Human Nature; Confucianism As A Viable Alternative

After the Zhou dynasty lost their political powers over China, the states began to

divide. Due to a lack of a centralized rule, the states began warfare over one another in a

struggle for power. With China facing many problems at the time, philosophers wanted to

improve society and help common people through the hardships. They put their focus on

finding the best manner for people to live while improving society, which they referred to

as finding the Dao, or the way. Confucianism focused on virtue ethics, a way to cultivate

virtue and become a better person. On the other hand, the Daoists put their focus on

finding the way through non-action. Daoism indicated virtue should come naturally and

one should not seek it. The Daoist tactics to the personal and political approaches to

living a virtuous life holds potential, but seems to be inconsistent with how human nature

truly is. Confucianism holds a much more realistic approach to leading a virtuous life.

Confucianism is based on an ethical system that is referred to as virtue ethics. Virtue

ethics focuses on the kind of person one ought to be. Virtue ethics cover four main topics:

living well, the virtues, ethical cultivation and human nature. Although all virtue ethics

find importance in these topics, they do not always agree upon a single answer on how to

use these to find the way. The primary basis of our ethical responsibility and moral

obligations lie in the need and love of family. Through family, we learn most of our

virtues. Our moral obligation is to extend it to others. The family is crucial to

Confucianism because it is where we first learn how to be a good person. Kongzi found

another reason why family was so important to our ethical and moral conduct; it was due

to differentiated caring. Differentiated caring states that the love of our family is much
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greater than that of a stranger. It does not state we should disregard people who are not in

our immediate family, but it is natural to care for them more than a stranger.

Differentiated care received many critiques. The Mohist position held that we should rid

of differentiated caring and practice partial caring instead. With impartial care we can

extend the respect we give our family and apply it to all. They felt that differentiated

caring promoted favoritism and promoted poor morality. Mohists thought all should be

treated equally regardless of their relations. Mengzi agreed that we should indeed care for

everyone. However, we should have more compassion for those in which we have

relationships and bounds with. Mengzi argued that the very basis of benevolence and

righteousness grows from being surrounded by our family. It is natural to have more

compassion for our family because they are the ones who taught us to be compassionate

in the first place. This is why it is crucial to have stronger compassion to our family.

Mengzis view of human nature is that, human nature is innately good, however,

humans themselves are not innately good. We have goodness instilled in us, but we must

learn to use it. All of our virtues are implanted in us like spouts; they must grow before

they can be of any use. In all of us there are four spouts of virtues: benevolence,

righteousness, propriety and wisdom. Because we are all born with the sprouts, we all

have the potential to become good and virtuous. People must have motivation to become

good because if the virtues are not enforced, they will never grow. In order to become

moral, we must use the power of reflection. You reflect on your own virtuous feelings,

but it is important to focus on the external situation that requests those feelings.

Reflection allows us to take situations in which we already have the right actions and

apply them to similar situations to achieve a similar reaction. This ability to reflect is how
 Lobsitz, Kaitlyn

we can extend our caring responsiveness to people outside of our immediate family. If

our family makes us act out in benevolence, we can take a similar situation with a

stranger, reflect and achieve similar reactions.

Mengzis view that human nature is innately good conflicts with Xunzis view that

human nature is self-interested. Xunzi states, although human nature is ultimately bad, it

can be transformed through rituals and deliberate effort. Rituals are important because

they give form and means of expressing our emotions. They establish a set of rules and

standard of righteousness. Sages, to help people from their self-interested tendencies,

created rituals. Deliberative effort is equally important to Xunzi because it is responsible

of reshaping our motivations. Xunzi believed that we might not act solely on our desires,

but what our heart desires. Everything that our heart desires is a disposition. When the

heart chooses a disposition to act on, it becomes a deliberation. Once a person can act on

a deliberation, it then becomes the deliberate effort. Our natural desires are bad they go

against the way, but through deliberative effort and rituals we can transform our desires.

Daoism hold a different conception of finding the way, it is what they refer to as non-

action. Participating in non-action is still taking action, but it is supposed to be

completely subconscious. With non-action, one is not to think of the task at hand, it is

supposed to come naturally, free of thought. This can be seen as a critique of

Confucianism, which states that finding the way comes through ethical cultivation. In

Confucianism, to find the way one must constantly be thinking and trying to learn how to

be virtuous. To learn to be virtuous, you must internalize the actions of those who are

virtuous. Meanwhile, the Daoist believed that if you had to learn to cultivate virtues they

lose all meaning and become artificial. If your motivations are to promote benevolence
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and righteousness in yourself, then you are being selfish and not following the way.

When you are being virtuous you should be practicing non-action and never seeking

ulterior motives for your action. Daoist felt that the Confucians were always seeking

ulterior motives so their actions were in opposition to being virtuous.

Although Daoism has some appealing merits that could make it seem like a viable

alternative to Confucianism, I think it is inconsistent with our actual human nature.

Daoism wants us to rid of all present knowledge in society and move back to a utopia like

the past. We can do this with a ruler who practices virtue through non-action. Daoist

approach calls for a ruler who does not make himself or his intentions known, he is to

possess a shadowy like presence. This seems hard to obtain, since it is difficult to learn to

be virtuous from a ruler who is not to make his presence or intentions known. I think

Confucianism is a more attractive approach to achieving a harmonized society. It calls for

a ruler that is there to be a representative of the gentleman. This idea of the gentleman

allows people to have a model to shape themselves after. It gives us an idea of what we

should be striving for. When it comes to being virtuous person, I take the Confucianism

approach to be more obtainable than the Daoist. The Daoist tells us we should be

virtuous, while not seeking any reward or ulterior motives for our actions. Being virtuous

for Daoism should come naturally free of force or thought. This is inconsistent with

human nature because we naturally want positive reinforcements for our actions. We need

to learn to become virtuous through others because it is not innate to us. Confucianism

allows us to gradually become virtuous through learning and cultivation, which is more

consistent with our nature. We are creatures of learning and exploring, not everything

comes naturally, like with non-action.

Lobsitz, Kaitlyn