This episode is really about two things. First, it’s about the claim that many instantiations of one virtue necessarily come packaged with other virtues. For example, you can’t have great humaneness or benevolence in your charitable giving to other people unless you also show a certain amount of ritual respect to them. Second, it’s about the view that one virtue in particular — the virtue of humaneness or good caring (ren 仁) — is more central or fundamental than the others. The Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200) proposes that we can understand both the unity of virtues and the central importance of humaneness (ren) by thinking about the unity of the seasons and the central importance of the spring for the other seasons. We attempt to unpack these ideas (and some of the relevant seasonal associations) as they are presented by one of the Confucian tradition’s most subtle and complicated philosophers.
Key passages
First passage: the unity of the four seasons
如春夏秋冬，須看他四時界限，又卻看春如何包得三時。四時之氣，溫涼寒熱，涼與寒既不能生物，夏氣又熱，亦非生物之時。惟春氣溫厚，乃見天地生物之心。到夏是生氣之長，秋是生氣之斂，冬是生氣之藏。若春無生物之意，後面三時都無了。此仁所以包得義禮智也，明道所以言義禮智皆仁也。若春無生物之意，後面三時都無了。此仁所以包得義禮智也。
[The relationship between the four virtues] is like the four seasons. One must see the divisions between the four seasons but also see how the spring encompasses the other three seasons. The qi of the four seasons varies from warm, to cool, to hot, to cold. When the qi is cool or cold then life is not produced. When the qi is hot in the summer, this too is not a time for producing life. The qi is warm and rich only in the spring, and only then can one witness the life-producing heart-mind of Heaven and Earth. In the summer, the life-producing qi grows. In the autumn, it contracts. And in the winter, the life-producing qi is stored away [until the spring]. If the spring did not have the impulse to produce living things then the subsequent three seasons would cease to exist. This is the sense in which ren can encompass righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom.
(Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類 [The Classified Sayings of Master Zhu] 18.107; translation slightly modified from Angle and Tiwald’s translation)
Second passage: natural outgrowths of humaneness (ren 仁)
仁，便是箇溫和底意思；義，便是慘烈剛斷底意思；禮，便是宣著發揮底意思；智，便是箇收斂無痕跡底意思。性中有此四者，聖門卻只以求仁為急者，緣仁卻是四者之先。若常存得溫厚底意思在這裏，到宣著發揮時，便自然會宣著發揮；到剛斷時，便自然會剛斷；到收斂時，便自然會收斂。若將別箇做主，便都對副不著了。此仁之所以包四者也。」
Ren has the sense of warmth and gentleness. Righteousness has the sense of sternness and decisiveness. Ritual propriety has the sense of public display. Wisdom has the sense of exercising restraint without any outward signs. All four of these are in our nature, but the sages only regard the pursuit of ren as most urgent, for ren is the first among the four. If we constantly maintain the sense of warmth and gentleness within, then when it comes time to make a public display [of ritual propriety] we can naturally display it publicly, when it comes time to be stern and decisive we will naturally be stern and decisive, and when it comes time to exercise restraint then we will naturally exercise restraint. If you put the other [virtuous feelings] in charge then they will no longer be able to work successfully with their counterparts. This is how ren encompasses all four.
(Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類 [The Classified Sayings of Master Zhu] 5.77; Tiwald’s translation for the show)
Sources and phrases mentioned
- Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200 CE)
- Thomas Aquinas (circa 1225-1274)
- The unity of the virtues
- Owen Flanagan, Varieties of Moral Personality
- The Cheng brothers: Cheng Hao 程顥 (1032–1085) and Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107)
- ren 仁 “humaneness” (the most central or fundamental virtue, also sometimes translated as “benevolence” or “humanity”)
- Chen Chun 陳淳 (1159-1223)
- Cardinal virtues: humaneness (ren 仁), righteousness (yi 義), ritual propriety (li 禮), and wisdom (zhi 智) — sometimes also including reliability or faithfulness (xin 信)
- bao 包 (to embrace, to include)
- ai 愛 (care)
- sheng 生 (life, growth, development, procreation)
- sheng sheng bu xi 生生不息 (ceaseless mutual life generativity)
- phronēsis (Aristotle’s term for practical wisdom)
- ziran 自然 (naturally, spontaneously)
- Mencius 2A2 (Mengzi 2A2, the “Farmer from Song” story)
- Analects 3.4 (“When it comes to mourning, it is better to be excessively sorrowful than fastidious”)
- Javert (the hyper-lawful character from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables)
- David Sipfle (an extraordinarily demanding but great philosophy teacher at Carleton College)
- Lee Yearley (Stanford Religious Studies scholar who is sparing with praise)
- Chenyang Li, Reshaping Confucianism (chapter two argues that for Confucians, all virtues are “care-centered”)
- Justin Tiwald, “How Care is the Central Notion for Virtue” (the paper that Justin mentions in the episode — as of April 7 2025, it’s just a draft under review)
- Philip J. Ivanhoe, Zhu Xi: Selected Writings
Live show
We will record a live show on April 17, 2024, at the Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in San Francisco! Look forward to seeing many of you there.
I don’t watch podcasts (with very few exceptions) but want to note that there are some interesting comparisons that might be made here with the “moral philosophy” of Iris Murdoch, although of course she draws upon ideas from Plato, Kant, and Simone Weil (among others, such as Wttgenstein), as well as “secularized” interpretations of both Christianity and Buddhism. She has an “ethics of care” and a “meta-virtue” (moral vision) that is combined with a more or less unity of virtues idea, and even if the specific cluster of virtues are not exactly the same, there is significant overlap here. This is a perfectibilist ethics in light of “the Good” and has been characterized as “naturalist,” although this naturalism is somewhat peculiar in comparison to contemporary expressions of same in philosophy and science, and she is, to be sure, an “unorthodox” virtue ethicist. Her conception of “moral civility” (see the chapter on ‘civility’) is similar to ren and li, involving “loving attention” to ordinary, everyday life and individual persons one interacts with, while ritual “is an outer framework that both occasions and identifies an inner event.” For a number of articles/chapters by some of the foremost scholars/philosophers of Murdoch’s worldview/lifeworld (I am leaving aside that rather important part of her life as a brilliant novelist, which of course has some ties to her philosophy), please see the volume edited by Silvia Caprioglio Panizza and Mark Hopwood, eds., The Murdochian Mind (Routledge, 2022) (37 chapters that add up to over 500 pgs. in small print!). So much more could be said, but I will leave it to those minds far more productive and brighter than mine!
Thanks Patrick for these notes. Iris Murdoch was a terrific philosopher and her view of virtue as a kind of moral perception is quite deep and attractive. She has that line about “really seeing” someone which always comes back to me.
Also fascinating that she had these deep relationships with Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe, two other outstanding philosopher of 20th century that I think about all the time.
My pleasure, Richard. I am looking forward to learning more about Neo-Confucianism, especially Zhu Xi, even if I can only rely on English translations. I happen to prefer Anscombe and Midgley to Foot, although I of course deeply respect her work and the significance of the relationships that developed among these philosophers (these days I am reading Cora Diamond and the later works of Hilary Putnam, among others). (I should note that Justin kindly responded to my comment on FB as well). Again, many thanks, and keep up this invaluable work!
I was looking again at Stephen Angle’s Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy (OUP, 2009), and discovered that I had completely forgotten that he made some comparisons with Murdoch’s philosophical ideas. He should be given credit of course for first making this connection, and I think more can be said along these lines. I do want to suggest that she is using the concept of “transcendence” in ways closer to closer to how he would prefer it rather than in some “troubling” manner, that is, as entailing “unnecessary and problematic metaphysical complications.” Her subscription to “open-ended” concepts, metaphors and “pictures” (including, if you will, metaphorical pictures), her emphasis on “realism,” her struggle to provide compelling notions of moral psychology and spiritual practices that are, strictly speaking, non-religious in a monotheistic/Abrahamic sense (e.g., her interpretation of ‘Forms,’ which are more like ideals bereft of much metaphysical baggage) and so forth, simply add up to the idea that we can never fully incarnate, if you, will, “the Good,” hence the corresponding functions of perfectibilist ethics and the unending spiritual pilgrimage or ascent outside the Cave and the eventual return to same after a “vision” of the Good. Her metaphysics is thus more Buddhist, much more that Murdoch seems to have realized to the extent that she emphasized Zen meditation and appears to have ignored such the metaphysical views (dependent origination, emptiness….) that are integral to its “self-cultivation” philosophy and practices as discussed in Christopher Gowans’ chapter on “Murdoch and Buddhism” in the aforementioned edited volume, The Murdochian Mind. I will make the perhaps strange claim that “the Good” plays a role for Murdoch not unlike in some respects that utopian imagination and thought (in a non-pejorative sense) has played in Western history and political thought. In Justice and the Human Good (1980), William A. Galston helpfully outlines a succinct description of the nature and function of utopian thought and imagination:
“Utopias are images of ideal communities; utopian thought tries to make explicit and to justify the principles on the basis of which communities are said to be ideal. [….] [T]he philosophical importance of utopias rests on utopian thought, although the practical effect of a utopia may be quite independent of its philosophic merits [….] Utopian thought performs three related political functions. First, it guides our deliberation, whether in devising courses of action or in choosing among exogenously defined alternatives with which we are confronted. Second, it justifies our actions; the grounds of action are reasons that others ought to accept and—given openness and the freedom to reflect—can be led to accept. Third, it serves as the basis for the evaluation of existing institutions and practices. The locus classicus is the Republic, in which the completed ideal is deployed in Plato’s memorable critique of imperfect regimes. [I will remind readers here that it is often forgotten or ignored precisely why Plato was discussing this ideal: because it was too difficult to directly address the nature of the soul or psyche).
“Utopian thought attempts to specify and justify the principles of a comprehensively good political order. Typically, the goodness of that order rests on the desirability of the way of life enjoyed by the individuals within it; less frequently, its merits rely on organic features that cannot be reduced to individuals. Whatever their basis, the principles of the political good share certain general features:
First, utopian principles are in their intention universally valid, temporally and geographically.
Second, the idea of the good order arises out of our experience but does not mirror it in any simple way and is not circumscribed by it. Imagination may combine elements of experience into a new totality that has never existed; reason, seeking to reconcile the contradictions of experience, may transmute its elements.
Third, utopias exist in speech; they are ‘cities of words.’ This does not mean that they cannot exist but only that they need not ever. This ‘counterfactuality’ of utopia in no way impedes its evaluative function.
Fourth, utopian principles may come to be realized in history, and it may be possible to point to real forces pushing in that direction. But our approval of a utopia is not logically linked to the claim that history is bringing us closer to it or that we can identify an existing basis for the transformative actions that would bring it into being. Conversely, history cannot by itself validate principles. The movement of history (if it is a meaningful totality in any sense at all) may be from the most desirable to the less; the proverbial dustbin may contain much of enduring worth.
Fifth, although not confined to actual existence, the practical intention of utopia requires that it be constrained by possibility. Utopia is realistic in that it assumes human and material preconditions that are neither logically nor empirically impossible, even though their simultaneous co-presence may be both unlikely and largely beyond human control to effect.
Sixth, although utopia is a guide for action, it is not in any simple sense a program of action. In nearly all cases, important human or material preconditions for good politics will be lacking. Political practice consists in striving for the best results achievable in particular circumstances. The relation between the ideal and the best achievable is not deductive. [….]
Thus, the incompleteness of utopia, far from constituting a criticism of it, is inherent in precisely the features that give it evaluative force. As has been recognized at least since Aristotle, the gap between utopian principles and specific strategic/tactical programs can be bridged only through an inquiry different in kind and content from that leading to the principles themselves. If so, the demand that utopian thought contain within itself the conditions of its actualization leads to a sterile hybrid that is neither an adequate basis for rational evaluation nor an accurate analysis of existing conditions.”
So, a deep bow to Professor Angle as we attempt to continue what he initiated. Another example is found in Megan Jane Laverty’s last chapter to The Murdochian Mind on “Civility,” which brings us back to Confucian (and Neo-Confucian) ideas, concepts and practices (she has read Amy Olberding).
erratum: “and appears to have ignored the metaphysical views…”