"Confucian Role Ethics: Issues of Naming, Translation, and Interpretation" in The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy, edited by Alexus McLeod (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, Feb 21, 2019).
This chapter explores the arguments behind considering Confucian ethics as a kind of "role ethics", as articulated by Roger Ames and others. I see at least three sets of concerns that animate the reasoning behind Confucian role ethics: naming, translation, and interpretation. In terms of naming, I discuss this project as an example of zhengming 正名, or proper naming, which is a common Confucian ethical project. Confucian thinkers are often preoccupied with appropriate categorization, one species of which is naming. The naming of Confucian ethics as role ethics, I argue, is not only consistent with but is situated in a larger Confucian concern with appropriate names. In terms of translation, I explore CRE in conversation with the translation theory of Lawrence Venuti, who argues against translations of “fluency” for an anti-domestication strategy—a method for translations to maintain some level of “foreignness.” Finally, I engage certain hermeneutic and interpretive assumptions about the very project of coming to understand “Confucian” ethics at all. In doing so, I also provide certain critical reflections on “role ethics” as a way of understanding Confucianism.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sarah-mattice/23/
Sarah Mattice is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at UNF, specializing in comparative and non-western philosophy. Much of her research concerns East Asian philosophical philosophical traditions, including Confucianism (Ruism), Buddhism, and Daoism.