Abstract
This essay first presents a rather detailed development of the question of internalism and externalism as it was triggered by Bernard Williams’s notion of internal and external reason all the way through Nagel and Korsgaard. Basically I adopt Gunnar Bjornsson’s definition of a conditional internalism in my evaluation of Zhu Xi’s moral philosophy. I argue that ethics as a practical philosophy must contains a theory of moral cultivation and shows how people could become a moral person. This is a good indication of whether a moral philosophy provides an adequate understanding of our moral experience and provides a criterion for our evaluation of the kind of reason it provides for moral judgments and motivation. To cultivate oneself to be a virtuous person and the ideal is a sage is precisely the basic concern of Confucianism. Zhu Xi is no exception and is what he struggles all through his early to mature theory. The central concern is his reflections on moral self-cultivation. This paper presents a brief background of Zhu Xi’s Confucianism and showing how his conception of the way of moral cultivation and hence his framework in general is different from Confucius and Mencius. I then argue that Zhu Xi have a clear conception of moral cultivation that fully satisfy the four criteria proposed by Bjornsson and that it is a conditional internalism. It shows also that Confucianism provides an answer to the question of “why be moral.”
I am grateful to Professor Jennifer Liu in styling and polishing the paper so that it is much better readable in its present form.
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Notes
- 1.
Though Aristotle first called ethics as a branch of practical philosophy, Kant is perhaps the first great philosopher to show some concern about how to realize a moral act in our daily dealings. His third chapter on the incentive of practical reason in the Book I, Part I of the Critique of Practical Reason is a discussion of how practical reason is practical and the last Part II on Methodology contains some discussion on how to make the objective principle of moral law a subjective principle, that is, how to secure a person to act morally. It is in fact a piece of moral cultivation though very primitive in the eyes of Confucianism. Unfortunately, later development in philosophy pays no attention at all to Kant’s idea of moral practice and relegates the duty to educators or psychologists.
- 2.
Stephen Darwall in his essay “Reasons, Motivations, the Demands of Morality: an Introduction” for the Part IV the book Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches, has noted that the term “internalism” derived from W. D. Falk’s “‘Ought’ and Motivation,” published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 48 (1947–1948), pp.111–38. Cf Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 7, n.1; Part of the first chapter is reprinted in Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches, pp. 323–40.
- 3.
Cf. The views and reasons by Nagel and Korsgaard are discussed below.
- 4.
Those marginal cases of apathy, even anti-sociopaths personality are relatively uncommon and could be treated as marginal cases and could be reasonably assimilated as cases needing effective moral cultivation or education.
- 5.
Mencius puts forward his analysis and argument in his famous, though short, statement of the spontaneous response to the alarming scene of a small child at the brink of falling into a deep well and who will thus be serious hurt. The spontaneous response is an unconditional imperative to ourselves urging us to stop the great harm coming to the innocent child. This is our moral mind that finds unbearable the suffering of others. It is the foundation of moral judgment and motivates us to act spontaneously, and thus unconditionally, for it is a moral decision made before any reflection or deliberation of means and end, and made even before we determine what kind of action to save the child. Mencius is of course aware that we may finally help to save the child or alternately just walk away. Though some may not do anything to help save the child, it does not mean that we do not have the spontaneous response and a self-motivation within our mind, as Korsgaard maintained the distinction of the two theses. For a detailed analysis of the argument contained in this passage, please refer to my book on the sources of normativity in Confucianism (Lee 2013: 190–98).
- 6.
This is the basic way of picturing the two poles of our lives, first proposed by Mencius, with the reflective part as “hear/mind” (xin) called the lofty body (dati 大體) and the lesser body (xiaoti 小體) which is non-reflective and acts merely following natural impulses. For Zhu Xi, the heart/mind is the reflective and active part of our life (qizhiling 氣之靈), and bodily inclination refers to the part of our life that is non-reflective, inert and impulsive. It is by no means a body-mind duality thesis like the one suggested by Descartes.
- 7.
There is in fact a heated debated issue of whether Zhu Xi is representative of Confucianism or is a side development. Whatever it is, Zhu Xi is still representative of a very important School of Confucianism. In the following, I shall give an exposition of Zhu Xi’s ideas and how they related to the issue of internalism and externalism.
- 8.
One of the most rigorous critique of Zhu Xi’s theory of moral cultivation is by one of the most famous and important contemporary Neo-Confucian, the late Professor Mou Zongsan, who devotes a whole book on Zhu Xi’ philosophy in his justly famous volumes on Song-Ming Confucianism (Mou 1969).
- 9.
I have made a comparative study of Zhu Xi and Kant, with xin and xing in contrast with Kant’s idea of wilhur (volition) and wille. I have argued that the two are homological and both are autonomous kind of agency though different from the kind of Mencius (Lee 1993).
References
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———, ed. 1992b. Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. (it is one of the most comprehensive collections of essays on the development and issues of Western ethics for the last twenty years of the twentieth century.)
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Lee, S.C. (2020). Zhu Xi and the Debate between Internalism and Externalism. In: Ng, Kc., Huang, Y. (eds) Dao Companion to ZHUXi’s Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29175-4_37
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