Sabbatical Application -- Philosophy
TITLE OF PROJECT: Punishment and Moral Education in Classical Confucian
and Western Ethics
ABSTRACT:
Does punishment have a useful role to play in teaching people to be moral? During my
sabbatical I will compare and analyze classical Confucian and classical Western
philosophical responses to that question. At first glance, there appears to be profound
disagreement: classical Western philosophers like Plato and Aristotle seem to answer a
clear “yes” while Confucius and his followers appear to say “no.” But philosophical
positions are seldom that simple, and even if they are that simple the arguments
supporting them are not. I intend to discover the nuances of the authors’ positions, find
the philosophical arguments for those positions, analyze the arguments’ strengths and
weaknesses, and see how much common ground the Confucians share with philosophers
in the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. My plan is to write a scholarly paper on my
findings, begin longer-term research on the topic, and revise my Introductory Ethics
course to include more Confucian and comparative philosophy.
NARRATIVE:
A. Significance of this Work
The general question I wish to address in my sabbatical project is, “How does
punishment’s role in classical Confucian ethics compare and contrast with its role in the
classical Western ethical systems of Plato and Aristotle, particularly in the area of moral
education?”1 In some classical Confucian texts (e.g. Confucius n.d./1998), there appears
to be a claim that punishment is at best ineffective in moral education, while both Plato
(e.g. n.d./1987 and n.d./1998) and Aristotle (n.d./1980) argue that punishment has an
important and positive role to play in the teaching of morality; I intend to explore and
analyze the extent and philosophical significance of this apparent disagreement. Here are
some more specific questions that I intend to consider, although I realize I won’t have
time to answer more than a few of them thoroughly in the course of a year:
1. Plato argues that punishment cures a person of injustice and that being unjust is worse
for a person than suffering injustice. How strong are his arguments for these bold
claims?
2. Aristotle says that punishment can help young people to form good habits. Does his
theory have resources for articulating a useful role for punishment in moral education
of adults?
3. Confucius and some of his early followers claim that punishment does not help
people internalize ethical norms: it simply motivates them to avoid detection. Does
this claim apply equally to children and adults? To all types of punishment (rather
than just to the system of legal punishment in ancient China)?
4. Confucius argues that a sage king (a perfectly virtuous ruler) will have no need for
laws or punishment because people will simply follow his example. In the absence of
an ideal ruler, does Confucius (or do his followers) consider punishment a necessary
evil?
For my purposes, “punishment” will be used broadly to refer to any type of punishment or negative
sanction: physical or nonphysical, legal or extralegal. “Moral education” simply means “teaching others—
children or adults—to be moral”: to become good people and/or to act rightly.
1
5. Do later texts in the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Confucian traditions give further
support for the positions described in 1-4 above?
6. Is there any empirical evidence to support the claims of Plato, Aristotle, or Confucius
about the (in)effectiveness of punishment in moral education?
The significance of this project derives from (1) the importance of comparative
philosophy, (2) the emerging interdisciplinary interest in moral education, and (3) the
lack of literature thus far on this aspect of comparative moral education; all of which will
be addressed more fully below.
Regarding (1), philosophers in the past few decades have recognized to an
increasing extent the importance of understanding other philosophical traditions, both for
the traditions’ inherent philosophical significance and for gaining more understanding of
one’s own tradition (see Angle 2007), as demonstrated by the emergence of four
organizations focusing on Chinese and/or comparative philosophy that sponsor sessions
at meetings of the American Philosophical Association (the major national association in
the discipline) and at least three major English-language scholarly journals devoted to
comparison of Asian and Western philosophy.
Regarding (2), the topic of moral education recently has become very fertile
ground for interdisciplinary collaboration among philosophical ethicists, psychologists,
and educators. The Association for Moral Education attracts a large, international
membership from academics in the social sciences, philosophy, and education, as well as
from K-12 teachers and administrators. Since the early 1990s, character education
programs drawing on philosophical virtue ethics (e.g. Lickona 1992; Kilpatrick 1993)
have received much attention from professional educators.
Finally, regarding (3), the lack of literature2 on the aspect of comparative moral
education that I find most fascinating provides me with a great opportunity to make a
significant contribution to the work being done both in comparative philosophy and in
moral education.
B. Basic Description
After reviewing the classical Western and Confucian sources from which I’ve
derived my questions for investigation, I’ll spend the most of Fall 2009 familiarizing
myself with the secondary sources (primarily in the Confucian tradition) that seem most
likely to be helpful in developing answers to those questions. By early December I
expect to come to (at least) working hypotheses and be ready to outline philosophical
arguments for them, and by the end of January I’ll narrow the scope of investigation for
the purposes of my conference paper and develop a more detailed outline of my
arguments in response to the question(s) on which I’ll be focusing. The writing of the
paper itself will take place between early February and mid-April. Finally, between midApril and the end of May I’ll revisit my fall research with an eye to further writing and
course revision, and develop paper/chapter outlines and an appropriately-revised syllabus
for Introductory Ethics that includes more Confucian and comparative philosophy.
C. Previous Work
The proposed project represents a largely new direction for my research. While
my main area of specialization within philosophy is ethics and I have been doing some
interdisciplinary research in moral education in the past year and a half or so, I had not
I’ve discussed my research plans in some depth with Confucianism and comparative philosophy expert
Stephen Angle, who confirmed that to the best of his (considerable) knowledge nothing has been published
on my topic.
2
done any advanced research in Confucian or comparative philosophy before this past
summer. Then in July and August of 2008 I was blessed with the opportunity to
participate in a six-week seminar on Confucianism and contemporary (Western) virtue
ethics, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The seminar
provided a terrific introduction to the classical Confucian philosophical texts and a
unique opportunity for initial comparisons with the more familiar Western virtue-based
ethical theories. It also afforded a great opportunity to develop ideas for my research
project through ongoing conversation with the seminar’s directors and 14 other
participants. While the NEH seminar gave me the necessary familiarity with primary
sources in classical Confucian ethics, I still lack expertise in secondary sources such as
commentaries and contemporary developments, and gaining facility with those will
comprise a substantial part of my project. Fortunately, seminar co-director Stephen
Angle has pointed me to several promising sources that relate well to my topic; these
appear in the bibliography below.
As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, my primary area of specialization
within philosophy is ethics, so I come to the project with substantial background in the
Western ethical traditions with which I’ll be comparing the Confucian tradition. I
regularly use both primary and secondary literature in Platonic and Aristotelian ethics in
both my teaching and my research.
Finally, I mentioned above that recently I have been performing interdisciplinary
research in the area of moral education. More specifically, I’ve been working with Tonia
Bock of the UST Psychology Department and a few student researchers to investigate the
effect of taking courses in philosophical ethics on students’ perceptions of their own
moral qualities and behaviors. While the proposed sabbatical project in comparative
moral education is quite different—it is theoretical rather than empirical—my previous
research in the area of moral education has given me some background in the main
concepts and theories in this field.
D. Specific Professional Goals
My professional goals for the project are, in chronological order: (1) to gain
facility with secondary and contemporary sources in Confucian ethics, (2) to prepare an
excellent scholarly paper on a to-be-finalized subset of the questions I’ll be exploring
(listed in section A above) for presentation at a professional conference of philosophers
with expertise in Confucianism and Western virtue ethics and for later publication, and
(3) to develop plans for ongoing research on the topic and for inclusion of Confucian
ethics in my teaching, particularly of Introductory Ethics. Since (2) is the most concrete
and specific of the three, I’ll focus on primarily on that goal and then elaborate just a bit
on the other two.
As a result of my participation in the NEH seminar described in section C, I have
been invited to present a paper on the topic of punishment and moral education at a
professional conference on Confucianism and contemporary virtue ethics to be held in
Beijing in the summer of 2010. (In fact, the seminar directors—who, along with several
Chinese philosophers, are on the conference organizing committee—are in the process of
raising funds to help cover travel expenses for me and several of the other seminar
participants so that we can present our research. So it seems clear that I’m not merely
invited but expected to come to the conference with a paper worthy of an audience of
international scholars.) After receiving feedback from the other conference participants, I
intend to submit a version of the paper as an article and/or include it as part of a longerterm book project.
Regarding goal (1), and as mentioned in earlier sections, I’ll need to gain more
background in the Confucian ethical tradition before developing my own scholarly work
and teaching interests in comparative ethics. So I see (1) as a means to both (2) and (3).
Regarding goal (3), it is clear to me that I won’t be able to address more than a
few of the questions/topics listed in section A in a sufficiently thorough way as part of
my work on the paper for the Beijing conference—perhaps I’ll even find that I have more
than enough to say about just one of those questions. So I plan to develop an initial
strategy for tackling the rest of the questions over the next several years via a book or
additional articles. Also, I am already finding many similarities between Confucian and
Aristotelian approaches to ethics that I think would be of interest to my students, so by
the end of the sabbatical year I intend to have a plan for modification of my Introductory
Ethics course to include more Confucian ethics.
E. Off-campus Locations
While my research does not itself require off-campus work, it may be worth
noting that I intend to apply for several external fellowships to help fund a yearlong
sabbatical and that some of these fellowships would require residence at other
institutions. (If unable to secure an external fellowship, I may have to cut back to a onesemester sabbatical.)