Philosophy East & West 51:3 (July, 2001)

No endnotes or final corrections in this version. Ask for a prepublication copy of your own.

This version also does not incorporate the comments of Prof. David DeMoss

Elegant is the junzi; he is as if cut, as if filed; as if chiselled,

as if polished; how freshly bright; how refined. . . .

The Book of Odes #55

The good, of course, is always beautiful.

Plato, Timeaus 87c

[The Spartans] sense that the virtues are like music.

They vibrate at a higher, nobler pitch.

--Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire

To "give style" to one’s character--a great and rare art!

--Friedrich Nietzsche

To become a work of art is the object of living.

--Oscar Wilde

    Feminist and postmodern critics appear to have placed the final nail in the coffin of the traditional idea of ethics as obedience to a moral code. For postmodernists universal moral laws are the ethical expression of logocentric and essentialist thinking and are more intelligibly conceived as abstractions from particular moral decision making. Feminists are more specific in their claim that this type of morality represents one of the most pervasive forms of patriarchy--to wit: the tyranny of the divine father who created the rules and the earthly fathers who have enforced them. Both deontological and utilitarian perspectives also assume a disembodied, impersonal self, which is a pale and misleading shadow of our own engaged personal agency. In his book From Morality to Virtue Michael Slote criticizes Kant for his moral asymmetry--for example, failure to help is wrong only when applied to others and not to the self.  He also critiques utilitarianism for its reductionism and, at least in its Singerian form, unreasonable moral demands such as a voluntary world-wide equalization of living standards.

    The most constructive response to this crisis in moral theory has been the revival of virtue ethics, an ethics that has the advantages of being personalist, contextualist, and, as I will argue, normative as well. In this paper I will also argue that the best way to refound virtue ethics is on the basis of the Greek concept of techn‘ tou biou, literally "craft of life." The ancients did not distinguish between craft and fine arts and the meaning of techn‘, even in its Latin form of ars, still retains the meaning of skillful crafting and discipline. In Greco-Roman culture these techniques were very specific, covering dietetics, economics, and erotics. In ancient China moral cultivation was intimately connected to the arts, from the art of archery to poetry, music, and dance such that virtually every activity would have both a moral and aesthetic meaning.

    A Chinese poet of the Book of Odes conceives of moral development as similar to the manufacture of a precious stone. At birth we are like uncut gems, and we have an obligation to carve and polish our potential in the most unique and beautiful ways possible. Using R. D. Collingwood’s distinction between craft and fine art, I hope show that the fine arts, particularly the performing arts of music and dance, can serve as a model for virtue ethics in our times. I will also demonstrate that Confucian philosophy has much to contribute to this project, although I want to emphasize that I am making a contemporary appropriation of an ancient view that did not recognize the full range of individual creativity that the fine art model allows.

I

    In the Hellenistic Age virtue was thoroughly gendered. There was a strong connection between reason, self-mastery, freedom, and virility. (The Latin virtus stems from vir meaning "manhood" so that Roman virtue meant "excellence of manly qualities.") Aristotle’s conception of woman as an ill formed and irrational man was almost universally accepted. Lacking reason the woman could not instill reason in those things without it, which of course the virtuous man could. (This meant that the virtuous man could control his sexual appetites, but women in general could not.) Greco-Roman ethics was, according to Foucault, an "ethics of men made for men, . . . a structure of virility that related oneself to oneself." Foucault also demonstrates that there was a close alliance among sexual virility, ethical virility, and social virility.

    The social hierarchy of virility and mastery produced interesting anomalies, such as the wife of the house being more "masculine" than the male slaves. Here the virtuous wife has these qualities only because she has imitated male self-mastery. Foucault gives the example of Ischomachus’ wife in Zenophon’s Oeconomicus who displays "masculine understanding" and is so well trained by her husband that she, like Plutarch’s barking dog, need hear his commands only once. Fourth Maccabees, a Hellenistic Jewish text, portrays the brave mother of seven boys as more masculine than Antiochus Epiphanes, the tyrant who tortures her sons to death.

    James Ware awkwardly translates ren*, the central Confucian virtue, as "manhood-at-its-best," which can be justified by the meaning of ren* as "noble huntsman" in the Book of Odes. Therefore, we see that Chinese virtue was gendered as well. This was not because of the preeminence of male reason, but because the virtues more likely developed according to a vocational model of nondomestic versus domestic duties. Several examples, however, reveal that some Chinese women were able to establish great virtue and exercise considerable political power within their restricted roles. A certain Ming Fu severely criticized her husband for his shortcomings as a charioteer for the minister of Qi. "Her intellignece was extensive" and she "knew excellence and hence she praised men who were able to attain it." The most illustrious example is Queen Man of Deng, who knew "the way of Heaven" and was therefore able to predict her incompetent husband’s death. Even the junzi praised her, so this remarkable woman was actually not to far from the status of a sage.

    A very striking and philosophically significant difference stands between Confucian and European philosophy. The latter generally followed Aristotle in his claim that reason is the essence of being human, but instead of this the Confucians offered a marvelous pun: ren ren*. The graph ren* is a combination of ren meaning person and the number two, so the concept of relationality is at the origins of this character. Ren* is variously translated as humanity, benevolence, human heartedness, love, and compassion; and, according to Tu Weiming, it is the comprehensive virtue that allows the perfection of all the others. At the heart of Confucian ethics is virtuous relationality rather than rational autonomy. Reasoning was of course important for ancient Chinese--their logical canons are impressive even without the syllogism--but reason was never granted the pride of place that relationality was. This means that self-mastery through reason plays no role in Confucian ethics, and that a male reason/female passions duality was not a conceptual weapon for Chinese males in the way it was for European patriarchy.

    Aristotle defines human beings as social as well as rational animals, but this dual definition leads to an unresolved dichotomy in Aristotle’s moral philosophy. In the early books of the Nicomachean Ethics the conditions for human happiness (eudaimonia) are thoroughly social and include material goods, friends, a good looking wife, and handsome children. In the tenth book, however, war and politics are declared "unleisurely" and happiness is equated with isolated contemplation. The moral virtues, which unified reason and the passions and were essential to the success of the polis, now give way to a life of intellectual virtue. As reason is that which is most divine in us we should, according to this Aristotle, emulate the gods in their freedom from society, the emotions, and nature. There is also a corresponding change in the pleasure that we experience in the virtues. The pleasure of the moral virtues involves the nonrational parts of the soul, whereas the contemplation of Book X produces pure intellectual joy. When the Confucians speak of the joy of virtue they are definitely referring to the embodied pleasures of the moral virtues.

    Aristotle is therefore faced with an irreconcilable inconsistency between rational autonomy and social relationality. Jiyuan Yu argues that Aristotle’s clear preference for the former over the latter appears in Aristotle’s claim that friendship is primarily based on self-love. Yu states that

a good person will perform actions in other people’s interests, but that is for the perfection of one’s own character. If so, when there is a conflict with other agents in pursing the development of their own characters, it is rational for a moral agent to develop his own, rather than curtailing it.

There is no ambivalence at all in the Confucian view that social relations constitute human nature, and Yu argues that if we conceive of ren* as filial love, then the expansion of this basic virtue to others gives a secure foundation for graded altruism and a truly other-regarding view of friendship. A virtue ethics based on aesthetic self-cultivation might well fail to encourage the other-regading virtues of love and compassion, but the thoroughly social self of Confucianism gives the proper psychological foundation for care for others.

    The Chinese character xin--translated as "mind" or "heart" but best rendered "heart-mind"--represents the "ruler" of the Confucian self. Reason and the passions are united in xin so the dichotomy that has plagued European thought is simply nonexistent. Assuming a thoroughly somatic soul, the Confucius of the Analects does not even oppose heart-mind to the senses and appetites, although this dichotomy does appear later in Mencius and Xunzi. Even so Mencius believes that the body is nevertheless constitutive of personal identity, because the virtues of the good person while "rooted in his heart" manifest themselves "in his face, giving it a sleek appearance. It also shows in his back and extends to his limbs. . . ." This means that sages literally "image" the virtues in their bodies and make even more evident the fusion of the good, the elegant, and the beautiful. Tu Weiming observes that learning li is essentially a "discipline of the body" and that the literal meaning of teaching by example (shenjiao), which is to be preferred over teaching by words (yenjiao), means "body teaching." (Although usually translated as "spirit," shen in human beings frequently refers to the whole psychophysical self.) The learning of li begins with physical exercises such as archery and charioteering and extends to the choreographing of every single bodily movement. This matches Foucault’s view that the bios of the human body should be the "material" from which we fashion our own virtuous "piece[s] of art."

    In many instances Greco-Roman "care of the self" tended to narcissism as self-indulgent ascetic-aesthetes poured their energies into their own body building and soul crafting. While definitely not narcissistic, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius certainly encouraged long periods of solitude and retreat from the world. Nevertheless, Foucault’s conclusion is that the best of Hellenistic moral self-cultivation was "not an exercise in solitude, but a true social practice; . . . the care of the self. . . appears . . . as an intensification of social relations." The evidence that Foucault adduces for this conclusion is the solicitude that the masters show for their pupils and how reflection in solitude resulted in fuller relations with others.

    As we have seen, Confucian self-cultivation has a strong social dimension, but I contend that this rests on firmer psychological and philosophical grounds than Hellenistic counterparts. When Epictetus, for example, reflects about the nature of the self he discovers the true Self, one that never sleeps and is never compromised by the passions. This is the spiritual self that we share with all human beings and that is the basis of our common humanity. The phrase self-examination (shen du) appears often in Confucian texts, but what Confucians find in their solitude is a not spiritual substance of Stoic or Cartesian variety, neither a dissolution into a universal self nor a solipsism and the egocentric predicament. Confucian self-examination reveals a self that has its own individual integrity and one that is united with its desires and emotions. Confucians also discover a self that is a process rather than a static substance; and they see for themselves the single thread of which Confucius spoke: the constitution of the self (zhong) is related to the constitution of others (shu).

    Tu Weiming has phrased this Confucian fusion of the inner and the outer in the following way:

The more one penetrates into one’s inner self, the more one will be capable of realizing the true nature of one’s human-relatedness. . . . The profound person [junzi] does not practice self-watchfulness [shen du] for the intrinsic value of being alone. In fact, he sees little significance in solitariness, unless it is totally integrated into the structure of social relations.

In short, the Confucians have a concept of self that gives full meaning to Foucault’s claim that retreat into the soul is the ground for true social practice. No substantialist or essentialist view of the self, which assumes that it is basically atemporal, unchanging, asocial, disembodied, and nonplural, is able to do this. Furthermore, the Confucian view does not require us to put care of the self before care of others. Because of the full relationality of self and others, Confucians would find the Greek priority of self over others as unnecessary. As Foucault observes: "One must not have the care for others precede the care for self. The care for self takes moral precedence in the measure that the relationship to self takes ontological precedence." Again we see rational autonomy overwhelming social relations and any secure foundations for the other-regarding virtues. This is simply another expression of Aristotle’s belief that friendship is based on self-love. If this is correct, then this mitigates significantly Foucault’s claim that Hellenistic ethics was as truly social as he claims it to be.

II

    We, however, can still speak of yi as personal appropriation without allowing a single variation in li. For example, even though judges interpret the exact same set of laws, their judicial decisions will have a very distinct personal style and character. Similarly, even though violin virtuosos are reading the exact same musical score, each them will give the piece a unique interpretation. We should assume that the dances the Confucians performed had a set choreography, but we could easily imagine each having particular styles as varied as all ballerinas do. These examples obviously support the idea of personal judgment rather than a group decision. A Confucianism aesthetics virtue is, however, role specific just as these examples from the fine arts are. Even though the younger brother may have his own particular style of deferring to his elder brother, he has no freedom not to defer or take on other roles not appropriate to li. Similarly, violin players do not switch to the French horn while performing their concertos.

Explicitly defined as fitness and appropriateness, yi mediates between the universal principle of humanity and the particular situations in which the principle is concretely manifested. . . . Yi is the human path (renlu) through which one’s inner morality becomes properly realized in society. This involves a practical judgment based upon the holistic evaluation of objective conditions.

"Right" rather than the traditional "righteousness" is a much better translation of yi, as long as we realize that this would always mean what is right for us or right for our conditions. For example, in Mencius’ time it was generally not right to touch your sister-in-law, but you certainly must do so if she is drowning and only your hand can save her. Yi is acting appropriately given one’s own personal history and situation. The meaning of one’s life is a creative fusion of external li and internal yi. Interestingly enough, Foucault finds the same dialectic in Hellenistic ethics, viz., "codes of behavior" (= li) coupled with "forms of subjectivation" (= yi). Foucault also maintains that moral practices are "not something that the individual invents by himself. They are patterns that he finds in his culture."

    Thinking of yi as a capacity for premoral discrimination is particularity helpful in understanding why the ren* person, who presumably uses yi, is "capable of liking or disliking other men." It also might explain the passage where Confucius believes something is terribly wrong when either everyone hates or likes something. Morally inferior people may either be indifferent and indiscriminately like anything; or alternatively, they may easily be swayed to hate those whom the group hates. What is appropriate, according to Confucius, is that people love virtue and the virtuous person and hate the lack thereof. (In a note to his translation Chan clarifies that "hate" in this passage "means dislike, without any connotation of ill will.") Mencius verifies the connection between yi and personal preference that I am proposing. In his discourse on the four beginnings, Mencius states yi originates in the sentiments of "disdain and dislike." Confucius’s observation that if a person is still disliked at forty, he will be always be disliked not only shows how lack of discernment becomes habitual, but also how this prevents such a person from enjoying the joys of a full social life. Some people continually misjudge how to act and relate to others. For Aristotle this would demonstrate a serious failure in practical reasoning and ultimately an inability to establish lasting friendships.

    Returning to the aesthetics of virtue it is significant to note that personal preferences have more to do with matters of taste than issues of morality. A person might, for example, being fully justified in criticizing a person for an immoral act, but many may not like the way he did it. It was not, as the British would say, "good form." Robert Eno has discovered that Zhou inscriptions do not distinguish between yi as morally right from another yi meaning good and proper form. Bad manners are not wrong because they are immoral but wrong because they lack aesthetic order: they are inelegant, coarse, or worse. Confucian li makes no distinction between manners and morality, so an aesthetic standard rules for all of its actions.

    Mencius describes the relationship between yi and zhi in a way that supports the present analysis. For him zhi is more like Aristotle’s practical wisdom, because its origins lie in feelings of right and wrong, whereas yi a more general capacity of discrimination arising in likes and dislikes. Taking Hansen’s idea of zhi as "know-how" one could say that yi provides the initial preference for acting, while zhi would be the skill necessary for carrying it out. (We will return to skills and virtues in the last section.) This point is confirmed even in the Analects: "When faced with what is right (yi), to leave it undone shows a lack of courage." True courage, we will recall, requires the presence of ren*. Mencius insists on the strict alliance between ren* and yi in achieving zhi: "The actuality of ren* consists in serving one’s parents. The actuality of yi consists in obeying one’s elder brother. The actuality of wisdom consists in knowing these two things and not departing from them." Although the Confucians never affirm the unity the virtues in the way that Aristotle does, they both share a functional holism in which the virtues must always work together in harmony with one another.

    Let us now summarize the advantages of Confucian over Greco-Roman ethics. First, the absence of any major conflict between reason and the passions allows Confucians to integrate the affective parts of the self without any difficulty. That sexist Confucian males produced such a view puts the lie to some feminist claims that only women could create an ethics of care in which relationality, the emotions, and the body are given prominence. (The conjunction of relationality and nonviolence in the Buddha is striking, especially given his initial resistance to women entering the Sangha and Carol Gilligan’s discovery of these qualities in her female subjects.) We have also argued that the Confucian view of the self supports the moral imperative of concern for others without sacrificing individual integrity. Confucian morality aims at an ideal of the coincidence of self-interest and other-interest. On the other hand, a substantialist view of a universal Self in Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Christianity appears to promote a more self-sacrificial ethic, arguably because this Self is always to preferred over the ego self, viz., "Not I but Christ" or "Not I (jiva) but Atman." The fact that process theologian John Cobb is committed to preserve self-interest within the performance of other-regarding Christian virtues may reveal significant common ground between American and Confucian process views of the self.

A good man is a perfectly functioning hierarchy of goals in which his projects cooperate harmoniously under the direction of more general, overarching goods. . . . Analogously, the plot of a good tragedy is thus a formal emblem of the well-planned life. Work and life are noble to the extent that they manifest the handiwork of a virtuous practical intelligence.

It should be obvious that Confucius agrees with Aristotle in his perfectionism and functional holism.

III

    Before turning to the Confucian texts to establish a connection between the good and the beautiful, let us work more generally with the concepts of rational and aesthetic order. Our word "reason" goes back to the Greek verb lego, the verbal noun of which is the famous word logos, which was translated into Latin as ratio. Lego has two principal meanings: "to say" (hence the Word of John’s logos) and "to put together." The most general definition of rationality that we could draw from this etymology is the following: "Rational beings are those beings who are able to put their world together so that it makes sense to them." We could then say that in addition to analytic reason, one that is prescriptive and insists on universal laws of thinking, there is also synthetic reason, which is descriptive and does not bind us to the laws of logic. We could also propose that synthetic reason has generally been passive in the sense that most people have accepted the way religious and cultural institutions have put their world together for them. Traditional religions, then, are constantly involved in re-lego, faithfully repeating the words (logoi) and ritually putting the world together again and again according to the accepted ways. Synthetic reason, however, can also be active, creative, and even anarchic, defying the old rules and proposing new ways of looking at the world. Cezanne, for example, rejected the laws of perspective and ushered in a whole new way of doing art. Scientists working on the cutting edge go with their intuitions, putting together the most elegant and sometimes daring new theories. Only afterward are they tested by analytic reason, whereas both artists and virtuous persons rightly resist such testing.

    I  now propose that the distinction between analytic and synthetic reason parallels closely Ames and Hall’s distinction between "rational" and "aesthetic" order. By abstracting from the particular, rational order is ultimately indifferent to concrete individuals because it generates the rule of complete substitutability. For example, p's and q's can stand for any word in any natural language, just as in classical physics one atom can take the place of any other atom without changing the whole. Morally this idea of substitution finds its ultimate expression in the interchangeabiliy of the sovereign in Kant’s Kingdom of Ends. An equivalent uniformity is obtained in the modern bureaucratic state where individuals are leveled and made abstract by social rules and regulations. Even libertarians who criticize the welfare state for these indignities share the same axiom of social atomism with their social utilitarian opponents. Regardless of context and circumstance the social atom of classical economic theory take the place of any other agent.

    Aesthetic order, on the other hand, focuses on the concrete individual so much so that there can be no substitution and no interchangeability. This applies to the work of fine art as much as the person of great virtue. This means that something aesthetic is ordered primarily in terms of internal relations, the basic elements being dependent on one another. By contrast physical or social atoms are externally related, independent from their environments, and for Kant’s moral agents, immune to their emotions and bodies. Even though Aristotle is the origin of the idea of rational autonomy, this applies only to the intellectual virtues and only when Aristotle sees the highest good as pure contemplation. It is important to remember that he joined reason and the passions in the moral virtues and he argued that these virtues are the unique self-creations of practical reason. Any view that ignores the constitutive role of the passions is bound to be numb (anaesthetic) and simply not do justice to experience.

    Analytic reason establishes rational order by reducing the whole to a simple sum of parts, while aesthetic order is synthesized from particulars in such a way that its unity is organic and immune to complete analysis. (Intimately paired subatomic particles also appear to make the universe far more organic than mechanical.) Rational order is ruled by universal laws--either physical or moral--while aesthetic order is created by imprecise "rules of thumb," by emulating the virtuous person or master artist, or ideally self-creation by practical reason. Rational order can be articulated in clear language, but no one can tell us explicitly how to be a good person or a great artist. Rational order involves "knowing that" whereas aesthetic order is produced by "knowing how"; the former can be said and cognized, the latter can only be shown in practice. Commentators and disciples alike bemoan the fact that Confucius never defined ren*, but they should have realized that the Master, without ever thinking about the distinction between rational and aesthetic order, knew that it could not be done.

    Applying the concept of aesthetic order Ames and Hall portray the Confucian sages as virtuoso performers who use their yi to create their own unique style of appropriating the social patterns of their community. This achievement is both moral and aesthetic because it results in the embodiment of the good (li) and the personal creation of an elegant, harmonious, and balanced soul. The beauty of such a creation is reflected in the person’s demeanor as well as her face, limbs, and back, as Mencius told us above. Chinese sages are so unified with their instruments (e.g., Butcher Ding’s knife) and their bodies that their actions appear effortless and magical. The emperor sits with his back to the north star, does nothing, and all is right with the empire. It is in this meaning of wu wei (effortless action) that both Confucianism and Daoism are united in an aesthetics of virtue.

    Zhuangzi's celebration of the crippled and the ugly also serves a response to those who might criticize aesthetic self-cultivation in another way. Moral aesthetes may be tempted to judge those who are not well formed in body or in action as morally unfit and not suitable for human interaction. For example, the beggars on the streets of large Indian cities are not a pretty sight, and an aesthetics of virtue might lead one to be less compassionate towards them. Zhuangzi's story of the ugly man of Wei whose virtue was "whole" and who was chosen by the Duke to be prime minister is a reminder that moral beauty is primarily an inner quality. (The Greeks called it eueidestatos, the soul of beauty, the one Plato conceived as a balance of intellect, passion, and appetite.) Neither Socrates nor Gandhi were considered handsome men, but they of course were paragons of virtue in the eyes of their disciples. The external beauty of some aesthetes may blind us to the fact that they may be too glib and too self-conscious about the gems they have created. (As Man of Deng said: "He steps proudly [but] his heart is not firm.") Natural moral beauty is never showy and ostentatious; if it is, it is false and only a semblance of virtue.

IV

    The earliest Confucians, not surprisingly, were not only teachers but musicians and dancers as well. Indeed, if Robert Eno’s extensive linguistic analyses are correct, then the original meaning of ru, the Chinese character for Confucian, is ritual dancer. Furthermore, Eno has traced the crucial word wen, translated as "pattern" or "culture" and taken by Confucians to mean Zhou culture, to a graph that stands for a dancer costumed as a bird. Eno finds it significant that the Mohists criticized the Confucians for their archaic speech and dress and also described them as dancing around making bird-like gestures.

    Even the causal reader of Confucian literature is struck by the many references to the Book of Odes, and Eno reminds us that this poetry was not meant for silent reading and was usually accompanied with music and dance. Eno cites the following passage from the Liji: "One must teach noble heirs and cadets according to the proper season. In spring and summer they learn dances of the shield and spear; in autumn and winter, dances of feather and flute." The description of the proper acts of the junzi in Chapter 10 of the Analects, thought by many to be a later addition, reminds one very much of the movements of a ritualized dance. This demonstrates the truth of Robert Neville’s observation that "learning the rhythms of one’s own movement is part of learning to perceive the being of others" and thereby confirming our moral connection with them.

    Confucius was not only an expert on li but also a very accomplished zither player. In his conversations with the Grand Music Master of Lu it is clear that Confucius considered himself at least the master’s equal. Once Confucius was lost so deeply in a Shun melody that he did not have any taste for meat for three months. He claimed to have the ability to read the character of composers by listening to their music. Along these lines it is said that Confucius, after his return from Wei to Lu, finally put the Book of Odes to music in the proper way, presumably based on a correlation between notes and virtues. Confucius is obviously committed to the fusion of the moral and the aesthetic. The beauty of the sage kings lies in their virtue; the beauty of any neighborhood is due to the goodness of its residents; a person without ren* could not possibly appreciate music; and a society without li and music would not be just; indeed, li cannot be perfected without music.

    At the end of Chapter 11 in the Analects four men are asked what they would do given their greatest wish. The first two answered that they would like to rule great and prosperous kingdoms. The first claimed that in three years’ time his people would be courageous and follow directions. The second admitted that he would have to wait for the appearance of a junzi to introduce li and music. The third had lower ambitions: he said that he would like to be a junior official in charge of the rites. The fourth Zengxi was playing his zither and apologized to Confucius for having such modest hopes for himself. Zeng confessed that all that he wanted to do was to go out of doors in the late spring, bathe in the river, perform the rain dance, and "go home chanting poetry." Confucius replied that he was "all in favor of" Zeng’s dream.

    There is, however, one indication that Confucius believes that beauty does not necessarily imply goodness. He once declared The Succession, a piece of Shun dance music, was both "perfectly beautiful and perfectly good," whereas Military Exploits, dance music from King Wu, was "perfectly beautiful but not perfectly good." The reason for the difference is that King Wu’s lack of virtue, principally because he overthrew the Yin by military force. This is one passage where Confucius does not preserve the unity of goodness and beauty consistently. Ideally Confucian philosophers should assume a complete isomorphism of heavenly order, societal order, and aesthetic order. If this is indeed the axiom, then something could not be perfectly good without being perfectly beautiful. In this incident King Wu's lack of virtue must be due to disobedience to the rules of li, which is deontological ethics rather than the teleological framework of virtue ethics. The only resolution to this is to assume that the composer of the Wu’s music was virtuous but Wu’s dancing of it was bad because of his vice.

    As we now turn to Mencius we see that he, too, continues the early Confucian fusion of the ethical and the aesthetic. The lost beauty of devastated Ox Mountain is a metaphor for moral depravity and in a famous passage on the stages of human perfection the attribute of beauty stands higher than goodness. Mencius also continues the detailed choreography of virtue when he says that the highest virtue requires that a person’s every movement will be in accordance with li. The Confucians agree with Aristotle that we should take pleasure in the virtues, and Mencius believes that music best expresses the joy of mature virtue. (Chinese aestheticians happily capitalize on the fact that music [yue] and joy [le] are represented by the same character.) For Mencius the joy of virtue is so infectious that when it arises one cannot stop it, "and when one cannot stop it, then one begins to dance with one’s feet and wave one’s arms without knowing it." One cannot imagine Confucians ever reaching the frenzied state of a Dionysos or a Shiva, but this passage paints a far more dynamic picture of them than is ordinarily assumed.

    In his eagerness to refute Gaozi’s analogical arguments, Mencius misses an opportunity to use one of Gaozi’s examples as way to express the aesthetic dimensions of moral self-cultivation. At the beginning of Chapter 6A Gaozi proposes that we see the development of virtue as analogous to the making of cups and bowls from willow wood. As one who was presumably reluctant to use the dialectical methods of his day, Mencius is remarkably quick to show that Gaozi’s argument implies an absurdity. The woodworker uses violent means to make his products, so that would imply that evil methods are used to produce the virtues. There is a double reductio in this response because these violent means would produce both vices as well as virutes.

Mencius could have responded much more constructively to this analogy. Woodworkers always look for certain features in the raw wood they select, sometimes choosing certain patterns in the wood’s grain or even a knot around which there are sometimes beautiful swirls. On this alternative reading of Gaozi’s analogy, the person of vice would be like the woodworker who works against the grain and destroys the beauty of the original forms. The virtuous person, on the other hand, works with the grain of her own nature, respecting its innate patterns, and makes herself into a thing of moral beauty.

It is instructive to contrast Zhuangzi's view of crafting bowls of wood. He concedes that the bowl is now beautiful and the shavings that are left are ugly, "yet they are both alike in having lost their inborn nature." The Daoist goal is to leave all as it is, like an uncarved block (pu), except, as we shall see, Butcher Ding and Wheelwright Pian.

    With his view of human nature Xunzi would be unmoved by Mencius’ reductio ad absurdum. For him it is not absurd to admit that violence is necessary for moral development. Sometimes crooked wood sometimes must be made straight and dull metal must be put to the grind stone. I also believe that Xunzi would embrace my alternative formulation of Gaozi’s analogy. Xunzi’s negative view of human nature does not in the least compromise his thoroughgoing humanism and his full commitment to moral self-cultivation. Nor does Xunzi break with earlier Confucians on the importance of music and dance. If anything, Xunzi makes the fusion of the arts and morality even more explicit and central. Xunzi declares that "music unites what is the same; rites distinguish that which is different; and through the combination of rites and music the human heart is governed." Without the unifying power of the arts one could easily get lost in ritualistic minutia and lose sight of morality’s proper purpose. The unity of physical movement, the order of heaven, musical harmony, and proper behavior is epitomized in the dance of the sage, who, as Xunzi describes it figuratively, "moves along with time; he bows or arches as the times change. [Fast or slow, curled or stretched,] a thousand moves ten thousand changes: his Way is one." The sage’s Dao is unified because his

spirit of the dance joins with the Way of Heaven. The drum is surely the lord of music, is it not? Hence, it resembles Heaven, while the bells resemble earth, the sounding stones resemble water, the mouth organs and lutes resemble the sun, and the scraper resemble the myriad beings of creation.

Edward Machle proposes that the cosmic dance is the central metaphor for Xunzi’s concept of self-cultivation: "Li is correlative to dance; both are the embodiment of that order or harmony which in natural things follow li and in human affairs appears as wen." (The second li is a character that means the natural principles in all things.)

    Medieval Confucians preserved the early views that great music has correct notes because of the virtue of the composer, and that beautiful paintings contains great thoughts as "prints" of a harmonious heart-mind (xin). They generally upheld the doctrine that the greater the virtue the greater the art. Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhou Dunyi preserves the isomorphism of heavenly and musical harmonies and their importance for virtue. He complains, however, about people who have rejected ancient music in favor contemporary sounds. The former "appeased the heart," while the latter "enhances desire." Just as music is a vehicle of moral principles so is good literature. Zhou observes that many young people are mere aesthetes: they have not obeyed their parents and have not applied themselves to virtue, so when they create literary works "this is no more than art (yi)." Zhou’s statement "literary style is a matter of art, whereas virtues (da-de) are a matter of substance," appears to move in the direction of European philosophy’s tendency to separate matters of taste and things of true value. Starting with the single inconsistency we saw with Confucius' condemnation of King Wu, moral order and aesthetic order are growing further apart.

V

    Therefore, both skills and virtues require a long apprenticeship before their respective ends can be achieved. The ingrained habits of both leads to a "body" knowledge that knows more than it can tell. Although skills involve a knowledge that cannot be completely formalized, they are amendable by critical reflection, including the ability to test options and the ability to change one's actions if better methods are discovered. Furthermore, the person mature in virtue acts on the knowledge of why the virtues are noble and why they must be practiced for their own sake. The person who seems virtuous by copying generous acts may have only the semblance of generosity, because a simple "knowing how" without proper motivation must be perfected by a "knowing why." A carpenter can explain why it is wrong to go against the grain just as an adult can explain to a child why it is wrong to eat too much. Practice, however, in both instances will be required to confirm this and to perfect the skill.

    The Stoics, however, defended virtue as a very special type of skill. They exploited the common intellectual component and used that as a way to further devalue the affective elements of virtue. The success of a skill depends on a finished product, whereas a mature virtue is always "complete" because, as Julia Annas explains, a "virtue can be said to succeed the whole time it is activated." Indeed, Stoic virtue is complete even if it is not connected to happiness nor "activated" in social relations. We can use this Stoic insight about holistic virtue without embracing Stoic intellectualism or the Stoic rejection of the passions and society. For the Confucians mature virtue is whole not only because it is complete in its every expression but also because it is a unity of body, heart, and mind. The Stoic view of virtue as skill also helps us bridge Aristotle's gap between "making" and "doing" as we think of moral cultivation as a form of self-creation. The skill of the dancer and the musician is also complete in the sense of the "product" already being "finished" in the first moment of performance. Like the Stoic view of virtue, musical and dancing skills "succeed the whole time [they are] activated." They are also whole in the sense of expressing a unity of body, heart, and mind.

    R. G. Collingwood observes that the while the craftsperson and the artist may share some of the same specific skills, the former has some specific end in sight while the latter does not. The potter, for example, shapes a very fine coffee mug on her potter's wheel. She then makes a mold of the mug so that it can be reproduced and sold on the market. The ceramic sculptor, on the other hand, proceeds very differently. Most of such work is not done on a wheel and, according to Collingwood, is not produced with any particular form in mind. If the sculptural work begins with a sketch, as is sometimes the case, then the artistic indeterminacy resides there primarily, although the execution of the sketch in clay may often require basic modifications because of differences in the media. The potter produces perhaps thousands of copies of the same fine mug, but the ceramic sculptor creates only one unique work.

    The implications for the practice of virtue ethics are, I believe, quite instructive. In contrast to the father who tells his son "Be just like me," following the craft analogy, a contemporary Confucian would say "Be your own person" and develop a unique ensemble of character traits, moral dispositions, and behaviors. I cannot resist the following indulgences. Confucius says: "Don't be just any old mug, be a gem!" Or: "Don't be a chip off the old block, but carve your own creation from your own material." More seriously, it is significant to observe that we sometimes use the word "gem" to describe a person of good character. Doc of Mean, chap. 13.

    Laozi’s ideal of remaining a "uncarved block" (pu) and Zhuangzi’s frequent preference for a faceless and undifferentiated hundun stand as major Chinese objectors to the cultivation of virtue. Liezi, for example, returned "from the carved gem . . . to the unhewn block." Butcher Ding and Wheelwright Pien, however, do not leave things are they are; neither the ox nor the wood is left uncarved. Furthermore, Ding and Pien have developed consummate skills. Using these masters rather than Liehzi as ideals diminishes significantly the antisocial implications of the Daoist sage. Eno is doubtless correct in observing that Confucian social skills are intersubjective and Daoist skills are intrasubjective. Nevertheless, Ding teaches Lord Wenhui how to nurture life, presumably without rejecting society and his position in it. (Duke Han does not respond to the Pien’s lecture, but one may assume an equally positive reponse.) Liehzi, however, is not a man of any particular skill, "stand[ing] alone like a clod" and "remain[ing] sealed," and it is clear that no ruler would have taken notice of him. Therefore, Zhuangzi's knackmasters are more sympathetic allies with the Confucians for a general Chinese aesthetics of virtue.

    The Greeks did not operate according to a craft art-fine art distinction, which, in fact, appears to have originated in the Renaissance. In his search for the proper function of human beings, Aristotle claims that it is analogous to the functions of many types of people; and he made no distinction among flue-players, sculptors, carpenters, or tanners. Furthermore, skilled work in ancient societies was centered in the crafts, so that in is not surprising that craft skills were used as an analogue by ancient moral philosophers. Julia Annas states that the "insistence on the common structure of skills and virtue was an insistence that being moral is like working; the virtuous person is importantly like the good worker." Living as we do in not only a postcraft but a postindustrial society, Annas goes on to observe that we see the crafts as hobbies and curiosities at craft fairs, thereby further undermining our ability to appreciate the basis for ancient virtue ethics. The fine arts are still central and valuable to our contemporary lives, so this why they are a good model for virtue ethics.

    One could continue the conversation with Annas in the following way. Does not going to craft fairs bring us in touch with what it must of been like to live like this; and do not many of us admire not only the excellence of good craft but also the virtues of the people who produce them? Aristotle is certainly correct in insisting that a evil man can make a good pot, but this tends to obscure the equally important fact that disciplined skilled work is one of the best ways to develop an entire ensemble of virtues. Even though we cannot possibly answer the conundrum of the evil sculptor, we have found a way to show that Aristotle has overdrawn his distinction between making and acting. Both Stoics and Confucians have helped us see the virtuous person as an ideal combination of making one's self and living by means of this moral-aesthetic creation.

    In a recent article James D. Wallace contends that the craft analogy breaks down because we can specify quite nicely the skills needed and the end result of craft art, but no one has ever been able to give the comparable specifics, especially with regard to ends, about the art of human flourishing. Wallace believes that the craft analogy can be saved by focusing on the analogous way in which skills are used to solve specific problems presented by craft materials and the moral life respectively. (This is essentially what Aristotle draws from the craft analogy.) What Wallace is essentially saying is that the craft analogy succeeds with regard to means but fails with regard to ends. I propose, however, that by using the craft art-fine art distinction we can solve what Wallace calls the "fixed goal" problem. The objects of craft art are determinate, whereas the goals of both fine art and life itself are indeterminate. In The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles confesses that he cannot control the lives of his characters, so, despite the claims of earlier omnipotent novelists, fictional lives are just as indeterminate as real human lives.

    In his article "Hume and the Aesthetics of Agency" Flint Schier supports the Mencian view of the "physiognomic" perception of virtue. Critics have always held that since virtues are internal properties there can be no objective theory of the virtues. Both Confucius and Hume, however, reject the modernist distinction between inner and outer and offer the obvious examples of the clear perception of the shame of vice and the glow of virtue, especially in the saint or sage. The fact that we do not always perceive this connection or sometimes make mistakes about it does not in any way discount the truth of the instances in which we do get it right. Schier’s best insight, however, is his explanation about why we find endless fascination in Van Gough’s Peasant’s Shoes but nothing at all comparable in the same type of real shoes, even if expertly displayed in a folk museum. Schier claims that in the painting we perceive a unique "style of agency" that captures us in a profound way that the museum shoes do not. As he argues: "The deposits of agency in action and creation must be aesthetically relevant, not only as determinants of what we are to appreciate (sonnet, painting, etc.), but as objects of aesthetic appreciation in their own right." This argument serves to strengthen our distinction between the value of the fine arts and the art of moral self-creation over the craft arts of shoemaking, etc. In each we recognize a style of agency that is admirable on a different level than the manufacture of useful goods.

    Several of our examples have suggested a difference in kind between art and craft, but I would rather propose a continuum of craft excellence and unique fine art. This is a horizontal continuum to avoid the elitist implications of a hierarchy of fine art over craft art. Craft excellence would be found in the examples used earlier: a judge's interpretation of the law, a musician performing according to a standard score, and a ballet dancer following a fixed choreography. The examples serve as apt analogies for the person who follows Confucian li, and the judge, the musician, and the Confucian still preserve the concept of personal appropriation of norms. Note that none of these examples can be reduced to a mere subjectivism. In each good objective reasons can be given for the respective interpretations, and not only can we say that a performance is bad form but that it is simply wrong. We have, therefore, fulfilled the promise of the introduction: we have shown that virtue ethics can be normative as well as personalist and contextualist.

    Ancient virtue ethics, therefore, involves craft excellence rather than an art of free creativity. There will be personal appropriation and a relative mean within the bounds of Confucian li and Greek ethos. Furthermore, as we have seen, a Confucian aesthetics of virtue is role specific. Sovereigns can change places in Kant’s Kingdom of Ends, but even Confucius could not change places with the emperor. One could even say that the fine arts of the Renaissance and later periods remained within the ethos of the times. Only in the later 19^th and 20^th Century have some artists broken completely with social standards. Here figures such as Nietzsche and Wilde proposed an ethics of total self-creation without regard for norms or standards. The best musical analogy is jazz where players, even though required to stay in the same key, can freely improvise on the melody, each can take their turn at it, and players can even change instruments if they wish. It is interesting to note that the jazz example still assumes conformation to the laws of classical harmony. On this point Confucius would be partly in agreement with the jazz musicians: ""[Music] begins with playing in unison. When it gets into full swing, it is harmonious, clear, and unbroken." In contrast to heavy metal rock one cannot almost imagine Confucius and Mencius celebrating jazz in and "danc[ing] with [their] feet and wav[ing] [their] arms without knowing it."

    Let us now summarize some general points of our contemporary adaptation of a Confucian aesthetics of virtue. One of the problems with a rule-based ethics is applying the rules to specific cases. The imperatives of virtue ethics--be patient, be kind, be compassionate, be courageous--better equip an individual to negotiate the obstacles of the moral life. The virtue ethics approach is not to follow a set of abstract rules, but to develop a unique ensemble of behaviors, dispositions, and qualities that lead to human excellence. Virtue ethics may not have pat answers to specific cases--no ethical theory could offer this--but it does prepare the moral agent for adaptation, innovation, and flexibility. As opposed to a rule based ethics, where the most that we can know is that we always fall short of the norm, virtue ethics is truly a voyage of personal discovery. Both Confucian and Aristotelian ethics always aim at a personal mean that is a creative choice for each individual. Virtue ethics is emulative--using the sage as a model for virtue--whereas rule ethics is based on simple conformity and obedience. The emulative approach engages the imagination and personalizes and thoroughly grounds individual moral action and responsibility. Such an ethics naturally lends itself to an aesthetics of virtue: the crafting of a good and beautiful soul, a unique individual gem among other gems.