Socially Centered Ethics
摘要
Joanna Crosby extends Bockover’s discussion: if we are not autonomous individuals, then what types of ethical approaches might we endorse? The answer according to Rosemont, which was significantly and loudly developed in his collaborations with Roger Ames, and also in Ames’s own work, is Confucian Role Ethics. This conception and its classification help to see how Confucian approaches are unique and have contributions to make that should not be limited to “just another version of” for example, deontology, care ethics, or virtue ethics. We should not, however, be too quick to claim that envisioning roles as central to the development of the person and to ethics is uniquely Confucian. Crosby expertly demonstrates how other non-western ethical systems share Confucian Role Ethics’ “commitment to harmonious relations as the highest good.” In particular, looking at Azetc and Zulu thought, Crosby argues that Confucian Role Ethics is “not a one-off, but representative of a much wider view of human existence and ethical commitment, one which most ethical systems that emerged from Europe and Britain miss.”