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In reflecting upon the Confucian, Socratic, and Zen dialogues, one is inevitably impressed with contrasting ways of moral thinking. [1] For both theory and practice, apart from the more conceptual interest in rational reconstruction, it appears to be worthwhile to explore the function and significance of these ethical uses of dialogues with a view to drawing certain models or focal lenses for understanding the different dimensions of moral experience. With this limited aim in mind, I shall first present a general characterization of certain aspects of these uses, and then present considerations for their philosophical and practical significance.
A dialogue is a conversational form of discourse in which certain questions and answers are given. It is a speech situation that contains two principal features: (1) the participants occupy certain roles, and (2) reasons or arguments are offered in support of statements made. I shall restrict my discussion of the three uses of dialogues with reference to these two features. In the Confucian use, the participants may be regarded as occupying the roles of advisor and advisee. [2] The advisor, Confucius [a], is implicitly accepted as a pre-eminent moral teacher engaged in an activity of inculcating certain attitudes, beliefs, and judgments in the light of a moral ideal of jen[b] (human-heartedness). The function of an advice, in the immediate context of discourse, is to assist the advisee in answering a practical question, determining what to do in a situation of wondering what to do. [3] The advisee asks questions that are of primary interest to him, the answers of which are relevant to resolving his problematic predicament. An advice is thus given in the interest of the advisee; it is conceptually distinct from a prescription. It still leaves the agent the freedom to accept or reject it. [4] For a person to function as a sincere moral adviser, he must appreciate the advisee's predicament and bring to bear moral
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considerations in the form of particular judgments or in the form of the import of moral notions as embedded with preceptive standards or action-guides. In Confucian dialogues, there is a recurrent emphasis on jen. Although the immediate objective of many of Confucius's sayings is best construed as moral advices, the predominant concern is with the moral ideal or the achievement of a state of moral excellence that is free from anxiety, perplexity and fear (Analects, XIV. 30).
One noteworthy feature in Confucian dialogues is the manner in which such moral notions as jen, hsiao [c] (filiality), li [d] (ritual propriety) and chun-tzu [e] (superior man) occur. [5] No attempt is made to give clear and precise definitions of these notions to which particular problematic cases of moral questioning are regarded as instantiations of prior moral requirements. The moral notions employed are explained contextually and presumably understood by the interlocutors as having a situational relevance (i.e., relevance to specific concrete situations) and as befitting the character and capacity of the agents. The situational relevance of moral notions as action-guides is not conceived in terms deductive application of general definitions, but in terms of a flexible and fluid notion of reasonableness. The moral notions, as conventionally understood, seem to possess a relatively stable content. But this cognitive content does not appear to be amenable to a systematic and coherent characterization. In this sense, in Confucian ethics, the moral beliefs form a 'loose' rather than a 'closed' system. To Confucius, the coherence seems to lie in their relation to the moral ideal of jen rather than in the coherence and consistency of a prepositional set. Thus any moral belief is in principle subject to re-examination of its relevance to actual situations confronted by moral agents and not by an a priori examination and assessment of cognitive content and consequences of moral acceptance. The preceptive force of moral notions, understood in the abstract, remains subject to assessment in concrete context of moral deliberation and decision. They are subject to a ruling that establishes, so to speak, the contact between the moral tradition and particular situations. The relatively stable content these moral notions possess is part of the acquisition of a cultural heritage in a common form of life seen as being embedded with an ideal telos. In this light, an advice is a sort of ruling on the relevance of moral notions to a particular matter at hand, and not a sheer deduction from a general principle. In relation to jen as an ideal, the advice is more of an articulation of a theme that
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admits of varying forms of realization, contingent upon the circumstance, character, and capacity of the moral agent. Each articulation, if it is successful in resolving a concrete problem, may be said to have a projective function to future situations. Thus the ideal of jen is more of a theme to be developed rather than a normative ground for forming moral principles or rules. It is a focal point for orienting an agent's life rather than a preceptive norm that offers specific action-guides. [6] Moral notions must ultimately possess this ideal reference to jen if they are to claim cogency in concrete situations.
An advice is thus a ruling or judgment on the relevance of a moral notion to a particular situation. It purports to be a reasonable solution to the advisee's problem. According to one view of this Confucian notion of reasonableness, "a reasonable solution is one that takes into account not only the abstract principle of right (i) [f] but one that gives due weight to the extenuating circumstance (ch'ing) [f'] [7]. But it must be noted that reasonableness itself has no canons that will enable the moral agents to act in an appropriate way in advance of actual encounter with living problematic situations. The question for a moral agent is not the problem of building exceptions to an existing requirement or abstract moral principle, but of making the principle suit the nature of the situation and character of moral agency. The language of principles does not find a natural home in Confucian morality. Consequently, the concept of 'extenuating circumstances' can be misleading in suggesting a problem of rule and exception. A reasonable solution to a practical question is a concretely temporal solution and not necessarily a universalizable decision that claims cogency of application to all similar cases or to all persons in similar circumstances. The universalizable feature, if present in a ruling, is a consequence of acceptance of that ruling as a paradigm for future situations. What is fitting and appropriate to act in a particular situation remains open to ruling. On this Confucian view, the validity of a moral principle depends on assessment in an actual case. Every moral situation has, so to speak, an integrity of its own quite apart from its possible sub-sumption under a pre-established standard. Its function in practical contexts depends on the agent's appeal to some notion of reasonableness as occasionally determined with a view to the reflective desirability of pursuing certain courses of action. In this sense the notions of reasonableness and reflective desirability are internally related within the concern for the
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ideal of jen. Thus some sort of consensual background of shared moral attitude is presupposed in discourse. The use of Confucian sorites in the classics can also be understood in this light as discourses on reflective desirability rather than attempts at determining the logical consequences of moral beliefs.
Since the Confucian use of dialogues is not methodologically governed by either inductive or deductive canons of reasoning, the discourses are bound to have a persuasive appearance. In saying this, however, I do not mean to suggest that the utterances are, in Austin's sense, perlocutionary rather than illocutionary acts. For typically, Confucius appeals to judgments of reflective desirability rather than aiming merely at the transformation of the agent's conduct through sheer rhetorical strategies. Discourse is an intrinsic feature in an advising activity; whereas "it is characteristic of perlocutionary acts that the response achieved, or the sequel, can be achieved additionally or entirely by nonlocutionary means: thus intimation may be achieved by waving a stick or pointing a gun".[8] This is one feature of Confucian dialogues as distinct from Zen's. As it has been noted by I. A. Richards in his study of Mencius, the arguments deployed are "dominated by a suasive purpose" and the movement of discourse is "entirely concrete -- from example to example".[9] Unlike Socratic elenchus there is no serious use of the method of counter example. [10] One plausible reason for this perhaps lies in its assumption of advice as an articulation of an ideal theme rather than an occasion for deploying arguments to produce intellectual conviction. The movement from one concrete example to another often takes the form of an appeal to historical personages or notion of chun-tzu, a superior man who allegedly embodied the articulations of the moral ideal. Since the persuasive reasons are tied to the concrete situations of moral agents, the appeal to paradigmatic individuals must, in the last analysis, be grounded in a consensual background conception of reflective desirability. The appeal to paradigmatic individuals in part functions as a practical explication of the meaning of an ideal theme. A forceful appeal is both a moral and intellectual achievement.
In sum, we regard the Confucian use of dialogues as a discourse that focuses on the merits of particular situations rather than an explication of the applicability conditions of moral notions. Moral notions on this view are validated, in that broad sense of the term, in their actual uses in con-
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crete experiences rather than by abstract definitional requirements. In this sense a 'valid' reasonable argument is tied to its appropriateness to an occurrent situation against the consensual background of reflective desirability. Moral actions, as vindicated by the use of moral notions, are not deductions from intellectually acceptable premises but reasonable or unreasonable actions grounded in a concrete judgment of reflective desirability.
If the focal point of the Confucian use of dialogues is the concrete and particular problematic situation, the Socratic use, as we learn from the earlier dialogues of Plato, draws our attention mainly to the universal character of moral notions that admit of understanding and practical guidance apart from particular occurrent situations. The particular situations present less the agent's problems but more as topics for assessment in terms of criteria for ideally explicit real definitions of moral notions. Although discourses are inconclusive, there appears to be no doubt in Socrates' mind that engagement in intellectual discourse in search of definitions is an indispensable feature of any examined life. On this assumption, particular moral situations are regarded as potentially logical instantiations of appropriate moral principles or universals whose validity is judged independently of the nature of the actual situations. A valid argument is determined by means of logical canons. General moral principles are the basis for the deductive formulation of rules. They are universals that the particulars exemplify but do not exhaust in application. In the ideal sense, where a definition of a moral notion can be clearly explicated, what it requires in an actual case can be unambiguously determined without the need to attend to the merits of the case in question. The search for a good life is basically an intellectual or rational quest for adequate definitions that embody moral standards as action-guides. The Socratic discourses, though inconclusive, are designed for moral improvement. In this regard, Socrates, like Confucius, is a moral pioneer. But unlike Confucius, he is also a searcher in quest of moral knowledge as a species of rational knowledge. As Vlastos points out, he has a conception of wisdom and knowledge "in those contexts where he disclaims it. When he renounces 'knowledge' he is telling us that the question of the truth of anything he believes can always be sensibly re-opened; that any conviction he has stands ready to be re-examined in the company of any sincere person who will raise the question and join him in the investigation." [11]
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This open-minded attitude is agreeable to Confucius provided the stress is on the practical rather than the cognitive adequacy of moral beliefs. [12] The two thus differ in their direction of stress of the function and significance of moral beliefs. Socrates tends to regard rationality of moral beliefs as a primary ground for the assessment of conduct. Confucius, on the other hand, points to the reasonableness of moral beliefs as a primary ground for their relevance to conduct. Here I think we are faced with a conflict between two ways of thinking. It is a conflict between two apparently irreconcilable conceptions: primacy of rationality versus the primacy of practice.
The participants in the Socratic dialogues do not play the roles of advisor and advisee. They are personal embodiments of opinions to be examined rather than persons confronted with practical questions. The validity of their opinions is thus independent of the nature of their character, circumstance, and capacity of moral achievement. The model of discourse is cast in the form of progressive intellectual struggle in that insight is supposed to be gained throughout the process of critique of successive definitions with the hope that a more adequate definition will emerge.[13] The success of discourse is assessed in terms of adequate epistemic criteria. Although the ethical aim is the realization of a good life, the immediate aim of discourse is theoretical understanding rather than practical performance.
It is thus the notion of rationality as governed by logical and semantical rules rather than the floating notion of reasonableness that dominates the Socratic use of dialogues. The interest that underlies the Socratic use is theoretical rather than practical knowledge -- a distinction that owes its insight to Ryles's distinction between 'knowing that' and 'knowing how'.Employing this distinction between two kinds of knowledge need not commit one to denying that practical knowledge is devoid of prepositional content. [14] In Socratic dialogues, correct moral performance presupposes some sort of intellectual achievement. In the words of Richard Robinson, "the method of the Platonic Socrates differs from those of all other moral reformers because of his unusually intellectual conception of what virtue is. He believes that you cannot really be virtuous unless you have a philosophical understanding of the definition of virtue. The practice of virtue is identical with the theory of it". [15] Moral performance, ideally, thus flows from theoretical insights and not from a concrete
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understanding of the predicament of the moral agents. Definitions of moral notions function as regulative norms that specify the types of situations rather than performative developments of an ideal theme. In principle, any qualification of the applicability conditions of moral notions represents an unhappy compromise with a practical situation rather than an adjustment of the import of moral principles to the situations themselves. The role of argument can be determined apart from the argumentative speech situation, thus independently assessed of any reasonably persuasive considerations that figure in moral deliberation. Persuasion is seen to be extrinsic to the validity of arguments. The Confucian use of persuasive reasons would be deemed to be merely motivating as distinct from justifying reasons, for the reasons that justify a moral judgment are to be assessed by essentially logical and conceptual means. [16]
If the distinction between the Confucian and Socratic uses of dialogues can be characterized in terms of the distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge, the case of Zen is not so amenable to an epistemic description. For the Zen (and also classical Taoistic) use of dialogues in the form of mondoo (wen-ta [g] in Chinese) and koan (kung-an [h] in Chinese) aims at transcending any recognizable sort of knowledge. Mondoo, literally meaning 'question-answer', appears to be a mere pedagogical method for effecting a religious transformation -- for inducing a non-conceptual enlightenment experience in the students. [17] The koans are 'standard problems' designed for a similar purpose. These uses of dialogues are not subject to logical explication in terms of our standard conceptual framework. For the most part they appear to be deliberate violations of logical and conceptual canons. Consider this mondoo:
Joshu used to give this sermon: "The Perfect Way is not difficult, only it abhors selecting-and-choosing, there is lucid blankness; but I am not in that lucid blankness. Do you, however, pay regard to it, or not?"
A monk rose from the rank and asked, "If you are not in the lucid blankness, to what do you pay regard?"
Joshu said, "I know not either".
The monk pursued, "If you know not, why do you say that you are not in lucid blankness?"
Joshu concluded, "Enough with your asking! Make your bow now, and retire " [18]
This example, like many others, seems to be an instrument designed for securing a religious consummatory experience. Quite sensibly the utter-
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ances in the dialogue appear to be perlocutionary acts in Austin's sense. In general Rosemont has forcefully argued: "In the mondoo and koan the Zen master is not performing illocutionary but perlocutionary speech acts; he has a specific intent, a specific response which he is desirous of eliciting from his students, and the content of his utterances has little relevance to that response. This intent does not have an ordinary Western equivalent, for the master uses such sentences literally to shock his students out of their conceptual scheme." [19] This point need not conflict with Cheng's emphasis on Zen methodology as one that separates "the means from the end in one's pursuit of truth and that of discarding the means as soon as the means creates a burden which obscures the vision of the truth". [20] In either way one wishes to stress, it appears to be crucial to understanding Zen in terms of its overall intent at achieving a vision or insight that the masters think the students can attain through the deployment of linguistic utterances. Furthermore, the focus on the attainment of this vision needs also to attend to the experiential nature of the subject's condition or the state of mind. In our example, Joshu, the Zen master, disclaims the experience of being in the state of 'lucid blankness'. If the disclaimer is to be intelligible, it must be construed as a sort of Socratic irony with a view of stressing the necessity of experiencing the vision as an individual affair. This focus on self-experience is consistent with my understanding of one basic aspect of Zen methodology. The state of enlightenment is an individual achievement. The master can help in inducing the having of the experience, but cannot guarantee success in the execution of his methodology. For our present inquiry, the striking aspect of Zen is its conception of the achieved state as a condition of oneself. From this point of view, a Confucian can well agree with the character of Zen-experience so long as it is characterized in terms of tranquility as a consequence of the experience of equilibrium (chung [i]) and harmony (ho [j]). The notion of lucid blankness as a condition of oneself seems to echo the Taoist notion of emptiness. According to Chuang-tzu [k] "Embody to the fullest what has no end and wander where there is no trail. Hold on to all that you have received from Heaven but do not think you have gotten anything. Be empty, that is all. The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror -- going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing. Therefore he can win out over things and not hurt himself. "[21]
Thus the use of paradoxical dialogues is a technique for the realization
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of an ethical aim -- a technique used to induce a condition of oneself seen to be of value quite apart from its religious significance. It is in the words of Suzuki, "an experience of the self" that is said to be "saturated with the feeling of autonomy, freedom, self-determination, and lasting creativity". [22] Though a Zen student is likely to reject my ethical interpretation of its aim, it seems difficult to deny that the Zen use of methodology presupposes a normative intent. And since it has to do with the meaning or significance of human life, the use of the epithet 'ethical' should be quite appropriate in describing the normative intent at issue. More immediately relevant to my present concern is the peculiar Zen conception of the nature of questions and answers. Any question concerning the meaning of one's life or the nature of the self is thereby regarded as having its origin in the questioner himself. Such an origin betrays the questioner's alienation from reality. The ultimate answer to the question thus lies within the interior life of the questioner himself -- an experience that is alleged to have the power to dissolve the question in some obscure form of self-realization and appreciation of the questioner's oneness with reality. [23] In our normal understanding of discourse, the question is not answered in the sense of being a solution to a problem, for any answer, to Zen, presupposes conceptual distinctions that betray the questioner's own alienation from his world. The object of Zen dialogue, in this sense, is thus to induce the questioner to abandon his questions and thus rise above any conceptual scheme in order to experience and appreciate reality. Since a Zen experience does not seem to be devoid of any noetic quality, we may term this sort of experience 'appreciative knowledge', in contrast with the practical and theoretic knowledge in Confucian and Socratic uses of dialogues. Undoubtedly, this linguistic recommendation has an odd ring to it. It appears to stretch the notion of knowledge far beyond the bounds of intelligibility. But if Zen admits of rational and intelligent exposition, and I have no doubt that it does, it seems appropriate to attend to its implicit noetic claims and presuppositions, thus bringing it closer to a language that has a tie to our ordinary and philosophical employment. My suggestion of appreciative knowledge perhaps is not inappropriate when one thinks of appreciating works of art in Goodman's sense. "The work of art is apprehended through the feelings as well as through the senses. Emotional numbness disables here as definitely, if not as completely, as blindness or deafness. Nor are feelings used exclusively for
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exploring the emotional content of a work. To some extent, we may feel how a painting looks as we may see how it feels." [24] In this sort of case, the appreciation can be rendered in conceptual form. Certainly a Zen vision, to be intelligible, must admit of conceptual characterization, at least of some conceptual clues to understanding its non-conceptual experience. This demand for conceptual understanding, if satisfied, is obviously not a substitute to having a Zen experience. If one has a vision, presumably, this vision must have some sort of prepositional content, at least its import can be conceptually articulated, thus paving the way to appreciate the experience in question.
Summing up, the Zen discourse is paradoxical rather than reasonably persuasive or rationally discursive. The participants in the dialogue are not engaged in a reason-giving session. Remarks made do not observe the canons of cognitive understanding, for they are intended to transcend any use of concepts or principles for the attainment of an ethical experience or appreciative knowledge. But as I have indicated, this focus on transcendence of conceptual scheme need not detract us from taking seriously the enterprise of conceptual understanding. We may need to stretch the meanings of the notion we employ in exposition, well aware that we may not 'hit the mark' of the nature of satori. But conceptual tolerance for extension of uses of notions is required to render this sort of discourse intelligible.
The discussion presented in the preceding section does not pretend to exhaust the varying features of the three ethical uses of dialogues. I have merely offered it as a basis for exploring one source of models for understanding moral experience. We may now regard these uses as reflecting, implicitly for the most part, differing conceptions of the relation between persons and moral knowledge. In the Confucian conception, a person is primarily a problem solver, with a view to acting, who aims at a practical knowledge resolving his actual predicament. The knowledge desired is in Ryle's sense an operative rather than academic knowledge -- a sort of "knowledge or conviction which manifests itself in the disposition to behave". [25] In this way moral knowledge is a performatory rather than intellectual achievement. Practical moral questions, though they can receive light from intellectual clarification, are tied to the actual matrix in
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which an agent's predicament takes its rise; they are not intellectual puzzles that call for analytical and logical insights into the structure and inferential import of moral notions. When we turn to the Socratic conception, the sort of investigation that appears to be devalued by the Confucian takes on a primary task in the quest for rational knowledge. Thus in the Socratic sense, the person, who may also be an actor, is an intellectual inquirer rather than a problem solver. The desired knowledge, whether or not the inquirer attains it, is in terms of a theoretical understanding of definitions and general principles of conduct. Practical moral performance is envisaged in terms of the application of these definitions and principles to the actual situations of the moral life. In the Zen conception, on the other hand, the person is a questioner in search of an experience rather than solution to intellectual or practical queries. The desired knowledge is appreciative that allegedly transcends the bounds of the meanings of concepts and criteria for justifying knowledge-claims in our ordinary practical and theoretical enterprises.
To a reflective moral agent who seeks to understand the nature of the moral life, the three conceptions of moral knowledge are more profitably construed as being complementary models or focal lenses for illuminating three dimensions of moral experience. Viewed as exclusive ways of thinking about the nature of morality, each tends to be one-sided and appears to preclude any legitimate concern with the neglected aspects. Our ordinary understanding at least contains nonexclusive features of moral experience. When we engage in discourse on moral issues and take the role of an advocate of a substantive thesis or principle, it appears to be quite rightly demanded of us to attend to the need of an impassioned examination of the notions and arguments we deploy. Quite sensibly in this sort of discursive context, the claim to relevance of our principles must satisfy the prior rational requirements of conceptual clarity and inferential consistency. Otherwise conflicting views on the nature of moral issues would be a brute personal confrontation immune from rational criticism and reconciliation. In this way, the Socratic stress on the rational examination of life has its proper place. To engage in justificatory talk is in part to be committed to the canons of rationality as authoritative guides to our moral beliefs and performance. Furthermore, in seeking to understand, in the sense distinct from causal explanation, there is also the need to see moral experiences by casting them into conceptually manage-
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able molds. This appears to be also true to an agent committed to a particular moral tradition. Part of the task of understanding a moral tradition consists in presenting it as a unified or coherent system. Even where we are confronted with a relatively loose system like Confucian ethics, we still need to cast its implicit character in some coherent conceptual form. In such a case, we shall do less than justice to impute systemic relations to the conceptual behavior of Confucian notions. But an attempt at conceptual understanding seems to be in order. One contribution of traditional ethical thought in the West can also be seen in the light of its search for foundation of morality and ultimate principle of conduct upon which moral actions may be sorted out and our ordinary appraisals of them assessed in terms of prepositional coherence and consistency. The sought-for principle, as a principle of understanding, apart from its justificatory import, provides also a way of organizing the diverse items of moral experience under a unified and synoptic theory. This quite naturally reflects the Socratic conception of moral knowledge that deals with the theoretical and systematic aspect of moral experience. Whether or not our moral life conforms to the theoretical structure of the philosophers, it seems difficult for ordinary moral agents to deny the power and potency of its influence. The structure may get embedded in a living way of thinking without the agent's awareness. Part of a successful moral education, I believe, is an inculcation for concern for conceptual clarity and inferential consistency. From the Socratic point of view, actions performed by the moral agents are viewed as objects of cognitive assessment. Actions may thus be assessed as right or wrong, adequate or inadequate exemplifications of moral principles. This concern with the epistemology of moral judgments reflects a concern with this rational dimension of understanding moral experience, for the moral agent does perform the function of a judge. As a moral judge, he needs to be impartial and objective. And impartiality and objectivity are secured in part by an appeal to rational principles that function as criteria for justification. Here we have a focus on moral experience that concerns one dimension of moral judgment.
Moreover, a moral agent is also an actor interested in resolving his practical and concrete problems in different settings of his life. Even if he possesses an adequate set of criteria for moral judgments, there are times in which his situations cannot be easily labeled and assessed by his
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moral principles. He can be mistaken about this. But so long as we regard human situations as innocent of our classificatory demands (as quite unlike policemen who wear badges for identification), there appear to be cases in which we feel our intellectual equipment unable to cope with novel cases. And so long as we believe that the individual problematic predicaments of moral agents have first to be understood in their own terms before we cast our conceptual net, the Confucian focus on reasonableness seems an illuminating way of attending to merits of particular situations. To do complete justice to novel situations may sometimes call for revision of our conceptual scheme. In Confucian language, we may need 'to rectify our names'. The Confucian conception of moral knowledge thus focuses upon the dynamic aspect of our moral experience. The Socratic conception of moral knowledge need not be denied so long as one insists on the necessity of rulings on the relevance of alleged moral principles. Right or wrong conduct cannot be properly assessed in advance of actual encounter with living problematic situations, since the relevance of such principles or criteria of judgment depends on the rulings that the agent makes with respect to his own predicament. For our knowledge of criteria for moral judgment to function as action-guides, they must be endowed with some sort of an actuating import in actual moral performance. However, actual problematic cases may contain novel and intrusive features that disrupt the continuity of moral experience. As an actor, the moral agent may need to re-examine and revise his principles in the light of his experience of the changing scenes of human life. If the Socratic conception of knowledge focuses on the aspect of stability of moral experience, the Confucian one complements its focus by centering attention upon the aspect of instability and precariousness that requires the agent's adjustment of his thinking and doing in the light of reasonableness rather than rationality. To do justice to the moral life, an adequate understanding of moral experience must ultimately take account of the relationship between these dimensions of stability and instability.
As moral agents we are also persons with experienced encounters with other persons and objects. Each may be viewed as possessing an integrity of its own quite apart from our interest in seeking theoretical and practical knowledge. If the moral world is a scene dominated by human concern with judgment and resolution of problematic situations, it appears to be also a scene capable of being permeated by certain qualitative features
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that religious experience seems to attest. To take this sort of experience seriously need not commit us to an abandonment of our Socratic and Confucian concerns. In non-religious context, we are at times drawn to certain styles of life of persons that seem to resist our practical and theoretical understanding. The significance of Zen conception of appreciative knowledge points to this obscure region of human experience that calls for appreciation and acceptance of persons and objects in the world as pervaded by qualitative features that cannot be conceptualized nor practically manipulated. Certain styles of life of moral agents seem to be translucent, as if a light diffuses throughout their character and conduct, thus blurring the kind of distinctions we deem important to both theory and practice. And if styles of life are seen as having ideal themes as teloses, whether jen, tao, [l] or satori, achievement of these themes can have this luminous quality. A Confucian morality can be endowed with this character without abandoning its practical concerns. Similarly a Socratic moral life can achieve a style of rationality irreducible to its prime focus on canons and procedures for assessment of moral judgments. I have here employed self-consciously a metaphorical expression for pointing to the importance of appreciative knowledge. Undoubtedly the use of metaphors can be dangerous particularly when one is engaged in philosophical reflection. But as Black reminds us, "A prohibition against their use would be a willful and harmful restriction upon our powers of inquiry". [26] A felicitous metaphor can have a power of insight. A Zen student is bound to be weary of our metaphorical expressions as being mere 'fingers that point to the moon', lest we forget that the fingers are different from the moon. Our humility would make us accept this warning, but we also need to point out that the warning is itself couched in metaphorical terms. Must our attempt to understand appreciative knowledge and experience be consigned to linguistic silence? Is it not possible to construe a Zen experience as having 'fingers' as parts or constitutive features of the moral life? At any rate we need metaphors for expressing our appreciative understanding of styles of life of moral agents and their world. Regarding the latter, perhaps the Zen emphasis on the importance of 'everyday mind' and work has this significance: while engaged in daily chores one can also encounter its environs in their qualitative fullness. And in the moral life of some agents, their manners and styles of performance may bespeak of a life pervaded by an idiosyncratic character that calls for appreciation
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rather than judgment. We are required to have a sort of responsive sensibility to appreciate this personal and creative dimension of the moral life.
The three ethical uses of dialogues thus appear to point to three different dimensions of the moral life. If I am right, they are a source upon which we may draw complementary models for understanding moral experience. If we wish to pursue our philosophical inquiry into moral experience in terms of constructing an adequate theory of moral speech-acts, we may profitably construe them as models, or in Pepper's sense, as root-metaphors. [27] We need to pay heed to Austin's reminder that in this task, "we seem bound to use a whole series of different models, because the difference between one named speech-act and another often resides principally in the difference between the speech situations envisaged for their respective performance". [28] To understand the nature of the moral life as a whole we may have to regard our different models as complementary focal devices on different dimensions of moral experience. To place emphasis on one at the exclusion of another is at best an abstraction that serves a narrow purpose of moral inquiry, but cannot replace a series of models that capture the different dimensions of the moral life. If appreciative knowledge seems to point to a creative dimension, so also the other types of knowledge. Moral creativity is not an exclusive privilege of one sort of activity. [29] I suggest that each of these models may be regarded as furnishing a significant focal notion for moral understanding without the necessity of ascribing to it an explanatory or justificatory function. [30] Although focal notions may also be employed as root-metaphors for categorical development, they possess independent value in ordinary and philosophical reflection. And if ethical theory is broadly construed as embracing tasks in both the epistemology and cartography of morals, the focal notions, if successfully articulated, can perhaps serve as basis for evaluating claims to theoretical adequacy. In this essay I have not been concerned to argue for a strong thesis on the intrinsic connection between ethical uses of dialogues and moral understanding. Instead, a weaker thesis is proposed: that understanding, as distinct from explanation and justification, may draw its models from the study of ethical uses of dialogues. The theoretic significance of its thesis is a topic worthy of further exploration. For the present, the weaker thesis may be viewed as a compendium of reminders for moral inquiry.
School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America
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1. I have in mind the Analects of Confucius, the familiar early Socratic dialogues of Plato, and the Zen koans and mondoos that originally developed in China (ch'an) rooted in Buddhistic and Taoist thought.
2. For conceptual features of the Confucian Analects see my 'The Logic of Confucian Dialogues', in Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, Vol. 4, ed. by J. K. Ryan, Washington, D.C., 1969, pp. 18-33.
3. See R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 54-60.
4. See Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1969, pp. 283-284.
5. For a study of the conceptual relations of these notions and their function in argumentation, see my 'Reflections on the Structure of Confucian Ethics', Philosophy East and West 21 (1971) 125-40; and 'Reasonable Action and Confucian Argumentation', Journal of Chinese Philosophy 1 (1973) 57-75.
6. In 'Confucian Vision and Experience of the World', (forthcoming in Philosophy East and West), I have attempted to set forth the Confucian vision of central harmony to which jen may be regarded as an ethical expression. For a related essay, see my 'Practical Causation and Confucian Ethics' (forthcoming in Philosophy East and West).
7. Arthur Hummel, 'Some Basic Moral Principles in Chinese Culture', in Moral Principles of Action, ed. by Ruth Nanda Ashen, Harper, New York and London, 1952, p. 603. For a more detailed discussion, see my 'Concept of Paradigmatic Individuals in the Ethics of Confucius,' Inquiry 14 (1971) 41-55.
8. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 117-118.
9. I. A. Richards, Mencius on the Mind, Kegan Paul, London, p. 55. These features of the role of argument are also present in the Analects.
10. I do not mean to suggest here that no logically valid forms of argument are employed by Mencius and the Analects. I am simply noting one conceptual feature peculiar to Confucian moral discourses. For a recent study on this topic, see M. D. Resnik, 'Logic and Methodology in the Writings of Mencius', International Philosophical Quarterly 8 (1968) 212-230.
11. Gregory Vlastos (ed.), Socrates: A Collection of Critical Essays, Anchor Books, New York, 1969, p. 10.
12. The Neo-Confucian Wang Yang-Ming seems to share this attitude, though distrustful of intellectual procedures in seeking for moral knowledge. He remarks that "in learning it is necessary to have teachers and friends to point out and explain things. But it is not as good as to find out and understand them oneself, for then if one succeeds in one case, one will succeed in all cases. Otherwise there will be no end to learning". Instructions of Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings, (transl. by W. T. Chan) Columbia University Press, New York and London, Section 298.
13. For a recent use of this method in the theory of value, see S. C. Pepper, Sources of Value, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1958, pp. 8-9.
14. See D. G. Brown, 'Knowing How and Knowing That, What', in Ryle: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by 0. P. Wood and George Pitchers, Anchor Books, New York 1970. pp. 213-248.
15. Vlastos, op. cit., p. 87.
16. This currently accepted distinction has its anticipation in Francis Hutcheson. See Hutcheson, Illustrations on Moral Sense, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1971, pp. 121-125.
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17. This is not to deny that the paradoxes cannot be intelligibly understood. See Chung-Ying Cheng, 'On Zen (Ch'an) Language and Zen Paradoxes', Journal of Chinese Philosophy 1 (1973) 77-102. For a different approach, see Henry Rosemont, Jr., "The Meaning is the Use: Koan and Mondo as Linguistic Tools of the Zen Masters', Philosophy East and West 20 (1970) 109-119.
18. D. T. Suzuki, The Essentials of Zen Buddhism, ed. by B. Phillips, Rider and Company, London, 1963, p. 225. This example is selected merely for illustration. I do not claim that remark on this passage can be taken as a basis for interpreting Zen. The preceding note should be helpful to the philosophically inclined readers to explore the intricate complexity of Zen language.
19. Rosemont, op. cit., p. 117.
20. Cheng, op. cit., p. 82.
21. Burton Watson (transl)., The Complete Works of Chuang-tzu, Columbia University Press, New York, 1968, p. 97. The notion of mind as a mirror plays also a crucial role in Wang Yang-Ming (op. cit., Sections 21, 148, and 167).
22. Suzuki, 'Lectures on Zen Buddhism' in E. Fromm, D. T. Suzuki, and R. DeMartino, Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, Harper Colophon Books, New York, p. 30.
23. Suzuki, The Essentials of Zen Buddhism, pp. 72-75 and 'Lectures on Zen Buddhism', p. 47.
24. Nelson Goodman, The Languages of Art, Bobbs Merrill, Indianapolis and New York, 1968, p. 248.
25. G. Ryle, 'Conscience and Moral Conviction', Analysis 7 (1940), no. 2. Reprinted in Philosophy and Analysis, ed. by M. MacDonald, Blackwell, Oxford, 1954, p. 159.
26. M. Black, Models and Metaphors, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1962, p. 47.
27. Stephen Pepper, World Hypotheses, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1948, Ch. V.
28. J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1961, p. 198.
29. For an elaboration of this topic see my 'Morality and Paradigmatic Individuals', American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1969) 324-329.
30. For the distinction in question, see Henrik von Wright, Explanation and Understanding, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1971 and Nicholas Rescher, Conceptual Idealism, Blackwell, Oxford, 1973, pp. 185-190.
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