Year: 2014
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: It was during my second year of graduate studies at Duke University that I began thinking about the various burdens and impositions demanded by Confucian ethics. I was giving a ‘brownbag’ talk to my fellow PhD students about the concept of ritual propriety ( li 禮) in the Analects of Confuciusreferring to the strictures of proper behavior that permeate Confucian ethical concerns. Ritual propriety delineates how one should comport oneself (forms of speech, clothing, demeanor, etc.) in a vast array of life circumstances (family life, social life, formal ceremony, etc.). I argued that one of the chief functions of abiding by norms of ritual propriety was to signal one’s values, attitudes, and commitments to others in a clear and predictable fashion, allowing others to easily (even effortlessly) grasp them. This, in turn, would make it possible to coordinate one’s activities in social life with minimal friction. Such signals would be especially important, I argued, in strategic encounters, or exchanges in which conflict (especially moral conflict) was possible. Thus, while the weightiness of ritual propriety in the Analects might seem strange to us, I argued that, when properly understood, it was meant to advance valuable goals of social cohesion and harmony.
Source: Routledge eBooks
Author: HAGOP SARKISSIAN
Institutions: Baruch College, City University of New York
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2958866564