Beyond Cartesian Dualism: François Noël’s Hybridization of Aristotelianism and Confucianism on the Voluntary and Involuntary
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The article begins by examining Ricoeur’s critique of the Cartesian understanding of the will, which ultimately leads Ricoeur to explore Aristotle’s distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts. Later, Aquinas integrates Aristotle’s insights into a creator/creatures framework by linking voluntary acts to the pursuit of beatitude and by integrating the affective and rational elements of human action in the reflective process that precedes action. In a different metaphysical context, Confucian accounts of moral agency, particularly in the Analects and the Mencius, highlight the role of bodily dispositions, affective responses, and ritualized learning in moral cultivation. Without sharply distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary acts, Confucianism views moral development as harmonizing inner movements through learning and ritual practices. But in Confucianism, too, shaping dispositions and evaluations of possible behaviors helps consider the agent as a whole. These examinations are possible because traditional resources provide a framework. From this perspective, François Noël (1651–1729), who like Descartes trained within a Jesuit scholastic context, provides a unique synthesis. In the Third Treatise on Chinese Ethics of his Philosophia Sinica, Noël interprets Confucian texts through the lens of Aristotelian and Scholastic frameworks, using Chinese examples to illustrate distinctions among voluntary actions: free, natural, spontaneous, and strictly voluntary. Noël seeks to show the value of ancient Chinese texts, their Neo-Confucian commentaries, and their compatibility with his tradition. By doing so, he also integrates Confucian moral psychology with the scholastic framework, proposing an anthropology that preserves the embodied, affective dimensions of agency while trusting the accountability of rationality, the ability of the agent to integrate different aspects of human life in a practical unity: the one able to take action.
Source: Religions
DOI: 10.3390/rel17060739
Author: Yves Vende
Institutions: Université Catholique de Lille, Facultés Loyola Paris
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,172
OpenAlex ID: W7166338701
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