When the Way was lost there was Virtue;
When Virtue was lost there was benevolence;
When benevolence was lost there was righteousness;
When righteousness was lost there were the rites.
- Laozi's Daodejing, Chapter 38
I know I said I'd get to Yan Hui next, but as I was writing the post, I realized this needed some 'splainin first.
Kongzi and Laozi have different views on virtue ethics, especially when it comes to their belief in rites. Laozi takes a really dim view of them whereas Kongzi thinks that true virtue requires the following of rites.
But ignoring that distinction for a minute, they both take similar approaches to virtue: that the ultimate virtue is not following a set of rules because of a threat or an external force. True virtue ("Enigmatic Virtue" or "the Way") comes from the unification of desire and propriety.
But that's no easy task. One of the two main purposes of the blog is that this be a way to carefully consider virtue ethics and get better at it (which would require comments from others, which isn't going so well just yet...). If this were easy, the world would look very, very different.
So although Laozi lays out how the world reached its fallen state, I would argue that he's also providing the path for returning to it.
If we start from the bottom, we're following the rites, or the rituals that society has laid out for us - the ones that we perform whether we want to or not...and whether or not we understand why we're doing them. Take, for example, saying "Thank you" when someone does nice. Small children are chided by their parents until they accept the rule, likely without knowing why.
From there, the child can eventually understand that it's right to say "Thank you" and do it without prompting. They understand not just how to do it but that it's right to do it, which correlates to the next step, righteousness. And the connotation of righteousness is that the extent of the understanding is that it's just the right thing to do and there isn't necessarily more to it than that.
Obviously, that's not correct. Part of the reason we say "Thank you" is that it's nice, and we, of course, want to be nice people. But it also makes other people feel good, and much of what we do is to help other people feel good - and this is benevolence. Ultimately, we want children to understand that, if someone does something nice for them, that person's feelings might be hurt if the child doesn't thank them.
That's where most people stop, I think. It's nice to be nice to people, and that's that. But there's more to it than that in the framework of virtue ethics. One of the virtues - and I've been putting off generating a list of the virtues because that's really tough - is promoting virtue in other people (if you disagree with me, trust me on that one; that's one of the few virtues I have absolute confidence in). So when we say "Thank you" to a person, we're reminding them of, likely, another virtue I have absolute confidence in: benevolence.
It's worth noting, I think, that rising to a "higher" level doesn't mean discarding the "lower" levels. It's in this way that I don't think Kongzi and Laozi disagree about the rites. For both of them, the truly virtuous person will still engage in the rites - but not for superficial reasons. A person who has found the Way will do all of the good that people at "lower" levels do, just for a different reason.
To close out the list, the final step is far more complicated than any of the ones before. A person can decide to move between any of the others steps. At a certain point, I decided to stop being only benevolent and start being a virtuous person, which requires considering more virtues. All of that can be a conscious choice. But the final step - reaching the Way or having what one desires be what is proper - can't be consciously decided upon. Sure, we can choose not to act on our desires, but we can't consciously choose what our desires are.
"So you're either lucky about what you want or you're not?" Not exactly, no. Consider caffeine addiction. As a recent convert to coffee, I can attest: the withdrawal headaches are really bad, and the only way to get rid of them is to drink coffee. When I get to work, I've started wanting a cup of coffee when I didn't before. On the other hand, a good friend of mine gave up drinking coffee some years ago for a few health issues; she told me that the first week was rough. She wanted coffee, but by not giving into that desire, she started not wanting coffee as much - until she didn't want it anymore.
Laozi and Kongzi would, I think, argue that all desires are like that. By engaging in what is good, we start to want to do what is good, partially out of habit. By eschewing what is bad, we stop wanting to do what is bad, again, partially out of habit. When we have cultivated these habits to match propriety, we can take the path of least resistance and still be proper. Crossing over into "the Way" can't be conscious, but we cannot get there without conscious effort. And lots of it.
Sure, that's a paradox. But that doesn't mean it's not true; it means quite the opposite, actually. And, really, would it be from The Daodejing if it weren't a paradox? (If you don't know the answer to the question, Google is your friend. SOPA didn't shut it down, so you can still look.)
