| This dissertation begins with the premise that humans inhabit a complex moral world that is comprised of an array of overlapping and mutually informing role-relations. Contemporary moral and political theorists have insufficiently theorized the concept of roles---a concept that can, if properly theorized, expand our conceptual repertoire in a way that encourages important questions to emerge that allow us to deepen our understanding of moral and political life. Drawing largely upon classical Confucian insights regarding the nature and importance of roles and relationships, contemporary philosophical and sociological discussions of role ethics, and professional ethics literature, I develop a seven-part definition of roles that captures and refines a common intuition that roles generate obligations and also require that one cultivate certain virtues.;Moreover, I argue that roles are a if not the primary focus of the moral life as articulated by several of the early Confucian texts. The robust picture of the moral life that we get from these sources is one where human moral development follows a fairly continuous arc from the family to the more social or political roles. Articulating the range of ways roles function in early Confucian texts enables me to sharpen my account of what makes Confucian ethics distinctive. Their emphasis on roles has the potential to offer a conceptual model for thinking about morality and the moral life in a nuanced way that brings together obligations, norms, and virtues.;With these considerations in place, I develop two theses. 1) The concept of a role, properly understood and sufficiently specified, integrates the many aspects of human moral and political interactions better than do more prevalent concepts such as duty, consequences, or virtue when these are taken as the primary element in familiar moral theories like deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. 2) Developing a working theory of roles helps us make better sense of early Confucian texts, in that it can account for and synthesize the variety of ethical modes of argument and description contained within these texts. |
