The Situationist Problem And Its Impact On Aristotle's And Confucius' Approaches To Ethics

This project analyzes the situationist problem and its effect on two approaches to ethics—that of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Confucius' Analects,even the later is labeled as a role-based ethics rather than virtue ethics.First,the project analyzes the background to the situationist problem and its supposed impact on Aristotelian virtue ethics.The problem focuses on Aristotle's conception of character as being firm and unchangeable.Research in social psychology has shown that our character is at,at the least,easily manipulated by situational factors or,at the most,a fabrication.Responses to this problem tend to attack the experiments or rework the concept of character,neither of which is terribly successful.Second,the project analyzes a contemporary debate in Confucian ethics as to whether Confucius' theories are primarily virtue-based or role-based and argues that the situationist problem is just as bad for Confucius as it is for Aristotle.The argument seems split by a preference for either role-cultivation or virtue-cultivation in describing Confucius' ethics.Where a virtue-cultivation interpretation will have to deal with the situationist problem,one may hope that a role-cultivation interpretation could avoid it.Even if we adopt a role-based approach to Confucius' ethics,however,the situationist problem must still be dealt with.