Virtuous power: Ethics,Confucianism,and Psychological self-help in China

Abstract

This article examines a genre of psychological self-help in China that deploys Confucian ethics to address social, moral, and psychological distress. Within this genre, a branch of what is called “third force” self-help, which attempts to overcome an ambiguous “third state” between health and illness, advocates encourage individuals to cultivate a form of virtuous power that emanates from the heart, seen as the basis of cognition, virtue, and bodily sensation. The heart has the freedom to imagine and act but also constrains such freedom. It constitutes the moral core necessary for achieving equanimity, a state of equilibrium in which one is not shaken by external disturbances and spontaneous bodily reactions are regulated by high moral reflection. This third force self-help uses heart-based Confucian ethics not only to help individuals cope with socioeconomic changes, but also, I argue, to constrain direct opposition to the causes of those changes by translating structural inequalities into ethical and moral issues. I suggest that this virtuous power serves government interests. The emphasis on Confucian ethics humanizes market competition and biologizes individual and family responsibility for care, legitimizing both class stratification and the family as a provider of social welfare.

Keywords

China Confucianism virtue ethics moral psychology psychological self-help

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bell

(2008) China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Bunkenborg

(2014) Subhealth: Questioning the quality of bodies in contemporary China. Medical Anthropology 33: 128–143.

Butler

(1999) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York, NY: Routledge.

Chen

(2010) Resolving the pain/threats posed by mental illness. Outlook Weekly 31: 36–37.

Cheng

BCY

Chio

JHM

(2010) The Tao (Way) of Chinese coping. In: Bond

(ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Psychology, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 399–419.

Clay

(2002) Chinese psychology. Monitor on Psychology 33(3): 64.

Confucius (1938) The Analects. Translated by A Waley. New York, NY: Vintage.

Farquhar

Zhang

(2005) Biopolitical Beijing: Pleasure, sovereignty, and self-cultivation in China’s capital. Cultural Anthropology 20(3): 303–327.

Farquhar

Zhang

(2012) Ten Thousand Things: Nurturing Life in Contemporary Beijing, New York, NY: Zone Books.

10.

Faubion

(2011) An Anthropology of Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

11.

Fei

(1992) From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society, Berkeley: University of California Press.

12.

Foucault M (1978) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Translated by R Hurley. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

13.

(2007a) Xiang Kongzi Wen Dao [Learning Dao from Confucius], Beijing: Chinese International Broadcasting Publisher.

14.

(2007b) Xiang Mengzi Wen Dao [Learning Dao from Mencius], Beijing: Chinese International Broadcasting Publisher.

15.

Hall

Ames

(1998) Thinking through the Han: Self, Truth and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture, Albany: State University of New York Press.

16.

Han

Zhang

(2007) Psychology in China. The Psychologist 20: 734–736.

17.

Hansen

(1985) Individualism in Chinese thought. In: Munro

(ed.) Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values, Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan.

18.

Hardt

(1999) Affective Labor. Boundary 26(2): 89–100.

19.

Ivanhoe

(2007) Filial piety as a virtue. In: Walker

Ivanhoe

(eds) Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 297–312.

20.

Jing

(2001) Modern Chinese psychology: Its indigenous roots and international influence. International Journal of Psychology 36(6): 408–418.

21.

Kipnis

(2012) Chinese Modernity and the Individual Psyche, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

22.

Kleinman

(2006) What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life amidst Uncertainty and Danger, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

23.

Kleinman

(2010) The art of medicine: Remaking the moral person in China: Implications for health. The Lancet 375(9720): 1074–1075.

24.

Kohlberg

(1981) Essays on Moral Development. Vol. 1, The Philosophy of Moral Development, New York, NY: Harper and Row.

25.

Laidlaw

(2002) For an anthropology of ethics and freedom. Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 8(2): 311–332.

26.

Lambek

(2010) Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language and Action, New York, NY: Fordham University Press.

27.

Levine J (2013) From Mao to now: China attempts to revive once-criticized Confucian values with filial piety law. Tea Leaf Nation, 14 July. Available at: http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/07/from-mao-to-now-china-attempts-to-revive-once-criticized-confucian-values-with-filial-piety-law/#sthash.DXn1BoK6.dpuf (accessed 12 December 2013).

28.

Liu

(2004) The self and Li in Confucianism. Journal of Chinese Philosophy 31(3): 363–376.

29.

Liu YL (2008) Xintai Gaibian Mingyun [Heart-attitude changes one’s destiny]. DVD. Beijing: Chinese Audio-Visual Publishing Press.

30.

(2006) Xinli Shudao Liaofa [Psychological Channeling Therapy], Beijing: The People’s Health Press.

31.

Mattingly

(2012) Two virtue ethics and the anthropology of morality. Anthropological Theory 12(2): 161–184.

32.

Mencius (1970) The Mencius. Translated by DC Lau. New York, NY: Penguin Classics.

33.

Nichols

(2011) A genealogy of early Confucian moral psychology. Philosophy East & West 61(4): 609–629.

34.

Piaget

(1935/1965) The Moral Judgment of the Child, New York, NY: Free Press.

35.

Rabinow

Rose

(2006) Biopower today. BioSocieties 1(2): 195–217.

36.

Robbins J (2012) On becoming ethical subjects: Freedom, constraints and the anthropology of morality. Anthropology of This Century, 5 October. Available at: http://aotcpress.com/articles/ethical-subjects-freedom-constraint-anthropology-morality/ (accessed 28 October 2013).

37.

Rosemont

Ames

(2009) The Classics of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the Xiaojing, Honolulu: Hawai’I University Press.

38.

Seok

(2013) Embodied Moral Psychology and Confucian Philosophy, Plymouth: Lexington Books.

39.

Shively

(2014) Entangled ethics: Piety and agency in Turkey. Anthropological Theory 14(4): 462–480.

40.

Shun

(2004) Conception of the person in early Confucian thought. In: Shun

Wong

(eds) Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 190–193.

41.

Shun

(2011) On anger: An experimental essay in Confucian moral psychology. In: Jones

Jinli

(eds) Zhu Xi Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Great Ultimate, Albany: State University of New York Press.

42.

Sundararajan

(2005) Happiness donut: A Confucian critique of positive psychology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 25(1): 35–60.

43.

(1990) The Confucian tradition in Chinese history. In: Ropp

(ed.) Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 112–137.

44.

Van Norden

(2003) Virtue ethics and Confucianism. In: Mou

(ed.) Comparative Approaches to Chinese Philosophy, London: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 99–121.

45.

Webster

(2010) Marginalization in Urban China: Comparative Perspectives, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

46.

Yan

(2011) The changing moral landscape. In: Kleinman

Yan

Jun

(eds) Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person, Berkley: University of California Press, pp. 36–77.

47.

Yang J (2013) Fake Happiness: Counseling, Potentiality and Psycho-politics in China. Ethos 41(3): 291–311.

48.

(2006) Lun Yu Xinde, Beijing: Zhonghua Books Company.

49.

Zhang

(2014a) Bentuhua: Culturing psychotherapy in postsocialist China. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 38(2): 283–305.

50.

Zhang

Schwartz

(1997) Confucius and the cultural revolution: A study in collective memory. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 11(2): 189–212.

51.

Zhang

(2014b) Crafting Confucian remedies for happiness in contemporary China: Unraveling the Yu Dan phenomenon. In: Yang

(ed.) The Political Economy of Affect and Emotion in East Asia, London: Routledge, pp. 31–44.

52.

Zheng

(2009) The Third Force of Psychological Self-Help, Shanghai: Chinese Northeast Normal University Press.