The universality of virtue ethics—II—Confucianism

Confucius, image from picryl.com, CC license.

We have recently seen that a case can be made for Buddhism to be understood as a type of non-western virtue ethics, with significant similarities to both Stoicism and Aristotelianism. This is interesting because it may suggest that not only the concept of virtue, but the notion of an ethics of virtue, are not limited to the Greco-Roman-Christian tradition.

Usually, though, it is not Buddhism, but Confucianism that is taken to be a good example of non-w...