The Human Person in Confucianism: Triadic Relationships and the Possibilities of an Agapastic Semeiotic Pragmatism
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The Human Person in Confucianism: Triadic Relationships and the Possibilities of an Agapastic Semeiotic Pragmatism Jason Morgan 1 Accepted: 1 September 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In a recent conference volume, American philosopher Michael Sandel engages the Confucian tradition in the search for alternatives to what Sandel calls the “unencumbered self,” the unattached liberal subject as detailed in the philosophy of John Rawls. Responding to Sandel, American Confucianist Roger Ames draws on a lifetime of comparative thought to advance the Pragmatism of John Dewey as a way to interrogate Western philosophy in general, arguing that “humane becomings,” a view of the human person facilitated, Ames writes, by Deweyan Pragmatism, are the Confucian ideal and the key to recovering a holistic anthropology within the Western tradition. In this essay, I intervene in the AmesSandel debate to argue that Charles Peirce, and not John Dewey, is the best American Pragmatist for bridging the divide between the Confucian and Rawlsian views of the human person. Peirce’s emphasis on love as true intersubjectivity and on communication as the exchange of real meaning is, I argue, the key to unlocking the Confucian ideal to the West. Keywords Confucius . Michael Sandel . Roger Ames . Pragmatism . John Dewey . Charles
Peirce
1 The Problem: Michael Sandel’s Diagnosis of the Rawlsian “Unencumbered Self” In Encountering China: Michael Sandel and Chinese Philosophy, American philosopher Michael Sandel lays out, anew, his brief against liberalism, while also attempting to integrate this approach into the various prerogatives of Confucianism (Sandel and D’Ambrosio 2018). Pushing back against John Rawls (1921–2002) explicitly, but also implicitly against Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992), Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), and the other architects of the radically culturally-unembedded socioeconomic order, * Jason Morgan jmorgan@reitaku–u.ac.jp
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Faculty of Global Studies, Reitaku University, 277-8686 Chiba-ken Kashiwa-shi Hikarigaoka 2-1-1, Kashiwa, Japan
Jason Morgan
Sandel has carried out a patient, methodical rethinking of the liberal agent, an abstraction from the full human person which Sandel eventually began calling “the unencumbered self.” “The unencumbered self,” Sandel explains, describes first of all the way we stand toward the things we have, or want, or seek. It means there is always a distinction between the values I have and the person I am. To identify any characteristics as my aims, ambitions, or desires, and so on, is always to imply some subject “me” standing behind them, and the shape of this “me” must be given prior to any of the aims or attributes I bear. […] [The unencumbered self] rules out the possibility of what we might call constitutive ends. No role or commitment could define me so completely that I could not understand myself without it. No project could be so essential that turning away from it would call into question the person I am. (Sandel 2006; as cited in Gordon 2006)1 Taken in this context, the t
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