This article explores the notion of care and justice in the relation between care ethics and justice ethics in Confucianism. The author, Li Chenyang, supports his findings by specifically focusing on the readings of Mencius, a Confucian philosopher of the fourth generation disciples of Confucian himself. Likewise, he explores the questions whether Confucian ethics embraced, or if they should embrace, universal values and impartiality; do they consider the concepts of care and justice. Li argues the notion of ‘configuration of values’.
Both care and justice, as values, are both present in Mencius’s moral philosophy. However, Li believes them not to be contradictory to one another. Instead, as a ‘configuration of values’, Mencius’s divulges into the values of care and justice ethics as two separate configured perspectives. Indeed, Mencius promotes universal love, whilst, likewise, severely critizing Mohism (another ancient Chinese philosophy that, more substantially than Confucianism, advocated for the unified ethical and political order grounded in consequentialist ethic which emphasized impartial concern for all people). Li shows that Mencius viewed universal love as a good thing, whilst at the same time believing that it should not be placed above one’s responsibility of love specifically to one’s own parents. The duty to one’s family was a primary duty of the utmost importance for Mencius, as for most Confucians in general; Li showed how this duty could not be compromised by other duties except in exceptional extreme circumstances.
Li introduces and explores one passage in particular of Mencius, bringing own evaluation and analysis of the text. Li makes several conclusions: firstly, an individual was wrong in using his own power to interfere with judicial procedures; secondly, as a son, however, he should take whatever actions reasonable to him as the son in order to help his father. Essentially, the son should have abdicated and hired a lawyer – in the context of the passage – this way justice would be enacted, but it would not be by the son’s hand that the father would be punished, and, instead, perhaps protected.
However, be that as it may, Li continues to expand on other possible scenarios that could have been enacted in this case. As this is a case of conflict between the value of filial piety and the value of justice, Li tries other possibilities. Firstly, Mencius could have put forward filial piety without justice, thus, in the Li chosen passage, the emperor, son, would not have used his power as the emperor to interfere with the state’s prosecution. Instead, he should have ordered for the charges against his father themselves to be dropped. Or, secondly, Mencius could have advocated for justice alone, without its relationship to filial piety, which would have meant that the son would have fully supported the state’s prosecution of his father as any man under the law. Thirdly, the case if Mencius had pushed filial piety and justice equally, thereby remaining stagnant, unable to choose, through the ‘flip of a coin’ making his decisions on what the son should do. The last two propositions counter justice and filial piety against one another, as one higher than the other, meaning: if justice over filial piety, the son, though hesitant, should have supported state justice against his father, whilst looking away from his post as his son, even stepping down as emperor if necessary; or, likewise, if filial piety was more important than justice, the son would not stop the state’s own decisions, but, instead, as the ultimate filial sacrifice, step down from the throne and take his father away into exile. This debate, as Li shows, depicts Mencius thought of advocating for both care and justice as single-aspect perspectives, though not as his equal belief in both care ethics and justice ethics.
Such moral dilemma was not unresolvable in Mencius’s eyes. Li affirms that care and justice do not always have to be in conflict, and that care ethics and justice ethics may, in the end, endorse the same course of action. However, when these two values should conflict, upholding one would always involve the cost on the other. Li argues that Confucian ethicists are more willing to side with impartiality than justice ethicists in order to preserve family relationships. Filial piety, as in, care ethics in this case, will always come before justice ethics in Confucianism, as advocated by Mencius.