1001Philosophers

Aristotle vs Confucius

Aristotle and Confucius are the two most influential virtue ethicists in the philosophical traditions of West and East. Both lived in the fourth-century BC and both produced ethical frameworks that have shaped their respective civilizations for more than two millennia.

At a glance

AristotleConfucius
Dates384 BC – 322 BC551 BC – 479 BC
NationalityGreekChinese
EraAncientAncient
Movements Peripatetic School, Ancient Greek Philosophy Confucianism
Profile Aristotle → Confucius →

Where they agree

Both held that the central question of ethics is what kind of person to become rather than what to do in particular cases, both treated virtue as the cultivated disposition of a well-formed character, both took the social and political community as essential to moral life, and both rejected purely rule-based or calculative accounts of ethics. The recent Anglophone revival of virtue ethics has read Aristotle and Confucius together with great profit.

Where they disagree

Aristotle's virtue ethics is grounded in a metaphysical biology: human beings have a function (ergon) — the activity of the rational soul — and virtue is excellence in performing this function. Confucian virtue is grounded in ritual propriety and the relations of family, community, and state; humanness (ren) is realized in the rectification of social roles rather than in the actualization of an individual nature. Where Aristotelian flourishing is in significant measure individual contemplative achievement, Confucian flourishing is more thoroughly relational. The two traditions disagree on the relative weight of family piety, the role of public institutions, and the place of contemplation in the good life.

Representative quotes

Aristotle

  • “All men by nature desire to know.”

    Metaphysics Book I, 980a.21 : Opening paragraph of Metaphysics | Variant: All men by nature desire knowledge. | The first sentence is in the Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:10

  • “Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

    A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.

  • “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

    Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Confucius

  • “Do not do unto others what you do not want done to yourself.”

    己所不欲，勿施於人

  • “Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.”

    學而不思則罔，思而不學則殆。

  • “The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.”

    君子欲訥於言而敏於行。

Continue reading