Integrating Care and Respect: Early Confucian Ethics as Inclusive Ethics

What it is commonly referred to as “early Confucian ethics” has its textual sources in two canonical Confucian texts―the Analects and the Mencius, and to a lesser extent, in the Xunzi. This article breaks fresh ground in the study of early Confucian ethics by defending a new interpretation that Confucian ethics is an inclusive ethics in the sense that all of its key notions contain the dual dimensions of care and respect. I call this “the inclusion thesis.” This paper will proceed as follows. First, I make some general remarks about the importance of integration of care and respect in ethics. Second, I distinguish between two ways of making ethics inclusive―(1) the integration by reduction and (2) the integration by complementation. Between the two, I suggest that the method of integration by complementation should be preferred. Third, I present two case studies to illustrate the importance of inclusivity of care and respect. Lastly, by meticulous exegetical analysis, I attempt to substantiate my inclusion thesis that early Confucian ethics is a moral theory in which care (or love) and respect are conceptually amalgamated through the complementary integration.