On
Nussbaum’s Theory of Justice and Animal Capabilities: A Confucian Evaluation
and Response
Dr.
Shui Chuen Lee
Graduate
Institute of Philosophy
National
Central university, Taiwan, R.O.C.
In the opening
of her treatise on the justice for nonhuman animals, Nussbaum presents the
Indian court’s addressing the treatment of circus animals as robbing them their
deserted dignified existence and comments as follows:
Dignified
existence would seem at least to include the following: adequate opportunities
for nutrition and physical activity; freedom from pain, squalor, and cruelty;
freedom to act in ways that are characteristic of the species (rather than to
be confined and, as here, made to perform silly and degrading stunts); freedom
from fear and opportunities for rewarding interactions with other creatures of
the same species, and of different species; a chance to enjoy the light and air
tranquility. The fact that human act in
ways that deny animals a dignified existence appears to be an issue of justice,
and an urgent one, although we shall have to say more to those who would deny
this. ---there seems to be no good reason why existing mechanisms of basic
justice, entitlement, and law cannot be extended across the species barrier, as
the Indian court boldly does. (FJ, 326)[1]
Nussbaum is here setting herself a tremendous
job to establish nonhuman animals with a dignified existence, of animal dignity
(FJ, 327). For it gives animals some
sort of moral status as equal to human being.
It is a daring and difficult task to make good. From such a conception of animals, Nussbaum
extends our common conception of justice within human society and links it to
the issue of justice. In this endeavor, she extends Amartya Sen’s approach of
capability into the reflection of our duties to animals.
1.
Nussbaum’s Capability Approach
to Animal Rights
In developing
Sen’s idea of capability into a full-blown theory of justice, Martha Nussbaum pushes
a new wave of discussion on the issues of animal rights and makes some
important contributions to the human-animal relation in terms of justice. She attacks vigorously the two main streams
of excluding animal from justice and animal welfare theories. Though she regards John Rawls has improved
much on Kant with accepting direct moral duties towards animals, she complains
Rawls’s exclusion of animals from the issues of justice when Rawls said,[2]
Certainly it is
wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great
evil. The capacity for feelings of
pleasure and pain and for the forms of life which animals are capable clearly
imposes duties of compassion and humanity in their case. I shall not attempt to explain these
considered beliefs. They are outside the
scope of the theory of justice, and it does not seem possible to extend the
contract doctrine so as to include them in a natural way. A correct conception of our relations to
animals and to nature would seem to depend upon a theory of the natural order
and our place in it.[3]
Nussbaum complains that Rawls duties of
compassion and humanity are vague and most important in that he does not place
it squarely within the realm of justice.
She criticizes Rawls in failing to include animals in the world of
justice because they lack the capacity for a conception of good and a capacity
for a sense of justice (FJ, 331). Animals
are agents seeking a flourishing existence. They have certain capabilities and
thus have certain entitlements which are important for their survival and
flourishing. Infringement of such
entitlements is tantamount to treat them unfairly. On the other hand, Nussbaum also complains
that utilitarians, such as Peter Singer, though with good success in the
promotion of the welfare of animals, has also great problems in relying on preferential
utilities of animals and inter-species comparisons of utilities or preferences,
without adequate acknowledgement of the richness and difference in different
types of life forms. Some damage to the
flourishing of a species is not registered as pain. Thus, utilitarianism comes short of
protecting ultimately the life of animals from killing for the benefits of
others and without proper recognition of the complexity of different forms of
life (FJ, 338-346).
Though Nussbaum
does not make a direct comment on another important figure and theory in animal
rights, namely Tom Regan’s, into discussion, she may feel somewhat closer with
the latter than with the other two, Nussbaum does make a brief comment on Regan’s
theory latter, where she says:
Tom Regan, who defends a right-based view of animal entitlement,
refuses to admit differences of intrinsic value within the group of animals he
considers, which includes all mammals who have reached the age of one
year. All these, he holds, have
intrinsic value, and intrinsic value is not a matter of degree. Nonetheless, he , too, gives conscious
awareness a large place in his account of intrinsic value; his argument that
all mammals who have reached one year have it is a large part of the support he
provides for the claim that they do all have intrinsic value. (FJ, 359)
Nussbaum would agree that at least some
animals have the right to life and violation of such rights of those animals,
especially mammals over one year old, would be an infringement of justice. However, it is also obvious that what Nussbaum
regards as most important for the respect of animals is not that these animals
have certain level of consciousness, but that they have capabilities, not
limited to consciousness or rationality, with all sorts of complexity,
especially those of emotional expressions.
Though not using the language of intrinsic value, for Nussbaum, these
diverse capabilities are what makes up their flourishing state and need be
considered morally and their violation is unfair and unjust to them. Hence, Nussbaum is making an option other than
the main streams of ethics and animal theories, which takes up another long
tradition in western philosophy, namely the Aristotelian ethics and
sentimentalism, to develop her own theory of justice to animals.
Following
Aristotle’s seeing animals as something that arouses our wonder and study,
Nussbaum argues that animals have something good in themselves. This leads us to accept that animals are
entitled to pursue these goods and as agents seeking a flourishing existence (FJ,
337). Nussbaum points out that there are variations in the capabilities of the
rich forms of different species and capabilities approach is apt to base our
treatment of animals with due considerations of such difference. Hence, Nussbaum regards the approach of capability
could make animals as subjects protected by justice and could take into
consideration the complex life forms：
So, I believe that the capabilities approach is well placed,
intuitively, to go beyond both contractarian and Utilitarian views. It goes
beyond the contractarian view in its starting point, a basic wonder at living
beings, and a wish for their flourishing, and for a world in which creatures of
many types flourish. It goes beyond the
intuitive starting point of Utilitarianism because it takes an interest not
just in pleasure and pain, but in complex forms of life and functioning. It wants to see each thing flourish as the
sort of thing it is。[4]
Now, when it
comes to the building of a capabilities list for animals, Nussbaum first makes
some methodological consideration. She
declares that the list will be tentative and always subjects to further
revision upon new data or discovery about the flourishing problem of
animals. She regards Rawls reflective equilibrium
as part of her method of building up the list.
What is most important is her “emotional approach” in tackling the
problem of animal capabilities as animals are hardly said to be rational but
more recognized as at least with rich emotional capabilities. Further, as we are not animals, there is
always a doubt about how we could capture the true or right list of
capabilities of animals and of different species. Nussbaum introduces her distinctive method in
her conception of different emotions and explain how certain type of emotion
could give us a better grasp of the capabilities of animals.
In fact,
Nussbaum has another project to rewrite ethics along the line of moral
sentimentalism and replaces the role of reason by emotion. She reverses the order of reason and emotion
in morality and proposes that emotions have intelligence and do contain
judgments.[5] In her theory of emotion, Nussbaum make
certain important distinctions between such notions as compassion, sympathy,
pity and empathy. Since these notions
have been used quite differently by different philosophers over time, Nussbaum
makes her own delineations and in a sense redefines the notions for her own
construction. Among these, the most important
notion is compassion, and Nussbaum says,
To put it
simply, compassion is a painful emotion occasioned by the awareness of another
person’s undeserved misfortune. (UT, 301)
Thus compassion designates not only that we
have certain emotion but of certain special kind of emotion, that is, it is
felt as a painful emotion not because one is physically hurt but just seeing
that others are undeservedly hurt. It
has a limited sense in that it only includes something that the other or others
being hurt undeservedly. Nussbaum tries
to delineate it from other different kinds of emotion such as when somebody is
punished deservedly for some wrongful acts.
However, we would say, there are similar emotional alarms even when we
see somebody is punished seriously though deservedly, say at the moment when
his head is chopped down, we seems to have certain strong instantaneous feeling
initially pointing to the direction that it should not happened. Or, we shall
feel even stronger when some innocent person, say a toddler, is about to be
hurt seriously, for instance, when a car is coming very fast and going to knock
down the toddler. Such emotional state or
alarm should also be included as compassion in Nussbaum’ usage.[6] Under the notion of compassion, there are notions
sometimes used historically indistinctively with compassion such as pity,
sympathy and empathy. Nussbaum takes
empathy as “imaginative reconstruction of another person’s experience, without
any particular evaluation of that experience” (UT, 301-302), and is regarded as
more or less morally neutral, hence, for Nussbaum, it is quite different from
her notion of compassion. On the other
hand, sympathy comes very close to compassion,
If there is any
difference between “sympathy” and “compassion” in contemporary usage, it is
perhaps that “compassion” seems more intense and suggests a greater degree of
suffering, both on the part of the afflicted person and on the part of the
person having the emotion. (UT, 302)
Thus, the two notions seem to be on the
same continuum with only difference in degree.
What is most important for our discussion is that Nussbaum argues that
compassion has a cognitive dimension:
The first cognitive requirement of compassion is a belief or
appraisal that the suffering is serious rather than trivial. The second is the belief that the person does
not deserve the suffering. The third is
the belief that the possibilities of the person who experiences the emotion are
similar to those of the sufferer. (UT, 306)
Such belief or appraisal is evaluative and
is made by the onlooker who has the compassion towards what is happening to the
sufferer. Citing the supports of
Aristotle, through Adam Smith and recent similar study of American research in
such kind of emotion, Nussbaum argues that the cognitive elements in compassion
is quite unanimity across space and time. Undoubtedly, it could also be said to
have corroboration with Chinese experience throughout Chinese history. Nussbaum finally sums up the three cognitive
elements of compassion as follows:
Compassion, then, has three cognitive elements: the judgment of size (a serious bad event has fallen
someone); the judgment of nondesert (this
person did not bring the suffering on himself or herself); and the eudaimonistic judgment (this person, or
creature, is a significant element in my scheme of goals and projects, an end
whose good is to be promoted). The Aristotelian judgment of similar possibilities is an epistemological aid to
forming the eudaimonistic judgment—not
necessary, but usually very important. (UT, 321)
The third element points to a rather
specific part of compassion in relation to the underserved suffering. It has the effect that is obviously and
strongly in opposing the flourishing of the sufferer. For instance, the sufferer is being
killed. Hence, employing Aristotelian
terminology, it has shortened what is supposed to be the full development of
the sufferer’s happiness and flourishing.
Hence, for Nussbaum, it means a great harm to the sufferer in his or her
eudaimonistic end. And, for Nussbaum, such undeserved suffering
appeals to our sense of injustice (UT, 312) where
Compassion
requires, then, a notion of responsibility and blame. (UT, 314)
By compassion, we feel and judge that somebody
who produces the underserved suffering is responsible and that is not just any
wrong but wrongful of a special kind. Thus Nussbaum drives home the problem of
justice in cases of mistreatment of animals.
When it comes to the actual building of her
theory, Nussbaum employs the notion of imagination and sympathy. Imagination is an idea comes from Aristotle
and Nussbaum thinks not only it offer something that Rawls original position
needs but also that it is something that actually goes along with his thought
experiment behind the veil of ignorance. More importantly, imagination could
release us from our personal bound and species blindness and most helpful to
release us from anthropocentric way of thinking in relation to animal
affairs. In addition to these
considerations, Nussbaum lays the greatest importance on her notion of
sympathy, which we have elaborated much before.
It is the core idea of moral evaluation of the animal case. Coupled imagination, this is the basic method
of Nussbaum’s capability approach:
So: the capabilities approach uses sympathetic imagination, despite
its fallibility, to extend and refine our moral judgments in this area. It also uses theoretical insights about
dignity to correct, refine, and extend both judgments and imaginations. (FJ,
355)
Hence, Nussbaum has all the reason that
these considerations support her use of capabilities approach and could be
expected a better approach than other theories of the field;
Although such a method can be used in conjunction with theories of
many different types, I believe that this complex holistic method, with its
inclusion of narrative and imagination, does ultimately support the choice of
the capabilities approach over other theories in the area of animal
entitlement. (FJ, 355)
Lastly, Nussbaum considers another basic methodological
issue. Though critical to Peter Singer’s
preferential utilitarianism, Tom Regan’s subject-of-a-life approach as well as
James Rachels’s more inclusive form, Nussbaum practically accept their view of “moral
individualism,” that is all moral relevance lies in the capabilities of the individual. The basic idea is that the individual animal
should be counted rather the idea of an abstract species. However, what counts as capabilities of an
individual relies on the species norm which this individual belongs. For, these capabilities are what this
individual is capable of but not individuals of other species. A human child or a Downs syndrome child has
different capabilities other than an adult chimpanzee though they may be of
equivalent mental state at some point. Hence, Nussbaum claims that
Species norm is evaluative,
a very strong moral reason for promoting its flourishing and removing obstacles
to it. (FJ, 347)
Furthermore, Nussbaum does not hesitate to
emphasize that this evaluation is not only evaluative, but also ethically
evaluative:
But we must
begin by evaluating the innate powers of human beings, asking which ones are
the good ones, and the ones that are central to the notion of a decently
flourishing human life, a life with human dignity. Thus not only evaluation but also ethical
evaluation are put into the approach from the start. Many things that are found
in human life are not on the capabilities list….The conception of flourishing
is thoroughly evaluative and ethical; it holds that the frustration of certain tendencies
is not only compatible with flourishing, but actually required by it. (FJ, 366)
The talk of human being here is in complete
accordance with animal entitlement. The capability list is a small list, so to
say. For, Nussbaum would not admit all biological functions as the capabilities
that serve the flourishing of human and animal life. There are positive as well
as negative capabilities or bad capabilities.
The latter are those that really destructive to the animals themselves
or their own species members, or infringing unfairly to the flourishing of
other species.
We could now go further to consider
Nussbaum’s list of animal capabilities. Such
functions have nothing to do with their flourishing and thus not counted in
Nussbaum’s list. Hence, the capabilities
list is not only evaluative in regards to the individuals wellbeing and
flourishing, but also an ethical evaluative list in that immoral kind of functioning
is excluded.
Finally, we come
to Nussbaum’s list. To sum up again, by capabilities,
Nussbaum means a list of functions that relates to the flourishing of an
animal. Capabilities are those
biological functions that are beneficial to the flourishing of the animals and
those that are harmful to self and other living things or negative capabilities
would be ruled out. Thus, Nussbaum
offers the following list of ten major animal capabilities，which includes life, bodily health, bodily integrity, employment of
senses, imagination and thought, emotions, practical reason, affiliation,
association with other species, play and control over one’s environment (FJ
393-4010.
2.
Compassion and Justice: A
comparison with Confucian idea
In her careful
and detailed analysis of the notion of compassion, Nussbaum does give us some
very productive ideas of this important notion.
Her most significant contribution is to espouse its cognitive function
so as to justify its role in our ethical thinking. It is to her credit that our
morality is somehow starting with compassion and that it is not something
purely subjective or anthropocentric.
Nussbaum extends it to our treatment of animals and shows clearly that
we could transcend our anthropocentric limitation by requesting a fair
treatment of other species. Our
compassion would not hesitate to accuse us if our deeds fail to accord with the
flourishing of other species. Confucianism
does admit what Nussbaum has been exposing what belongs to this notion, however,
Confucianism has also developed a deep and rich theory of a comparative notion
which bears importantly to the life of Chinese people for its long history up
to now. There are many significant
sayings in Confucianism in this area. I shall elaborate further in the
following this Confucian notion in order to get a better comparison.
When she starts
to raise compassion as her core idea of ethical thinking, Nussbaum has noticed
that this notion is also central to many Asian cultures (UT301). I would add that it is truly a central notion
in Chinese culture, especially in Confucianism and starts early from Confucius
and Mencius on. For Confucius, his basic idea of ren (a close English translation is “benevolence”),or the moral
consciousness of our heart/mind, which is the common expression of our feeling
and sharing with the joy or grief of our fellows, especially our intimate
family members, is something what Nussbaum has been talking about with the
notion of compassion. Mencius described
similar kind of response or alarm that we have when facing the tragic scene of
a toddler about to fall into a deep well to kill itself. This kind of response is stronger the closer in
relation we are with the sufferer, however, it is not limited in any special personal
relationship. Mencius has already using
a child as an example without any contingent relation to the onlooker. Mencius has in fact saying that we show the
same kind of compassion towards animals, like a cow showing a look of fear and
innocence when sending to sacrifice. It
is even referred to a greedy emperor whose main goal is to defeat all other
powers and unify the whole world under his rule. Hence, compassion in Confucian understanding
is something not limited to special personal relation, not to human being only,
but to all things, thus it is a very general and universal concept. It is not confined to our intimate family
members of friends as it was usually understood. Furthermore, this response towards the
sufferings of others have nothing to do with our own personal projects except what Nussbaum regards as
personal project is something that related to our own moral self-image or
ideal. It is something to do with morality
which has important meaning towards our self-evaluation and image. It is so to say to have important bearing upon
our vocation as a moral agent. We regard
ourselves as seriously immoral without acting out our moral response towards
such internal moral calling. Furthermore,
it is basically other-regarding. We feel
deeply concerned with the suffering that the other is facing and it implies not
only that it should not happen but also that we have a feeling of an internal
and autonomous command to relieve the suffering if possible. It is thus a moral judgment. For Confucians, it is in fact, the origin of
morality. What our compassion opposes is
morally wrong. Such kind of moral
response of compassion also means that what is happening to the other is
something that is deeply harmful to the wellbeing or flourishing of the
sufferer. By itself, it does not make
the distinction whether the suffering is deserved or not. It is not that we have no distinction of
moral or immoral, it is the initial spontaneous response that comes right from
our heart/mind: any living thing being hurt has a due impact to our heart/mind
and it could not but send back such direct strong natural response. We would certainly estimate whether the
sufferer is really deserved it and upon further reflection and estimation, we
may come to the conclusion that the sufferer, because of his or her guilt, does
deserve the punishment. We shall then
settle the case and return back to our common calm state of mind.
Now, what I think
most important with our comparison is that Nussbaum raises with the notion of compassion
the idea of justice. It is really one of
her most significant contribution to the talk of capabilities. For Confucian, the manifestation of our moral
heart/mind is to develop to the full our moral mandate that is to be a moral
person. We have this principle of
developing to the utmost of our moral mandate towards ourselves, towards others
and towards all things under Heaven。 This is the principle written in one of the
classics of the Four Books:
Only those who are the utmost sincere could extend to the utmost his
or her hsing as a human. One who
could extend to the utmost one’s own hsing,
could extend to the utmost the others’ hsing,
and one who could extend to the utmost the others’ hsing, one could extend the hsing
of everything. One who could extend the hsing
of everything, one could participate in the nourishing process of Heaven and
Earth. One who participates in the
nourishing process of Heaven and Earth forms a trinity with Heaven and Earth. (Chapter
22 of The Doctrine of the Middle Way)
By “hsing”
is meant what we are born with. It signifies something that Nussbaum called
capabilities. Confucian realizes that
there are two kinds of capabilities, one is the practical reason or moral
capacity and the other is natural capacity. The former is assumed to belong
only to human beings and the latter is what is in common with all other
species. Moral capabilities are our
moral self-awareness, act according to moral principles, concerns the wellbeing
of others, of other species and the whole universe under Heaven. In short, it
encompasses what as a human being should try to manifest as much as possible in
our moral practice. It is the origin of our internal moral command. Since it is extended to signify the inborn
capabilities of other living things other than human beings, this moral
principle requests us to support and help manifest the capabilities of animals,
as well as plants, environment and everything. I named it the principle of
utmost extension of each one’s hsing feng.[7]
Being a moral person, we have the duty not only to be a moral person, but also
have the duty to help others to manifest to the utmost their mandate or
capabilities, and to achieve this we have to develop to the utmost the capabilities
of all things under Heaven, including animals.
It would be unfair and thus unjust to others and other species if we
could not treat them in full respect of their inborn capabilities. It becomes a moral duty for capabilities. Here Confucianism comes very close to
Nussbaum:
We certainly
should not deny that compassion is very important in thinking correctly about
our duties to animals. Compassion
overlaps with the sense of justice, and a full allegiance to justice requires
compassion for beings who suffer wrongfully, just as it requires anger at the
offenders who inflict wrongful suffering.
But compassion by itself is too indeterminate to capture our sense of
what is wrong with the treatment of animals. An adequate response involves
compassion of a special sort, compassion that focuses on wrongful action and
sees the animal as an agent and an end.
(FJ, 337-338)
Here Nussbaum regards compassion in general
is not quite up to her request that it is something to do with justice. In the
case of animal, Nussbaum urges us to treat them as agent and as an end in
themselves. What Nussbaum means, of
course, not to treat animals as beings with human dignity, but with certain
kind of dignified existence, which is defined by the list of species capabilities. The same could be said of treating animals as
ends, that is, treating animals as an agent acting with an end to have a life
with full flourishing.
3.
The Continuum of Natural
Endowments：Between Wellbeing and Justice
Though Nussbaum
gives so brilliant an exposition of the capabilities approach and provides some
well-argued solution to most human-animal conflict of interest situations, she
does not give us some very definite conclusion upon our treatment of animals as
our sources of food. She offers a very
high sounding ideal for treating animal a comparative moral status of dignity
or dignified existence, though may not be as high as equivalent to human kind
of dignity. It is a different type of dignity and has all to do with the
capabilities and flourishing of animals.
Hence, though not the same type of dignity of humankind, it is no doubt that
animals have the basic entitlement for life.
Taking their life is the final termination of all their prospect of
flourishing. It has the implication that
no animal life should be taken without good moral reasons. Killing animals for food seems principally
ruled out. However, Nussbaum does not
support vegetarianism. It becomes a
difficult testing case for the consistence of her theory.
After the long
reflection of the justice to animals, Nussbaum draws up her list of capabilities
for animals with life as the first capability on the list. She gives a fairly long explanations and
arguments of the different ways we are treating animals with respect to their cardinal
capacity of the life of sentient animals. Nussbaum writes:
With sentient animals, things are different. All these animals have
a secure entitlement against gratuitous killing for sport. Killing for luxury items such as fur falls in
this category, and should be banned. So, too, should all cruel practices and
painful killings in the process of raising animals for food. On the other hand, intelligently respectful
paternalism supports euthanasia for elderly (and young) animals in irreversible
pain. In the middle, as we saw, are the very difficult cases, involving
painless killing, whether for food or to control populations. It seems wise to focus initially on banning
all forms of cruelty to living animals and then moving gradually toward a consensus
against killing at least the more complexly sentient animals for food. One of the most useful steps we can take
would be to insist on clear labeling of all meat as to the conditions in which
the animals were raised. Practices vary widely, and consumers lack adequate
information on which to base ethically responsible choices. Demivegetarians who
press this search for information may advance the goals of public policy at
least as well as vegetarians. (FJ, 393-394)
In the problem of killing animal for food,
it seems that Nussbaum finally falls back on the principle of prudence. She recognizes it as some sort of
ineliminability of conflicts between human being and animals in the real world and
says,
The world we live in contains persistent and often conflicts between
the well-being of human beings and the well-being of animals. Some bad
treatment of animals can be eliminated without serious losses in human
well-being: such is the case with the use of animals for fur, and the brutal
and confining treatment of animals for food.
The use of animals for food in general is a much more difficult case,
since nobody really knows what the impact on the world environment would be of
a total switch to vegetarian sources of protein, or the extent to which such a
diet could be made compatible with the health of all the world’s children. In this case, it appears that the best
solution might be to focus initially on good treatment during life and painless
killing, setting the threshold there, at first, where it is clearly compatible
with securing all the human capabilities, and not very clearly in violation of
any major animal capability, depending on how we understand the harm of a
painless death for various types of animals. Even that threshold is utopian at
present, but it seems to be realistically utopian. (FJ, 403)
This basic conflict between wellbeing of
human and wellbeing of animals seems truly ineliminable. Later, Nussbaum also takes the use of animals
in experiments as similar kind of inelinimable conflict of interest between
human well-being and protection of animal capabilities. Nussbaum takes pain to elaborate the conflict
and comes up with a partial and prudent solution. Though it will not satisfy all people, it is
still the most powerful and best statement of the present world situation.
In comparison, Confucianism
will take a more positive statement in this issue. The principle Confucian takes is a principle
of differentiation with gradation of love.
It is a specific principle guiding our conduct when we could not fulfill
all responsibilities all at one time and when their fulfillment may cause
conflict. Confucianism will take the
circle of responsibility starting from the most inner circle of the family,
where we are guided by ethical intimate relationship and then extends it
outward to other human being with less stringency where we are guided by the principle
of ren; the further step is to deal
with all things including living things and animals, where Confucian endows
living things with love. Thus, Wang Yang Ming proclaims that we have to bear
the pain of the unbearable heart/mind when we have to kill some animal in order
to serve filial piety to our parents. Our heart/mind make the final decision
and it has the final say in moral matters.
Confucian has
long knows that it is a moral conflict for human being as a moral agent. As a natural living thing, human being could
not but rely upon other species to provide our living materials on the one
hand, human being as a moral agent could not exemplify oneself from the immoral
implications in killing animals for food.
It is a final dilemma for human being as a natural and a moral
agent. It is specifically human. If it is some kind of ineliminable conflict
for human being, it may be construed as something not within the power of human
being, such as could not be made as something not a life dependent being, nor
not a being with morality, the moral solution is something beyond our power and
not a true responsibility. When thing
happening beyond our reach and possibility to make good, sometimes Confucianism
offers the prudential principle not to overstep the limitation of nature and
try to follow our natural capabilities in accordance with natural law.
[1] Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of
Justice (Cambridge, M.A.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2006), p.326. Hereafter abbreviated as FJ with page number.
[2] Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of
Justice (Cambridge, M.A.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2006), p.331ff.
[3] John Rawls, A theory of
Justice, Revised edition (Cambridge, M.A.: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2006), p.448.
[4] Frontiers of Justice, p.349.
[5] Nussbaum had written extensive on emotions and refigured them into
ethics. The most comprehensive treatise is Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of
Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Hereafter
abbreviated as UT with page number.
[6] This is the kind of moral feeling or rather, moral consciousness
that Confucians talk about with the moral function of the moral heart/mind, or
the unbearable mind of suffering of others in Mencius writing. Cf. Shui Chuen Lee,
‘On Relational Autonomy: From Feminist Critique to a Confucian Model for
Clinical Practice’, in Shui Chuen Lee (ed). The
Family, Medical Decision-Making, and Biotechnology: Critical Reflections on
Asian Moral Perspectives (Dordrecht: Springer, Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 2007), pp.83-93. Further comparison will be made later.
[7] Cf. my Confucian Bioethics
(Taipei: Legion Magazine Publisher, 1999), pp.63-66. A more detailed exposition
of this principle and the idea of justice, utilizing Sen’s idea of capability,
please referred to my paper, “Justice and Equality in Health Care: A Confucian
Critique”, Applied Ethics: Life, Environment and Society (Sapporo, Japan:
Hokkaido University Press, 2007), pp.
**This paper was first present in the 2014 International Conference on “Animal Liberation, Animal
Rights, and Equal Ecological Rights: Dialogues between Eastern and Western
Philosophies and Religions” organised by 玄奘大學, Taiwan, ROC
