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Kant’s Better Man and the Confucian Junzi |
XIE Wenyu() |
Center for Judaic and Inter-Religious Studies, School of Philosophy and Sociology, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China |
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Abstract This essay attempts to compare Kant’s better man and the Confucian junzi in the Zhongyong, and argues that Kant’s idea of the better man, which expresses human self-improvement in ultimate freedom, is in fact a conception very similar to that of the Confucian junzi, which denotes an ideal human being in cheng. Kant attributes the lack of emphasis on self-improvement in Western culture to the Christian conception of grace, and demonstrates the possibility of self-improvement on the ground of ultimate freedom. We may call this treatment “the Confucian solution” in Kant’s thought. My intention is to explicate the conceptual commonality between the better man and the junzi and demonstrate the Confucian element in Kant’s religious thought.
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Keywords
better man
junzi
natural revelation
grace
Zhongyong
Kant
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Corresponding Author(s):
XIE Wenyu,Email:xiew@sdu.edu.cn
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Issue Date: 05 September 2012
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