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.