Reading Aquinas through Confucianism: Toward a Transcultural Virtue Ethics

Overview & Synopsis

This article explores the possibility and relevance of engaging Thomas Aquinas’s moral reflection in the Summa Theologica through a transcultural dialogue with Confucian thought to face contemporary crisis. It opens by examining the ongoing debate on whether Confucianism is best understood as a Virtue Ethics or a Role Ethics. Then it turns to Huang Yong’s work, which draws parallels between Aristotle, Aquinas, and Zhu Xi. Huang defends an interpretation of Confucianism as a form of Virtue Ethics, rooted in human nature and moral cultivation, and argues that Zhu Xi offers a model closer to the “ideal type” of Virtue Ethics than Aristotle. The interest of Zhu Xi’s reflection is indeed to put relational abilities and dispositions at the foundation of moral reflection. This is also what Li Yong establishes, although relying on Mencius and Aquinas. Interestingly, all the thinkers mentioned share a fundamental trust in the phenomena of tradition. The commentarial practices of Neo-Confucianism and Scholasticism embody a hermeneutical ethics that enables intergenerational transmission and innovation in moral reflection. This can also be observed in Aquinas’s definition of virtue, examining both its transcultural and teleological foundations. In this sense, transcultural VirtueEthics, built on the bridging of Scholasticism and Confucianism, as exemplified by several commentators, advocates for the pursuit of moral knowledge that integrates rational, emotional, and spiritual dimensions across philosophical traditions.