Amy Olberding

Etiquette writer Judith Martin is frequently faced with “etiquette skeptics,” interlocutors who protest not simply that this or that rule of etiquette is problematic but complain that etiquette itself, qua a system of conventional norms for human conduct and communication, is objectionable. While etiquette skeptics come in a variety of forms, one of the most frequent skeptical complaints is that etiquette is artificial.The worries Martin canvasses are frequently also raised in more philosophical work as reasons to doubt the moral significance of etiquette. See, e.g., Sarah Buss, “Appearing Respectful: The Moral Significance of Manners”, Ethics 109.4 : 795–826; Nancy Sherman, “The Look and Feel of Virtue”, in Christopher Gill, ed., Virtue, Norms, and Objectivity: Issues in Ancient and Modern Ethics ; and Karen Stohr, On Manners , especially Chapter 1. “Artificial” typically operates in this context as a catch-all te ..

In this essay, I consider the philosophical purposes served by Seneca’s insistently violent imagery and argue that Seneca appears to provide what I term an “erotica of death.” In the Roman context, a context in which violence and violent death are regular features of popular entertainment, there is a worry that Seneca’s vivid depictions of violent death can only aim at eliciting more of the intoxicating pleasure Romans derived from their spectacles. However, where the spectacle features as a species of death denial, a “pornography” in which death is stripped of its emotive and symbolic content, Seneca provides an “erotica” in which raw physical detail serves to announce and evoke emotive responses to death. He thus works against the Roman taboo on expressing fear and the equation of fear with cowardice in order to court the dismay and disgust necessary as a precondition for a robust therapy for death anxiety.

Mundane and often subtle forms of bias generate harms that can be fruitfully understood as akin to the harms evident in rudeness. Although subclinical expressions of bias are not mere rudeness, like rudeness they often manifest through the breach of mannerly norms for social cooperation and collaboration. At a basic level, the perceived harm of mundane forms of bias often has much to do with feeling oneself unjustly or arbitrarily cut out of a group, a group that cooperates and collaborates but does not do so with me. Appealing to the subtle but familiar choreography of mannered social interaction, I argue, makes it easier to recognize how exclusion can be accomplished through slight but symbolically significant gestures and styles of interaction, where bias manifests not in announced hostility but in an absence of the cooperation and collaboration upon which we rely socially

In this study, Olberding proposes a new theoretical model for reading the _Analects_. Her thesis is that the moral sensibility of the text derives from an effort to conceptually capture and articulate the features seen in exemplars, exemplars that are identified and admired pre-theoretically and thus prior to any conceptual criteria for virtue. Put simply, Olberding proposes an "origins myth" in which Confucius, already and prior to his philosophizing knows _whom _he judges to be virtuous. The work we see him and the _Analects'_ authors pursuing is their effort to explain in an organized, generalized, and abstract way _why _pre-theoretically identified exemplars are virtuous. Moral reasoning here begins with people and with inchoate experiences of admiration for them. The conceptual work of the text reflects the attempt to analyze such people and parse such experiences in order to distill abstract qualities that account for virtue and can guide emulation.

This essay elaborates on my essay, “Confucius’ Complaints and the Analects’ Account of the Good Life,” responding to issues and criticisms raised by Michael Ing and Manyul Im. Ing’s and Im’s critiques most invite reflection on regret, both as it might situate in Confucius’ own life and as it could feature more broadly in developed moral maturity. I consider two modes of regret: regret concerning compromises of conscience and end-of-life regret. The latter can naturally include elements of the former, but may nonetheless have special features not exhausted by it. I argue that the model of Confucius is consistent with versions of both of these forms of regret while also acknowledging that where the Analects is concerned, much of what we might say about regret will inevitably be somewhat speculative. The essay thus dwells in some of the ambiguities suggested by the Analects.

My purpose in this essay is to suggest, via case study, that if Anglo-American philosophy is to become more inclusive of non-western traditions, the discipline requires far greater efforts at self-scrutiny. I begin with the premise that Confucian ethical treatments of manners afford unique and distinctive arguments from which moral philosophy might profit, then seek to show why receptivity to these arguments will be low. I examine how ordinary good manners have largely fallen out of philosophical moral discourse in the west, looking specifically at three areas: conditions in the 18th and 19th centuries that depressed philosophical attention to manners; discourse conventions in contemporary philosophy that privilege modes of analysis not well fitted to close scrutiny of manners; and a philosophical culture that implicitly encourages indifference or even antipathy toward polite conduct. I argue that these three areas function in effect to render contemporary discourse inhospitable to greater inclusivity where Confucianism is concerned and thus, more broadly, that greater self-scrutiny regarding unexamined, parochial western commitments and practices is necessary for genuine inclusivity.

Confucian resources for moral discourse and public policy concerning abortion have potential to broaden the prevailing forms of debate in Western societies. However, what form a Confucian contribution might take is itself debatable. This essay provides a critique of Philip J. Ivanhoe’s recent proposal for a Confucian account of abortion. I contend that Ivanhoe’s approach is neither particularly Confucian, nor viable as effective and humane public policy. Affirmatively, I argue that a Confucian approach to abortion will assiduously root moral consideration and public policy in evidence-based strategies that recognize the complexity of the phenomena of unplanned pregnancy and abortion. What most distinguishes a Confucian approach, I argue, is a refusal to treat abortion as a moral dilemma that stands free of the myriad social conditions and societal inequities in which empirical evidence shows it situates.