Situational Ethics and Social Epistemology in Confucian Philosophy

Abstract

It may seem strange, if not highly Western, to hear the term ‘epistemology’ placed side by side the Analects. Yet, this paper dares to pronounce the epistemological import of the Analects. To what end? To argue the co-foundationality of ethics and epistemology in Confucian Philosophy. There are a variety of ways in which ethical and epistemological ideas figure in the Analects. This paper however focuses on the Confucian take on average intelligibility referred to here as ‘knowing-to’. This paper argues that this knowing-to is a form of social epistemology that is the ground of what can be called situational ethics in the Analects. Furthermore, it is stressed that this social epistemology, is in return grounded in the social commitment for ethical consistency.