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1

Toward a Critical Synthesis of the Aristotelian and Confucian Doctrines of the Mean

100%
Brien K. M.
Dialogue and Universalism
|
2020
|
issue 1
9-35
EN
This paper is the second phase of a project that was begun more than three years ago. The first phase culminated in the publication of a paper working toward a critical appropriation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.1 Therein Aristotle famously argues that human wellbeing (eudaimonia) is constituted by “activity of the soul in accordance with moral and intellectual virtue.”2 This earlier paper brought into focus all the main lines of Aristotle’s theoretical web in the N. Ethics: including the nature of the soul, intellectual virtue, moral virtue, etc. That paper went on to give a developed critique of Aristotle’s theoretical web, and against that background it argued for a very different way of thinking about intellectual virtue, and it prepared the ground for different ways of thinking about moral virtue. This current paper explores the various conceptual understandings of “the mean” in Aristotelian and in Confucian thought. It begins with an explanatory sketch of “the mean” as understood in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and then in a second section goes on to explore “the mean” as presented in classical Confucianism. The third section of this paper offers some reflections oriented toward a tentative formulation of a modified conception of “the mean” as it might be construed from a humanistic Marxist perspective.
2

The Confucian and Marxian Ways: Ironic Affinities

100%
Brien K. M.
Dialogue and Universalism
|
2021
|
issue Special Supplement
39-66
EN
This essay explores significant affinities with respect to the humanism of the Marxian and Confucian Ways. Although orthodox Marxism suppresses the humanistic dimensions of Marx’s thought, they are foremost in his earlier writing, and were never abandoned in his later thought. All varieties of Confucianism recognize its humanism. The essay argues that both perspectives involve process modes of understanding; that both have a convergent understanding of abstract general terms; that both view the human being as a community being; that both advocate similar ideal modes of becoming; and that both are concerned with the problems of human alienation.
3

Karl Marx: Praxis, Process, and Method

100%
Brien K. M.
Dialogue and Universalism
|
2018
|
issue 3
155-160
EN
In Karl Marx’s “Preface” to the second edition of Capital, Volume 1, he famously wrote that with Hegel dialectical thinking is “standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.”1 Unfortunately, across a wide spectrum of interpretations of Marxism, there continues to be a great deal of confusion about what Marx means by the “rational kernel” that he discerns within the Hegelian “mystical shell.” But not just a great deal of confusion, but real mystification and distortion of what Marx himself means by dialectical thinking, and especially what a dialectical mode of explanation involves. The concern of this brief paper is to offer some considerations that might open up a clearer conceptual horizon for understanding Marx’s method of dialectical explanation, and the fundamental can-ons of interpretation that are associated with it.
4

Toward a Critical Appropriation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics for the 21st Century

100%
Brien K. M.
Dialogue and Universalism
|
2016
|
issue 4
49-67
EN
This is a working paper that presents the first phase of what will eventually be a huge project, namely a critical appropriation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Early on it provides a sketch of the main strands of Aristotle’s theoretical web in his N. Eth-ics. Following that, the paper offers some critical commentary concerning some of Aris-totle’s main positions: especially his views on moral virtue, the soul, intellectual virtue, and human well-being. The paper then turns to the development of some significantly different ways of construing both intellectual virtue as well as moral virtue. With re-spect to intellectual virtue, I present my own perspective in interconnection with a pro-cess-oriented way of understanding reality, as opposed to Aristotle’s substance-oriented way. With respect to moral virtue, I present my interpretation in relation to a this-worldly understanding of the human spirit/soul, as well as a humanistic-Marxist inter-pretation of human well-being. Toward the paper’s end, I offer some suggestions con-cerning a modified “doctrine of the mean” that would be a sort of critical synthesis of the views of Aristotle and Confucius.
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