Words&Dirt

“The principle of individuation in this cosmology is not a ready-made and replicable essential identity that constitutes us as natural kinds––a soul, a heavenly-endowed human nature, a rational mind, a virtuous character, a self-conscious self, an independent agency.  Rather, it is a qualitatively achieved distinctiveness in the configuring of one’s relations within family and community.  In this Confucian model of the constitutive relations of role-bearing persons, then, we are not ‘individuals who associate in community,’ but rather because we associate effectively in community we become distinguished as relationally constituted individuals; we do not ‘have minds and therefore speak with one another,’ but rather because we speak effectively with one another we become like-minded and thrive as a family and community; we do not ‘have hearts and therefore are empathetic with one another,’ but rather because we feel effective empathy with one another we become a whole-hearted, self-regulating community.”

––Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, by Roger T. Ames, pg. 75-6

“‘Ignorance and deception can’t save anybody.  Knowing saves them.'”

––Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card, pg. 196