Ethics unbound [electronic resource] : some Chinese and Western perspectives on morality / Katrin Froese.

Issued as part of UPCC book collections on Project MUSE.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [237]-244) and index.

Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Part I. The esteem of ethics -- Taking a stand : the moral philosophy of Confucius and Kant -- Organic virtue : reading Mencius with Rousseau -- Part II. Vices of virtue -- Strangers to ethics : Kierkegaard and Daoist approaches -- Beyond good and evil : flexible ethics in Nietzsche and Daoist thought -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.

This book closely examines texts from Chinese and Western traditions that hold up ethics as the inviolable ground of human existence, as well as those that regard ethics with suspicion. The negative notion of morality contends that because ethics cannot be divorced from questions of belonging and identity, there is a danger that it can be nudged into the domain of the unethical since ethical virtues can become properties to be possessed with which the recognition of others is solicited. Ethics thus fosters the very egoism it hopes to transcend, and risks excluding the unfamiliar and the stranger. The author argues inspirationally that the unethical underbelly of ethics must be recognized in order to ensure that it remains vibrant.

Description based on print version record.