Benjamin Huff
Professor of Philosophy
Randolph-Macon College
Professor of Philosophy
Randolph-Macon College
Abstracts of Selected Scholarly Publications (where abstracts aren't posted elsewhere on the web—most recent first)
“The Family as the Foundation of the Confucian Ethical Order,” in Eric Silverman, Ed., Sexual Ethics in a Secular Age: Is There Still a Virtue of Chastity? (Routledge, 2021), 128-149.
Classical Confucian thought forthrightly acknowledges the positive importance of sexuality for individual happiness and satisfaction, while taking a firm position on how sexuality is to be channeled morally. Hence chastity is the ethically appropriate fulfillment of the central human desire for companionship and intimacy. In Confucian thought, individuals become moral first and foremost by growing up within a family unit that exemplifies love, loyalty, and integrity. In fact, the cardinal virtues of benevolence and rightness are defined fundamentally in terms of relationships within the family, where we first learn to exercise them. In turn, human flourishing itself is understood primarily through the proper functioning of family relationships. Hence the proper approach to marriage and sexuality is crucial to the entire ethical order, and fundamental to the well-being of both individuals and society. I conclude with some reflections on the relevance of classical Confucian thought for contemporary society.
“Putting the Way Into Effect (Xing Dao 行道): Inward and Outward Concerns in Classical Confucianism,” Philosophy East and West 66:2 (April 2016), 418-448.
Classical Confucian thought places such great value on individual moral self- cultivation that some scholars suggest a cultivated person, or gentleman, has little concern for anything else. Several scholars particularly maintain that a gentleman does not concern himself with anything beyond his own control. However, such views neglect the deep Confucian commitment to establishing a moral social order. I argue that the highest Confucian aspiration is putting the Way into effect (xíng dào 行道), in society as well as one’s own life. This is a manifestation of virtue, requiring virtue to be achieved, but also requiring the cooperation of others and a measure of good fortune. Individual virtue has great intrinsic value, but it is also valuable because it is necessary to achieve the manifestations of virtue, including a peaceful and just society. Similarly, external goods such as wealth and social position also have value insofar as they enable us to achieve these larger, social goods.
“Justice, Benevolence, and Friendship: A Confucian Addition to Thomistic Ethics?” with Heidi Giebel (Univ. of St. Thomas), in The Wisdom of Youth (Catholic Univ. of America Press, 2016), 310-328.
Thomas Aquinas presents a comprehensive theory of virtue, centered on the classical Western cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. These four virtues, he argues, include and direct all of the other moral virtues. The Confucian thinker Mencius similarly presents a moral theory centered on four cardinal virtues, but in this case the foremost is benevolence. In this paper, using the Confucian example as a provocation, we ask where benevolence should be located within Aquinas’ scheme. This inquiry brings to light gaps and tensions within Aquinas’s account, as well as intriguing possibilities and promising resources that are otherwise easily overlooked. As a result we propose that Aquinas’s own positive conception of the virtues would be more fully captured by redefining the cardinal virtue of justice in a broader form as ‘justice-fellowship.’ We then identify ‘justice-fairness’ and benevolence (or mercy) as two divisions within justice-fellowship and as themselves cardinal: that is, some justice-fellowship-related virtues are categorized under fairness and others under benevolence.
“The Target of Life in Aristotle and Wang Yangming,” in Stephen Angle and Michael Slote, eds., Virtue Ethics and Confucianism (Routledge, 2013), 103-113.
The eudaimonist approach to ethics proposes to guide our lives by organizing them around the pursuit of one goal: the chief, supreme, or ultimate good. Aristotle states that the chief good must be self-sufficient, but does not indicate how it should be measured or quantified. I argue that we should understand the chief good as a single, incomparable good which is not improved by adding any other good, but which one can realize to a greater or lesser degree. Aristotle follows this pattern in offering philosophical contemplation as the chief good, but this is unsatisfying as the content of happiness. Wang Yangming offers an alternative model for understanding the chief good as a single good that can be realized to different degrees, namely as the manifestation of clear character, or of luminous virtue. I argue that this account fits the pattern we need for a robust eudaimonism. Further, a similar understanding is available in an Aristotelian context, since the manifestation of clear character is closely analogous to Aristotle’s conception of the chief good as virtuous activity.