Daily Reflection
What are the Five Constant Virtues?
They are benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness.
Benevolence means not being able to endure (seeing others suffer), loving others, and aiding all living things.
Righteousness means doing what is proper. In making judgments one hits the mark.
Propriety means to enact. That is, to realize the way and perfect the refined.
Wisdom means knowledge. One has a special understanding and can know things before hearing about them. [They] are not befuddled by matters and can discern the subtle.
Trustworthiness means sincerity. One cannot be deterred from [their] purpose.
Therefore, people are born and respond to the Eight Trigrams, thereby obtaining the five energies (qi 氣) that are the Constant Virtues.
— From The Baihutong Ch. 301
Over the next few days, we’ll be studying morality.
We might spend 2 weeks on this topic to make sure we get an adequate survey of the concept.
But, more than understanding morality itself, this idea is a wonderful guide to get right at the heart of what various philosophies, traditions, and codes believed at their most fundamental level.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it like this:
There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single definition of morality will be applicable to all moral discussions. One reason for this is that “morality” seems to be used in two distinct broad senses: a descriptive sense and a normative sense. More particularly, the term “morality” can be used either
descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational people.2
So these will be our two governing assumptions as we take a global survey of “right” and “wrong.”
To put it another, we will assume that 1) Morality is regional (not universal) based on the needs of a people or group, and 2) Morality is a logical evolution of rational people seeking harmonious, collective living.
We begin today with Confucianism, which remains even to this day in direct conversation and even conflict with Daoism and Buddhism.
For those who follow Confucian thought, the primary pillar of their moral code is the 5 Virtues explained above—benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness.
Confucian thought is largely about duty, discipline, order, government efficiency, and harmonious communities. Unlike its balancing partner Daoism, Confucian thought can feel artificial in the sense that it tends to prioritize the needs of created systems over natural instinct.
In this way, it produces a highly rigorous and disciplined political community of people who behave in ways that maximize cohesion, but perhaps lack other types of healthy outlets to nature and unconstrained relationships.
We'll pick this up tomorrow considering Daoism and it’s more naturalistic approach to the good.
Until then friends,
Matt
https://chinaconnectu.com/wp-content/pdf/ThreeFundamentalBondsandFiveConstantVirtues.pdf
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/