Islamic Ethics and the Controversy about the Moral Heart of Confucianism

This essay briefly evaluates the ongoing controversy between LIU Qingping and GUO Qiyong (and their followers) about the “moral heart” of Confucianism in order to draw a comparison with Islamic ethics for mutual illumination of the two traditions (see Guo 2007: 21). Liu argues that Confucianism is basically consanguinism and, as such, it lands into an “embarrassing paradox” in its moral thinking when dealing with conflicts between filial piety and brotherly love on the one hand and public good on the other. It also lands in a “profound paradox” when it comes to extending family love to humanity in general because such extension is impossible without a universalistic human love (Liu 2007). Guo contests this view and insists that the root of morality in Confucianism is not family love but our “moral heart/mind,” endowed by “Heaven” with universal human love. Filial piety is only the “root of practice” of this universal human love and not the root of all morality. Therefore, Confucianism has all the resources for a universalistic ethics and it is “the natural order” of the practice of human love to start with parental and brotherly love (Guo 2007). This controversy revolves particularly around Analects 13.18, where Confucius talks about fathers and sons covering up for each other, and Mencius 7A35 and 5A3, where Mencius talks about King Shun leaving his empire and running away to help his father escape punishment for murder (7A35) and giving princely status to his murderous brother (5A3). Liu challenges Mencius’s presentation of Shun as a great hero, sage-king, of Confucian tradition because these cases point toward public corruption by Shun in the name of filial piety and brotherly love. Guo, however, defends Mencius’s position as underlining the need, per traditional Confucian culture, for “grace” rather than “righteousness” in the private sphere of life, and also as protecting family love as the “root of practice” for universal human love. These two opposing interpretations can be pictured as follows: