VIRTUE ETHICS, THE ANALECTS, AND THE PROBLEM OF COMMENSURABILITY Edward Slingerland ABSTRACT In support of the thesis that virtue ethics allows for a more comprehensive and consistent interpretation of the Analects than other possible models, the author uses a structural outline of a virtue ethic (derived from Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of the Aristotelian tradition) to organize a discussion of the text. The resulting interpretation focuses attention on the religious aspects of Confucianism and accounts for aspects of the text that are otherwise difficult to explain. In addition, the author argues that the structural similarities between the Aristotelian and Confucian concep- tions of self-cultivation indicate a dimension of commensurability between the two traditions, despite very real variations in specific content. Finally, the author suggests how crosscultural commensurability, in general, can be understood on a theoretical level. KEY WORDS: Chinese philosophy, comparative ethics, Confucianism, Confu- cius, virtue ethics IN RECENT YEARS, VARIOUS WESTERN ETHICAL MODELS have been brought to bear upon the Analects, traditionally considered to be the record of the teachings of Confucius and his disciples. 1 These models have included Kantian deontology (Roetz 1993; Lau 1979, esp. 50), something resem- bling Sartrean existentialism (Hall and Ames 1987), and the kind of performative act theory developed by Gilbert Ryle and J. L. Austin (Fingarette 1972). While each of these models has its own strengths and serves to illuminate important aspects of the text, each arguably leaves certain important aspects of the text unexplained. In a 1995 article in JRE 29.1:97–125. © 2001 Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc. 1 The Analects (Lunyu; lit., “Classified Sayings”) was probably put together after the death of the historical Confucius (551–479 B.C.E.). Our present version is a somewhat het- erogeneous collection of material from different time periods, although scholars differ in their identification of the different strata, as well as in the significance they attribute to these differences. Bruce and Taeko Brooks have recently argued for a quite extreme view of the text, seeing each individual chapter as representing a discrete stratum, identifying vast numbers of “later interpolations” within each stratum, and claiming that the work was composed over a much longer period of time than has been generally accepted—the later strata being put together as late as the third century before the common era (Brooks and Brooks 1998). While this is not the place for a thorough discussion of their arguments