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Mind & Morals

Crossing Cultures in Moral Psychology

David Wong on two ancient Chinese philosophers with very different approaches to moral reasoning.

How we develop good judgment about what to do in a particular situation? In the modern Western tradition, the dominant answer to this question comes in the form of a ‘top-down’ model of moral reasoning that derives concrete judgment from general principle but never in the other direction. It is top-down in the sense that it derives answers to ground-level practical questions from the upper reaches of abstract and general thought. Utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill sought to answer all practical moral questions by reference to the general goal of advancing social utility. For Kant the ultimate moral principle in one of his formulations required one to treat each person as an end in itself and never as a means only.

Jean-Paul Sartre expressed skepticism about the practicality of such principles through his story about a boy in occupied France during World War Two, who was torn between staying with his mother and leaving to join the Free French forces.

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