China Social Science Review

No.4, 2023

“Yi”: A Moral Fact in Ancient Chinese Society

(Abstract)

He Jian

Under the influence of modernization theory supported by Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, especially the analytical framework of “universalism—particularism,” ancient Chinese society was inappropriately assumed as an evolutionary type of particularism and traditionalism. This assumption has led to a mindset that a society with a particularist orientation must completely emulate the values of a society with an universalist orientation, otherwise modernization will be out of reach. A discussion of human nature on the basis of modern moral science can help tear the fixed mindset apart and excavate the “benevolence and yi (righteousness)” duality in ancient Chinese society, and reconstruct righteousness, and its characteristics, thus enrich the dimensions of moral facts. As a moral existence, righteousness manifests as a collective performance, a personality, a concept of obligation, and a form of desirability (goodness).