Virtuous power: Ethics, Confucianism, and Psychological self-help in China

Abstract

This article examines a genre of psychological self-help in China that deploys Confucian ethics to address social, moral, and psychological distress. Within this genre, a branch of what is called “third force” self-help, which attempts to overcome an ambiguous “third state” between health and illness, advocates encourage individuals to cultivate a form of virtuous power that emanates from the heart, seen as the basis of cognition, virtue, and bodily sensation. The heart has the freedom to imagine and act but also constrains such freedom. It constitutes the moral core necessary for achieving equanimity, a state of equilibrium in which one is not shaken by external disturbances and spontaneous bodily reactions are regulated by high moral reflection. This third force self-help uses heart-based Confucian ethics not only to help individuals cope with socioeconomic changes, but also, I argue, to constrain direct opposition to the causes of those changes by translating structural inequalities into ethical and moral issues. I suggest that this virtuous power serves government interests. The emphasis on Confucian ethics humanizes market competition and biologizes individual and family responsibility for care, legitimizing both class stratification and the family as a provider of social welfare.