From 16:30p.m. to 18:00 p.m. on March 16, a symposium was held for discussion with graduate students on the theme: Orientation of Confucian Virtue Ethics and Its Difference from Normative Ethics.

Professor Bryan Van Norden had a cordial discussion with young teachers and some graduate students and exchanged and communicated on issues related to Confucian virtue ethics.

(Professor Bryan Van Norden is the fifth from left in the picture)

According to Professor Van, Chinese traditional Confucian ethics should be regarded as a kind of moral ethics. There were differences between this kind of virtue ethics and Aristotle's virtue ethics, but both paid attention to the cultivation of human's inner virtue and regarded it as the core purpose of moral philosophy. Therefore, there was a starting point for comparison between traditional Confucian ethics and Aristotle's ethics in ancient Greek of western world. At the same time, Professor virtue ethics further elaborated the difference between virtue ethics and normative ethics.

Professor Bryan Van Norden pointed out that scholars from overseas or Hong Kong and Taiwan had various views on the orientation of Confucian ethics. For example, Roger T. Ames believed that Confucian ethics was role ethics emphasizing the central position of human relations in ethical roles. Wang Qingjie proposed that Confucian ethics was exemplary ethics emphasizing the guide function of exemplary identity and behavior of saints or gentlemen to the ethics of ordinary people. More overseas sinologists, including Professor Bryan Van Norden, agreed with MacIntyre's view and believed that traditional Chinese Confucian ethics was a kind of virtue ethics. Because Confucius, the founder of Confucianism, and Mencius, the promoter of Confucianism, attached great importance to "shaping people". The core of "shaping people" lay in the achievement of human's inner virtue. In the early Pre-Qin Confucianism, achieving virtue became the central topic of almost all Confucian scholars. All other topics should aim at virtue cultivation or take virtue cultivation as the logical premise, which made us have to admit that Confucian ethics was a kind of virtue ethics, and even its tendency of virtue ethics exceeded Aristotle's ethical purport.

Professor Bryan Van Norden had high hopes for the Philosophy Department of School of Humanities, Xidian University. He thought it's necessary to set up a philosophy major in a polytechnic university. Because as per "the gentleman is no vessel" by Confucius, i.e. the essence of education lay in "shaping people", i.e. the achievement of virtue, and all goals should not be put on the cultivation of senior technicians. Even for senior technicians, the cultivation of good virtue was also helpful to the possibility of scientific and technological innovation and the standardization of scientific and technological ethics. Professor Bryan Van Norden believed that the Philosophy Department of Xidian University took overseas sinology research as a breakthrough to improve its professional direction of Chinese philosophy, which was an appropriate choice. He further pointed out the importance of overseas sinology research on Chinese philosophy, which deserved more attention from mainland Chinese scholars. Finally, Professor Bryan Van Norden wished the Philosophy Department of School of Humanities, Xidian University better and better, and hoped to have more exchanges and cooperation with the Philosophy Department of Xidian University in the future.

The teachers and graduate students who participated in the symposium discussed with Professor Bryan Van Norden on their academic issues of concern. Professor Van gave enthusiastic answers to the questions raised by the teachers and students.