I suggest that the author gives a deeper analysis of the following questions. I also suggest that the author refers to Aristotle's conception of shame in his ethics. It will give you some new insights.

(1) Is there rationaliy in the feelings of shame? If there is rationality, how can we define this rationality.

(2) For Aristotle, we shouldn't have shame. However, for Mencius, shame is innate. The author might get some insights from comparative thinking.

Author Response

Reviewer1

Is there rationaliy in the feelings of shame? If there is rationality, how can we define this rationality.

Response: I very much appreciated this question in going through the revision, because one of the points that did not come through in the original submitted version was that Mencius is not only focused on the being of shame and living with it, but also on the becoming of shame, that is, how shame develops in tandem with the other three germs from merely innate-affective mindsets into cognitive-rational-reflective mindsets. In this way, I wanted to show becoming moral in life hinges on the development of shame from innate disposition into learned manners of appropriately interacting with others in society. Though the length of the paper started to become a problem, I also pointed out that the rationality in the feeling of shame presents a positive propensity toward the development of a social rationality or pro-social reasoning.

For Aristotle, we shouldn't have shame. However, for Mencius, shame is innate. The author might get some insights from comparative thinking.

Response: I very much wanted to add Aristotle to the mix, but the paper actually expanded significantly in length as it engaged more of the reviewers’ responses. That said, I felt it would be acceptable to leave Aristotle out of this paper and address him in another one, because within the length limits, the only way I could have briefly introduced Aristotle would have been in a new additional section that shows conceptions of shame in the history of philosophy that consider it as mainly negative. I really wanted to foreground the positivity of shame for the reader by backgrounding the widespread presupposition that the feeling of shame is a negative experience, instead of diving deep into the reasons why philosophers in the past have thought of shame in the negative way. Again, the problem with adding Aristotle was a length problem, but certainly I intend to either devote another article or a section of a book to Aristotle’s conception of shame.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper aims to argue for the positive role played by shame in the ethical thought of Mencius and for an ethics of shame more generally. In particular the paper attempts to suggest that shame functions as moral motivation within moral judgement, and is an expression of both reason and emotion.

Central to the paper is supposedly an argument for the affective mindset of shame and aversion as a combined functioning of both moral motivation and moral judgement. However, the paper fails to provide a clear articulation of the relevant issues, not to mention substantial and convincing arguments. As attempts to support the case of the paper, works of scholars like Harry Frankfurt, Sin Yee Chan and Nick Zangwill are cited. Unfortunately, the paper seems to misread these scholars, or at least fails to clearly show why their ideas and arguments are relevant to the paper. Now central to the account of personhood of Frankfurt is a hierarchy of desires, where certain first-order desires are endorsed and validated by second-order desires (to put it crudely). Frankfurt is more concerned with agency and volition, and only indirectly with moral evaluation. I am baffled by the claim of the paper that for Frankfurt “a person with second order desire is someone with the desire to do whatever is in fact right.” (2) I am doubtful that Frankfurt will accept such a claim. Also, while Frankfurt’s works are certainly concerned with the issues of actions and freedom, I do not quite understand why these issues are relevant to the notion of shame. Even more obscure is their relevance to the issue of shame being innate or learned. It should also be mentioned that the term “Frankfurt School” is usually reserved for the camp of scholars of social theory and critical philosophy, and as far as I know, no one uses such a term to refer to the thought of Harry Frankfurt.

The paper of Sin Yee Chan is directly relevant to the topic of the paper. But it seems the author misunderstands Chan’s position. Chan aims to argue that for Mencius some desires are evaluative and that evaluative desires positively support moral cultivation and moral actions. I am not sure what the paper intends to convey by citing Chan to say that “immediately desiring without contemplation can however motivate moral action.” Such an idea seems to be contrary to Chan’s position, for she clearly thinks that thinking/contemplation of the heart-mind has the moral guiding function while the unthinking desire rarely helps moral motivation.

Nick Zangwill in his paper intends to argue for moral externalism, a position for which moral judgement by itself does not motivate. Now the issue of moral internalism and externalism is certainly relevant to the central aim of the paper. But without further explication it is unclear whether Mencius should be understood as a moral internalist or externalist. It is also unclear how the central claim of the paper, that shame functions as moral motivation within moral judgement, should be understood in relation to the issue of moral internalism or externalism. It is quite unhelpful simply to claim that "For Mencius, motivation combines the desire to do what is right with a belief in the rightness of the deed." (3) For the latter claim is simply a general statement of the desire-belief model of action. I do not quite understand how the issue of moral motivation is related to the notion of “inductive analogy” or “analogical reasoning”. Even more bizarre is the misleading statement of “Zangwill's account of Mencian analogical reasoning provides the best interpretation of extension.” (3) Zangwill’s paper does not mention Mencius at all.

The notions of desire and belief, reason and emotion are of course central to our understanding of moral motivation and judgement. However the paper does not clearly explain its understanding of nor its stance towards these notions. On the one hand, the paper claims that both desire and belief are needed for motivation, which sounds like agreeing with the general Humean model of motivation. Yet on the other hand the paper also explicitly criticizes Hume. (6) It is unhelpful to claim that “emotion, reason and logic are each indispensable for the processing of a moral judgement.” (6) "Indispensable” in what sense? Also, it is unclear how Nichols’ paper on kin emotion and Confucian moral psychology is relevant to the issue at this point. Moreover, it is unhelpful to quote Nichols’ appraisal of Liu Qingping without referring to Liu’s work. Actually for readers who are unfamiliar with the relevant debates they will not know Liu refers to Liu Qingping.

The paper talks about Dan Zahavi’s works without providing reference. Zahavi’s works are also not listed in the reference section. The paper probably needs to explain more why and how Zahavi is mistaken about the negative function of shame.

There is also one minor point regarding translation. In the beginning of the paper yi義is rendered as “rightness” (2) but later it is rendered as “decorum”. It is best to explain why the paper thinks “decorum” is a better rendering. Also, it is equally unclear why the paper prefers to render the term junzi君子as “noble master”.

Author Response

Reviewer2

Response: I appreciate your thoughts on my citation of Chan and have thoroughly reworked where I invoked Chan’s position. My intention was to show the innate aspect of shame as it develops from an innate/immediate affective response into an affective mindset that continues to morally motivate us while being mediated by reason when more developed forms of pro-social reasoning come about in life development. Your comments very much spurred me to make this point more clearly and without muddying Chan’s position.

Response: after careful consideration about my critical point and your suggestions, I deleted some quotes (Nichols, Zangwill)to make my argument more focus on the shame of Mencius. The most interesting or important contribution of this article is its characterization of how shame operates within the overall system of Mengzi's thought--especially its role in self-regulation of the moral agent acting within a community of moral norms--and how shame so characterized can provide an alternative perspective on the issue of moral symmetry vs. asymmetry.

As desires are also important for yi which is the moral aim of shame, I put it in footnote.

Response: Thank you for addressing this. To explain my paper’s rendering of yi, I have now added a footnote breaking down the issue in some detail.The Chinese term yi 义 is usually translated with the English terms “rightness,” “righteousness,” “dutifulness” and even “justness,” which although do convey some senses of the original Chinese term ultimately fail at rendering some key nuances, especially in the contexts that Mencius and Xunzi were writing in. The most important nuances lost by the usual English renderings include the intrinsic connection of yi to an affective origin in the human mind that is having shame, and the other is the intrinsic connection of yi to the hierarchical division of society that Confucianism philosophically defended with this concept (see Xunzi 9.19). The slightly archaic English term “decorum” aims to show rather than hide the context of hierarchy that is so important to Confucian philosophy, while the verb “honoring” brings out yi’s nuance of a kind of social action that involves emotionally-invested moral valuation. Lastly, the intrinsic connection of yi to an affective origin in the mind (shame) is best captured by this phrasing that foregrounds honoring and dishonoring, insofar as honor and dishonor are precisely the underlying subject matters of shame and aversion.

As regards the rendering of junzi as “noble master,” the intention was to use a translation name that describes less a psycho-social role and more a philosophical character or conceptual persona. Thus, I generally choose not to use names like “prince” or “ruler” or “gentlemen,” but the fact that you found it strange made me prefer to stick with past renderings, because, although my rendering could facilitate the development of another paper, for the purposes of this paper, introducing it seems to just get in the way of the point.

Reviewer 3 Report

This article reviews the concept of shame in the Mengzi, arguing that it integrates both moral affect and moral judgement. It situates shame and aversion in relation to Mengzi's other three foundational moral mindsets, and concludes that shame operates in Mengzi's thought in a way that transcends the moral symmetry-asymmetry dichotomy.

The most interesting or important contribution of this article is its characterization of how shame operates within the overall system of Mengzi's thought--especially its role in self-regulation of the moral agent acting within a community of moral norms--and how shame so characterized can provide an alternative perspective on the issue of moral symmetry vs. asymmetry. Unfortunately, this is not the article's stated goal, and is not even mentioned in the abstract. According to the abstract and introduction, the paper's main argument is to address the issue of whether shame is innate or learned, and offering a way to overcome this as a false dichotomy. That claim is not taken up or explored systematically (at least not as such) in the rest of the paper. I therefore recommend that the author revise her or his introductory section to better reflect the actual argument and conclusions of the paper.

Otherwise, the paper makes adequate reference to secondary literature on the topic and generally gives a competent treatment of how shame functions within Mengzian thought. The author includes a rather long section on the relationship between affect and rationality in the Mengzi that is not essential to the overall argument of the paper, and has been treated extensively in the secondary literature. I therefore recommend that the author remove this discussion and instead simply reference the relevant literature since he or she is not making a new contribution in this area anyway.

I find that the paper does not, however, make adequate reference to the primary text of Mengzi. There are many instances where claims about content in the Mengzi are unsubstantiated by references to the text, or when incomplete or inadequate explanation is provided--including even basic citations to where a quotation appears in the text. For instance, on page 4 the author claims that for Mengzi, "the rational action is the right thing to do because it is grounded in both correct judgement and the affective mindset of compassion," but does not provide any evidence from the primary text (or, in this case, even secondary interpretations) for this assertion. This is a relatively precise claim that requires at least reference to relevant material in the primary text, if not a further explanation of how exactly we should be reading that material to reach that conclusion. I suggest that the author edit the article rather extensively to rely more on primary textual analysis. A alternative approach would be to restructure the argument to be about the function of shame in general (as opposed to in the Mengzi in particular), only drawing on the Mengzi as necessary for very specific points. This seems like a more fundamental revision though, so I strongly advise the author to return instead to a deeper engagement with the primary source material. Without this, the article's analysis and conclusions can only be tentative at best.

Finally, the style in which the article is written tends to be overly pedantic and at times obscurantist. Sentence structures are often needlessly complicated and the author does not provide adequate clarification about how parts of his or her argument relate to what has come before or what will come after. This seems to be exacerbated by somewhat idiomatic use of English constructions. For instance, in several places (e.g. on page 10, "Such virtues are equivalent to norms in the affective mind of the true noble, because the latter's virtues…") the author refers to "the latter" when listing only one example ("the latter" implies two options or examples, the other of which would be "the former"). I think that this article will require much additional copyediting for clarity and style before it is ready for publication.

Misc. comments:

P 1:

Introductory paragraph could use more context. Why is the argument about shame being amoral even important in the first place?
When speaking about Mengzi in the context of Bongrae Seok's work, clarify whether the positions described are Mengzi's or Seok's.

P2:

When the author says the "Frankfurt School" I think he or she means the line of interpretation initiated by Harry Frankfurt, but most readers will think of the German movement in critical theory, so this phrasing should be changed.

P3:

The author claims that in Mengzi 1A7 Mengzi is not encouraging the extension of the king's moral response, but in the larger context of that passage that sort of is what Mengzi is arguing, so this requires more clarification.

P5:

No primary evidence or citation provided for the case of "detesting the handout."

P6:

I am not sure why a discussion of Hume's treatment of shame is relevant here. Absent any discussion of comparative methodology it seems irrelevant.
I am not sure what the reference to "the fundamentalism of traditional Chinese society" has to do with the argument about the Mengzi. The phrase itself is also over-broad and ill-defined.

P7:

Where is the argument from within the Mengzi itself that the affective mind is "logically structred overall by the primary underlying germ of compassion…" ? Because this is a claim about the content of the Mengzi it needs primary textual evidence to support it, or at least reference to secondary literature that provides such evidence.
Similarly, the claim that ritual propriety "hinges more so [sic] on conducting social interaction in harmony…" requires primary textual evidence.

P8:

Is "How to cohabitate with other human beings" a quotation? If not, why is it in quotation marks?

P9:

I think the author means, in the example of the wife and concubine feeling shame, the author means that it is the husbands' actions, not the husband himself, that inspires their shame.
Relatedly, it is also possible that the husband lacks moral knowledge (following the author's point about moral judgement above), not that he is avoiding feeling shame.

P10:

What does the author mean that shame is prereflective? Why is that an important modifier?
The Mengzi quotations require citations to the primary text.

P11:

Dan Zahavi's work is not included in the list of references, and no citation is given.

P12:

The article ends rather abruptly, and I note in my comments above that the stated thesis is not addressed by the end.

Author Response

Response: I found reviewer 3’s analysis of my paper to be the most extensive, interesting and helpful for the revision process. I went ahead and revised the paper thoroughly, then adjusted the abstract and introduction in light of reviewer 3’s reading. Although reviewer 2’s criticism conflicted with reviewer 3’s at several points, I have attempted to strike a balance of sorts where I saw conflicting inputs.

Response: I appreciate this comment, because I was indeed trying (while failing) to make a strong point about how Mencius’s understanding of shame offers an interesting way out of the innate/learned dichotomy. To correct the failure, I went as deeply as I could into how Mencius affirms shame as innate affective mindset and how it develops from an affective capacity into a cognitive capacity through learning the observance of ritual propriety and through the cognitive development of recognizing wisdom as to right and wrong. I also add more detail on this aspect of shame becoming-cognitive in a footnote.

Response: I took this comment to heart and restructured each argument (especially in the first half of the paper) around primary textual sources in the Mengzi, so that the reader can more closely follow my reading of Mengzi from the perspective of his concept of shame without unnecessary confusion as to where I am drawing all this from.

Reponse: I edited the article 10’s of times looking for wherever the sentence structures were overly and needlessly complicated, and especially bordering on pedantic and obscurantist, which is the last style I would want to endorse. I believe I simplified the style overall and tried to get rid of all the confusing idiomatic usages of English words.

Misc. comments:

P 1:

Introductory paragraph could use more context. Why is the argument about shame being amoral even important in the first place?
When speaking about Mengzi in the context of Bongrae Seok's work, clarify whether the positions described are Mengzi's or Seok's.

Response: I went ahead adjusted the introduction and my usage of Seok’s work.

P2:

When the author says the "Frankfurt School" I think he or she means the line of interpretation initiated by Harry Frankfurt, but most readers will think of the German movement in critical theory, so this phrasing should be changed.

Response: changed.

P3:

The author claims that in Mengzi 1A7 Mengzi is not encouraging the extension of the king's moral response, but in the larger context of that passage that sort of is what Mengzi is arguing, so this requires more clarification.

Response: I expanded this section to clarify what I mean.

P5:

No primary evidence or citation provided for the case of "detesting the handout."

Response: I added the primary source material.

P6:

I am not sure why a discussion of Hume's treatment of shame is relevant here. Absent any discussion of comparative methodology it seems irrelevant.
I am not sure what the reference to "the fundamentalism of traditional Chinese society" has to do with the argument about the Mengzi. The phrase itself is also over-broad and ill-defined.

Response: I agree with you on these points, so I deleted these parts.

P7:

Where is the argument from within the Mengzi itself that the affective mind is "logically structred overall by the primary underlying germ of compassion…" ? Because this is a claim about the content of the Mengzi it needs primary textual evidence to support it, or at least reference to secondary literature that provides such evidence.
Similarly, the claim that ritual propriety "hinges more so [sic] on conducting social interaction in harmony…" requires primary textual evidence.

Response: I went ahead and added primary textual sources and further explication of what I intended to say on these points in part one.

P8:

Is "How to cohabitate with other human beings" a quotation? If not, why is it in quotation marks?

Response: Since I found I could delete this part without altering the flow of my argument, I realized I did not need it. It is a Chinese writing habit to quote well-known ancient phrases without citation.

P9:

I think the author means, in the example of the wife and concubine feeling shame, the author means that it is the husbands' actions, not the husband himself, that inspires their shame.
Relatedly, it is also possible that the husband lacks moral knowledge (following the author's point about moral judgement above), not that he is avoiding feeling shame.

Response: I did my best to clarify and cover this issue you mention.

P10:

What does the author mean that shame is prereflective? Why is that an important modifier?
The Mengzi quotations require citations to the primary text.

Response: I added a couple of parts taking up the pre-reflective/reflective dichotomy and connected it to my handling of the innate/learned dichotomy. I also cited the primary Mengzi text.

P11:

Dan Zahavi's work is not included in the list of references, and no citation is given.

Response: Reviewer 2 also took up an issue with how I invoked Zahavi, so I deleted one part, without damaging the paper in anyway. And added one reference of Zahavi.

The article ends rather abruptly, and I note in my comments above that the stated thesis is not addressed by the end.

Response: I adjusted the abstract and added a summary to pull together the key points of the paper, so the reader is not lost at the very end.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has been rewritten and no longer carries the intentions to argue for the roles played by reason and emotion in the affective mindset of shame and aversion, and also how shame transcends the dichotomy of innate or learned. The paper is now focused on the explication of the affective mindset of shame and aversion in relation to yi義, and also to the other three original mindsets and their corresponding virtues. With such a more focused aim the paper is now more clearly written and much improved. Nevertheless, there are two key issues regarding which the paper should make more and better clarification.

First, central to the interrelation of the four affective mindsets is the relation between the mindset of compassion and the mindset of shame and aversion. The paper heavily relies on the concept of the mindset of unbearable (buren zhi xin) and in particular Mencius 1A.7 to illustrate the intimate relation between compassion and shame. I think there is a plausible case here but the paper needs to do more work on it. For example, 1A.7 actually does not mention shame; but the paper simply assumes that King Xuan of Qi has the feeling of shame. Given that the original passages do not mention shame and also that a feeling of shame is not necessary for a natural reading of the King’s reactions, I think the paper should give more explanation and explicitly argue for the necessity of invoking the feeling of shame. I think the paper actually makes use of two different senses of shame to make plausible its claims. Sometimes the paper employs an inflated sense of shame, where the feeling invoked is so broad that it is almost the same as any general sense of moral disapproval; such a broad sense can indeed accommodate the texts of the Mencius and many moral experiences, but at the cost of losing the distinctiveness of shame. To argue for the positive role of shame against the dominant image of negativity, the paper then reverts back to a narrow sense of shame. I think such an ambiguity exposes a central weakness of the paper. I suggest the paper gives a more explicit explanation of its understanding of shame and how and to what extent such a feeling is different from other moral feelings.

Second and relatedly, it is not totally clear how shame is related to aversion in the affective mindset of shame and aversion. The paper does give an explanation of the difference and relation of shame and aversion on page 5 and 7. But I think more explication should be given, particularly in relation to the original texts of the Mencius. The paper suggests that shame is directed not only towards the self but also to others. We can indeed be ashamed of others, but only when these others are seen as extended selves. If that is not the case, then we are not ashamed of them, and when we say so we merely suggest that these others should be ashamed of themselves. Now shame and aversion is clearly related in Mencius’ thought. But it is not totally clear what their relationship is beyond the fact that both are the expression of yi. In my opinion this issue requires further explication.

There are two minor issues. On page 4, “that all human beings have affective minds that sprout and grow from four original settings” is repeated twice. I think it is a typo. On page 8, regarding Mencius VI.A10, it is not the case that the passerby insults the beggar. Both are being insulted. The passage describes the two as parallel cases.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Point to point Response:

The case of King Xuan of Qi is not directly related to shame, but throughout this case, Mencius is trying to explain the process of expanding the feeling of finding something unbearable that is done to others, which is crucial for any demonstration of the moral feeling of shame, because shame cannot only come from that feeling of finding something unbearable but also needs to be expanded into a broader sense of shame, so that all people have the feeling of shame when they are going to do something wrong. All in all, shame can prevent bad things from happening through restraining their actions while the sense of shame is expanding. If shame is not expanding into a broader sense, then shame just remains an inward thing that is effectively of little or no value with respect to bringing about that type of social-relational activity that is moral in the understanding of Mencius.

There are not so many parts in Mencius where shame is directly discussed, but the affective mindset of shame and aversion in connection with honoring decorum are the keys to understanding Mencius's concept of shame. The affective mindset of shame and aversion sheds clarity on the origin of shame, while honoring decorum demonstrates the development and necessary expansion of shame.

Response: The affective mindset of shame and aversion sheds clarity on the origin of shame, while honoring decorum demonstrates the development and necessary expansion of shame. Aversion in the affective mindset of shame and aversion shows the restraining side of shame: when you do something that goes against moral principles, other people will feel aversion to you, and at the same time it warns yourself to do this something with shame (and therefore, you do not do it). This amounts to a process of self-reflection over self-behavior that is not yet unfolding but might possibly unfold.

Response： page4 delete

Page8: page 8 delete the unclear part

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

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The Positive Motivation of Shame: Moral Emotion in the Mencius

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