Mark D. White

In the latest in their series of discussions of papers drawn from the journals Ethics, PEA Soup are focusing "The Situationist Critique and Confuncian Virtue Ethics" by Edward Slingerland, which is available through PEA Soup here (for a limited time). The abstract is as follows:

This article argues that strong versions of the situationist critique of virtue ethics are empirically and conceptually unfounded, as well as that, even if one accepts that the predictive power of character may be limited, this is not a fatal problem for early Confucian virtue ethics. Early Confucianism has explicit strategies for strengthening and expanding character traits over time, as well as for managing a variety of situational forces. The article concludes by suggesting that Confucian virtue ethics represents a more empirically responsible model of ethics than those currently dominant in Western philosophy.

Critiques of situationism from scholars in the Western virtue ethics tradition are fairly common, but to see a statement from the viewpoint of Confucianism--I don't know how I missed this one.