Confucianism tells us how best to live our lives, not based on individual choices we make, but based on the overall path we walk. For the Confucian, it is about staying on a path (dao) that is important, rather than any individual action.

Part of what it means to stay on the path is to properly fill the roles you have in your lives. We each have many roles: as siblings, as students, as workers, etc. These roles are all relational: We have siblings; we are students who have teachers; as workers we have bosses and subordinates. For the Confucian, properly being within your role is about having the right relationship with the others around your role. Here, the family plays an important part: If you are taught to appropriately respect your parents and elders at home, you will be better prepared to properly respect your teachers, bosses, and superiors elsewhere. Even though there will be different specific rules about proper behavior with your boss than, say, with your mother, the respect you have developed for your mother will help you learn how to show proper respect for your boss. So, even though it is unlikely that your boss will want you to tell her how your day was, and cook dinner occasionally, doing these things for your mother will help you develop the appropriate behavior toward your boss.

This makes moral choice from a Confucian view deeply contextual: what you should do in any given situation will not always be the same. It will depend on who is involved, what relationships they have to you, and their roles. This allows us to be particular in our assessments of what is right and wrong. There is not one simple rule to follow, full stop (for example, "do unto others..."). Instead, to stay on the path, and therefore to do good things, you need to consider fully the situation and people involved in it. This is why the Confucian thinks that even though we can learn how to properly respect our boss by learning to properly respect our parents, we do not need to treat them the same way or give them the same considerations. What is right for one person might not be right for every person.

It is important to notice here that acting within your role does not simply mean doing what you are told. For example, part of your role as the child of someone includes respecting your parents. However, respecting your parents does not just mean following their orders and doing what they say. It also involves helping them to act appropriately within their role as well. Sometimes this means that you actually should just do what they say, but there will be times when a discussion about whether to follow their orders in more important. Suppose, for example, that your parents tell you to do something you think is wrong. In this case, the best way to act in your role as their child may not simply be to do it anyway, or to not do it and not talk to them, but rather to explain to them why you think it is wrong in order to help them become better people and parents. So, part of acting in your role is reflecting on your role and behaving in such a way that you help others act within their role as well.

This theory will be most useful when we are considering what people should do based on the jobs and positions they occupy.

Short Analysis Assignment:

In this story, we see a large change in the behavior of the drill instructor as we progress. Does this change occur with a change in his role? If not, why not? If so, how does his role change? Is he always acting in the best way possible for his role? Why or why not? In this sense, is he always doing the right thing for a Confucian?