Mandarin paradox

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The Mandarin paradox is an ethical parable used to illustrate the difficulty of fulfilling moral obligations when moral punishment is unlikely or impossible, leading to moral disengagement. [1] It has been used to underscore the fragility of ethical standards when moral agents are separated by physical, cultural, or other distance, especially as facilitated by globalization. [2] It was first posed by French writer Chateaubriand in "The Genius of Christianity" (1802): [3]

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I ask my own heart, I put to myself this question: "If thou couldst by a mere wish kill a fellow-creature in China, and inherit his fortune in Europe, with the supernatural conviction that the fact would never be known, wouldst thou consent to form such a wish?"

The paradox is famously used to foreshadow the character development of the arriviste Eugène de Rastignac in Balzac's novel Père Goriot . [1] Rastignac asks Bianchon if he recalls the paradox, to which Bianchon first replies that he is "at [his] thirty-third mandarin," but then states that he would refuse to take an unknown man's life regardless of circumstance. [3] Rastignac wrongly attributes the quote to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which propagated to later writings. [2] [4]

In fiction

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References

  1. 1 2 Hanotte-Zawiślak, Anna (2019-06-28). "Le retour du "paradoxe du mandarin" dans la construction de l'arriviste littéraire au XIXe siècle". Cahiers ERTA. Uniwersytet Gdański (18): 9–23. doi: 10.4467/23538953CE.19.010.10695 . Retrieved 2020-01-23.
  2. 1 2 Delon, Michel (2013-12-15). "De Diderot à Balzac, le paradoxe du mandarin". Italian Review of French Studies. 3 (3). doi: 10.4000/rief.248 . Retrieved 2020-01-23.
  3. 1 2 Ginzburg, Carlo (Autumn 1994). "Killing a Chinese Mandarin: The Moral Implications of Distance". Critical Inquiry. 21 (1): 46–60. doi:10.1086/448740. JSTOR   1343886. S2CID   162198091.
  4. Falaky, Fayçal (2011-09-15). "Reverse Revolution: The Paradox of Rousseau's Authorship". In Lauritsen, Holger Ross; Thorup, Mikkel (eds.). Rousseau and Revolution. Continuum Studies in Political Philosophy. Continuum. pp. 83–97. ISBN   978-1441128973 . Retrieved 2020-01-23.

Bibliography