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Someone asked, "What do you think of the saying, 'Requite injury with kindness [de]'?" Master replied, "With what, then, would one requite kindness? Requite injury with uprightness, and kindness with kindness." - Analects 14.34'
You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. - Matt. 5: 43-45
What does virtue require in the face of injury and opposition? How ought I to be postured toward my enemy? How should I respond? And how would I feel about my enemy if I were a person of admirable character? The great religious leaders and moralists in recorded history have been virtually unanimous in their rejection of a respond-in-kind approach to injury and opposition.2 So suppose I have resolved not to respond in kind (or at least to endeavor so not to respond). Still, I might wonder, how should I be? Are there specific affects, postures and behaviors characteristic of the moral hero in the context of injury and opposition? If so, which? It is the point of these reflections to compare the explicit teachings of two great moralists, Jesus and Confucius, on this question.
Unsurprisingly, neither Jesus nor Confucius endorses a respond -in-kind approach. Jesus contrasts his view explicitly with such an approach. Apparently, in Jesus' day, the Old Testament Law according to which one is to love one's neighbor (see, for example, Lev. 19:18) had been expanded inappropriately to enjoin also hatred of one's enemy. Jesus addresses the situation and describes the ideal rather as one in which the enemy is prayed for, loved, and blessed.
In the Analects, the teaching on response to injury is not contrasted explicitly with the respond-in-kind approach. Instead, the teaching is contrasted with a phrase that occurs in the Laozi (Chapter 63) according to which one should respond to injury with kindness. The foil here is not the respond-in-kind approach but rather a version of Laozian wisdom according to which one's response to...