Personal Cultivation as a Civic Act

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 33
  In Roundtable Session: Virtue and Education

Abstract

This article constructs a Confucian relationality by focusing on the notion of personal cultivation and its implications. I argue that Confucian relationality, which envisions people as interdependent, situates personal cultivation in at least two ways. First, personal cultivation entails personal learning that necessarily occurs through interaction. Secondly, personal cultivation has an extensive impact in that it influences not a “self” but a person as part of a network of relationships. In higher educational contexts, relationality provides a complementary and alternative framework to a neoliberal one that does not rely on measurement to assume value. More broadly, relationality situates personal cultivation as a civic act that enriches communities.

Author

• Mary Chang, Independent Scholar