Abstract

This paper critically examines Yong Huang’s proposal of ‘agent-focused’ moral realism based on Zhu Xi’s virtue ethics. Huang characterizes Zhu Xi’s ethics as naturalistic moral realism, claiming that it successfully counters major philosophical challenges that confront other forms of moral realism: Hume’s IS/OUGHT challenge, Moore’s Open Question challenge, Mackie’s Queer challenge, and Mackie’s argument from relativity. This paper explores whether Zhu Xi’s framework, as interpreted by Huang, truly withstands such challenges and can be deemed a viable naturalistic moral realism. The crux of the critique lies in the objectivity of moral properties and their independence from the mind. This paper scrutinizes the distinction Huang makes between ‘action-focused’ and ‘agent-focused’ moral realism, questioning the latter’s ability to address moral disputes and its claim of mind-independent moral properties. It concludes that Huang's interpretation, while innovative, may not provide a definitive resolution to the issues within meta-ethical discourse regarding moral realism.