 The similarities coexist with significant differences, however. There is no parallel in Greek virtue ethics for the centrality of family life in the Confucian conception of the good life. Part of the reason for this lies in the Confucian appreciation for the family as the first arena in which care, respect, and deference to legitimate authority is learned (Analects 1.2; see also Cline, 2007, 2013 for a discussion of the Confucian view of the family in moral development and for an interesting comparison to John Rawls’ conception of the role of the family). Van Norden (2004, 2007) points out that the moral emotion of shame plays a crucial role in Mencius’ conception of moral development and that there is no comparable role played by the emotion in Aristotle. He suggests that the explanation lies in Mencius’ greater focus on moral agency in media res. The way in which particularist reasoning is illustrated in historical stories such as those about Shun is also a distinctive feature of Confucian ethics. These stories present paradigms of good judgment and of good individuals, from which persons engaged in ethical cultivation of themselves should learn. Another distinctive feature of Confucian ethics is the emphasis it gives to an aesthetic dimension of the good life. To act according to ritual propriety is not simply to conform to notions of appropriate behavior in this or that context. It is to act with the right attitude, reverence, say, in the case of serving one’s parents in an appropriately respectful manner, and it is to express such an attitude so gracefully and without internal conflict that doing so has become second nature (see Kupperman, 1999 and Cua, 1997). The importance attached to li, to ritual propriety itself, indicates the Confucian appreciation for the role of culture and convention in enabling human beings to express ethical attitudes toward each another such as care and respect (see Cua, 2005 for rich explorations of li in the thought of Xunzi). It is not as if bowing naturally means deferential respect; it must be agreed through convention that it does mean something like this (see Fingarette, 1972; see Shun, 1993, for a discussion of the relationship of li to the important virtue of ren). 