 There are good reasons to expect Confucianism to offer some distinctive resources for dealing with this problem. First, as pointed out in 2.3, Confucians appreciate the relational nature of human life: who we are as persons very much includes our social context: the people with whom we are in relationship and our institutions and practices. So they are very much in a position to appreciate situational influences on how human beings think, feel, and act. Second, they appear to hold something like a conception of virtues as stable character traits that are resistant to undue situational influences. As noted in 2.3, and this pertains to the challenge posed by the Milgram study, the Confucians emphasize the importance of living according to one’s own understanding of what is right and good even if others do not see it the same way. Third, as noted at the beginning of this entry, Chinese philosophy in general is distinguished by a focus on the practical. This is illustrated in the Confucian case by the tradition of scholar-officials who not only wrote about and taught the importance of the ethical to the political life, but strove to enact this importance in their own careers. As a consequence, they were very much concerned with specifying in practical terms how one could go about cultivating the virtues in oneself. Fourth, and this is very much in response to the combination of the previous points, they describe a long and arduous program of ethical training to inculcate the virtues.