Abstract
Modern Confucian political philosophy has long been divided between the more comprehensive branch of theories that prioritize Confucian classics and traditions, and the more moderate branch of theories that attempt to modernize Confucianism so as to better accommodate contemporary East Asian societies. In the previous chapter, I argued that comprehensive Confucianism has both theoretical and practical challenges when it is applied to modern East Asia. In this chapter, I will focus on the more moderate approach that aims to strike the perfect balance between Confucianism and liberal democracy.
A longer version of this chapter was published in “The Discontents of Moderate Political Confucianism and the Future of Democracy in East Asia,” Philosophy East & West 68, No. 4 (October 2018): 1193–1218.
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Notes
- 1.
For comprehensive Confucianism, see Qing Jiang, A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future, eds. Daniel A. Bell and Ruiping Fan, trans. Edmund Ryden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). Also see Daniel Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). Ruiping Fan, Reconstructionist Confucianism: Rethinking Morality after the West (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010).
- 2.
Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 17–18.
- 3.
Sungmoon Kim, “Public Reason Confucianism: A Construction,” American Political Science Review 109, No. 1 (Feb., 2015): 187. For a more recent attempt to bridge political liberalism with political Confucianism, see Shaun O’Dwyer, Confucianism’s Prospects: A Reassessment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019).
- 4.
Joseph Chan, “Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 29, No. 1 (Winter 2000): 22.
- 5.
Ibid., 16.
- 6.
Chan divides the good life into three analytical parts: (1) Agency goods: virtues or dispositions that constitute the good life: e.g., reason (especially practical wisdom), courage, justice, temperance, integrity, and sincerity; (2) Prudential goods: goods or values that contribute to a person’s good life: e.g., aesthetic experience (music and beauty), human relationship (friendship, family), amusement and play, knowledge, etc.; (3) A way of life: this is a person’s pattern of living, which embodies a particular ranking of agency and prudential goods and a particular way of realizing them. Chan argues that the first two components are not necessarily controversial and that a moderate version of perfectionism can be developed by focusing on agency and prudential goods and staying away from specific ways of life. Ibid., 11.
- 7.
For in-depth discussion of the four features, see Ibid., 14–17.
- 8.
Ibid., 14.
- 9.
Ibid., 201.
- 10.
Ibid., 203.
- 11.
For an example of the comprehensive approach, see Qing Jiang, A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future, trans. Edmund Ryden, ed. Daniel A. Bell and Ruiping Fan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
- 12.
Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 199–200.
- 13.
Ibid., 204.
- 14.
Ibid., 18.
- 15.
See Parts I and II in Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).
- 16.
Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). As Kim points out, modern Chinese people are in fact under the “nonideal situations [that] quite regrettably prevent them from realizing” these ideals. Sungmoon Kim, Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic-Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 90. For classic references to these ideals, see Confucius, The Analects, trans. D. C. Lau, revised bilingual edition (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1992). Mencius, Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau, revised bilingual edition (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2003). Xunzi, Basic Writings of Hsün Tzu, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963).
- 17.
Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 204.
- 18.
Ibid., 200.
- 19.
It is worth pointing out the distinction between having Confucianism as the doctrine and having Confucianism as one among a plurality of traditions inform a theory of justice. Given the history of Confucianism in East Asian societies, it is hard to imagine a democracy without at least some influence from Confucianism. However, it is quite another claim to argue that given this substantial history Confucianism then ought to be the sole source of justice and legitimacy.
- 20.
Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 203.
- 21.
Doing so will of course risk becoming less Confucian and more liberal, which is unacceptable to Chan.
- 22.
See Footnote 6 for Chan’s three-part view of the good life. Many would argue that Martha Nussbaum’s version of political liberalism, which evolves from her capability theory, is a good example of this strategy. See Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: Capabilities Approach (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Belknap Press, 2013). Also see Rawls’ Political Liberalism, eds. Thom Brooks and Martha Nussbaum (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).
- 23.
One could say the same of Catholicism and Islam, for instance. The problem of the oscillation between these two undesirable extremes (losing moderateness or losing identity) seems to arise whenever we envision the transition from one comprehensive doctrine to political liberalism. Rawls’s political liberalism begins with a plurality of comprehensive doctrines that have to coexist, not with one which wishes to “liberalize” itself for political or democratic reasons.
- 24.
Sungmoon Kim, “Public Reason Confucianism: A Construction,” American Political Science Review 109, No. 1 (Feb., 2015): 191.
- 25.
Ibid., 191–192.
- 26.
Ibid., 187.
- 27.
Ibid., 198–199.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Ibid., 191, 199.
- 30.
Sungmoon Kim, Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic-Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 91.
- 31.
Sungmoon Kim, “Public Reason Confucianism: A Construction,” American Political Science Review 109, No. 1 (Feb., 2015): 193.
- 32.
Byung-ik Koh, “Confucianism in Contemporary Korea,” Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity: Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and Four Mini-Dragons, ed. Tu Wei-ming (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 191–201.
- 33.
Sungmoon Kim, “Public Reason Confucianism: A Construction,” American Political Science Review 109, No. 1 (Feb., 2015): 193.
- 34.
Ibid., 199.
- 35.
Sungmoon Kim, “Public Reason Confucianism: A Construction,” American Political Science Review 109, No. 1 (Feb., 2015): 198.
- 36.
To put it bluntly, this suggestion is rather assimilationist in the same sense as requiring Muslim refugees in the EU to embrace Christianity. However, it is different to require that they embrace democracy.
- 37.
Ibid., 198–199.
- 38.
Ibid., 199.
- 39.
Ibid., 193–194.
- 40.
See for instance Corey Brettschneider, “The Politics of the Personal: A Liberal Approach,” American Political Science Review 101, No. 1 (Feb., 2007): 19–31.
- 41.
Sungmoon Kim, “Public Reason Confucianism: A Construction,” American Political Science Review 109, No. 1 (Feb., 2015): 198.
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
To be clear, I share with Chan and Kim the conviction that Confucianism ought not be simply dismissed as a doctrine of the past. I nonetheless differ from them when it comes to how Confucianism should be maintained within a sustainable democracy.
- 44.
Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 204.
- 45.
For Chan, the reason why he wishes to avoid comprehensive forms of Confucianism is that “it damages civility.” However, as Steven Wall points out, the duty of civility is independent of moral content. Chan is in a difficult position to ground civility. On the one hand, if civility is grounded on Confucian doctrines, then what is so moderate about this theory? On the other hand, if civility is indeed morally independent, then the theory risks a “massive blurring of the meaningful difference between Confucian and liberal perfectionism,” which is likely to “reintroduce the state neutrality” that Chan sets out to overcome in the first place. Steven Wall, Liberalism, Perfectionism and Restraint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 79. Sungmoon Kim, Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic-Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 46.
- 46.
I also discussed these core values in Chap. 3.
- 47.
Alessandro Ferrara recently proposes what he calls “multivariate democratic polity” that takes advantage of both partially and fully prudential reasons to mitigate the effect of hyperpluralism and perhaps emancipate us from the trap of mutual resentment within which majorities and minorities might end up being caught. This proposal consists of “conceiving of the democratic polity as a multivariate unity that includes both overlapping-consensus–type and modus vivendi–type relations between the citizens participating in the overlapping consensus over the political conception of justice and over the constitutional essentials, as well as other groups of citizens embracing partially reasonable comprehensive conception.” In Chapter 8, I will argue on the basis of Ferrara’s theory that a multivariate model of democracy represents a much more promising direction for East Asia. Alessandro Ferrara, The Democratic Horizon: Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 106.
- 48.
See Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 204.
- 49.
Sungmoon Kim, Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic-Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 48.
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Li, Z. (2020). The Discontents of Moderate Political Confucianism. In: Political Liberalism, Confucianism, and the Future of Democracy in East Asia. Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43116-7_7
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