Abstract
A close reading of early Confucian texts does impress us that Confucians fully appreciate the significance of livelihood of the people and distribution of economic resources, usually as the manifestation of benevolent rule. It does not mean, however, that Confucians try to figure out a framework of social justice, as what western contemporary political philosophers do with social justice. Instead, the value of emphasizing material goods and their allocation there is actually located in a specific framework in which political community is a moral community and the relation between kings and the people is the kind of care. What Confucians present us is a different picture of social justice with its underlying assumption of human nature and community, which may not be familiar in modern times but also be relevant.
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Notes
- 1.
Acknowledgement: I am indebted to Tin Ka Ping Foundation in HK for inviting me for a short-term research visit in Department of Religion and Philosophy in HKBU in 2015. I am grateful for Prof. Kuan Kai Man, Prof. Lo Ping Cheung, Dr. Ellen Ying Zhang, Dr. Ng Yau-nang and Dr. Kwok Wai Luen for their hospitality and helpful comments on the earlier draft of this article.
- 2.
Rawls [15, p. 11].
- 3.
Chan [2, p. 262].
- 4.
Ibid., [3].
- 5.
Ibid., pp. 175–176, Chan [3, pp. 175–176].
- 6.
I will return to this point later in the third section.
- 7.
Tian [18, p. 76].
- 8.
Fan [8].
- 9.
Ren is the key virtue of Confucian ethics, usually translated as benevolence.
- 10.
Fan [6, p. 434].
- 11.
Ibid., [7, p. 47].
- 12.
Fan [7, p. 48].
- 13.
Tan [17, p. 489].
- 14.
Shen [16, p. 168].
- 15.
Chen [4, p. 158].
- 16.
The Analects 4:5.
- 17.
Ibid., 7:16.
- 18.
Ibid., 4:16.
- 19.
Ibid., 15:32.
- 20.
Ibid., 13:9.
- 21.
Mencius 5:3.
- 22.
Ibid., 5:3.
- 23.
Ibid., 1:4.
- 24.
Ibid., 2:12.
- 25.
See Mencius 14:8.
- 26.
Ibid., 7:14.
- 27.
The Analects 5:16.
- 28.
Ibid., 6:30.
- 29.
Mencius 1:7.
- 30.
Ibid., 13:23.
- 31.
Ibid., 1:5.
- 32.
Ibid., 2:5.
- 33.
Xunzi 9:17. All translations of Xunzi are mine.
- 34.
Ibid., 10:4.
- 35.
Ibid., 9:4.
- 36.
Mencius 9:5.
- 37.
Wang [19].
- 38.
Mencius 8:29.
- 39.
Ibid., 1:3.
- 40.
Ibid., 2:8.
- 41.
Ibid., 1:2; 2:1.
- 42.
Ibid., 3:3.
- 43.
Ibid., 2:15.
- 44.
Ibid., 7:9.
- 45.
Xunzi 9:16.
- 46.
Tan [17, p. 503].
- 47.
The Analects 12:13.
- 48.
Huang [11].
- 49.
Cline [5, pp. 378–379].
- 50.
Fleischacker [9, p. 2].
- 51.
Fleischacker [9, p. 5].
- 52.
Kim [12, p. 28].
- 53.
Frankfurt [10, p. 23].
- 54.
Frankfurt [10, p. 37, emphasis original].
- 55.
Mulligan, [14, p. 1173].
- 56.
For a detailed discussion of this problem, see Casal [1].
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Wang, Y. (2020). Individual Rights or Community? A Confucian Perspective of Social Justice. In: Xie, Z., Kollontai, P., Kim, S. (eds) Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5081-2_1
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