Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy E-Book

Stephen C. Angle

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 449

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Confucian political philosophy has recently emerged as a vibrant area of thought both in China and around the globe. This book provides an accessible introduction to the main perspectives and topics being debated today, and shows why Progressive Confucianism is a particularly promising approach. Students of political theory or contemporary politics will learn that far from being confined to a museum, contemporary Confucianism is both responding to current challenges and offering insights from which we can all learn.

The Progressive Confucianism defended here takes key ideas of the twentieth-century Confucian philosopher Mou Zongsan (1909-1995) as its point of departure for exploring issues like political authority and legitimacy, the rule of law, human rights, civility, and social justice. The result is anti-authoritarian without abandoning the ideas of virtue and harmony; it preserves the key values Confucians find in ritual and hierarchy without giving in to oppression or domination. A central goal of the book is to present Progressive Confucianism in such a way as to make its insights manifest to non-Confucians, be they philosophers or simply citizens interested in the potential contributions of Chinese thinking to our emerging, shared world.

Leseprobe

Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy

Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy

Toward Progressive Confucianism

STEPHEN C. ANGLE

polity

Copyright © Stephen Angle 2012

The right of Stephen Angle to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2012 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 9780745661537

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Contents

Preface

1

Introduction: Contextualizing Progressive Confucianism

2

Self-Restriction: The Indirect Link Between Ethics and Politics

3

Rethinking Authority and Rejecting Authoritarianism: Giving the People their Voice

4

Debating the Rule of Law and Virtue Politics: Zhang Shizhao, Mou Zongsan, and Today

5

The Rights of All Under Heaven: Human Rights and Contemporary Confucianism

6

Neither Ethics nor Law: Ritual Propriety as Confucian Civility

7

Virtue, Politics, and Social Criticism: Toward Deference without Oppression

8

Conclusion: The Shape of Confucian Virtue-Ritual-Politics

Notes

Bibliography

Index and Glossary of Chinese Terms

Preface

Almost twenty-five years ago I fell in love with a young Jewish-American woman, a fellow student of Chinese at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies in Taipei. This book is certainly not the most important outcome of that event, but in a curious way my coming to write as a Confucian philosopher does stem, at least partly, from the relationship that began in Taipei. The recipient of a brief and forgettable Episcopalian religious education as a child, I became and remain an atheist. The importance of Judaism to Debbie and her family, though, meant that Jewish rituals began to enter my life. First, High Holiday services and Passover, then joining a synagogue, observing and sometimes participating in my daughters’ religious educations, and the splendid ceremonies as each of my daughters became a Bat Mitzvah. As all this was going on, my own reading and teaching of Confucian texts led me to reflect on the importance of ritual in our lives – and to see that the Jewish rituals in which I now participated were in fact only one of many types of ritual that inform our lives today. And rituals were not the only facet of my life where I was finding resonance between Confucianism and my own life. It is only as adults that we can become truly aware of the importance of our parents and family in shaping who we are, and also become aware of our own roles in helping to sustain these crucial relationships. Participation in the local community also emerged as something to which I was drawn, and about which I found tremendous insight in Confucian writings. Gradually, I began to wonder: am I a Confucian? What would that even mean, here in Middletown, Connecticut?

I continue to wrestle with these questions. Certainly whatever Confucianism means today – and, as we will see, it has many different dimensions and interpretations – it is more than a vague commitment to ritual, family, and community. It is both broader and more specific. Broader, in that almost any version of Confucianism will also emphasize an on-going commitment to moral growth and a serious involvement with a textual tradition, and many types of Confucianism will add an effort to balance our concern for one another with an apt concern for the environment we inhabit. This is more specifically, both because Confucian ways of valuing family and so on are going to differ, to one degree or another, from other ways of doing so; and also because within the Confucian tradition itself, there are disagreements about the details. So, figuring out what exactly it means to be a Confucian in the contemporary world is complex. In addition, as I will discuss in Chapter 1, in the last hundred years Confucianism has faced greater challenges than ever before, and also has become more global than at any time in its history. It teeters on the verge of possible irrelevance and yet is studied in new ways and in new places. Both within China and without, various interpretations of Confucianism are starting to gain traction as philosophy, as political theory, and as religion – and many of the scholars and practitioners who have been pursuing these Confucianisms are now my friends and interlocutors. If I am a little unsure of whether I am a Confucian, I am confident that I am part of exciting conversations about contemporary Confucian philosophy, and venture in this book both to describe what Confucian theorists have been saying and to prescribe what Confucian theorists should say.

In 2009 I published a book called Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy. Sagehood has two goals: to offer an interpretation of the central philosophical project of Neo-Confucianism – namely, the ethical, metaphysical, psychological, and educational theories surrounding the search for sagehood – and to put these theories into critical dialogue with relevant ideas from contemporary Western philosophy. The hypothesis is that each side can be stimulated by and learn from the other. My main Chinese sources in Sagehood are two great Neo-Confucian philosophers, Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and Wang Yangming (1472–1529). I believe their theories in the areas I have mentioned to be fascinating and well worth our attention. In the last two chapters of Sagehood, though, I turn to the topic of Neo-Confucian political philosophy, and there I find the approaches of Zhu and Wang to fall significantly short. There are still things we can learn from them but, as I pursued the question of how sages and politics should mix, I found myself drawn to the radical ideas of a twentieth-century Confucian philosopher, Mou Zongsan (1909–95). As I explore briefly in these closing chapters of Sagehood, Mou argues that notwithstanding all the insights of the Confucian tradition in many areas, Confucians can only realize their deepest aims if they adopt a different understanding of law and of political authority than had been generally accepted within the tradition. (Mou does note that some of his pre-modern predecessors made moves in this direction, but never in a consolidated way.)

Sagehood, in short, offers a broad view of one version – an attractive and intriguing one, it seems to me – of Confucian ethics, but only some tantalizing hints at what a satisfactory Confucian political philosophy might look like. It left me wanting to think through more thoroughly what such a political philosophy would entail, and wanting to explore what other Confucian philosophers today had to say about these subjects. The opportunity to do this arrived sooner than I ever expected, as I was invited to deliver the inaugural Tang Junyi Lectures at the University of Michigan in the Spring of 2009. Those lectures, collectively titled “Contemporary Confucian Virtue Politics,” are the direct ancestors of Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 7 of the present book. I thus owe a considerable debt to Donald Lopez and his colleagues in the Asian Languages and Literatures Department for inviting me, to the appreciative and challenging audiences for the lectures, and to the many old friends and teachers with whom I was able to reconnect (especially Don and Anne Munro). It was then my good fortune to be able to take a year’s sabbatical from my teaching and administrative responsibilities at Wesleyan which, coming so close on the heels of the Tang Lectures, provided the perfect setting for building a full book on the foundation already laid in the lectures.

Many friends and colleagues have offered their help over the time I have been writing this book. Daniel Bell did me the great favor of reading over the whole book manuscript and offering many comments, corrections, and suggestions. I am grateful to audiences who responded to portions of the manuscript-in-progress at the 2010 APSA Conference, the Columbia Comparative Philosophy Seminar, Connecticut College, Haverford College, the Institute of Philosophy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the 2010 Nishan Forum, and Soochow University. My thanks to Routledge for granting permission to use material from my essay in Deborah Mower and Wade Robison, eds, Civility in Politics and Education (2012), which overlaps substantially with Chapter 6 of the present book; and also to the editors of 《中國哲學與文化》[Chinese Philosophy and Culture] for permission to use material from my article in their issue 8 (2010), which is a predecessor of Chapter 3. The following generous people each contributed to my work on one or more chapters: Sebastien Billioud, Fred Dallmayr, Loubna El-Amine, David Elstein, Fan Ruiping, Gu Hongliang, Huang Yushun, Leigh Jenco, Sungmoon Kim, David Little, Kai Marchal, Emily McRae, Deborah Mower, Peng Guoxiang, Marty Powers, Hagop Sarkissian, Sarah Schneewind, Michael Slote, Anna Sun, Sor-hoon Tan, Justin Tiwald, Sean Walsh, Wang Jue, Kathleen Wright, Xiao Yang, and Zhao Tingyang. They all have my sincere thanks. Several anonymous referees gave helpful feedback on my initial book proposal, and two of them read and commented on the entire manuscript. The book has benefitted greatly from their challenging engagement, for which I am extremely grateful. Finally, Emma Hutchinson and her staff at Polity Press have been extremely supportive and responsive; Emma’s guidance and good humor have meant a lot to me. With all this help, one hopes that any remaining deficiencies are few and far between, but I suppose they are inevitable, and they are solely my own responsibility.

1

Introduction: Contextualizing Progressive Confucianism

The title of this book is meant to be at least a little bit provocative. More than 2,500 years after the death of Confucius (551–479 BCE) – not to mention more than six decades after the Chinese communist revolution – is there anything alive and “contemporary” about Confucianism? You might also wonder about both “political” and “philosophy.” Confucianism is best known as an ethical teaching advocating benevolence and filial devotion, and its classic texts, which are filled with aphorisms, stories, and dialogues, might seem more like religious tracts or handbooks for spiritual practice than philosophical arguments. As if this weren’t enough, the subtitle asserts that the book will articulate something called “progressive” Confucianism. But everyone knows that Confucianism is conservative, looking back to a lost golden age, concerned to revive the rituals and values of an antique era. How can it be progressive?

Let us start with the idea of Confucianism itself. Or perhaps I should say “Confucianisms,” because there have been many, even competing, ways in which the legacy of Confucius has been developed over the centuries. As we will see in a few moments, distinct approaches are also proliferating today. As I use the term in this book, Confucianism refers to the broad and dynamic tradition of practice and reflection that includes all of these competing Confucianisms. This means that at any given moment, it may be controversial what the exact parameters of the tradition are. Even seemingly major issues, like the question of whether Confucius is in some sense divine, often divide Confucians. What they agree upon is that the texts and vocabulary of classical Confucianism are a critical source of their own values and practices. In this book I will be diving into some of the current debates about how to best capture and develop the spirit of Confucius and other Confucian masters. To some degree, these arguments are based on historical evidence and textual interpretation, but in a more fundamental sense they are prescriptive rather than descriptive: what are the best, most valuable, most robust insights at the core of the tradition? As I will explain below, I join those who believe that this core should be centered around the ideal of all individuals developing their capacities for virtue – ultimately aiming at sagehood – through their relationships with one another and with their environment.

I am the first to admit that Confucianism spent most of the twentieth century on life-support. And just as China and the world in the twenty-first century are dramatically different from how they were in the nineteenth century, so contemporary Confucianism must successfully remake itself if it is to again be significant. The goal of this introductory chapter is to sketch the context within which the refashioning of contemporary Confucianism is already underway. We will see that while Confucianism today is certainly not only a philosophy, philosophy is an important element of contemporary Confucianism: among other things, it is the most international aspect of Confucianism. The philosophers I will introduce in this chapter are from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore; and also from the United States and Canada. Some are ethnically Chinese and some are not; some write primarily in Chinese and some in English.1 Most of these Confucian philosophers are sure that political philosophy is an important part of Confucianism, though they also acknowledge that this is an area in which contemporary Confucianism faces significant challenges.

What, finally, of “progressive”? I mean this word to function in two different ways. On the one hand, it helps to describe the core Confucian commitment to individual and collective moral progress, and many of the other Confucian philosophers to whom I will refer would agree that this kind of progress is critical to Confucianism. On the other hand, it is meant as a label for the particular approach to Confucian political philosophy that I will be advocating throughout this book. “Progressive Confucianism” bears certain similarities to other contemporary “progressive” social and political movements, and I will argue that some contemporary Confucians are mistaken in not adopting these progressive values and institutions. A key part of my argument will aim at convincing readers that Progressive Confucianism is indeed “Confucianism.” As we will see, I build on the foundation begun by Confucian philosophers in the twentieth century, and especially on the work of Mou Zongsan (1909–95). My ultimate goal is showing that Progressive Confucianism has much to both teach and challenge us today.

A Difficult Century

The twentieth century was difficult for Confucianism. In 1905, a last-ditch effort to reform a floundering empire led to the abandonment of the ubiquitous civil-service exam system, around which higher education in China had been based for centuries. Since the exams were based in large part on mastery of Confucian classics, the end of the exams marked a major challenge to the significance of Confucian learning. This was followed, in 1911, with the collapse of the last dynasty itself. In 1915 Chinese intellectuals inaugurated a “New Culture Movement” that sought fundamental changes to Chinese values, practices, and even the Chinese language. In many ways this movement was a more pervasive “cultural revolution” than the later Maoist movement of that name. The values of “modern civilization” were on the rise and older traditions like Confucianism were roundly criticized. Confucianism did not die, but after the first decades of the twentieth century, it would need to find new ways to be relevant in Chinese society.

After this unpromising start, the twentieth century continued to pose obstacles to any rebirth of Confucianism. Some political leaders tried to manipulate it as a shallow ideology of loyalty to power. Chinese intellectuals increasingly were drawn to either liberalism or Marxism as they endeavored to work out what a “New China” should look like. The rhetoric and values associated with science were hugely popular and widely seen as incompatible with traditional Confucianism. As Mao pushed Communist ideology in increasingly radical directions, the space for Confucianism shrank even further, reaching its nadir during the 1973–4 “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius” campaign. Mao’s goal was to wipe Confucianism completely from the hearts of China’s citizens.2

Admittedly, there were some important exceptions to this bleak picture. In 1921, a young scholar named Liang Shuming (1893–1988) generated considerable discussion with the publication of his Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies, which argued for the continued value of a reformed Confucianism and pointed toward problems with Western materialism. The early 1920s also witnessed a spirited intellectual debate sparked by Zhang Junmai (1886–1969)’s criticism of his contemporaries’ unthinking endorsement of science as a solution to all problems; Zhang drew on Confucian ideas to argue for the importance of humanistic values.3 Another important figure in this era is Xiong Shili (1885–1968). Like Liang Shuming, Xiong was intrigued by Buddhist metaphysical theories, but gradually developed an influential critique of Buddhism, on the basis of which he articulated his own understanding of Confucian metaphysics. Although when in his twenties Xiong had been involved in the republican movement to overthrow the Qing empire, most of Xiong’s career was spent as a college professor. Liang and Zhang, by contrast, balanced their philosophical writings with political and social activism – under very challenging circumstances – throughout much of their lives.

The Confucian philosopher whose work is the most important for the present book, Mou Zongsan (1909–95), is sometimes referred to as among the “second generation” of twentieth-century Confucians. Other members of the second generation include Tang Junyi (1909–78) and Xu Fuguan (1902–82) who, like Mou himself, studied with Xiong Shili, began academic careers in mainland China, and then left China after 1949 to live and teach in Taiwan and Hong Kong. All three were active scholars, with Mou and Tang being particularly prolific. Their combination of historical re-interpretation, openness to and engagement with Western philosophers like Kant and Hegel, and commitment to democracy and the rule of law, has come to be called “contemporary New Confucianism” and has made a major impact on the Sinophone academic world.4,5 Outside of the academic community, though, the felt presence of New Confucianism was very slight throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s. One often gets the sense, especially in their more popularly oriented writings from this period, that Mou and his colleagues feel isolated and frustrated. Despite their somewhat lonely voices, that is, the twentieth century remained a difficult time for Confucianism.6

Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, and picking up steam in the early years of the 2000s, signs of renewed interest in Confucianism began to appear in China. The earliest indications of changing attitudes could be seen in academia, as research and writing on Confucius, Confucianism, and even New Confucianism (despite the fact that many of the New Confucians were fierce anti-Communists) emerged and grew. We will look at some of the key figures in these discussions below. A second important arena is governmental, in which Confucian symbols come to play some significant roles. Jiang Zemin, China’s leader from 1989 to 2002, was fond of emphasizing the importance of “rule by virtue,” which – though he did not emphasize it – is a deeply Confucian theme. Jiang’s successor, Hu Jintao, soon announced his own major initiative to cultivate a “harmonious society”; harmony is another key Confucian value, though once again the connection to Confucianism was not made explicit. A large-scale program to promote the study of Chinese language and culture overseas began in 2004 under the title of “Confucius Institutes.” These institutes, of which there are now more than three hundred around the world, rarely engage in activities that are explicitly connected to Confucianism, but they certainly emphasize the role of Confucius as an important symbol of Chinese culture. Many observers were struck, finally, by the central role that Confucianism played in the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The spectacle began with 2008 drummers clad in ancient-style costumes chanting the opening lines of the Analects of Confucius, and “harmony” was a repeated motif throughout. There is of course a difference between Confucian symbols and Confucian values, and the gap between the two is often very wide. Still, official use of Confucian-sounding rhetoric can help to legitimize the discussion of Confucian themes throughout the society.7

Another important dimension of the revival of Confucianism in contemporary China is taking place in popular culture and civil society. A variety of educational experiments – some private, and some supported by local governments – are taking place. The most common model is after-school or weekend classes in memorizing and chanting Confucian classics (often, depending on the school, mixed with Shakespeare). More elaborate options also exist, including private schools that are developing curricula based on traditional culture. Books and television series expounding the lessons of Confucianism have been very popular, the poster child for which is Beijing-based professor Yu Dan. Her 2006 book, Yu Dan’s Insights Gleaned from the Analects, has sold more than ten million copies. It is a charming book, drawing widely on contemporary examples and world folklore to elucidate the lessons from the Analects that Professor Yu finds relevant to present-day China. Chinese scholars have frequently been dismissive of the book, but this is somewhat unfair, as it makes no pretensions of presenting a scholarly interpretation of the Analects. The observation of Daniel Bell, a Canadian political theorist currently living and teaching in Beijing, is perhaps more pertinent: he notes that Yu’s version of the Analects has been thoroughly “depoliticized,” since she confines her lessons to matters of personal growth and interpersonal relations.8 At any rate, all agree that the enormous sales of Yu’s book speak to a desire in contemporary China for a more robust ethical culture to combat what many see as rampant materialism and even nihilism.

The last three decades have witnessed extraordinary growth in China of religious organizations and practices (both officially sanctioned and not), and of secular civil-society organizations (like environmental NGOs). Both types of groups have at least sometimes worked to get around government limitations via the internet. These trends have been intertwined with complex responses from the government, which has variously encouraged, suppressed, and tried to coopt these organizations. Confucians and Confucianism have been playing their part in these developments.9 Confucian civil society organizations, both formal and more informal (like the community of like-minded people who contribute to a particular internet site), have also begun to serve more than merely academic functions. A mix of scholars and what can only be called Confucian activists have started to take and publicize positions on matters of public interest, sometimes in direct opposition to governmental entities. In December of 2010, for example, criticism began circulating on Confucian websites of the local government in Qufu City, Shandong province – the city most closely associated with the birth of Confucius and the hometown of his family – because it had approved construction within the city limits of a large Christian church.10 In April of 2011, a similar event took place. Apparently bowing to pressure from other factions within the government, authorities removed a large statue of Confucius that only a few months earlier had been unveiled on the edge of Tiananmen Square, the symbolic center of modern China. Confucians again howled in protest; one open letter posted anonymously on an internet site cited the Analects on the importance of “trust (xin),” suggesting that a government that lost the trust of its people could not stand.11 Compared with the carefully apolitical stance of Yu Dan, these recent developments suggest a more confident attitude that is reminiscent of the traditional Confucian responsibility of intellectuals to remonstrate with superiors (be they parents or rulers) who deviate from the Way.

A final dimension of the on-going growth of Confucianism is its international aspect. Most basically, from 1949 to the 1980s, New Confucianism lived in Taiwan and Hong Kong, not in mainland China. Relations among these three polities have changed dramatically in the years since, and the study and development of Confucianism is now shared – and even the subject of some healthy competition.12 There have of course been scholars outside of East Asia studying Confucianism for many decades; what is new in recent years is Americans and others taking up the Confucian philosophical project as their own. Robert Neville’s 2000 book Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late Modern World is a fine symbol of this trend; we will look at more examples below. Explicitly Confucian practices have not taken off in the United States, unlike American Buddhism, which according to some measures is the fastest-growing religion in America. The lack of Confucian practices is perhaps unsurprising, given that even in today’s China, it is somewhat murky exactly which practices make sense. Finally, Confucian philosophizing is a small but growing part of the international philosophical scene, and some of these philosophers’ work is making its way back into Sinophone philosophical discourse. The present book seeks to build upon these trends.

Confucianism as Philosophy

The Chinese word for philosophy, zhexue, is of recent vintage. Like a number of other words in modern Chinese (including zongjiao for “religion”), it is a neologism coined in Japan in the latter part of the nineteenth century (the same two-character compound is used in both languages; it is pronounced tetsugaku in Japanese), specifically as a translation of “philosophy” and its cognates in other European languages.13 It was only in the twentieth century that scholars began to talk about “Chinese philosophy (zhongg uo zhexue).”14 Two works in particular introduced the idea that Confucianism and other Chinese traditions could be thought of as “philosophy”: Hu Shi’s 1918 Outline of a History of Chinese Philosophy and Feng Youlan’s 1934 History of Chinese Philosophy. These works set out to analyze the texts, thinkers, and ideas of China’s intellectual tradition in terms of the categories of Western philosophy: epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and so on. Chinese “philosophers” were identified as idealists or materialists, as realists or nominalists. It was also in the late 1910s that philosophy departments in Chinese universities – themselves quite new – began to hire faculty to teach “Chinese philosophy.” This arrangement has continued down to the present day (notwithstanding certain disruptions during the Mao era): Chinese philosophy departments contain significant numbers of scholars whose research focuses on Chinese traditions and especially on Confucianism.

Despite this seeming success of “Chinese philosophy,” the aptness of thinking of Confucianism as “philosophy” has recently come in for significant criticism. I refer not to Western philosophers questioning whether Confucianism counts as real philosophy – these doubts, thankfully, seem to be receding15 – but rather to worries within China that categorizing Confucianism as philosophy does violence to key aspects of the tradition.16 The concerns tend to cluster into two areas, and if we are to have solid footing for our exploration of contemporary Chinese political philosophy, both of these issues need to be addressed. First, it is charged that by shoehorning the writings of the ancient Chinese masters into Western philosophical language (no matter whether one is writing in Chinese or another language), one inevitably misunderstands one’s sources. Examples of such problems are easy to find, and so we should readily agree that things can go wrong when new terms, derived from foreign traditions, are used to interpret an existing discourse.17 However, the fact that things can go wrong does not mean that problems are unavoidable. After all, the Confucian tradition itself contains many instances in which Confucians draw on concepts from outside the then-existing tradition in order to find better answers to age-old challenges or to respond to newly arisen problems. As a dynamic tradition of reflection, Confucianism has grown and changed, enriched by encounters with Mohism, Daoism, Buddhism, and various strands of Western thought (in the twentieth century). At a number of points in this book, I will directly face the challenge of justifying why the positions I advocate should count as good Confucianism, as well as raising questions about the Confucian legitimacy of others’ positions. My general strategy will be to ask whether a given innovation (or resistance to innovation) is true to the core concerns of the evolving tradition.

The second charge leveled against those of us who take Confucianism to be philosophy is that we sunder the connection that existed throughout the pre-twentieth-century tradition between reflection and a full-fledged way of life. Confucianism, it is said, is not a mere profession: its practices are intimately related to improving oneself and one’s world. It cannot flourish if confined to the libraries and lecture halls of universities. To these critics, philosophy professors like Mou Zongsan are not true Confucians.18 I have a two-part answer to these criticisms. First of all, I am quite sympathetic to the idea that a genuine, contemporary flourishing of Confucianism will require that it find a way to be relevant once more to people’s full lives. It is not just a set of rules or an abstruse understanding of the ontology of the universe – things that one could read in a book and then count as “knowing.” As Wang Yangming (1472–1529) famously put it, true knowledge and action are unified. A Confucian education orients one to the ethical dimensions of the situations one encounters throughout one’s life, and thus changes the way one perceives and acts in the world.

The second part of my answer, though, is that these truths about the broad aims of Confucian education do not show that philosophical reflection, dialogue, and argument19 are not a critical part of Confucianism. Rather, they show that if one rests content with the professional aspects of Confucianism-as-philosophy and ignores its deeper lessons, one is not a very good Confucian. In defense of Mou Zongsan and Confucian philosophy professors everywhere (myself included), it may not be as easy to know how to practice Confucianism today as it once was. At least, pre-twentieth-century Chinese society had various well-trodden paths to follow, based in part in a deeply ingrained ritualization of life. It might be a mistake, though, to conclude that Confucianism was easy to practice under those circumstances. Looking superficially Confucian was certainly easier then. But was it easier to be a good son? Was it easier to cultivate one’s “humaneness (ren)” and show apt concern for all aspects of one’s world (“to form one body with all things”)? I am not so sure. In fact, some of the arguments of the present book aim to show that critical modern innovations like broad political participation, the rule of law, and the active rooting out of social oppression, actually better enable one to be a good Confucian.

Trying to demonstrate these conclusions right now would get me too far ahead of myself, so let us return to the issue of philosophy. The reflection, dialogue, and argument that lie at the core of philosophical practice are important parts of Confucian practice as well. Confucian philosophers insist that this aspect of their practice is not an end in itself, but rather contributes to their life-long commitment to learning – and through this learning, to coming as close as they can to the ideal of sagehood. The striking thing is that for all their differences, many great Western philosophers believed essentially the same thing. For Greeks and Romans, philosophy was a “way of life” that aimed at personal transformation.20 So, too, was philosophy intimately related to personal growth for Dewey, Wittgenstein, Foucault, and many others.21 Of course, Confucians might not be very happy with the models of personal growth offered by these ancient, modern, or post-modern Westerners, and it is an unfortunate fact that many professional philosophers – East and West – do not take the broader implications of their philosophical work very seriously.22 But, once again, it has never been easy to become a better person.

The final point I would like to make in this section is to further clarify the relation between the existing Confucian tradition and various non-Confucian sources of inspiration in the generation of contemporary Confucian philosophy. In previous work I have employed a method called “rooted global philosophy” which is again very apt in the present context. Rooted global philosophy means to work within a particular living philosophical tradition – thus its rootedness – but to do so in a way that is open to stimulus and insights from other philosophical traditions – thus its global nature.23 New Confucians like Mou Zongsan were rooted global philosophers, seeking to develop their tradition in constructive ways by drawing on stimulating ideas from various parts of the globe.24 It is important to emphasize that rooted global philosophy is not premised on our ultimate convergence on some single set of philosophical truths. Perhaps this will take place, but the plurality of human concerns and historically contingent differences in traditions provide us with no guarantees. In the realm of political philosophy, this book argues for a certain degree of convergence between Confucianism and the liberal tradition, but also for continuing differences from existing liberal values and institutions.

Contemporary Confucians

Mou Zongsan plays a special role in this book. One of the central themes of his New Confucianism was the need for Confucianism to develop a new political philosophy and political practice – what he called a “xin wai wang,” literally “new outer kingship,” which can more loosely be rendered as “new politics” – that would better enable the realization of “inner sage-hood (nei sheng).” I am persuaded that in this respect, Mou’s approach is the right one for Confucianism to pursue, and in particular that his idea of “self-restriction (ziwo kanxian),” which I will explain in depth in Chapter 2, is crucial. The idea of self-restriction allows for a reorientation of the relation between individual ethical insight and publicly agreed-upon norms like laws and human rights; the resulting partial independence of laws and rights is a key part of my argument in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, though in each case I move considerably beyond anything that Mou himself actually said. In two other ways, as well, there is significant distance between the project of this book and Mou’s own philosophizing. First, I believe it is possible to separate Mou’s insights into political philosophy from the rest of his philosophical system, and then to develop a version of these insights that can stand independently from Mou’s other ideas. Indeed, I find some of the other aspects of Mou’s system to be philosophically problematic. His controversial ideas of moral metaphysics, intellectual intuition, perfect teaching, and so on will therefore play no role in this book – though some version of Confucian ethics will be necessary in order to motivate many of the book’s arguments, about which I will say more below. My approach is bound to be controversial, because Mou understood his various ideas to be intimately related, all parts of a unified philosophical system. Without denying that different aspects of Mou’s vision are mutually reinforcing, I will show in Chapter 2 that “self-restriction” is indeed both separable from, and meaningful without, the rest of Mou’s system. Second, Mou had little or nothing to say about some of my topics, especially the issues raised in Chapters 6 and 7. Still, in an important sense my project here is to further develop Mou’s New Confucian approach to political philosophy, including defending it from some contemporary critics who have quite badly misunderstood its motivations and arguments.

Mou Zongsan serves as an important source of the Progressive Confucianism I will be developing in later chapters, but now we should turn to the rapidly expanding world of contemporary Confucian theorizing, since these are the voices with whom I am most directly in dialogue. Many of the individuals whom I discuss in this section come up repeatedly in later chapters, both positively and negatively. In order to make sense of the complex contemporary scene, I tentatively offer some categories into which various thinkers and approaches might be put, but please understand that these groups are overlapping and sometimes shifting: contemporary Confucianism is a live and increasingly vibrant tradition. In formulating these categories, I have generally emphasized the method by which people approach contemporary Confucianism, rather than the specific normative views they hold.

Begin with a group that is both the largest and yet the least involved in the issues that will concern us in the balance of this book: the philosophicalhistorians. Representative figures include Chen Lai (Tsinghua University), Guo Qiyong (Wuhan University), and younger scholars like Peng Guoxiang (Peking University) and Wu Genyou (Wuhan University). The main activity of scholars like these is the production of interpretive studies of thinkers, texts, periods, or concepts from the long history of Confucianism (including the twentieth century). Unlike intellectual/ cultural historians who foreground the political and cultural contexts in which Confucians lived and wrote, these philosophical historians emphasize the charitable understanding of Confucian philosophy and, to some degree, spiritual practice. They are not primarily interested in the creative, contemporary development of Confucianism, however.25 This is not to say they are uninterested in the contemporary fate of Confucianism; sometimes they reflect on the possible contemporary relevance of the doctrines they explicate, and some of them are quite active as essayists or public intellectuals. Some self-identify as Confucians. Their primary work, though, is historical scholarship.

Another group to which I will make little subsequent reference is the Confucian revivalists (although there is considerable overlap between this category and the following one). I mentioned this loose category above as the source of public complaint about the planned church in Qufu and about the removal of the statue of Confucius from Tiananmen Square. Revivalist organizations include both scholars and non-scholars and tend to be supportive of both research on, and efforts to revive the practice of, “Confucian [Religious] Teachings (rujiao).”26 The journal and website Yuandao, founded in 1994 by Chen Ming, is one of the chief organs of the revivalists, although relevant websites are proliferating.27 Revivalism is often motivated by a sense of cultural pride and sometimes also by a concern about a moral or spiritual crisis in today’s China. Revivalists may be interested in one or more of the theoretical approaches to contemporary Confucian political thinking, but contemporary theorizing often plays a minimal part in the projects or aspirations of revivalists.

The category of political philosophizing most closely associated with revivalism can be called institutional Confucianism, the leading thinker of which is Jiang Qing (1953– ).28 In 2003, Jiang published Political Confucianism: The Changing Direction, Particularities, and Development of Contemporary Confucianism.29 This book represents an importantly different approach to contemporary Confucianism from the work of the New Confucians. In works like the 1958 Manifesto referred to above, Mou Zongsan and other New Confucians had advocated Confucianism in terms of “Learning of the Heartmind-and-Nature (xinxing zhi xue),” by which they meant that the core of Confucianism involved realizing the “inner sagely” potential each of us has. According to Jiang Qing, this is to emphasize the wrong aspect of the Confucian tradition. Rather than its metaphysics and ethics, Confucianism’s political and other institutions are what Confucians today need to rediscover, reinvent, and advocate – if Confucianism is to be able to play a constructive role in Chinese society. Based on a complex notion of legitimacy that Jiang believes can be found in earlier Confucian justifications of political institutions, he proposes some dramatically new kinds of institutions that he believes are apt for contemporary China.30 When coupled with his efforts to revive traditional Confucian educational practices by leaving his university post and founding a private academy, Jiang’s writings have garnered him considerable attention as a public intellectual. Like some figures from the early twentieth century, Jiang believes that Confucianism must be institutionalized as a formally organized religion, building these institutions on models found in China’s past. Jiang sees Confucianism as intimately tied to Chinese history, culture, and popular practice; for him, any talk of global values is problematically utopian. Still, Jiang’s faith in the truth of Confucian teachings and, strikingly, in the reality of Tian (or “Heaven”) as a kind of deity seem to be deeply held, and he views Confucian institutions as eventually able to have a positive impact on the rest of the world.31 His confidence that Confucianism must be the source of Chinese values has led him to outline a dramatically different set of political institutions from those currently in place in China.32 This new political structure would have a place for the democratic expression of people’s views, but the upper two houses of its tricameral legislature would be designed to give voice to learned Confucians with special insight into moral reality, on the one hand, and to experienced representatives of Chinese cultural and social institutions, on the other.33

Jiang is not alone in thinking that properly modified institutions should form the core of our thinking about Confucianism’s future. Born in 1963 and initially trained in physics, Kang Xiaoguang is a social scientist and public intellectual who has become persuaded that China must replace its communist ideology with a soft authoritarianism based on Confucianism.34 Kang is deeply unhappy with failings of the current regime in the area of social justice and is concerned that China’s present political system lacks legitimacy. He writes of an alliance of political, intellectual, and economic elites that is leading to increased corruption, inequality, a rise in the power of organized crime, and other social maladies; he sums it up by saying that these elites are robbing the masses.35 He (quite rightly) sees that such a system cannot possibly be legitimate in any type of Marxist framework. At the same time, Kang argues that liberal democracy is no panacea. Instead, he accepts and seeks to justify authoritarian, one-party rule. His goal is to show how a version of authoritarianism can both deal effectively with the social justice problems he has identified, and simultaneously be legitimate in its own terms. His basic idea is to show that a certain type of authoritarian, “cooperativist,” welfare state can be justified largely by a rebuilding of Confucian-style institutions. Fan Ruiping’s Reconstructionist Confucianism: Rethinking Morality after the West shares with Jiang Qing and to some degree with Kang Xiaoguang an enthusiasm for Confucian ritual and other fairly specific forms of life, especially the traditional family structure. Like Jiang, Fan sets his version of Confucianism up against the “New Confucianism” of Mou Zongsan. Fan identifies his “reconstructionist Confucianism” with the “project of reclaiming and articulating moral resources from the Confucian tradition so as to meet contemporary moral and public policy challenges.”36 According to Fan, philosophers like Mou advocate greater changes than Fan himself; in fact, they strive to “recast the Confucian heritage in light of modern Western values.” As a result, Fan alleges that the “Confucian heritage is in great measure colonized by modern Western notions” as the New Confucians engage in “naive presentism” in order to “read social democratic concepts into Confucianism.”37 Starting in the next chapter, I will take issue with this characterization of New Confucian political philosophy, and will engage with other arguments from Jiang, Kang, and Fan throughout this book.

Mou Zongsan has many followers today, many of whom are primarily engaged in reiterating and defending various of Mou’s theses.38 There is a creative trend among philosophers who are generally supportive of Mou’s vision, though, which we can label Kantian New Confucianism, the leading exponent of which is Lee Ming-huei of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. There is a debate among interpreters of Mou concerning how deep Mou’s engagement with Kant really runs: is Mou fundamentally a Confucian who comes to express many of his ideas using Kantian language, or are Mou’s ideas genuinely Kantian (perhaps because even earlier Confucianism itself is deontological)?39 Lee is an influential voice among those who think that the connections are very deep. For our purposes, what is most significant about Lee’s approach is the way he draws on Kant and on more recent Kantian philosophizing, much of it from Germany, to develop themes in political philosophy about which Mou said comparatively little. For example, in one discussion of democracy, Lee argues as follows.40 First, Confucianism has two key theses concerning democracy: that democracy is connected to humans’ innate good nature, and that political freedom must be based on moral freedom. Second, Lee says that this approach to democracy is different from mainstream Anglo-American theories, but resonates strongly with Kant’s democratic theory, which he proceeds to explicate and defend. Third, Lee uses the parallel with Kant to suggest ways in which Confucian democratic theory may be developed, filling in many of the gaps left by Mou and other New Confucians. Another example of Lee’s approach relates to Jiang Qing’s emphasis on the institutional dimension of Confucianism. Lee agrees with Jiang on the importance of Confucian institutional theories, but he wants to show that this is still compatible with the centrality that Mou (and Lee himself) places on the pure moral heartmind. Lee’s strategy is to show that in Kant, the fundamental commitment to moral autonomy can undergird an “ethic of responsibility” that is concerned with practical political outcomes, and that Confucianism, in parallel fashion, can build its institutional values on the foundation of its theories of moral heartmind.41

Max Weber argued that a key aspect of modernity was that it has become “disenchanted”: we had lost the deep-seated religious and metaphysical commitment to values that was characteristic of earlier ages. One of the defining features of what I will call Critical New Confucianism is an agreement with Weber on this point.42 The Taiwanese philosopher Lin Anwu, from whom I borrow the term “Critical New Confucianism,” criticizes what he calls the “magical” dimension of Mou Zongsan’s thought. He advocates a post-modern, practically and socially embedded Confucianism that stresses social justice and political responsibility and would critique autocracy, patriarchy, and male chauvinism; he now sometimes refers to this as “civic Confucianism (gongmin ruxue).”43 As one analyst has noted, the details of how this might come about are far from clear, and Lin’s work remains “hamstrung by its piecemeal formation and overly self-referential character.”44 Still, the broad outline of Lin’s objectives resonates reasonably well with the arguments and goals I will be making in subsequent chapters. Another “critical” view that is generally compatible with Lin’s can be found in the work of the young mainland scholar Tang Zhonggang, though as yet his scholarship has been more focused on the interpretation and criticism of Mou’s political philosophy, as opposed to the constructive development of a “Critical New Confucian” perspective. Tang sees a future for a liberal, post-modern Confucianism that abandons Mou’s moral monism and metaphysics and enters into the actual lifeworld (here he cites Habermas).45 Tang is less explicit than Lin about the role or type of democracy that he envisions, but as is the case with Lin, many of the positive statements that Tang makes about the nature of the polity he envisions head in the same directions that I will endeavor to move – albeit more concretely – in the rest of this book.

Another approach to Confucian political philosophy that is finding increasing favor can be called Neo-Classical Confucianism. What these scholars have in common is a certain kind of ahistoricism: rather than looking at how the Confucian tradition has evolved (up through the twentieth century), they ask: If Confucius or Mencius or Xunzi were alive today, then based on what we know of their ideas from their writings, what might they have to say about contemporary social and political challenges? Would they endorse democracy, and if so, of what type? What would they say about human rights? Distributive justice? Capitalism? And so on. Theorists like Joseph Chan of Hong Kong University, Bai Tongdong of Fudan University, and perhaps Fan Ruiping (already mentioned above under Institutional Confucianism) can all fit under this heading.46 A shared neo-classical approach does not guarantee shared conclusions: Chan, Bai, and Fan differ quite dramatically. Some of the writings of Canadian theorist Daniel Bell also fall into this category, though his recent reflections on “Left Confucianism” are more synthetic or comparative and thus belong in the next group I will mention.47 A general goal of the Neo-Classicists tends to be showing that the recovery and creative development of classical Confucianism leads to the articulation of new and valuable positions within political philosophy: positions that may pose significant challenges to the existing Marxist or liberal wisdom. It is also often claimed that political philosophy built on the ideas of classical Confucianism has more chance of taking root and flourishing in Chinese soil, as opposed to theories of Western origin. Given the ahistorical nature of these positions and given the success of Western ideologies like Marxism, I have serious doubts about the persuasiveness of this latter argument, but as creative interpretations and developments of the founding texts of the Confucian tradition, Neo-Classical analyses are often very valuable.

My last category is the most diverse. By Synthetic Confucians, I designate Confucian philosophers who draw centrally on non-Confucian philosophical traditions. These individuals may identify with multiple traditions, seeing value and significance from multiple perspectives, and seek to integrate these in one synthetic form of Confucianism. The synthetic approach goes beyond the “rooted global” approach that I mentioned earlier, since it is explicitly rooted in more than one tradition. One prominent strand of this group – including Roger Ames of the University of Hawaii, Robert Neville of Boston University (who is also a Christian), and Sor-hoon Tan of the National University of Singapore – emphasizes the resonances they see between American Pragmatism and Confucianism, and seeks to develop Confucianism in concert with Deweyan and Peircean insights.48 Huang Yushun of Shandong University offers a different kind of synthesis, taking inspiration from Heidegger in order to develop what he calls “life Confucianism.”49 Daniel Bell has recently been exploring the idea of “Left Confucianism,” which pushes Confucianism and socialism to learn from one another.50 Yet another example is the historian and political theorist Thomas Metzger who, especially in his magisterial A Cloud Across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today, has sought to bring Confucianism and Mill’s liberalism into a constructive and synthetic dialogue.51 As can be seen from this extremely diverse list, synthetic approaches to Confucian political philosophy are emerging within many philosophical cultures and traditions, and are taking place in multiple languages. Roughly, we might be able to discern two different motivations within this synthetic philosophizing. In some cases, one is motivated to accept the synthetic version of Confucianism only insofar as one has an antecedent, independent commitment to the other doctrines with which Confucianism is being synthesized. A clear example of this is Bell’s Left Confucianism: insofar as one is gripped by socialist values, then a Confucian will be attracted to a version of Confucianism that has developed in ways that accommodates and enhances socialist insights.52 A different pattern of motivations occurs when the synthesis aims to solve a problem that, according to the theorist, can be perceived from within the perspective of Confucianism. Metzger’s work is perhaps the best example of this approach, since he argues that both Confucian and Millian philosophies face complementary problems (he calls this the “Seesaw Effect”) that can only be solved by some kind of creative synthesis.53 The only other generalization we can make about synthetic approaches is that they are obviously premised on the existence of enough commonality between the respective traditions to make synthesis a possibility.

To conclude this section, let me add two caveats. First, contemporary Confucian political philosophy is complex enough, and its development is proceeding and proliferating at such a pace, that no set of categories is going to be completely satisfactory. The taxonomy I offer here is simply meant to help us to grasp the salient dimensions of the current discourse, in part so that the positions I take (and the positions I reject) in the coming chapters will make more sense. Second, we must note that current conversations often include non-Confucians who nonetheless interact in significant ways with, and thus contribute to, contemporary Confucian philosophizing. The early twentieth century political theorist Zhang Shizhao (1885–1973) is one such example; as we will see in Chapter 4, despite his clear commitment to liberal values and institutions, his arguments can contribute to a proper Confucian stance on the rule of law. Another example is the contemporary philosopher Zhao Tingyang, whose discussions of human rights and of “all-under Heaven (tianxia)” will figure prominently in Chapter 5. Zhao is an eclectic thinker, drawing both on a range of traditional Chinese ideas and on more recent Western perspectives, but Confucians can learn a great deal by taking his arguments seriously.

Progressive Confucianism

In light of all this, where does “Progressive Confucianism” fit in? I said at the outset that I mean “progressive” to function in two different ways: to describe the core Confucian commitment to individual and collective moral progress, and to label the particular approach to Confucian political philosophy that I will be advocating, which bears certain similarities to other contemporary “progressive” social and political movements. In terms of the categories I have just outlined, Progressive Confucianism probably fits in between the Kantian and Critical New Confucianisms. It is like the former in endorsing the importance of Mou Zongsan’s “self-restriction” argument, though it is agnostic about the exact form that an account of Confucian ethics must take.54 It is like the latter in being much more social-critical than Mou ever was, though it parts company with at least some of Lin’s and Tang’s criticisms of Mou. In addition, throughout the following chapters I will draw on what I see as the most persuasive parts of the Institutional, Neo-Classical, and Synthetic varieties of Confucianism.

“Progressive” is often opposed to “conservative,” and yet there are senses in which the Confucian tradition – including my reading of it – is progressive and conservative at the same time. As Mou’s fellow New Confucian Tang Junyi (1909–78) put it, “conserving is based on one’s self-conscious affirmation of the value of the existence of one’s life,” and this understanding of value ultimately leads to a realization of the values of all things, and this latter understanding is the ground for progress.55