A liberal society seeks not to impose a single way of life, but to leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends. It therefore must govern by principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular vision of the good life. But can any such principles be found? And if not, what are the consequences for justice as a moral and political ideal? These are the questions Michael Sandel takes up in this penetrating critique (...) of contemporary liberalism. Sandel locates modern liberalism in the tradition of Kant, and focuses on its most influential recent expression in the work of John Rawls. In the most important challenge yet to Rawls' theory of justice, Sandel traces the limits of liberalism to the conception of the person that underlies it, and argues for a deeper understanding of community than liberalism allows. (shrink)

Is liberal democracy appropriate for East Asia? In this provocative book, Daniel Bell argues for morally legitimate alternatives to Western-style liberal democracy in the region. Beyond Liberal Democracy, which continues the author's influential earlier work, is divided into three parts that correspond to the three main hallmarks of liberal democracy--human rights, democracy, and capitalism. These features have been modified substantially during their transmission to East Asian societies that have been shaped by nonliberal practices and values. Bell points to the dangers (...) of implementing Western-style models and proposes alternative justifications and practices that may be more appropriate for East Asian societies. If human rights, democracy, and capitalism are to take root and produce beneficial outcomes in East Asia, Bell argues, they must be adjusted to contemporary East Asian political and economic realities and to the values of nonliberal East Asian political traditions such as Confucianism and Legalism. Local knowledge is therefore essential for realistic and morally informed contributions to debates on political reform in the region, as well as for mutual learning and enrichment of political theories. Beyond Liberal Democracy is indispensable reading for students and scholars of political theory, Asian studies, and human rights, as well as anyone concerned about China's political and economic future and how Western governments and organizations should engage with China. (shrink)

The book's significance is two-fold: it argues for a new stage in the development of contemporary Confucian philosophy, and it demonstrates the value to Western ...

Will democracy figure prominently in China's future? If so, what kind of democracy? In this insightful and thought-provoking book, David Hall and Roger Ames explore such questions and, in the course of answering them, look to the ideas of John Dewey and Confucius.

Many have criticized liberalism for being too individualistic, but few have offered an alternative that goes beyond a vague affirmation of the need for community. In this entertaining book, written in dialogue form, Daniel Bell fills this gap, presenting and defending a distinctively communitarian theory against the objections of a liberal critic. Drawing on the works of such thinkers as Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, and Alasdair MacIntyre, Bell attacks liberalism's individualistic view of the person by pointing to our social embeddedness. (...) He develops Michael Walzer's idea that political thinking involves the interpretation of shared meanings emerging from the political life of a community, and intelligently rebuts criticism that this approach damages his case by being conservative and relativistic. Communitarianism and Its Critics is a provocative defense of a distinctly communitarian theory which will stimulate interest and debate among scholars and students of political theory as well as those approaching the subject for the first time. (shrink)

Examines liberal democracy and Confucianism as two value systems and argues for a future where both coexist as independent value systems in China.

What should we make of claims by members of other groups to have moralities different from our own? Human Rights in Chinese Thought gives an extended answer to this question in the first study of its kind. It integrates a full account of the development of Chinese rights discourse - reaching back to important, though neglected, origins of that discourse in 17th and 18th century Confucianism - with philosophical consideration of how various communities should respond to contemporary Chinese claims about (...) the uniqueness of their human rights concepts. The book elaborates a plausible kind of moral pluralism and demonstrates that Chinese ideas of human rights do indeed have distinctive characteristics, but it nonetheless argues for the importance and promise of cross-cultural moral engagement. (shrink)

Like the cracking of the genetic code and the creation of the atomic bomb, the discovery of how the brain's neurons work is one of the fundamental scientific developments of the twentieth century. The discovery of neurotransmitters revolutionized the way we think about the brain and what it means to be human yet few people know how they were discovered, the scientists involved, or the fierce controversy about whether they even existed. The War of the Soups and the Sparks tells (...) the saga of the dispute between the pharmacologists, who had uncovered the first evidence that nerves communicate by releasing chemicals, and the neurophysiologists, experts on the nervous system, who dismissed the evidence and remained committed to electrical explanations. The protagonists of this story are Otto Loewi and Henry Dale, who received Nobel Prizes for their work, and Walter Cannon, who would have shared the prize with them if he had not been persuaded to adopt a controversial theory (how that happened is an important part of this history). Valenstein sets his story of scientific discovery against the backdrop of two world wars and examines the fascinating lives of several scientists whose work was affected by the social and political events of their time. He recounts such stories as Loewi's arrest by Nazi storm troopers and Dale's efforts at helping key scientists escape Germany. The War of the Soups and the Sparks reveals how science and scientists work. Valenstein describes the observations and experiments that led to the discovery of neurotransmitters and sheds light on what determines whether a novel concept will gain acceptance among the scientific community. His work also explains the immense importance of Loewi, Dale, and Cannon's achievements in our understanding of the human brain and the way mental illnesses are conceptualized and treated. (shrink)

Three claims are defended. (1) There is a conception of moral autonomy in Confucian ethics that to a degree can support toleration and freedom. However, (2) Confucian moral autonomy is different from personal autonomy, and the latter gives a stronger justification for civil and personal liberties than does the former. (3) The contemporary appeal of Confucianism would be strengthened by including personal autonomy, and this need not be seen as forsaking Confucian ethics but rather as an internal revision in response (...) to new social circumstances. From this inclusion emerges a new theory of liberties that recognizes the value of personal autonomy and the importance of the ethical good that liberties instrumentally serve to promote. (shrink)

A central issue in Chinese philosophy today is the relationship between Confucianism and democracy. While some political figures have argued that Confucian values justify non-democratic forms of government, many scholars have argued that Confucianism can provide justification for democracy, though this Confucian democracy will differ substantially from liberal democracy. These scholars believe it is important for Chinese culture to develop its own conception of democracy using Confucian values, drawn mainly from Kongzi (Confucius) and Mengzi (Mencius), as the basis. This essay (...) describes some obstacles to this form of Confucian democracy. It argues that considering the political philosophies of Kongzi and Mengzi in the context of their views on personal cultivation reveals that they oppose some of the central assumptions of democracy. They do not trust the public to make good decisions, and advocate government for the people, but not by the people. These philosophies alone cannot generate democracy. (shrink)

I Introduction i Actions which otherwise would be arbitrary or capricious may be quite reasonable when they are in fact cases in which rights are being ...

Well known as a scholar of Asian culture, de Bary examines the concepts of self-understanding and self-cultivation in neo-Confucian thought from the 12th to the 17th centuries, in relation to the social, political, and scholarly roles of educated men in late imperial China. Rejecting the notion that.

Although contemporary Confucianists tend to view Western liberalism as pitting the individual against society, recent liberal scholarship has vigorously claimed that liberal polity is indeed grounded in the self-transformation that produces “liberal virtues.” To meet this challenge, this essay presents a sophisticated Confucian critique of liberalism by arguing that there is an appreciable contrast between liberal and Confucian self-transformation and between liberal and Confucian virtues. By contrasting Locke and Confucius, key representatives of each tradition, this essay shows that both liberalism (...) and Confucianism aim to reconstruct a society freed from antisocial passions entailing a vicious politics of resentment, and yet come to differing ethical and political resolutions. My key claim is that what makes Confucian self-cultivation so distinctive is the incorporation of ritual propriety ( li ) within it, whereas liberal self-transformation that relies heavily on a method of self-control comes back to the problem that it originally set out to overcome. (shrink)

The necessity of a coordination of rights and virtues is analyzed. Interpreting liberalism as a rights-based morality and Confucianism as a virtue-based morality, the author directs his criticism to the extremes found within both. Through a mutual criticism of liberalism and Confucianism, it is proposed that the coordination of these two moral systems is not only possible, but also necessary for a fulfilling moral society.

This Philosophy Compass article continues the comparison between Confucian and mainstream Western views of personhood and their connection with ethics begun in Confucianism and Ethics in the Western Philosophical Tradition I: Fundamental Concepts , by focusing on the Western self conceived as an independent agent with moral and political rights. More specifically, the present article briefly accounts for how the more strictly and explicitly individualistic notion of self dominating Western philosophy has developed, leading up to a recent debate in modern (...) Western rights theory between Herbert Fingarette and Henry Rosemont, Jr., two contemporary Western philosophers who are both steeped in Confucian thought as well as moral and political philosophy. This discussion elucidates how Confucianism can be compared to, and even contrasted with some basic principles of modern Western rights theory and the more individualistic view of self they entail. In the end, a new view of personhood and "free will"? is offered that synthesizes insights from the Confucian treatment of persons as being essentially interdependent with the Western treatment of persons as being essentially independent. (shrink)

There is an inner thoroughness spirit in traditional Chinese learning of classics—the so-called "Guoxue" in Chinese. Only on this foundation of "thoroughness" spirit can academics show its vigorous culture life and spiritual life, which makes traditional Chinese learning of classics pursue the transcendence of heaven and man and can’t be divided into a religion. Our traditional Chinese values and its original significance exist in our traditional academic system and the enlightenment of propriety and music. As for the self—identification, because of (...) the lost of the "thoroughness" spirit and original significance foundation, the traditional Chinese learning of classics concealed their academic specialties that make the reconstruction of modern Chinese culture lack a solid foundation. Currently, various colleges, institutes and centers of traditional Chinese learning have been set up in many universities, but “Guoxue” should not be taken as one special subject far from the other disciplines, and we should make efforts to reconstruct the traditional Chinese learning of classics ("Guoxue") as a primitive significance-adding foundation or “academic home”. (shrink)

It is often remarked that East Asian polities have been hierarchical and the “elite” category continues to figure prominently in works on Chinese society and politics. Many scholars believe that hierarchy and elitism are deeply rooted in Confucianism, which served as the state orthodoxy in imperial China and provided the “psycho-cultural construct” of the way of life in other East Asian cultural communities as well. It is therefore not surprising that some should believe that if modern Confucian societies are to (...) be democratic at all, elitism must be reconciled with democracy. In contrast, elitism is commonly a pejorative term in liberal democracies today, especially the United States, notwithstanding the portrayal of these polities by political scientists as cases of “democratic elitism.”. (shrink)

This paper argues for the pragmatic construction of Confucian democracy by showing that Chinese philosophers who wish to see Confucianism flourish again as a positive dimension of Chinese civilization need to approach it pragmatically and democratically, otherwise their love of the past is at the expense of something else Confucius held in equal esteem, love of learning. Chinese philosophers who desire democracy for China would do well to learn from the earlier failures of the iconoclastic Westernizers, and realize that a (...) Chinese democracy cannot come about by ignoring or dismissing such an important part of China's history, its Confucian tradition. The best chances for democracy in China lie in transforming that tradition without destroying it. Eagerness to learn from others must be united with a proper appreciation of one's own past to nurture democracy as a way of life. (shrink)

Drawn from a series of lectures that Wm. Theodore de Bary delivered in honor of the Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi, _Confucian Tradition and Global Education_ is a unique synthesis of essay and debate concerning the future of Chinese education and the potential political uses of Confucianism in the contemporary world. Rapid modernization and the rise of English as a global language increasingly threaten East Asia's cultural diversity and long-standing Confucian traditions. De Bary argues that keeping Confucianism alive in China is (...) not only a matter of "Chinese identity," but also a critical part of achieving a multicultural global education. Scholars take different views on what is worth preserving in Confucian tradition, and whether it is possible for the classical teachings to remain relevant in today's high-tech educational environment. De Bary and his contributors assert that the Chinese classics are the key to this survival, and therefore their inclusion in a global humanities curriculum is essential. De Bary also believes in the power of the classics to humanize the modernization process and to shape a more democratic East Asia. Kwan Tze-wan discusses the difficulty of teaching the Chinese humanities in English when certain ideas and values are best expressed in a native language, and Cheung Chan Fai demonstrates how it is still possible for Confucian humanism to contribute to a modern liberal education. Timely and passionately argued, _Confucian Tradition and Global Education_ is a major work emphasizing the importance of Chinese philosophy in the post-World War II era. (shrink)