Public Reason Confucianism

Public reason Confucianism is a particular style of Confucian democratic perfectionism in which comprehensive Confucianism is connected with perfectionism.

This book explores and elaborates three theories of public reason, drawn from Rawlsian political liberalism, natural law theory, and Confucianism. Drawing together academics from these separate approaches, the volume explores how the three theories critique each other, as well as how each one brings its theoretical arsenal to bear on the urgent contemporary debate of medical assistance in dying. The volume is structured in two parts: an exploration of the three traditions, followed by an in-depth overview of the conceptual and historical background. In Part I, the three comprehensive opening chapters are supplemented by six dynamic chapters in dialogue with each other, each author responding to the other two traditions, and subsequently reflecting on the possible deficiencies of their own theories. The chapters in Part II cover a broad range of subjects, from an overview of the history of bioethics to the nature of autonomy and its status as a moral and political value. In its entirety, the volume provides a vibrant and exemplary collaborative resource to scholars interested in the role of public reason and its relevance in bioethical debate.

This book debates the values and ideals of Confucian politics—harmony, virtue, freedom, justice, order—and what these ideals mean for Confucian political philosophy today. The authors deliberate these eminent topics in five debates centering on recent innovative and influential publications in the field. Challenging and building on those works, the dialogues consider the roles of benevolence, family determination, public reason, distributive justice, and social stability in Confucian political philosophy. In response, the authors defend their views and evaluate their critics in turn. Taking up a broad range of crucial issues—autonomy, liberty, democracy, political legitimacy, human welfare—these author-meets-critic debates will appeal to scholars interested in political, comparative, and East Asian philosophy. Their interlaced themes weave a portrait of what is at stake in discussing Confucian values and theory. Most importantly, they engage and develop the state of the field of Confucian political philosophy today.

Confucian Democracy in East Asia explores the unique Confucian reasoning that still exists in much of East Asian culture.

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, Joseph Chan argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of the right. Confucian Perfectionism examines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. Chan decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, he grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. Then he explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice. Confucian Perfectionism critically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era.

This book contributes to both the internal debate in liberalism and the application of political liberalism to the process of democratization in East Asia. Beyond John Rawls’ original intention to limit the scope of political liberalism to only existing and well-ordered liberal democracies, political liberalism has the potential to inspire and contribute to democratic establishment and maintenance in East Asia. Specifically, the book has two main objectives. First, it will demonstrate that political liberalism offers the most promising vision for liberal democracy, and it can be defended against contemporary perfectionist objections. Second, it will show that perfectionist approaches to political Confucianism suffer from practical and theoretical difficulties. Instead, an alternative model of democracy inspired by political liberalism will be explored in order to achieve a multivariate structure for citizens to come to terms with democracy in their own ways, to support a neutral state that ensures the establishment and stability of democracy, and to maintain an active public role for Confucianism to prevent it from being banished to the private sphere. This model represents a more promising future for democracy in East Asia.

Makes Mencius' and Xunzi's political thought accessible to political theorists, philosophers and scientists with no expertise in classical Chinese or sinology.

Ongoing debates among political theorists revolve around the question of whether the overarching goal of Confucianism--serving the people's moral and material wellbeing--is attainable in modern day politics without broad democratic participation. One side of the debate, voiced by Confucian meritocrats, argues that only certain people are equipped with the moral character needed to lead and ensure broad public wellbeing. The other side, voiced by Confucian democrats, argues that unless all citizens participate equally in the public sphere, a polity cannot attain the moral growth that Confucianism emphasizes. Written by one of the leading voices of Confucian political theory, Confucian Constitutionalism presents a constitutional theory of democratic self-government that is normatively appealing and politically practicable in East Asia's historically Confucian societies, which are increasingly pluralist, multicultural, and rights sensitive. While Confucian political theorists are preoccupied with how to build a Confucianism-inspired institution that would make a given polity more meritorious, Sungmoon Kim offers a robust normative theory of Confucian constitutionalism--what he calls "Confucian democratic constitutionalism"--with special attention to value pluralism and moral disagreement. Building on his previous theory of Confucian democracy, Kim establishes egalitarian human dignity as the underlying moral value of Confucian democratic constitutionalism and derives two foundational rights from Confucian egalitarian dignity--the equal right to political participation and the equal right to constitutional protection of civil and political rights. He then shows how each of these rights justifies the establishment of the legislature and the judiciary respectively as two independent constitutional institutions equally committed to the protection and promotion of the people's moral and material wellbeing, now reformulated in terms of rights. Aiming to contribute to both political theory and comparative law, Confucian Constitutionalism explains how Confucian democratic constitutionalism differs from and improves upon liberal legal constitutionalism, political constitutionalism, and Confucian meritocratic constitutionalism.