Daoist Liberalism

In comment #14 in this thread, I suggested that “parts of the Zhuāngzǐ are committed to a form of political liberalism, on which all individuals should be allowed to live, without government interference, in a way that comes naturally to and pleases them, provided they allow others to do so as well.”

It occurred to me that explicating this claim might make for an interesting post.

The Chinese political tradition is generally regarded as authoritarian, in cases even totalitarian, in both theory and practice. This view is one basis for certain claims about differences between traditional Asian and contemporary Western political cultures, which have sometimes been cited as grounds for resisting liberal democratic reforms in Asian countries. Continue reading →

Confucius Institutes

Ronggui, one of our long time blog followers, writes:

I’m interested in other’s thoughts on the role that Confucius Institutes might play in the (future) development of the field.

I know, for instance, that some of them have been inviting scholars to speak on issues related to Chinese philosophy. (I believe Eric Schwitzgebel recently spoke at the Confucius Institute of Scotland and Zhang Longxi will be speaking there later this month.)

More importantly, I recently came across this job ad http://chronicle.com/jobs/0000626659-01 , which is a search for an endowed chair (Chinese poetry) at the Confucius Institute at Stanford (I didn’t even realize there was an Institute there. And where’s the funding coming from for this position?).

Having heard the government official partially responsible for the Confucius Institutes speak on the topic, it’s quite obvious that these institutes have little to do directly with Confucius (let alone Chinese philosophy); but does anyone else get the sense that there could be something significant going on with these Institutes as far as the future of the field is concerned? Could we, for instance, see an endowed chair of Chinese philosophy at the University of Michigan, or at least research fellowships and conferences sponsored by these institutes?

I’m sure some here have more direct exposure to a Confucius Institute, and so could perhaps shed some light on this, but I’m interested to know what others have heard and/or think.

Comments welcome!

Rethinking Confucian Sovereignty

Starting next week, I’m going to be giving a series of lectures, collectively titled “Contemporary Confucian Virtue Politics,” at the University of Michigan. In case any reader might be in Ann Arbor, you’re more than welcome to come; information is here. I thought I would sketch out one of the ideas here and see what y’all think.

One of the thoughts motivating the third lecture (with the same title as this post) is that there is a tension within one prominent way in which sovereignty is articulated in classical Confucianism. My eventual claim is that resolving this tension requires making some significant changes to Confucianism, but that these changes have the effect of allowing the revised system to better realize its core commitments than did the original configuration. In other words, the argument that I end up making for what we can loosely call Confucian democracy is not a claim that democracy is compatible with Confucianism, but rather than it is required by Confucian commitments themselves. In making this argument, I take myself to be building on ideas of Mou Zongsan, and at certain points draw explicitly on some of his arguments.

For now, I wanted to see what folks thought about the “tension” claim. I am focused on Mencius. Roughly, the idea is this: Continue reading →