Robert A. Carleo’s thorough and carefully annotated summary of a roundtable on “Progressive Confucianism” has now been published by The Philosophical Forum as “Progressive Confucianism: Its Proponents and Prospects.” See here for full-text read-only access, and below for the abstract. This is as good a compact summary of the idea of progressive Confucianism as any I have seen!
Abstract:
The 四海为学 “Collaborative Learning” project is a free online academic forum that hosts dozens of events annually. Its tenth roundtable, on “Progressive Confucianism,” was held on February 20, 2025.1 The event placed two leading progressive Confucian theorists, Chenyang Li and Stephen C. Angle, into discussion with several other leading scholars of contemporary Confucian moral and political theory, featuring Ranjoo Herr, Elena Ziliotti, Sophia Feiyan Gao, Li Luyao, and audience members. The group exchanged views on a variety of important questions, including: the relation between traditional Confucianism and modern forms of equality, including political equality, gender equality, and human rights; the relation between traditional Confucianism and modern academic Confucian philosophy; and what exactly is progressive about progressive Confucianism. This article first introduces progressive Confucianism as an emergent camp of Confucian normative theory. It then recaps key points of the roundtable discussion and concludes by outlining a few key takeaways that help further contextualize the place of these theories in contemporary Confucian discourse.
[1] Details of this event and its participants can be found at https://www. sihaiweixue.org/progressive-confucianism-roundtable. A full recording of the roundtable can be viewed at https://youtu.be/PEqmCJLVqko? si=X-Gjr_HIWyKurYWC.
