Angle on Confucian Leadership & Confucian Democracy

My article “Confucian Leadership Meets Confucian Democracy” has just been published in the Journal of Social and Political Philosophy (1:2). The abstract is below; full text is available here (through the end of October).

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New Journal / Roundtable on Kim, Confucian Public Reason

Thanks to Kyung Rok Kwon for sharing the following information and the linked PDF of the the journal’s roundtable!

The Hong Kong Journal of Law and Public Affairs (HKJLPA) is the first student-edited
law and political science journal in all of Asia, established by the Government and Laws
Committee, Politics and Public Administration Association, with full support
from the Bachelor of Social Sciences (Government and Laws) and Bachelor of Laws
Programme (BSocSc (Govt&Laws) & LLB / Government and Laws / GLaws) at The University
of Hong Kong in 2018.

The theme of the inaugural volume is “Confucian Democracy and Constitutionalism”. In this volume, not only four articles on the theme but also book symposium for Prof. Kim’s Public Reason Confucianism will be published. The full text of the issue is available for download here.

KIM Sungmoon – Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy Lecture: “BEYOND THE PLURALISM DILEMMA — A CONSTITUTIONAL RECONSTRUCTION OF CONFUCIAN DEMOCRACY” Friday Nov 8

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes: KIM SUNGMOON (City University of Hong Kong)
With responses from: OMAR DAHBOUR  (Hunter College & Graduate Center, CUNY)

Please join on November 8, 2019 at 5:30 for his lecture entitled,

BEYOND THE PLURALISM DILEMMA — A CONSTITUTIONAL RECONSTRUCTION OF CONFUCIAN DEMOCRACY

Recently, a group of scholars has challenged the moral legitimacy of Confucian democracy from a liberal philosophical standpoint. Continue reading

Chan at Harvard on “Democratic Equality and Confucian Hierarchy”

Faculty Seminar with Joseph Chan – “Democratic Equality and Confucian Hierarchy”

The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard will be hosting a seminar with Joseph Chan, who will present his paper, “Democratic Equality and Confucian Hierarchy.” Archon Fung will be the discussant. This event is co-sponsored with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

DATE & TIME: Tuesday, May 23 3:00-5:00pm
LOCATION: Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics

More information here.

Jiwei Ci’s Upcoming Visit to Harvard

Philosopher Jiwei Ci from the University of Hong Kong will be spending a couple weeks at Harvard in November and giving a series of lectures. The details here here: Fairbank Democracy and China poster. There will also be a one-day conference on Friday, November 13 titled “Democracy and China: Philosophical-Poltical Reflections” with a number of speakers, and Prof. Ci’s commentary. (I’ll post details of that once it has been finalized.)

Review of Chan, Confucian Perfectionism

This is a rich review of Joseph Chan’s important new book; the review is significant, in part, because it represents an engagement by someone from outside the Chinese philosophy world with contemporary Chinese thought. Wall is himself an advocate of perfectionism, which helps to explain why the cross-tradition engagement here is so fruitful.

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2014.08.16 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times, Princeton University Press, 2014, 256pp., $35.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780691158617.

Reviewed by Steven Wall, University of Arizona

This is an unusual book. It is partly an effort to reconstruct and revive an ancient tradition of political thought, partly an exercise in comparing that tradition to western liberalism and partly a contribution to contemporary political theory. It does not fit into any well-defined disciplinary niche. Its unusual aims, in turn, present a challenge to the reviewer. Should the success of the project be assessed in terms of its fidelity to a tradition of thought that has shaped Chinese culture for over two millennia, or should it be assessed in terms of its contribution to contemporary political thought? No doubt the right answer to this question is that it should be assessed along both dimensions, but this answer does not tell us how much weight to give to each measure of assessment. My own assessment will not grapple with this problem, since I am in no position to gauge its success in remaining faithful to traditional Confucian ideas. Accordingly, this review does not offer a verdict on how well Confucian Perfectionism succeeds in its aim of staying true to Confucian political thought (leaving that judgment to others who are better placed to make it). It focuses instead on how well the view of politics that it presents hangs together and how well it contributes to an understanding of the political topics that it addresses.

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