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Document Details : Title: Communitarian Interpretation of Confucianism and Just Hierarchy Author(s): DUAN, Demin Journal: Ethical Perspectives Volume: 29 Issue: 4 Date: 2022 Pages: 407-422 DOI: 10.2143/EP.29.4.3291687 Abstract : The effort of exploring the contemporary relevance of Confucianism has been going on for many years. Daniel Bell’s work is more or less in line with this endeavor, but there is a distinctively ‘communitarian’ line in his thinking, thus making his interpretation more appealing to a ‘universal’ audience. This feature extends to the book Just Hierarchy coauthored with Pei Wang (2020). In this book, Bell and Wang’s interpretation of Confucianism, particularly the hierarchical relationship therein, is essentially ‘communitarian’ in nature. Filial piety, a prime virtue in Confucianism, points to a hierarchical relationship in a certain community that is morally justifiable, and which can be extended to other social and political relationships, such as those between ruler and the ruled, states big and small. But it is less certain whether we can view the ‘parent-child’ relationship from a ‘role-reversal’ perspective. On a second look, Chinese meritocratic systems such as ke ju or gao kao may also be much more similar to the ‘one-man-one-vote’ representative system than we assume. This is not ‘just’ because they are meritocratic, but because they are embedded in ethical Confucian relationships. |
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