Robert A. Carleo III - Confucian Political Philosophy: Dialogues on the State of the Field

In comparison with Confucian ethics, Confucian political philosophy has been significantly understudied in the contemporary scholarship. Part of the explanation for this fact is a common (mis)perception that ancient Confucianism has little, if anything, to contribute to contemporary political philosophy, which is connected with a related (mis)perception that Confucianism is essentially an ethical theory, lacking a corresponding political vision. The so-called political philosophy in Confucianism is nothing but ethics for those particular individuals who happen to be rulers. These (mis)perceptions are now seriously challenged. A significant number of scholars have done serious work to bring the ancient Confucian tradition to bear on many important and urgent social and political issues we are facing today, often through engaging dialogues with contemporary Western political philosophers. The result is a fast-growing literature of a very high quality, in the form of not only journal articles and book chapters but also of monographs in the field of Confucian political philosophy. This volume is a partial reflection on contemporary Confucian political philosophy. This chapter, as an Introduction, aims to provide an overview of the state of the field, followed by outlines of the chapters that follow.

One of the underlying difficulties for Confucianism in developing a robust political philosophy is that, in its ethical dimensions, Confucianism promotes primarily a form of virtue ethics rather than consequentialism or deontology. The latter two, as ethical theories, can be readily developed into political philosophy, if they are not originally political theories in the first place. Consequentialism uses the effects of an action or rule to determine whether it is morally right or wrong (ethics), and likewise looks to the effects of laws and social policies to determine whether these are morally right or wrong (political philosophy). Similarly, deontology uses moral principles to determine both whether a particular action is morally right or wrong (ethics) as well as whether a particular law, social policy, or social institution is morally right or wrong (political philosophy). In contrast, virtue ethics is concerned with the character traits of individual persons: what character traits are virtues and what character traits are vices. They seem to have little if any direct application in evaluating laws, policies, and social institutions. So the key to developing a plausible Confucian political philosophy lies in identifying a plausible idea of virtue politics, a political philosophy that is based on or derived from the very idea of virtue.

The most direct and most natural way to develop a virtue politics, from the Confucian perspective, is perhaps to argue that the political leaders must have virtues. This is the central feature of the type of virtue politics developed by K im Sungmoon in his recent book, Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics: Political Philosophy of Mencius and Xunzi. Kim makes four propositions for his virtue politics, two of which are directed to virtue politics in this sense. The first proposition, which he simply calls the virtue proposition, states that political theories are predicated on virtue ethics (Kim 2019: 5). This is not controversial, as what makes virtue politics unique is that it is based on virtue ethics. Kims second proposition, which he calls the virtue politics proposition, states that virtue politics relies primarily on the rulers moral character for its moral goal and political viability (Kim 2019: 56). This proposition is indeed fully supported in Confucianism, as Confucius and his followers all emphasize that political leaders must have virtues. L uo Shirong uses virtue politics also in this sense in his paper, Confuciuss Virtue Politics: Ren as Leadership Virtue. By ren as a leadership virtue, Luo means that if one possesses ren to a substantial degree, one is worthy of being a ruler or a governmental official . Ren is the moral qualification for a leadership position (Luo 2012: 1516). However, virtue politics understood this way faces the very problem that contemporary critics think plagues Confucianism as a political philosophy: Confucian politics promotes a kind of rule by persons (ren zhi ), or rule by virtue (de zhi ), that is, rule by virtuous persons, and not rule of laws (fa zhi ). For example, L iang Qichao , in his A History of Political Thought in Pre-Qin China, claims that Confucianism is an ideology of rule by persons (he uses the term ren zhi zhuyi ), according to which there are only ruling persons but no ruling laws . A state comes into being when you have the ruling person and gone when the person is gone (Liang 1996: 253). The question is of course not whether political leaders should have virtues, which is largely the business of (virtue) ethics; rather it is whether there is a need for political institutions with laws and social policies, and, if so, how a virtue based political philosophy can determine whether a political institution or law or social policy is moral or not. This is the job of (virtue) politics, which is not answered in this type of virtue politics.