The Place of Confucianism in Pluralist East Asia

Comparative Political Theory 1 (2021) 126-134 brill.com/cpt The Place of Confucianism in Pluralist East Asia Dongxian Jiang Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States [email protected] Abstract In this commentary on Shaun O’Dwyer’s Confucianism’s Prospects, I raise three challenges to the arguments presented in the book. First, against his empirical claim that East Asian societies have already become pluralistic, I show that there are important empirical studies supporting the “Confucian heritage” thesis that O’Dwyer rejects. Second, against his anti-perfectionist position, I argue that there are some significant perfectionist connotations in his use of the capabilities approach which are in tension with his critique of Confucian and liberal perfectionisms. Third, against his argument that contemporary Confucians have good reasons to embrace a liberal democracy and pluralistic public culture, I argue that the reasons he offers are not solid enough to convince his Confucian rivals. Keywords Confucianism – liberal democracy – liberalism – perfectionism – pluralism Shaun O’Dwyer’s Confucianism’s Prospects is an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the place of Confucianism in contemporary East Asia. A main purpose of his book is to break the “orientalist myth” that serves as the empirical foundation of most contemporary Confucian moral and political philosophies. This myth holds that East Asian societies are still by and large “Confucian societies” in which people are consciously or unconsciously living according to traditional beliefs and conventions that can be traced to Confucian teachings of the past. O’Dwyer aims to show that contemporary East Asia has already become pluralistic, making a comprehensive Confucian political theory unsuitable under new social circumstances. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/26669773-01010009 the place of confucianism in pluralist east asia 127 Based on this empirical claim, O’Dwyer (2019) “urges a shift in primary ethical focus from the good of associations… to the good of individuals, attainable through a variety of affiliations, ways of life, and identities” (p. x). The core of O’Dwyer’s normative theory is what he calls “ethical individualism,” and this makes him distinguished from most contemporary Confucians who, in a varying degree, tend to treat individualism (arguably the foundation of liberalism) with suspicion, or even hostility. However, far from being an iconoclast, O’Dwyer still thinks that Confucianism can contribute important insights for the modern world, such as the values of ritual propriety and filial piety, as long as it can purge its hierarchical and patriarchal characteristics. In sum, O’Dwyer’s book presents a liberal theory for East Asia without denying the significant role Confucianism can play within it. I fully agree with O’Dwyer’s liberal position on the justifiable political principles in the East Asian context. In this paper, however, I would like to raise three questions for his treatment of the relationship between Confucianism, pluralism, and liberalism and discuss the directions that future liberal theorists could take. I hope that this exercise can further strengthen O’Dwyer’s liberal political philosophy for East Asian politics and society. The Fact of Pluralism in East Asia Since O’Dwyer begins his book by criticizing the empirical assumption of contemporary Confucian theories, let me also start with his empirical claim that present-day East Asia has already become too pluralistic to be qualified as Confucian societies. In Chapter 1, O’Dwyer (2019) mentions that “the current New Confucian literature asserting the ubiquity of unreflective Confucian values and habits of the heart… may not be the outcome of careful, finegrained qualitative as well as quantitative research into the value orientations of contemporary East Asians” (p. 26). He then cites Doh Chull Shin’s survey research, which claims that there isn’t any deep attachment to Confucian values in contemporary East Asia, as the region “is no longer a single cultural zone in regard to the public’s attachment to the legacies of Confucian social and political ethics” (p. 27). Shin (2011) has by far provided the most comprehensive study of social and political culture in East Asian societies. A major takeaway of his work is that popular attachment to Confucian values has declined dramatically due to rapid modernization and industrialization. However, a closer reading of Shin’s book shows that the conclusion from his survey research is much more complicated. While modernization has driven East Asian people away from Comparative Political Theory 1 (2021) 126-134 128 jiang traditional worldviews and ways of life, such as fatalism, living with a large family, and gendered division of labor, Shin finds that the political views of East Asians remain Confucian, or quasi-Confucian. For example, he finds that Confucian Asians rank political freedom as the least important criterion for a democracy because they value substantive outcomes more than political procedures in a democratic regime (Shin, 2011, p. 240–3). He also notes that “[i]n the minds of the Confucian Asian people, democracy means government for the people more than it means government by the people” (p. 264). Shin thus concludes that “a Confucian heritage is intrinsically incompatible with the Western type of liberal-procedural democracy, but it can be reformulated to develop different types of nonliberal democracy” (p. 266). Shin’s book shows that a post-traditional societal culture is coexisting with a resilient traditional political culture in East Asia, as can be seen in many transitional societies around the world. The persistence of Confucian political values and their tension with liberal democracy in East Asia have also been demonstrated by other political science studies, including Shi’s studies on contemporary Chinese political values (Shi, 2008), the “Asian Governance Model” thesis by Gilley (2014), and a study on minben legitimacy by Chan, Shin, and Williams (2016). I am not here defending Shin’s research along with various others. All I want to say is that they point to a more complicated picture of the cultural landscape in contemporary East Asia than what O’Dwyer has in mind. Though O’Dwyer makes a powerful argument that contemporary East Asia has become pluralistic, he does not discuss whether the mode of pluralism found in East Asia is different from the pluralism of Western liberal societies, in which, arguably, both societal and political cultures have been freed from the shackles of traditional authorities. In contrast, O’Dwyer’s Confucian rivals, such as Daniel Bell (2006, pp. 323–35) and Sungmoon Kim (2015, p. 193), do draw upon these empirical studies, and it is not easy to dismiss this Confucian reading of East Asian societies as completely unfounded. If we take this Confucian reading seriously, then we may find that O’Dwyer also dismisses the legitimacy of meritocracy too quickly. In Chapter 6, where O’Dwyer argues against Bell’s justification for a meritocratic second chamber in a bicameral legislature, he admits nevertheless that a “justice conception of political authority,” which means that coercion is justified only to the extent that it protects citizens’ access to primary goods necessary for exercising their basic capabilities (regardless of what conceptions of the good citizens are holding), could provide a justification for a second chamber, but whose members can be selected either by meritocratic mechanisms (examination or peer and performance review) or by democratic means (sortition, deliberative Comparative Political Theory 1 (2021) 126-134 the place of confucianism in pluralist east asia 129 mini-public, or conventional election) (O’Dwyer, 2019, p. 194). In my view, however, it is also possible to make a case for a meritocratic second chamber on other grounds, such as the political culture that makes East Asian people more receptive to meritocratic institutions that can hold democracy in check and produce good policy outcomes. A regime featuring meritocratic principles can also be more stable than a liberal democracy in East Asia (particularly China); otherwise there could be a mismatch between liberal democratic institutions and the quasi-Confucian political culture. I am not here defending any concrete proposals of bicameralism in contemporary Confucian political theory (Bell, 2006, pp. 162–79; Chan, 2014, pp. 100–10), but I believe O’Dwyer seems to need a more compelling reason to criticize the Confucian theories of meritocracy. The Capabilities Approach and Political Liberalism My second question concerns O’Dwyer’s employment of various contemporary liberal theories in crafting his own vision of liberalism for East Asia. In the Introduction of the book, O’Dwyer adopts the “capabilities approach,” developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, as the standard for evaluating the legitimacy of political arrangements. According to him, “moral and political values, principles, and conceptions of the good, as instantiated in practices and institutions, are to be evaluated according to whether they enhance, or inhibit, the fundamental capacities ‘for truly human flourishing’ in individual human beings” (O’Dwyer, 2019, p. xiii). The capabilities approach, however, is not the only version of liberalism that O’Dwyer draws upon. In Chapter 7, in the search of a “less comprehensive and least morally taxing” justification for liberal democracy (p. 198), O’Dwyer introduces two additional versions of liberalism, Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear and John Rawls’ public reason liberalism. The problem with this mixture of multiple intellectual resources, as I shall argue, is the theoretical inconsistency within O’Dwyer’s liberalism. While O’Dwyer makes a convincing argument regarding why Confucianism should no longer serve as the foundational normative theory in contemporary East Asia, he is less successful in illustrating what kind of liberalism East Asian societies should adopt. The primary inconsistency lies in the strict anti-perfectionism of O’Dwyer’s political liberalism and the perfectionist connotations implied in his use of the capabilities approach. In Chapter 1, O’Dwyer argues that political perfectionism is in conflict with ethical individualism because the state’s coercive or noncoercive promotion of “the good of its citizens” will discourage certain Comparative Political Theory 1 (2021) 126-134 130 jiang people from pursuing conceptions of the good that are not in line with official doctrines. Further, in Chapter 7 he calls for a “less comprehensive and least morally taxing” political framework in which parties with diverse religious, moral, and metaphysical comprehensive doctrines can agree upon a set of “political conceptions of justice and right as if they are independent of and not consequences of” these doctrines (O’Dwyer, 2019, p. 199). He thus concludes that neither Joseph Chan’s Confucian perfectionism nor Sungmoon Kim’s public reason Confucianism is justifiable in contemporary East Asia because they impose unfair burdens upon people who do not find Confucian values attractive, thus disrespecting the moral agency of these individuals in a pluralistic society. I find O’Dwyer’s critique of Confucian political perfectionism largely persuasive, but this is only half of his liberalism. In another half, he aims to provide a “least morally taxing” version of liberalism that duly acknowledges “the diverse and sometimes illiberal personal and corporate lives” within a given society (O’Dwyer, 2019, p. 198). That is to say, this liberalism will refrain from imposing a comprehensive liberal way of life upon traditionalist Confucians who refute the moral ideals of liberalism outright, or upon other ordinary citizens who are still not ready to embrace a full set of liberal ideals, especially personal autonomy. At the end of Chapter 6, for example, O’Dwyer mentions that “the norm of personal autonomy is too conceptually implicated in comprehensive liberal conceptions of the good life” (p. 194). In Chapter 7, therefore, he resorts to Shklar’s liberalism of fear because this position, which focuses on “the suppressive and exploitative power of the state,” does not require that citizens should “subscribe to liberal conceptions of personhood and of personal autonomy” (p. 204). O’Dwyer’s anti-perfectionism, therefore, is against both Confucian perfectionism and liberal perfectionism. This “least morally taxing” liberalism introduced in Chapter 7, however, is to some extent in tension with the capabilities approach introduced in Chapter 1, primarily because the idea of “human flourishing” in this approach has strong Aristotelian and perfectionist connotations. It may imply that by adopting a particular theory of well-being (objectively construed), “the state has a duty to help us succeed in living lives that achieve genuinely worthwhile goods” (Arneson, 2020, p. 167). Nussbaum’s early, neo-Aristotelian formulation of the capabilities approach, for example, provides a list of ten central capabilities essential to a good life, and she regards this list as objectively and universally valid (Nussbaum, 1990, p. 225; Claassen, 2018, pp. 23–24). The idea of human flourishing is also compatible with John Stuart Mill’s liberalism, in which the development of individuality is set by him as the highest goal of a political society. This perfectionist liberalism bears important similarities with Amartya Comparative Political Theory 1 (2021) 126-134 the place of confucianism in pluralist east asia 131 Sen’s capabilities approach, despite the fact that Sen himself does not embrace Mill’s theory wholeheartedly (Sumner, 2020, pp. 70–71). As Rutger Claassen (2018) points out, the tension between perfectionism and liberal neutrality is one of the central controversies around the capabilities approach. To be clear, I am not suggesting that the capabilities approach is by nature a perfectionist theory, and I do not think this approach and political liberalism are diametrically opposed. Having acknowledged that a perfectionist formulation of the capabilities approach is implicated in paternalism and elitism, some philosophers, such as Nussbaum (2011), have developed theories that marry the capabilities approach with Rawlsian political liberalism. This anti-perfectionist tilt of the capabilities approach is again challenged by Richard Arneson (2020), who argues that it is neither necessary nor desirable for the capabilities approach to dissociate itself with political perfectionism. My point is that O’Dwyer’s book is short of a detailed discussion of what kind of capabilities approach he is endorsing, especially whether, and to what degree, his version of the capabilities approach is anti-perfectionist. A discussion like this would have been able to make O’Dwyer’s liberalism stronger and more consistent. It would also press O’Dwyer to rethink the following question: Is the least morally taxing liberalism the only legitimate and suitable theory for a pluralistic East Asia? In Chapter 7, O’Dwyer (2019) briefly mentions that “[i]n East Asian liberal democracies, with recent histories of economically interventionist, developmental statism, there is greater (if now declining) public tolerance for paternalism or perfectionism in governmental industrial and social policy” (p. 214). Does this imply that as a matter of fact, East Asians prefer a perfectionist state to a neutral state, regardless of whether it is liberal or Confucian? Then, why his advocacy of political liberalism in East Asia? Confucianism’s Prospects My last question concerns the book’s title: Confucianism’s Prospects. O’Dwyer (2019) does think that Confucianism has some prospects in modern times, provided that it can renounce its dream to be reinstated as a state religion or official ideology and be content with being one of the many civil society associations advocating for some specific social issues (p. 230). This extremely limited role reserved for Confucianism, I argue, makes O’Dwyer vulnerable to a generic critique from illiberal Confucians, or strongly perfectionist Confucians, who hold that any attempt to modernize and liberalize Confucianism will inevitably lead to its demise, because, in their views, there will not be any distinctively Comparative Political Theory 1 (2021) 126-134 132 jiang Confucian features in the resultant theory if elitist, hierarchical, and even authoritarian dimensions are purged. For this reason, they would argue that it would be better for O’Dwyer to title the book as “Liberalism’s Prospects in East Asia,” or “Confucianism’s Dim Prospects,” because it is more about justifying the advancement of liberalism and the retreat of Confucianism, and less about “making Confucianism great again.” O’Dwyer has a response to this group of Confucians. In Chapter 7, Shklar’s liberalism of fear looms large precisely because O’Dwyer thinks that a common memory of state repression would give various social groups reason to refrain from asking the state power to persecute their rivals. Regardless of what comprehensive doctrines they hold, “they have reason to fear governments that act as agents of one comprehensive conception of the good or one comprehensive moral code, or which align themselves with or represent the interests and good of the most powerful factions in a society in order to suppress weaker minorities and dissenting individuals. For they all have institutional memories of being such minorities” (O’Dwyer, 2019, p. 205). Although O’Dwyer does not mention specific cases of governments’ crackdown on Confucianism, this liberalism of fear is meant to serve as a good reason for Confucians to consider embracing a liberal regime. While I admit that Christians, Muslims, and other religious, ethnic, and political dissidents in East Asia have abundant memories of state repression, I do not think the liberalism of fear can persuade these illiberal Confucians to accept the legitimacy of liberal democracy. This is because illiberal Confucians, especially those who are sympathetic to statism, have managed to construct a memory that is fundamentally different from other groups. In their narrative, the golden ages for Confucians are premodern dynasties in which Confucianism was fully supported by social and political institutions. The decline of Confucianism happened in modern times not because the state turned to persecute it, but because the intrusion of Western imperialism terminated the very state that endorsed and promoted Confucian teachings. In their narrative, Confucianism has since then become a victim of Western Enlightenment ideas and ideologies, a “wandering spirit” seeking a strong state that can restore its prominence.1 Although Mao’s iconoclasm in China can be regarded as a textbook case of the state’s persecution of Confucianism, his twenty-seven-year rule was rather brief, and one can even say that it is not the state per se, but the radical foreign ideals of Marxism and Leninism, that were 1 The term “wandering spirit” was coined and popularized by Yu Yingshi (see Yu, 2012), but Yu himself is against the idea of restoring the social and political institutions supporting Confucianism. Comparative Political Theory 1 (2021) 126-134 the place of confucianism in pluralist east asia 133 responsible for the repression of Confucianism. Once this foreign radicalism was abandoned, this narrative goes, it is no coincidence that Confucianism has once again been favored by the Chinese state. Therefore, rather than fearing the state, these Confucians have good reason to welcome a stronger state, as this is the very body that Confucianism needs for its spirit to stop the homeless wandering. This is the memory of many illiberal, statist, and strongly perfectionist Confucians in East Asia, particularly China, and it is hard to prove that this narrative construction is entirely baseless. If the effectiveness of Shklar’s theory in defending a liberal democracy relies heavily on a certain memory or experience, I am afraid that it would not attract these Confucians who do not share the same memory with Christians, Muslims, and other dissidents in East Asia. 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