Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:10:20.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Confucianism and Multivariate Democracy in East Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2019

Zhuoyao Li
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Sungmoon Kim's pragmatic Confucian democracy tries to provide a mediating position between the instrumental model and the intrinsic model of democracy. However, this model of Confucian democracy is problematic because it fails to justify the unique role Confucianism plays in accommodating democracy when it is one among many comprehensive doctrines in East Asia. To be truly pragmatic about democracy is to hold a pluralistic attitude toward how people will come to terms with it. This article aims to push the pragmatic tendency further and propose an alternative model of democracy that has a multivariate structure, a neutral state, and an active public role for Confucianism. This multivariate model represents a more promising future for democracy in East Asia.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , Summer 2019 , pp. 459 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This paper was presented at the 14th Manchester Center for Political Theory (MANCEPT) Workshop in Manchester, UK. I am grateful for the comments from participants in the panel on Confucian political theory. I am also thankful for criticisms and suggestions from Alessandro Ferrara, Sungmoon Kim, and David Rasmussen.

References

1 Throughout this article, Confucianism is understood as a conception of the good life that involves a systematic theorization about human life concerning a range of values, including moral, metaphysical, and religious commitments, as well as beliefs about personal virtues and political beliefs about the way society ought to be arranged. This Rawlsian understanding of comprehensive doctrine is adopted to set up both neutral and nonneutral understandings of the state in relation to comprehensive doctrines, such as Confucianism. Democracy, on the other hand, is understood in this article as a political system by and for the people that respects citizens’ free and equal status as moral agents and political participants. This definition of democracy is intentionally loose to accommodate different types of democratic arrangements so that liberal democracy and Confucian democracy can be compared in a meaningful way. See Rawls, John, Political Liberalism, expanded ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 59Google Scholar.

2 I borrow this classification from He, Baogang, “Four Models of the Relationship between Confucianism and Democracy,” Contemporary Chinese Political Thought: Debates and Perspectives, ed. Dallmayr, Fred and Zhao, Tingyang (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), 131–51Google Scholar. The four models are sometimes presented differently, for instance in Doh Chull Shin's characterization of a three-model debate between compatibility, incompatibility, and convergence (Shin, Doh Chull, Confucianism and Democratization in East Asia [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012], 68–70Google Scholar).

3 For instance, in China, one of the central messages of the May the Fourth Movement in the 1910s was the corruptive effect of Confucianism, which ought to be replaced by Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science. Confucianism was also used to suppress democratic reforms. Chiang Kai-Shek employed Confucianism in the 1930s and 1940s in mainland China and then in the 1970s in Taiwan to contain the trend toward democratization. Similar approach was also seen in Singapore in the 1980s when Confucianism was used as a justification for Asian values against Western democratic influence.

4 The critical model is different from the conflict model in that the former not only admits the conflicting relationship between Confucianism and democracy but also reverses the usual order of judgment. In contrast to the supposedly Eurocentric point of view, the critical model argues that Confucianism ought to be judge of democratic merits and demerits. Both Kang Xiaoguang and Jiang Qing have developed critiques of liberal democracy that represent this model. Jiang Qing even proposed a highly controversial theory of political Confucianism that he calls Confucian constitutionalism. See Qing, Jiang, A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China's Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future, ed. Bell, Daniel A. and Fan, Ruiping, trans. Ryden, Edmund (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

5 Compatibility has become a mainstream model among Confucian scholars who wish to facilitate democratization of East Asia. See Cheng, Chung-ying, “Transforming Confucian Virtues into Human Rights,” in Confucianism and Human Rights, ed. de Bary, William Theodore and Weiming, Tu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 142–53Google Scholar. Also see Yu, Yingshi, Anthology of Yu Yingshi, vol. 2, Traditional Chinese Thought and Its Present Day Transformation, and vol. 6, Democracy and Modern Civilization (Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, 2004)Google Scholar. Also see Lin, Yusheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Anti-traditionalism in the May Fourth Era (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 1988)Google Scholar.

6 This model is different from the simpler view of compatibility in that the former does not assume a smooth convergence between Confucianism and democracy. Instead, the hybrid model recognizes inherent tensions between Confucianism and (especially liberal) democracy, and it aims to take the best elements from both worlds in order to produce the most ideal result. The hybrid model is more commonly found in more liberal-minded Confucian thinkers who wish to incorporate at least some liberal democratic ideals and institutions in their views of political Confucianism. See Chan, Joseph, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Kim, Sungmoon, Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic-Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Kim, Sungmoon, “Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Rethinking the Value of Democracy in East Asia,” Journal of Politics 79, no. 1 (Jan. 2017): 237–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 On this multivariate model, I draw arguments from Li, Zhuoyao, “The Discontents of Moderate Political Confucianism and the Future of Democracy in East Asia,” Philosophy East & West 68, no. 4 (Oct. 2018): 1193–218CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Kim, “Pragmatic Confucian Democracy,” 241.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid., 237–49.

12 Ibid., 244–45.

13 Ibid., 245.

14 Ibid., 247.

15 Kim gives the example of gender equality. There is no doubt that traditional Confucianism has long been rationalizing its androcentric, patrimonial, and patriarchal tendencies. However, “in the post-democratic constitutional and societal context in which the value of gender equality is publicly recognized, all sorts of gender inequalities that have severely injured the equal public standing of women … are to be rectified in ways that can elevate them as equal … citizens who can actively participate in public decision-making processes without fear” (ibid., 247–48).

16 For a comprehensive empirical study on the role of Confucianism in contemporary East Asia, see Shin, Confucianism and Democratization. Also see Chan, Joseph, Shin, Doh Chull, and Williams, Melissa, eds., East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 The term “reasonable pluralism” necessarily carries a Rawlsian and liberal connotation. One might argue that the kind of pluralism in East Asia is quite different from what Rawls has in mind for advanced liberal democracies. This statement is true only to a certain extent. It is true because East Asia does not share the Western history of the Reformation and the Wars of Religion, which directly contribute to the modern understanding of liberty of conscience and freedom of thought that produce the fact of reasonable pluralism in advanced liberal democracies. However, like many of Rawls's concepts, reasonable pluralism can be stripped of its strong liberal and Western connotation. For instance, from the Hundred Schools of Thought during the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period in ancient China to the recent clash between Asian values and Western Enlightenment ideas, East Asian societies have their own historical experience that directly contributes to the rise of a diversity of comprehensive doctrines, including both religious and nonreligious doctrines, that coexist with one another. This pluralism, like the kind Rawls has in mind for advanced liberal democracies, is the natural outcome of the activities of human reason and the pursuit of free institutions. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, xxiv.

18 Chan, Confucian Perfectionism, 199–200.

19 Kim, Sungmoon, “Public Reason Confucianism: A Construction,” American Political Science Review 109, no. 1 (Feb. 2015): 193CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Byong-ik, Koh, “Confucianism in Contemporary Korea,” in Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity, ed. Wei-ming, Tu (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 193Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., 194.

22 Association of Religion Data Archives, http://www.thearda.com/internationalData/countries/Country_124_2.asp, accessed October 16th, 2017.

23 Shin, Confucianism and Democratization, 104. Shin's research divides world cultures into seven categories: democratic West, ex-communist West, South Asia, Muslim zone, East Asia, Latin America, and Africa. When it comes to preference for individualism, which is opposite to what traditional Confucianism requires, East Asia has a 25.5% favoring rate, which is higher than that in South Asia (21.9%), Latin America (23.9%), Africa (10.4%), and Muslim zone (7.1%). Democratic West and ex-communist West, in contrast, have favoring rates of 46% and 39.9%, respectively. See Table 3.5 in ibid., 97.

24 Kim, “Pragmatic Confucian Democracy,” 246.

25 For a discussion of how different comprehensive doctrines can utilize their internal resources to accommodate democracy on the basis of the democratic ethos of their cultures, see Ferrara, Alessandro, The Democratic Horizon: Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), chaps. 3 and 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 See Li, “Discontents of Moderate Political Confucianism.” One way to avoid this problem is to enlarge the scope of the mutual accommodation thesis to include non-Confucian doctrines, but this would certainly take away the central point of pragmatic Confucian democracy.

27 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 13.

28 Kim, Public Reason Confucianism, 93.

29 See Public Reason Confucianism, chaps. 3–4, where Kim analyzes a landmark court decision in South Korea where the Constitutional Court declared the family-head system (hojuje) to be unconstitutional, and the Korean Supreme Court case regarding membership within clan organizations (chongjung), where the court ruled that women are entitled to formal membership with all accompanying rights of their paternal clan organization.

30 Ibid., 123.

31 Ibid., 124.

32 These two distinctions are problematic in their own ways. Rawls's distinction between fully and partially comprehensive doctrines is underappreciated primarily because it is difficult to distinguish between the two kinds of comprehensive doctrines since they both appeal to epistemological and metaphysical claims. As for the distinction between direct and indirect constitutional values, Kim is essentially broadening the scope of constitutionalism beyond its intended legal scope. This is problematic because it opens the door for comprehensive doctrines to exert influence on constitutional values, which might endanger the objectivity and impartiality of constitutional essentials.

33 Ibid., 136.

34 Ibid., 100, emphasis original.

35 Ibid., 5. For instance, Jiang Qing's tricameral Confucian constitutionalism is perhaps the most notorious example of extreme Confucian perfectionism that aims to establish Confucianism as a state religion/philosophy. But even in this theory there is the House of the People representing popular legitimacy, which is supposed to balance the House of Ru, which represents sacred legitimacy, and the House of the Nation, which represents cultural legitimacy. See Qing Jiang, “The Way of the Humane Authority: The Theoretical Basis for Confucian Constitutionalism and a Tricameral Parliament,” in A Confucian Constitutional Order, 41.

36 Kim, Public Reason Confucianism, 6.

37 In this section, I draw arguments from Li, “Discontents of Moderate Political Confucianism.”

38 Rawls, Political Liberalism, xvi.

39 Ibid., 5.

40 Ferrara, Democratic Horizon, 90.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., 100. This leads Ferrara to modify Rawls's famous opening question in Political Liberalism: “how is it possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens, who remain profoundly divided by religious, philosophical and moral doctrines some of which are reasonable and susceptible of giving rise to an overlapping consensus, and some of which are only partially reasonable, display only an incomplete acceptance of the burdens of judgment and cannot be brought to endorse all of the constitutional essentials?” (Democratic Horizon, 91).

43 Ferrara, Democratic Horizon, 106. Also see Rawls, John, The Law of Peoples, with The Idea of Public Reason Revisited (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

44 Ferrara, Democratic Horizon, 106.

45 Ibid., 106–7.

46 Ibid., 107–8.

47 Ibid., 107. To be clear, this multivariate view, which leads to a multivariate democratic polity, is not supposed to replace overlapping consensus or constitutional essentials. Instead, it works to “supplement, not to replace public reason.” This is so because in hyperpluralist contexts, a stock of shared reasons from which to generate hopefully shareable conclusions “may simply be too thin for conclusions of any consequence to be drawn,” which leads public reason to be idle and inoperative (Ferrara, Alessandro, “Political Liberalism Revisited: A Paradigm for Liberal Democracy in the 21st Century,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 42, no. 7 [Sept. 2016]: 690)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 I am not suggesting that hyperpluralism as described by Ferrara in the context of advanced liberal democracies is actually experienced among East Asian societies. Instead, I am arguing that the highly divided sociocultural condition created by hyperpluralism in advanced liberal democracies is strikingly similar to the divided attitude toward democracy in East Asia. Hence, Ferrara's analysis can be repurposed to examine the relationship between Confucianism and democracy in the context of this discussion.

49 Chan, Joseph, “Confucian Attitudes toward Ethical Pluralism,” in Confucian Political Ethics, ed. Bell, Daniel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 113–38Google Scholar.

50 The latter point requires some clarification. Conjecture constitutes a form of argumentation for Rawls. While public reason aims to arrive at binding conclusions from shared premises, conjectural arguments do not presuppose shared premises. Instead, the ideal form of conjectural arguments is of the kind “because you believe x, you have all reasons to accept y.” In other words, people could conjecturally endorse democracy by finding resources and motivations from within their comprehensive doctrines, which is an approach already taken by many scholars who work within the hybrid and compatibility models of the relationship between Confucianism and democracy. See Ferrara, Democratic Horizon, chaps. 3 and 5, for how conjectural arguments can be applied to accommodate reasonable pluralism and multiple democracies.

51 It is worth drawing a distinction between a full-fledged democracy where Confucianism is one of many comprehensive doctrines, and a Confucian decent society where a large majority of citizens actively subscribe to and endorse Confucianism. I use the term “decent society” in the Rawlsian sense, which in the Confucian context refers to a society where Confucianism serves as the guiding doctrine for policy and legislation. Although a Confucian decent society might be a reasonable idea when Confucianism is the major religious-ethical culture in a society, it is perhaps too unstable to avert the risk of collapsing into more comprehensive or even authoritarian forms of political Confucianism given the highly pluralistic condition of East Asian societies.

52 Kim, “Public Reason Confucianism: A Construction,” 187.

53 I argue this point more fully in Li, “Discontents of Moderate Political Confucianism.”

54 Kim, “Public Reason Confucianism: A Construction,” 198.

55 Besides the passion for openness, Ferrara also includes the passion for the common good, the passion for equality and equal recognition, and the passion for individuality as key elements in the spirit of democracy (Democratic Horizon, 48).

56 Some Confucian political theorists will find this conclusion much easier to accept. For instance, Stephen Angle borrows the concept of “self-restriction” from neo-Confucian thinker Mou Zongsan and develops what he calls “progressive Confucian political philosophy” that shows that a limited government, a constitution, laws, and rights are in fact required by Confucianism if it is to realize its own goals. See Angle, Stephen, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy: Toward Progressive Confucianism (Cambridge: Polity, 2012), 29Google Scholar.

57 An-Na'im, Abdullahi Ahmed, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari'a (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 An-Na'im, Abdullahi Ahmed, “Islamic Politics and the Neutral Sate: A Friendly Amendment to Rawls?,” in Rawls and Religion, ed. Bailey, Tom and Gentile, Valentina (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 257Google Scholar.

61 Ibid., 261–63.

62 An-Na'im, Islam and the Secular State, 8.

63 See Li Chi: Book of Rites, ed. Chai, C. C. and Chai, W., trans. Legge, James (New York: University Books, 1967), chap. 2Google Scholar.

64 Kim, “Public Reason Confucianism: A Construction,” 193.

65 Michael Auslin, “Asia's Promise Gives Way to Its Growing List of Troubles,” Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/asias-precarious-rise-1488559173, accessed April 21, 2017.

66 In the European Union, for instance, Article 25 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union mentions the “rights of the elderly to lead a life of dignity and independence and to participate in social and cultural life” without resorting to controversial comprehensive doctrines (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf, accessed May 10, 2017).

67 Both Sungmoon Kim's public reason Confucianism and Joseph Chan's political Confucianism are confronted with this objection. See Kim, Public Reason Confucianism, 241–45; Chan, Confucian Perfectionism, 204.

68 For this reason, I have been avoiding a precise definition of democracy so as to make room for a diversity of arrangements to be made even within the same multivariate model suggested here. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me on this issue.

69 For Confucian public reason, see Kim, Public Reason Confucianism.

70 Again, I am not completely ruling out the potentially reasonable approach to form a Confucian decent society where Confucianism is actively endorsed by a large majority of citizens. But whether or not this society can be democratic is an entirely different question that I have no room to address here.

71 An-Na'im, Islam and the Secular State, 89.