A hundred years after the Xinhai Revolution, a centennial judgment has to be made by an impartial observer for the interest of China’s constitutional cause. Despite its sharp language, the main theme of the Manifesto is to explore the conditions and mechanisms of constitutional transformation, as well as the way out of the hopeless historical cycle of reform and revolution. It analyzes the cultural syndrome under absolute despotism and the difficulties it has caused to constitutional transformation, and presents the human dignity theory of modernized Confucianism as a possible solution to transform the Chinese moral and political personality.

Chapter 9 suggests how Hinduism and Confucianism may be understood in relation to the construct of transcendentalism in order to set up a discussion of India and China in the final chapter. (Unearthly Powers had largely taken Christianity, Islam and Buddhism as the main examples of transcendentalist traditions.) This involves a consideration of distinct forms that the Axial Age took in both regions and the religious and philosophical traditions that emerged from them. The diverse traditions coming under the umbrellas of Hinduism and Confucianism represent very substantial continuity with the immanentist pre-Axial past, especially in a fundamental emphasis on the role of ritual action. However, they also incorporated Axial elements, particularly an emphasis on liberation/salvation in the case of Hinduism and ethical rectitude in the case of Confucianism. Confucianism remains the most awkward fit within the mould of transcendentalism because of the absence of a soteriological imperative.

Rich historical records from pre-modern Japan allow us to imagine ‘sexuality’ despite the absence of an explicit lexicon referring to it. The chapter examines three systems of thought: the Kami (Deities) Way, Mahayana Buddhism, and Confucianism. The Kami Way was the native cult and the spiritual foundation for Japan’s first state. Inscribed in its texts such as the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters, 712 CE) are vivid descriptions of deities’ bodies and performances steeped in symbolic meanings. Buddhism’s treatment of sexuality varied as widely as its diverse offerings of doctrines and practices. At least for the priestly figures, however, it denounced desire for and intercourse with women but affirmed sex with men. Confucianism, which arrived from the continent alongside Buddhism, taught social order and disapproved of all human relations, including sexual ones, that threatened the stable moral order and the gender hierarchy. The three systems of thought operated symbiotically, and reflected and shaped social rules, norms, and power relations of a given historical moment. Mostly more celebratory than condemning of the sexual body, pre-modern sources have no vocabulary for virginity as a boundary to be guarded or conquered, nor a body-altering institution such as the castration of eunuchs.

What is intergenerational responsibility? The present chapter aims at answering this question by demonstrating the following two points. First, future-oriented responsibility essentially requires past-oriented responsibility and vice versa (I call the former the ‘foreseeing-care-prevention’ type and the latter the ‘letting-the-dead-be’ type). Hence, second, intergenerational responsibility is composed of these two different and interdependent types of responsibility. I begin by clarifying what is meant by the foreseeing-care-prevention-type. Interpreting Derek Parfit and Hans Jonas, I try to characterize it in detail. Then I address the letting-the-dead-be type. In this context, I deal with Confucianism and the Japanese philosopher Tetsurô Watsuji. Lastly, I discuss how both of the types of responsibility are interconnected with each other, and conclude that our intergenerational responsibility means that we are responsible for future people and responsible to past generations at the same time.

This chapter considers how Confucian values constitute constitutional identity in three Confucian-influenced countries in Asia: China, South Korea, and Singapore. Drawing on Professor Gary Jacobsohn’s framework for the comparative study of constitutional identity, this contribution argues that Confucian commitments are embodied in the formal and/or prescriptive constitutions in the three Asian jurisdictions. The constitutions’ Confucian heritages are continuously dynamic. Disharmony provokes a change in Confucian constitutional identity. The change involves not only judicial but also social and political activities.

This chapter engages with the world of ghosts and spirits (guishen 鬼神) in the classical Chinese tradition. While there has been agreement about the existence of ghosts, their status and the duties of currently living humans to them is all but clear. We argue that a Confucian innovation consists in acknowledging the existence of the spirit world in an “as if” mode. In this conception, humans share obligations of respect while they are well advised to practice attentive distancing to these beings. The mechanisms governing a haunted cosmos are ultimately beyond human comprehension. Ghosts are stand-ins and correctives who reveal the limits of human control and comprehension. We conclude by discussing the potential contributions of this Confucian conception of ghosts and spirits to contemporary debates on intergenerational justice.

This chapter explores the concept of virtue (de) in Confucianism and Daoism, which are the two prominent indigenous traditions in ancient China. It is argued that virtue, from an ancient Chinese paradigm, is essentially about moral excellence and influence. In the Confucian traditions, virtue is manifested in the exaltation of moral goodness and ethical charisma of exemplary persons. In the Daoist traditions, virtue is encapsulated in the emptying of one’s heart-mind and in noncoercive action. Chinese ethics in the ancient past stress the utmost importance of (inter)personal cultivation of virtues and role-modeling. School leaders, teachers, students, and other educational stakeholders should develop themselves and others morally so as to collectively achieve dao (the Way), which is a shared vision of human excellence.

Why some groups outperform others in academic and professional achievements? Why some countries’ economies grow faster than others? Why are the fastest-growing economies located in East Asia? What role does Confucian heritage play in helping countries in this region to outperform others economically? How do culture, institutions, and policy interact to influence each other?

Two propositions motivate this book. First, a country’s culture influences its economic performance and, second, its economic performance determines its position in the international pecking order. Economic vitality is imperative for sustaining a country’s leading position in world political economy. This vitality depends critically on its mass culture which is not static but rather evolves in response to changing socioeconomic environment.

This chapter conceptualises the Confucian legal tradition as a historically extended and legally embodied Confucian argument. The Confucian legal tradition has three features. First, it is jurisprudentially founded on a set of Confucian concepts and principles justifying the importance of good men. Second, the Confucian argument is embodied in structural institutions and legal codes in premodern and modern East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam). Third, legally embodied Confucian concepts and principles are historically extended for thousands of years from formation, consolidation, and transnationalisation to modernisation.

This chapter situates in the social context of Tokugawa Japan the emergence of a class of scholars who engaged in the production of texts and in practices that aimed at developing authoritative inquiries on the nature of reality and the laws that govern it (metaphysics); the motivations, norms, and aims of moral life (ethics); the function and rules of language (philology and linguistics); the principles of good government (politics); and the legitimation of cognitive claims (epistemology), among others. Operating within different institutional frameworks and through texts circulating in a variety of formats (manuscript and printed commentaries, treatises, glossaries, dictionaries, collected lecture notes, etc.), these scholars (generically known as jusha) developed a philosophical archive that should be regarded as a qualitatively and quantitatively unprecedented event in Japanese history outside Buddhist institutions.

Rising literacy, urbanization, and leisure time in early modern Japan led to increasing popular interaction with politics. This chapter, after confirming the basic political apparatus of the Tokugawa state, demonstrates how the governance carried out within that apparatus interacted with increasingly vibrant expressions of political opinion from outside the state. From erudite Confucian analysis to popular riot and lewd graffiti, this chapter argues that public political opinion and action both influenced and at times was courted by the shogunal government. Political discussions in salon and popular culture outside the state introduced key new political ideas which transformed the ideal of governance in Japan from a minimalist concept of military domination and agricultural facilitation to a much more comprehensive vision of general welfare and development.

After a general survey of the situation in China, attention turns to Daoism and Confucianism and the conflicting interpretations of their key concepts of ‘the Way’ and ‘Heaven.’ A number of reasons are given for considering their approach religious. With Daoism the specific case considered is how Christianity might learn from its approach to the beginning and end of life, in critique of the traditional doctrine of the Fall at the beginning and too tenacious a desire for permanence at its end. With Confucianism the social value of ritual is considered. The work of Daniel Bell and Stephen Angle are used to argue the need for the sacred underpinning of contemporary democracy. Finally, the extent of the change in Buddhism as it adopted the Mahayana position is considered. Here most attention is devoted to the type of arguments deployed for the necessity of change from Shakyamuni’s original message, particularly as presented in the Lotus Sutra.