Communitarian Interpretation of Confucianism and Just Hierarchy
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’ audien...
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| Contributors: | |
| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Peeters
2022
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| In: |
Ethical perspectives
Year: 2022, Volume: 29, Issue: 4, Pages: 407-422 |
| Review of: | Just hierarchy (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2020) (Duan, Demin)
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
China
/ Communitarianism
/ Confucianism
/ Political theory
/ Philosophy
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| RelBib Classification: | BM Chinese universism; Confucianism; Taoism KBM Asia NCD Political ethics VA Philosophy |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | 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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| ISSN: | 1783-1431 |
| Reference: | Kritik in "Response to Critics (2023)"
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Ethical perspectives
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2143/EP.29.4.3291687 |