Chenyang Li

While largely agreeing with Ruiping Fan, Chenyang Li makes three points regarding the handling of COVID-19. First, in addition to state capacity, social trust, and leadership, as identified by Francis Fukuyama, factors responsible for successful pandemic responses include the value of individual freedom upheld by citizens. A high level of individual freedom can make it difficult to implement strict measures even when they are objectively necessary. Second, a strong state can be effective in handling a pandemic, but without checks and balances it also runs the risk of leading a country into a major catastrophe. Third, Confucian ethics and other ethics can aid in coping with the pandemic. However, their efficacy is not unlimited, and ultimately, human survival overrides other concerns.

He (和), or harmony, has traditionally been a central concept in Chinese thought, and to this day continues to shape the way in which people in China and East Asia think about ethics and politics. Yet, there is no systematic and comprehensive introduction of harmony as has been variously articulated in different Chinese schools. This edited volume aims to fill this gap. The individual contributions elaborate the conceptions of harmony as these were exemplified in central Chinese schools of thought, including Daoism, Confucianism, Legalism, Mohism, Buddhism, and trace their impact on contemporary Chinese philosophy. The volume explores the various meanings and implications of harmony so as to consider its relevance as a value and virtue in the modern world. It provides an accessible but substantial introductory work for readers interested in learning about pertinent core concepts and theories in Chinese thought, as well as engages specialists in Chinese philosophy by explicating its implications for ethical, political, epistemological, and metaphysical reflection as the basic point of reference.

In this volume, leading scholars in Asian and comparative philosophy take the work of Joel J. Kupperman as a point of departure to consider new perspectives on Confucian ethics. Kupperman is one of the few eminent Western philosophers to have integrated Asian philosophical traditions into his thought, developing a character-based ethics synthesizing Western, Chinese, and Indian philosophies. With their focus on Confucian ethics, contributors respond, expand, and engage in critical dialogue with Kupperman’s views. Kupperman joins the conversation with responses and comments that conclude the volume.

As both Chinese philosophy and Indian philosophy have been largely marginalized on the world stage of philosophy in contemporary times, there is a pressing need to bring these voices into the discourse of world philosophy. This essay explores the value of taking into account the Confucian idea of harmony for postcolonial solitary and for a more equitable polycentric global academy. I explicate the concept and the value of harmony as exemplified in Confucian philosophy. I examine reasons of the disappearance of harmony in dominant Western philosophical discourse by comparing various conceptions of harmony in the West. Greek philosophers Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Plato presented competing conceptions of harmony; whereas Heraclitian processive harmony presupposes opposites, tension and conflict, Pythagorean harmony and Platonic harmony are founded on a pre-determined order. In the contemporary West, from Karl Popper to Martha Nussbaum, harmony has been treated with disdain while it is taken in a Platonic sense. In East Asia, both Confucianism and Daoism take harmony/harmonization as an effective way to accommodate diversity and difference. I will then focus on the Confucian dynamic notion of “harmony with difference” and argue that such a conception is far from naiveté and it has important implications if it is taken seriously in contemporary philosophical discourse.

When asked why we are friends with someone, we often point to her good virtues as reasons. If these are the reasons, we have equal reasons to be friends with anyone with such virtues, and we can even replace current friends with anyone with the same or better virtues without substantive loss in friendship. However, it does not seem right that a particular friend is replaceable by just any other person with the same or better virtues. This is the fungibility problem of friendship. This essay outlines a Confucian response to the problem on the basis of the Confucian family-based conception of friendship and the Confucian understanding of particularized virtues. First, in the Confucian understanding, true friends are like family members, toward whom we have special obligations. Family members are nonfungible, and so are friends. Second, even though virtues are general traits that can be shared, the formations and practices of virtues are particularized. Confucian thinkers hold that each person configures virtues and exercises virtues in his or her own way depending on specific circumstances, and that persons with the same virtues may nevertheless possess them in varied fashions and exercise different shades of them in particular ways. Thus, persons of the same generic virtues will still retain their particularities as distinctive individuals. We become friends and remain friends with people in part because of their virtues practiced in ways that we appreciate. This notion of particularly exercised virtues makes it practically impossible for two persons to be identical in virtues. On such an understanding, virtuous friends are nevertheless unique and nonfungible.

Daniel A. Bell's recent book The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy makes a significant contribution to political theory, political philosophy, and China studies. The book has already drawn a variety of responses, some of which I believe are due to utter misreadings and misunderstandings. It is therefore important for us to spell out explicitly what kind of work we are dealing with here before we dive into other substantive issues. We should not take this book as an apologetics for the Chinese Communist Party even though it offers both positive and negative assessments of the Chinese communist regime, as any...

At the twenty-second World Congress of Philosophy held in Seoul, Korea, from July 29 to August 5, 2008, a panel was convened to debate the ideas for a "democracy with Confucian characteristics'' in Daniel A. Bell's Beyond Liberal Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). While all participants welcome the attempt to remedy the shortcomings of liberal democracy with Confucian teachings, Fred Dallmayr worries that Bell's political thinking for an East Asian context may "point beyond democracy tout court/' For Sor-hoon Tan, Bell's chapter 6, "Taking Elitism Seriously: Democracy with Confucian Characteristics" may not be so much an alternative to liberalism as it is a challenge to the democratic value of equality that overlooks the dangers of an imperfect meritocracy. Chenyang Li, on the other hand, approaches Bell's proposal of combining a Confucianism-inspired Upper House of Talent and Virtue selected through competitive examinations with a lower house of democratically elected representatives from the concern that it surrenders the Confucian requirement of virtuous leadership. This feature review also concludes with a spirited reply from Daniel Bell.

Jiyuan Yu 余纪元, professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Executive Director of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy since 2012, passed away on November 3, 2016, after a two-year battle with cancer. His passing is a major loss to many, especially to the international community of Chinese and comparative philosophy.Born in China, Jiyuan was among the first batches of students entering universities after the Cultural Revolution. One of the youngest of his university peers, he developed a keen interest in Greek philosophy and went overseas to study at the University of Guelph and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1994. After a...

It is a great honor to have colleagues engaging in a meaningful discussion of my book. I appreciate my critics’ thoughtful and constructive criticisms as well as exceedingly generous praises. Due to space limitations, I will confine my response to some key issues raised here. I will begin with Yao Xinzhong’s criticism of my claim and argument on the centrality of harmony in Confucian philosophy. Yao reads my view as being that harmony is the central concept or ideal in Confucian philosophy, which I take to mean that harmony has been the central concept or ideal in Confucian philosophy up to this point. Understood this way, that is not my argument in the book. My claims in the book are more...

Joseph Chan’s Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times is a milestone in the contemporary study of Confucian political philosophy. In this remarkable work, Chan presents his version of Confucian perfectionism, aiming to balance liberalism and Confucianism as a solution to reconstructing a political philosophy in response to contemporary challenges. I am sympathetic to much of what Chan has to say in the book. I agree that, rather than merely being an ethical theory, Confucianism can and should have a place in political philosophy. I also agree that Confucianism can coexist with democracy1 and that human rights can and should be instituted as a fallback apparatus. This essay is not...

By investigating the link between the Confucian ideal of longevity and moral cultivation, I argue that Confucian moral cultivation is founded on the ideal of harmony, and, in this connection, it promotes a holistic, healthy life, of which longevity is an important component. My argument is internal to Confucianism, in the sense that it aims to show these concepts are coherently constructed within the Confucian philosophical framework; I do not go beyond the Confucian framework to prove its validity. Finally, I show that if these Confucian beliefs are true, they have serious implications for public policy-making in contemporary societies.

The materialist thesis that there is a type-type identity between certain mental phenomena and certain physical phenomena has encountered serious criticisms. This paper is to propose a revised form of mind-body identity theory which moves forward from the token identity theory and can stand the major criticism made against the type-type identity theory. In the first part of the paper, through a very brief review of the issue I show what needs to be done; in the second part, I show how my solution avoids the difficulties that have troubled the type-type identity theory.

SCIENTISTS HAVE DISCOVERED that water is H2O. Water is H2O is true. But is it a necessary truth? In other words, is it true in all possible worlds? Some people think it is. For example Hilary Putnam, in his well-known Twin Earth argument, concludes that "water is H2O" is necessarily true; thus a liquid which phenomenally resembles H2O and fits the description of water in almost all aspects, but has the chemical formula XYZ, cannot be water. Saul Kripke has made a similar claim about the necessary identity between water and H2O. Because this type of truth is based on empirical discoveries, Kripke calls truths of this sort "necessary a posteriori." The thesis shared by Putnam and Kripke has two premises: a realist view that natural kinds exist independently of human cognition, and a theory of direct reference of natural kind terms. Opposing the view that natural kind terms pick out objects through descriptions, Putnam and Kripke hold that natural kind terms pick out natural kinds in the world in a direct way. Based on these two premises, they argue that, if two natural kind terms, A and B, designate the same thing in the world, "A = B" expresses a necessary identity.

The traditional ontology is a substance-ontology. It is the ontology that an object is primarily a substance, which has a definite being and properties. A lot of philosophical problems are tied to this ontology. I deconstruct the ontology of substance and propose a being-ontology. It is a way to see the world, instead of as a totality of substances, as a totality of ways of being. It has two theses. First, an object is not viewed as a substance which has properties, but as an entity that has various ways of being, among which one may be viewed as prominent in certain circumstances and another in other circumstances. For example, an object is a statue, it is also a piece of marble, and many more; it is itself no more a statue than a piece of marble, nor more a piece of marble than a statue, but can be viewed as prominently a statue or a piece of marble depending on circumstances. Second, the being of an object is contextually constituted. That is, while an object has a variety of being, each being is constituted in a context. Without a context, no being can be constituted. Thus, my ontology may be viewed at two levels. On the being level, each being is contextually constituted; on the entity level, each entity is a totality of its various ways of being. My ontology is feministic and democratic, in a very broad sense of these terms, in that it deconstructs the 'totalitarian' core of objects and allows a variety of being on their own right. My ontology has consequences for other branches of philosophy. For instance, it explains why in aesthetic critiques the same object may be subject to two or more equally well-grounded assessments. Without the conception of substance, my notion of identity is relative and context-dependent. Using this ontology I offer solutions to a number of metaphysical problems, such as individual identity, personal identity, and mind-body identity, etc

Harmony has become a major challenge for modern governance in the twenty-first century because of the multi-religious, multi-racial and multi-ethnic character of our increasingly globalized societies. Governments all over the world are facing growing pressure to integrate the many diverse elements and subcultures which make up modern pluralistic societies. This book examines the idea of harmony, and its place in politics and governance, both in theory and practice, in Asia, the West and elsewhere. It explores and analyses the meanings, mechanisms, dimensions and methodologies of harmony as a normative political ideal in both Western and Asian philosophical traditions. The book argues that in Western political thought - which sees politics as primarily concerned with resolving social conflicts and protecting individual rights - the concept of harmony has often been neglected. In contrast, since earliest times harmony or ‘he’ has been a profound theme in Confucian thought, and current leaders of many East Asian governments, and the Chinese government, have explicitly declared that the realisation of a harmonious society is their aim. The book also assesses how harmony is pursued, jeopardized or deformed in the real world of politics, based upon empirical analysis of a variety of different cultural, social and political contexts, including: China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Denmark, Latin America and the Scandinavian countries. It shows how harmony as an organizing concept can help to promote new thinking in governance, and overcome problems of modern-day governance like distrust, adversarial conflicts, hyper-individualism, coercive state intervention, and free-market alienation. It also discusses the potential problems posed by the pursuit of harmony, in particular in the grave threat of totalitarianism, and considers how these risks could best be mitigated.

Freedom is intrinsic to a good life. An account of the Confucian conception of the good life must include a reasonable conception of freedom. Studies in Chinese ideas of freedom, however, have been focused mostly on Daoism. A quick survey of some fine books on Chinese philosophy shows little result on Confucian freedom.1 In this essay, I argue that attributing a notion of “free will” to Confucian philosophy has serious limitations; it will be more fruitful to draw on contemporary feminist theories of freedom and autonomy, particularly the notion of autonomy competency, in explicating Confucian freedom. Thus, I articulate the Confucian notion of freedom in terms of choosing , and advance a Confucian ..

This article offers a study of the early formation and development of the ideal of harmony in ancient Chinese philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy. It shows that, unlike the Pythagorean notion of harmony, which is primarily based on a linear progressive model with a pre-set order, the ancient Chinese concept of harmony is best understood as a comprehensive process of harmonization. It encompasses spatial as well as temporal dimensions, metaphysical as well as moral and aesthetical dimensions. It is a fundamentally open notion in the sense that it does not aim to conform to any pre-set order. This broader, richer, and more liberal understanding of harmony has had a profound influence on Chinese culture as whole in its long history.