Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation, by Loubna El Amine (review)

Confucian political philosophy is enjoying a renaissance. In the last two decades a number of significant monographs in English have appeared, to say nothing of the Chinese studies that are virtually beyond count. If they have a common theme, it is that Confucian politics is an extension of its ethical thought. Confucian politics is not a mere application of techniques for producing order, as in Legalism, nor does it separate politics and personal morality, as in liberalism.

Considering a wide array of sources, in Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation, Loubna El Amine notes how prevalent the view is that the goal of politics is moral transformation (p. 4). It is precisely this common sense that she challenges in this book, arguing that “the approach to politics offered in the Classical Confucian texts does not follow from Confucian ethics in any straightforward manner” (p. 9). Instead, she makes the case that political order is a good of its own, not subordinated to ethical realization.

El Amine’s project has a certain audacity to it, challenging the conventional wisdom on Confucian political thought in many ways. To name a few of the more significant ones: virtue is necessary and sufficient for good government; Confucians put personal virtue above serving in an imperfect government; government aims at developing moral virtues in the people; and Confucians were not interested in institutions and policies as means of realizing good government. In many ways, she offers an important corrective to some of the exaggerated claims about Confucian political thought. Her focus on actual policies and regulations is particularly important (chapter 2). However, I remain unconvinced by her central argument that political order and ethical development are not connected in early Confucian thought, which I believe needs some refining. I will focus on a few areas where I think her conclusions are problematic.

First, there is the textual evidence that connects the development of personal virtue, notably filiality, to qualities that contribute to political order. In the Analects there is Youzi’s statement that a filial son will also respect political authority (1.2). The whole idea of extension in the Mencius assumes that familial virtue in particular is a necessary condition for the development of broader social virtues, including political ones. And then there is the example of Shun, whose main qualification for his political appointment was his extreme filial and fraternal behavior. This was enough for Yao to appoint him to office, where he carried out his duties well enough to become the next ruler. In discussing these sections, El Amine notes the tension between familial duties and duties to the state, describing how Confucians tried to remove the tension (pp. 111–113), but curiously does not draw what seems to me the natural conclusion: personal virtue and political virtue are not identical, but the former is a prerequisite for the latter.

One way El Amine addresses this possible objection is through distinguishing desirable qualities for political order from moral virtues. At times she argues that political or civic virtues are a different class than moral virtues (pp. 59, 83, 136–137). Armed with this distinction, she agrees that government does aim at improving people’s dispositions but that these are “dispositions relating to orderliness, not virtuousness” and that this does not amount to “full-blown moral education” (pp. 33–34). This raises some questions. If the claim is that the measure of success of a government is not how many people become sages, I would agree entirely. Of course, given how rare sages are, this should be no surprise.

But why should the qualities that are conducive to political order not be considered virtues? El Amine notes that in the Mencius the four main virtues are rarely associated with the common people (p. 32). Even so, there is no particular textual reason to think that Mencius thought only those qualities should be considered virtues (I’m...