A Reply to Professor El Amine

After reading Professor El Amine’s response to my review of her Classical Confucian Political Thought, I realize we are not as far apart on many issues as it appeared. Nevertheless, some areas of substantive disagreement remain. I will take the opportunity to highlight a couple of these.

One is whether the good qualities expected of the common people should be properly considered virtues, that is, whether they are different in kind from the virtues that mark a superior man or even potentially a sage. This is especially relevant because it bears on the question of whether “political order, not moral edification, is the end” of the moral education that we agree is part of government’s role (p. 15). I still think they are not distinguished as sharply as she does. She makes a good case that the four virtues are rarely mentioned in connection with the common people in Mencius. Still, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In the Analects, filial piety and fraternality seem to be expected of everyone, commoner or member of the elite, and these are clearly connected to the possibility of benevolence. Adherence to ritual also seems expected of everyone, even if the ritual practices are different.

I can happily agree that it was never expected of the government to make people into sages. Of course, given the likelihood of anyone becoming a sage this would probably be a futile hope, and one can understand why early Confucians felt the government would be better off focusing on a lower standard. Still, there is a more substantive level of moral education than I believe one finds in liberalism. Certainly Confucians never expected a society of superior people, but they did think government ought to play a significant role in encouraging personal virtue. I highlight this point because I think it illustrates where my reading differs from Professor El Amine’s due to our divergent interests. She says, “How Confucianism can be tailored to the modern world is not otherwise the concern of this book” (p. 9). That is the question that interests me the most, and so where Confucianism differs from liberal thought is a special concern of mine.

I respect that it is not for her. Still, given how pervasively the distinction between political or civic virtues and personal moral virtues is identified with liberal philosophy, it seems to me that any suggestion that Confucianism separates ethical and political goods is likely to imply to the casual reader that Confucianism is closely aligned with liberalism in this respect. It is that impression that I want to take care to dispel. When put that way, I hazard a guess that Professor El Amine would agree that they differ quite a bit.

She has made a significant contribution drawing attention to the political goods pursued in classical Confucianism: economic well-being, social stability, and peace between states. I remain a tad curious why she wants to take these as strictly political goods, rather than also helpful, perhaps necessary, conditions for personal moral development. I still insist that political order can be a good in itself and good as a means toward virtue. As Mencius pointed out, it is very difficult for the common people to have a stable heart-mind if they lack a stable livelihood (Mencius 1A7). It seems to me we have a classic case of—as the Chinese saying has it—killing two birds with one arrow. With such an opportunity, why limit the arrow of good government to only one bird?