Confucius, Rawls, and the Sense of Justice

Acknowledgments

xi a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s I owe debts of gratitude to many who helped in various ways and at different stages of this project. I thank P. J. Ivanhoe for encouraging me to write a new book that reflected my evolving ideas about justice and Confucianism instead of simply revising my previous work on this topic, for conversations about the shape of this project, and for his extremely insightful comments and suggestions on multiple drafts of the manuscript. P.J. and his wife, Hong Jiang, are among the most generous people I know, and I am deeply grateful for their continued friendship and support. I also thank Bob Baird, who provided invaluable training in the rigors of reading Rawls, and who originally suggested that I explore the capacity for a sense of justice more intensively. As my work evolved following the completion of my Ph.D., he continued to offer encouragement and helpful feedback. He has taught me more than I could possibly express here, and I am truly thankful for the support Bob and his wife, Alice, have provided. I hope this book honors the memory of their daughter Kathy’s tireless work for social justice. I also want to thank Michael Puett, who read and commented on the entire manuscript, offered encouragement, and helped me to find the right publisher. I have great admiration for him as a scholar, and even greater admiration for him as a person. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to Ronnie Littlejohn, who was an incredibly supportive mentor and a decisive influence in my decision to study Chinese and comparative philosophy. I am also grateful to Henry Rosemont, who encouraged and supported me both as an undergraduate and as a graduate student. When I initially began to work on the subject of justice in relation to Confucianism, his probing questions helped me to strengthen and refine my views. Thanks are also due to the following individuals for their comments on various parts of the manuscript at various stages of its development: Steve Angle, Daniel Bell, Mark Berkson, Eric Hutton, Craig Ihara, Leigh Jenco, Sungmoon Kim, David Mungello, John P. Reeder Jr., Stuart Rosenbaum, Aaron Stalnaker, Justin Tiwald, and Bryan Van Norden. I also want to thank an anonymous reviewer for xii Acknowledgments Fordham University Press for helpful comments and suggestions on the entire manuscript. I presented material from this book in many different forums over the years, and I am grateful to audiences at the City University of Hong Kong, Fairfield University, Georgetown University, the Oregon Humanities Center, the University of Oregon, and the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion, the American Philosophical Association , and the Association for Asian Studies for helpful comments and questions that influenced the final form of this work. For my discussion of the Nurse-Family Partnership in Chapter 5 I am indebted to conversations with Tom and Carole Hanks, from whom I initially learned of the program. I thank the journal Dao for permission to include portions of my “Confucian Ethics, Public Policy, and the Nurse-Family Partnership,” a more focused precursor to part of Chapter 5. I also thank Dao for permission to include work that appeared in an earlier form as an article entitled “Two Senses of Justice” (Volume 6.4, 2007: 361–81), which is an early formulation of some of the ideas I develop in this book. The feedback I received from the editor, Huang Yong; two anonymous referees for Dao; and the commentators and members of the audience at the Dao Best Essay Award panel at the APA contributed greatly to the development of this work. Thanks to Georgetown University, the Oregon Humanities Center, and the University of Oregon for grants and fellowships that supported the writing of this book. I owe special thanks to my colleagues at Georgetown University and the University of Oregon for encouragement throughout the process of seeing it to completion. I am particularly grateful to Mark Unno for his advice and for his unfailing generosity and friendship. I want to express my appreciation to the entire editorial team at Fordham University Press. I am especially grateful to Helen Tartar, my editor, for her advice and encouragement, and to Thomas Lay for his invaluable assistance. I also thank Eric Newman for providing excellent copy editing and for his guidance and attention to detail throughout the editing process. Finally, I want...