 Welcome. I'm Liz Perry, the director of the Harvard Yenjing Institute. And on behalf of the Harvard Yenjing Institute, it's my pleasure to welcome all of you to this round table entitled, Encountering China, Michael Sandel, and Chinese Philosophy. As you no doubt discovered, when you walked into this event, there is a new book that has just been published by Harvard University Press with exactly that title. And this event was convened to coincide with that publication hot off the press from Harvard University Press. And indeed, we'll have a book signing immediately after this event for those of you who might want to have the author or one of the two editors, I should say, sign the book. This book includes chapters by scholars of Chinese philosophy located both inside and outside of China, commenting on points of convergence and divergence between Professor Sandel's ideas and central concepts in Confucianism and to a lesser extent Taoism. And this round table today provides us with an opportunity to deepen that discussion with leading scholars from Asia, leading scholars of East Asian thought from China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan. It's a chance for us to think about connections and contradictions between Professor Sandel's arguments about social justice, about civic virtue, about communitarianism and republicanism as they relate to themes in East Asian ethical and political thought. It's also an opportunity for us to consider why it is that Professor Sandel's writings and his lectures have resonated so strongly with ordinary people and particularly younger people in China and across East Asia. Professor Sandel first visited China a little over 10 years ago in the spring of 2007. And since then, he's returned six times to China, each of those times for high-profile lectures and book tours, for press interviews and dialogues with prominent Chinese thinkers, symposia on his writings, most recently even participating in a public forum on the Beijing government's proposals to relieve traffic congestion in the city. Now, unfortunately, judging from my last trip to Beijing, Michael, where it took me more than two and a half hours to get from the airport to Beijing University, I don't know how effective that particular intervention was. But in any case, it is a testimony to the enthusiasm with which Michael's ideas are greeted in China. The China Daily, which is the main English-language newspaper in China, put it this way. Professor Sandel is someone who in China has attained, quote, a level of popularity usually reserved for Hollywood movie stars and NBA players. So we have here the Dennis Rodman of the Academy, as it were. And this situation is not limited to China. Professor Sandel fills sports stadiums, holding more than 14,000 people in Seoul. His lectures are aired over NHK in Japan and so forth. And this phenomenon, of course, isn't restricted to East Asia. When I suggested to Michael today as a good date for this roundtable, he modestly asked whether anyone would actually show up on a Friday afternoon to engage in this kind of discussion. And the size of the audience here, I think, is proof of his appeal here at Harvard as well. So what explains this exceptional interest in Professor Sandel's work? He is a professor of government here at Harvard University with many books to his name. But there are, after all, other professors of government at Harvard University with many books to their name. And they don't have the rock star status, either here at Harvard or in East Asia. Of course, a lot of the explanation lies with Michael's wonderful knack in both his writings and his lectures for making difficult philosophical arguments accessible and relevant to current everyday concerns that we all face. Some of this popularity, I think, is also attributable to what I believe to be an admirable thirst on the part of the younger generation in East Asia and in this country as well, searching for answers in a rapidly changing world, a world of commercialization, a world in which technical advances seem to be outpacing our ability to really understand them or to understand their consequences. Here at Harvard, as many of you know, Professor Sandell's huge lecture course on justice has long been one of the most popular courses on campus. And more recently, also, Michael Pughet's course entitled Classical, Chinese, Ethical, and Political Theory has also been a tremendous draw here at Harvard, enrolling hundreds of students every semester. Now, the popularity of these kinds of courses undoubtedly is a testimony to the quality and the charisma of the professors who teach them. But I think they're also a kind of testimony to the thirst of students around the world for solutions to global political and ethical dilemmas and a willingness of students, both in this country and in East Asia, to look beyond the moral conditions or the moral traditions of their own political cultures in seeking meaningful answers. We should all, of course, be cognizant of our own traditions and look within them for answers to contemporary solutions. But it's a time when we're wringing our hands about the rise of youthful nationalism around the world. It's also, I think, refreshing and reassuring to see that there is a kind of youthful cosmopolitanism on the rise and enthusiasm for searching beyond one's own cultural horizons to find resolutions to common problems. So we have this afternoon a wonderful lineup of scholars from East Asia to help us navigate this global philosophical encounter. I would like to just very briefly introduce them to you. Of course, Michael Sandell is right here, the Harvard professor of whom I was speaking. But joining him today for this round table is on his immediate left, your right, Professor Joseph Chan, a professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches political theory and is the author of many important books and articles, including a book entitled Confucian Perfectionism, a Political Philosophy for Modern Times that was published a few years ago by Princeton University Press. And I'm proud to also mention that Professor Chan was a visiting scholar at the Harvard Yenjing Institute in 1999 to 2000. Next to Professor Chan is Professor Chu Hongmei. She is professor of philosophy at Jilin University in China. She has the advantage of actually coming to us from a climate that's even colder than what we're experiencing here today. So she told me how warm and welcome she feels here in Cambridge. Her specialty is Kantian cosmopolitanism and Marxian moral theory. And she has written insightfully on Kant's impact on contemporary political philosophy. And I'm pleased to report that she, too, was a visiting scholar at the Harvard Yenjing Institute in 2010 to 2011. Next to her, Professor Ham Chai-Bong is president of the Assan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, Korea. Formerly, he was a professor in the Political Science Department of Yonsei University in Seoul. And he has written many influential works on political issues concerning East Asia. He was co-editor of a volume entitled Confucianism for the Modern World, published by Cambridge University Press. And then next to Professor Ham is Professor Inoue Tatsuo, who is professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Tokyo in Japan. He has written widely on questions of global justice, liberal democracy, human rights. And he has co-edited a volume that's entitled The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights. So we will have brief opening presentations by each of these four panelists. And then we'll give Professor Sandell an opportunity to respond to their comments. We'll allow for some back and forth interchange among the panelists. And then we expect to have plenty of time also to open up the floor to your questions that may be directed either to Professor Sandell or to any or all of the other panelists. So please join me first in welcoming here to the floor Professor Joseph Chan. Speaking. You hear me clearly? Good. It's my great pleasure and honor to participate in this roundtable on Professor Sandell's new book. And I'm grateful for Professor Perry and Harvard Yen-Jung Institute for the kind invitation. I only have 10 minutes, so I'm not going to waste any time on more sort of courtesy remarks. We have had a long relationship with Michael, but this is not the time to bore you with these details. In the last chapter of this new book, Sandell opens and closes his response to critics by sharing his thoughts about how to do dialogue across cultural and philosophical traditions. The questions are, what do we want to achieve in such a dialogue? What is the best way to proceed? Sandell has reservations about an approach that takes Chinese and Western traditions of thought at a high level of generality, characterizes them in wholesale fashion, and then identifies similarities and differences between them. Doing comparative philosophy in this way, he says, quote, risk stripping traditions rich with nuance, internal tensions, and interpretive disputes of the very disagreements that make philosophy interesting. And another quote is that this generalizing impulse is in some respects anti-philosophical. Sandell reminds us that comparative philosophy should be in itself an activity of philosophizing. As he says, identifying the differences of cultures and traditional thought is not the point of the exercise. The point is rather to invite the participants to reflect critically on hard philosophical questions and to reason together with those who disagree with them. I share a lot about this approach that Sandell has advocated through many years. And indeed, Sandell has done a superb job in inviting his audience, millions of people in the US, East Asia, and the rest of the world to critically reason together on hard philosophical questions. He challenges people's settled assumptions. He sets numerous young minds on the path of philosophy. Interestingly, in this new book, he engages in a series of discussions with Chinese interlocutors in a reverse order. Instead of posing challenges to his interlocutors, Sandell is being challenged by his Chinese philosophy scholars. And he engages his critics, but in the same spirit as he advocates in his public dialogues and public lectures. Sandell explores his critics' thoughts respectfully and sympathetically. He indicates where his sympathies and sensibilities lies in those contrasts without closing off the debates unnecessarily by simply rejecting other views or reinstating his own. And one of the things that I find most interesting in this dialogue is that in responding to his critics' challenges, Sandell discloses more clearly his own normative orientations and sensibilities. For many years, Sandell's major effort has been to criticize contemporary liberalism and his thin vision of the self, society, and politics. But when facing some of the confusion challenges expressed in this book, I can see him feeling quite uneasy about this thicker conception of the self, of virtue, of moral leadership that his critics advocate. So Sandell seems to be less of a liberal than many mainstream liberals, but more of a liberal than many mainstream confusions. Actually, I find myself in similar situations. I've been a confusion scholar and I'm a critic of contemporary liberalism. But when I was confronted by the more fundamentalist thoughts of some mainland Chinese confusion scholars, I realized that I may have swallowed a last dose of the poison of liberalism already. But let me talk about Sandell, not myself. When Li Chenyan, one of the authors in the book, wants a strong community with members sharing a thick conception of the common good and giving priority of place to harmony, Sandell says he takes clamor, decency, and moral disagreements as signs of a healthy pluralism in a community. When Bai Zhegongtong wants more elitism and meritocracy than democracy, Sandell prefers to put faith on democratic deliberation by fellow citizens about the meaning of a good life. When Huang Yong and Chen Lai argue that political virtue and personal moral virtue are more or less the same and that the state should not hesitate in embracing and promoting full moral virtues, Sandell feels the need to make a more nuanced differentiation of the two sets of virtues. In terms of ideal normative orientations, I may be closer to the confusion side than to the side of Sandell. But in terms of realistic aspirations, I have quite a lot of sympathy with these sensibilities. You may call these sensibilities liberal and democratic sensibilities, but I think I might understand where these sensibilities come from. I like to call these sensibilities sensibilities of the modern. Modernity, to put it in most simplistic terms, means that this enchantment of the world, the loss of the sacred, the disappearance of the aristocratic class and its accompanied virtues and rituals and the breakdown of social authorities across society. In many ways, liberalism and democracy are just the products of modernity. And some would say they are the most fitting response to it. Now to me, the central challenge for confusionism is sociological rather than normative. How can the thick community constituted by a shared vision of virtue and the common good be possible without a state engaging in ideological domination? Many Confucian scholars, myself included, have argued that traditional Confucian insights and values can have a lot to contribute to the modern world. But we have yet to grapple with the sociological challenge of advancing the Confucian agenda in modern society. However, even Sandel's more moderate civic republicanism is not entirely free from this challenge of modernity, I would say, although his task might be a bit less daunting than Confucian. To give just an example, he insists in finding the tellers or purposes of our social practices to settle questions of distributive justice. But we could ask this question to Sandel in a disenchanted secular world where people disagree often very strongly among themselves about the very purpose of the social and political order. The hope of reaching agreement by public deliberation on these harsh philosophical questions seems a little unrealistic. Now, in the face of the challenge of modernity, I'm not saying that Confucian should therefore give up their ideal conception of good life or society. To give them up is to give up the most noble part of our humanity according to Confucianism. But any serious advocates of Confucianism like myself and the contributors in this book or advocates of civic republicanism like Sandel should tell people why their ideal is not only attractive but also feasible, even in such an inhospitable conditions of modernity. Let me close by going back to my first point. Sandel says the point of dialogue is to promote a genuine kind of philosophizing that challenges unsettled assumptions and engages people with reason. But this critical unsettling nature of philosophizing might have an unintended consequence of reinforcing moral disagreement, which, if not carefully understood or conducted, could easily erode whatever are the remaining shared values that can serve as a foundation for moral regeneration. In the books forward, Evans Osnos told the story of a girl named Xi Yi, who said that Sandel's books and lectures are a key to open her mind and doubt and question everything. Now, the key word, I think, is everything. One may question not just about injustice or immorality but also virtues and morality. Many students have told the same story to me. After taking philosophy classes, they find that they can't believe in anything. So philosophizing is a double-edged sword. It may strengthen one's conviction after critical reflection, but it may also lead to despair and disbelief. From a sociological point of view, this free and ceaseless activity of doubting and questioning while taking place in a society already lacking strong social forces or social forms of life to support virtues and to share good could just easily undermine the kind of shared community that Sandel himself wants to reinvigorate. So I want to end my speech with a question for Sandel. Other than promoting free and public philosophizing, what could we realistically do to foster confusion or civic, Republican ideals of virtues and community in modern society? Thank you. Professor Chu? Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I really appreciate the invitation of Professor Perry and the Harvard Yankee Institute. It's my honor to be here to take part in this event. And eight years ago, I participated in a similar event at Boston University, which was for the publication of the book titled, China Today, China Tomorrow. At that time, I had a question. Since it was a book aiming at showing various aspects of China's development, why all the papers in the volume were only in the context of domestic politics, economy, and the society of China? Why there were no papers on culture and the philosophical change in China? So right now, when we have the book in Counting China at hand, I think we can treat with the question in another way. So the title of my presentation is Chinese Philosophy and Philosophy in China Today. And as to Chinese philosophy, I want to talk about two points. One is mentioned by several scholars in the book. The other is as important as the first one, I think, but unfortunately not mentioned much by the authors. The first one is about the philosophical approach in Chinese philosophy. And I think it is moral anthropology. In the Counting China, quite a few of the Chinese scholars and experts in Chinese philosophy bring about dialogues between Chinese thought and Professor Sandell's thought. In the context of Confucian philosophy and Deist philosophy. As most of the readers notice, the tradition of Chinese philosophy is essentially concerned with questions about how we ought to live, what goes into a worthwhile life. This is actually, I think, practical philosophy or moral philosophy in a broader sense. However, there are no definite moral laws or categorical imperative in the sense of a manual count expressed clearly in Chinese philosophy. So the question is, how can Chinese philosophy work in the practical life? Professor Sandell's observation is that Confucius and Manchers do not enunciate abstract principles, but convey their moral teaching through stories and particular cases. Definitely, there is no universal law raised in Chinese philosophy. Instead, we can find the fundamental rules in the moral discourse and the dialogues that the masters told to the disciples, the fathers to the sons, and the ancestors to the descendants in their doctrines and family instructions. This is not metaphysics of morals, but moral anthropology, which plays an important role in making the canonical text acceptable to a much broader range of readers than the usually obscure philosophy text see critique of pure reason. So the seven points is about the contribution of Chinese philosophy to cosmopolitanism. When I spent a year from 2010 to 2011 at Harvard Indian Institute, I worked on Kant's cosmopolitanism. Kant is firstly a moral cosmopolitan insofar as he views that all rational beings are citizens of a super sensible moral world who are free and equal co-legislators. Kant then defends a political version of cosmopolitanism for perpetual peace. However, Kant's cosmopolitan idea is based on his view of an equal rational being in understanding the citizens in the Republican state and the citizens in the world, or state. So someone calls it individualist cosmopolitanism and John Ross's version in the law of peoples, I think, follows the same logic as Kant. So Alastair Mockingter as a communitarian is anti-cosmopolitan because he believes that our morality is framed in terms of the membership of some particular community with some particular social, political, and economic structure. Professor Sando also argues that individualism generally feels to deal adequately with the problem of personal identity in his liberalism and the limits of justice. But we can find a communitarian cosmopolitanism in Confucian philosophy with his idea of Tianxia, or Under Heaven, and Datong, the Grand Union. Confucius made the blueprint of the cosmopolitan society as the Grand Union, in which the unity of heaven and human being reached a level of harmony. So he also raised a practical plan for people to achieve their own perfection and harmonious relation between man and nature and among different persons with the understanding of Ren and Li, which is the embodiment of the spirit of heaven. Since family is the basic cell in the Chinese society, dealing with the relationship between family and the other groups is the most important task for a person. So Confucius' method to achieve the Grand Union is to persuade people to treat others as members of their own families and then to make people all over the world live as if they are part of one big family. Professor Zhao Tingyang believes that in this way, the world is not an organization of states, but a world institution. From the perspective of Tianxia, all the people in the world can reach and share the common good of the world because Tianxia belongs to all of us. According to my reading of Professor Sandals' writings, I think he might be interested in this idea and there will be much more to talk about between him and the Chinese philosophers. Finally, I want to say something about philosophy in China today. More and more Chinese philosophers agree that the highest aim in China's philosophy today is not to make comparative research among different resources, but to reach a higher level in understanding human life by combining different philosophical wisdom. Jonathan Worf, the author of Why Read Marks Today, visited GDU University last year. When we talked about the possibility of mutual communication among Chinese philosophy, Marxist philosophy and Western philosophy, which are dominant parts in the economic world of China today, he raised the question, how to solve the conflict between the equal concern on real men in Marxist philosophy and the definite existence of the social hierarchy in Chinese philosophy? I think this is also a question to the relation between Chinese philosophy and Western philosophy. In the traditional way, the Chinese people were educated to obey the social order in a team society with little reflection on reasons. But nowadays, Chinese people are on the way of modernity in the area of globalization. There's no way back to the time of Confucius and Lao Zi. So it is necessary for the Chinese people to recognize the value of democracy, liberty and human rights in a reasonable way on the basis of their own cultural structure. So Professor Chen claims that there's no way of accepting right-based political thinking in Confucius philosophy. So we need to think about what Chinese can learn from the West in philosophy. In the Encounting China, Professor Li Chenyang comments that Professor Sando's version of a communitarianism is too thin compared to the conception of community in traditional Chinese philosophy. While Professor Bai Tongdong believes that Professor Sando's version is too thick for the society of strangers, I mean, the liberal society, I think Professor Sando's version is just right for China's philosophy today. Because it is closer to the spirit state of Chinese than traditional Chinese philosophy and also liberal theories. So there's so much that we can learn from Professor Sando. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Chu. Next, Professor Han. Professor Perry and the Encounting Institute, thank you for inviting me. It's a great honor to participate in this panel on Michael Sando's new book. I wanted to title my very short talk as why I stopped being a Confucian. And, yeah, it's news to Joseph, too. But because as Dr. Perry mentioned during her introduction, I had been a very active in promoting Confucianism. I think up till about 15, 20 years ago. And when Daniel A. Bell and I myself co-edited the book that you mentioned, Confucianism for the Modern World and a project in which Joseph also participated. It was a time when we talked about Confucianism and we would encounter Chinese intellectuals and most of them would say, why are you talking about Confucianism? Except those in Hong Kong. Because they thought even 20 years ago for Chinese intellectuals, Confucianism was still this very feudal philosophy that, among others, of course, Mao and the May 4th movement have pointed to as the cause of all the ills for the Chinese civilization and has been chucked as forcefully as possible. Now, it's fascinating to see this book in which so many Chinese intellectuals have now become Confucian in 20 very short years. And it's something Joseph already described and I think the unease that Michael, Professor Sandel feels that, of course, Joseph and others also detect. It's something that I feel very strongly, perhaps even stronger. And so when liberalism was the default position, criticizing liberalism, either from a civic Republican, communitarian or Confucian point of view seemed like a good way to enrich the discussion, but also in a sense, sort of a safe intellectual thing to do. But when you realize that that's not necessarily the case, then attacking liberalism from whatever perspective is a very different enterprise. And this sort of brings me to the issue of what are intellectuals are they supposed to be? How sensitive are they supposed to be to political change? If you're a Confucian, do you do Confucianism all the way through despite its political and social ramifications or do you change your position if you think that it has different or sometimes wrong implications? I think one way to describe what Joseph just talked about in terms of Michael Sandel's encounter with Confucianism is about especially regards to too thick a conception, you know, that Michael doesn't have thick enough of a conception of community is be careful what you wish for, Michael, is my way. Now, let me go back to the three sources of my anxiety about Confucianism and why I stopped being a Confucian. Because as you'll notice when Liz Perry introduced me, I'm running a policy think tank and what's a Confucian, former Confucian scholar doing, so it's sort of an effort to introduce my, and explain on my biography or intellectual migration. When I read this book, one quote that really struck me that came back to me was, and I couldn't find the exact quote, but it's some paraphrasing, it's Joseph Levinson's quote about Confucianism and he said something like this, he said, the moment Confucianism started to decline in China is when Confucian, Chinese intellectuals started to study Confucianism because it was Chinese, not because it was universal philosophy. And I think that's what I find in this book, that the Chinese philosophers are engaging Confucianism because it's Chinese as one of, at least one of the main motivating factors as to why they do this and I think that comes through very, very strongly. Secondly, as a political scientist, sort of doing a social political analysis of this, I really find this book sort of representing the phase that China is going through. In a different context, this may be a difficult concept for some of you to grasp, but for those of you who know something about Korean history, I really think this is sort of a Chinese Park Jung-hee moment. Now, I guess perhaps it's easier if you think of the Lee Guan Yu moment in Singapore that is South Korea, after going through rapid industrialization and liberalization for about a decade through the, all through the 60s, by the early 70s, President Park Jung-hee who had engineered much of that rapid growth decided that there was just too much liberalization taking place too fast and he imposed emergency decree, he arrogated power for life and started this very authoritarian regime and not only did he establish these very, a basically police state, but what he also did, of course, was strongly start to advocate nationalism and of course, Confucianism as the philosophy that Koreans should embrace as this tradition that we should rediscover because Koreans had also chucked Confucianism as the epitome of this feudal philosophy that had always prevented Korea from going modernizing itself. So the parallel is just quite striking and also very disturbing. Third one is what China seems to be going through or its current engagement with Confucianism is another self, Li Hongzhang moment, a self strengthening moment, Zhongti Xi Yong moment. That is, Chinese core and Western means, technology, that there's a way in which that morally, philosophically, the Chinese core is always superior and you could always bring in Western technology, industrial, whatever, as accruetraments to strengthen and support the core Chinese world and we call that the Yang Wu movement or self strengthening movement. I always contrast that for me, the striking contrast of that particular way of encountering modernity was of course, is with the major restoration which was a different way of encountering modernity which was go modernity all the way, westernization all the way. I think it's one way to characterize that and compare it to the self strengthening movement of China. Now we all know what happened at the end of the day that Japan did go through a thorough industrialization, westernization and was able to achieve its own version of modernity which in many striking ways have preserved its own tradition almost better than any other East Asian countries that have struggled with it. That's a debate, okay, that's a question for you. Okay, you get to ask questions later, okay, so. So is this another way, another Chinese moment where it finds an excuse to stop thorough modernization and liberalization? We know that in a strange way, there are residents of this, how to be a good communist, Liu Xiaoqi and the way even Marxists try to combine Confucianism and Marxism. So is this another, is this something very Chinese where it says okay, we need to stop here. There's some core Chinese thing even if we have to revive it wholesale in order to preserve the Chinese worldview. So these are the three very political residences that I get from this book. And again, what is the world that we want? And in a sense, I have discovered my own liberal roots. I think I have also swallowed that liberal poison much earlier and deeper than I had ever thought because I really find myself increasingly veering towards the liberal position on all these issues and starting to see all these danger signs in any kind of philosophy that emphasizes community and of course a much thicker, even thicker sense of a community than the one Michael Sandel advocates. Let me stop there. Thank you very much. Wow. Professor Yunole. The focus of discussion today is on this book, Michael Sandel and the Chinese Philosophy. I was wondering why I was invited to join the panel because I'm not an expert in Chinese philosophy. But in some of my earlier works, I made a kind of an imminent critique of Michael Sandel's political philosophy from a liberal viewpoint and discussed political and socio-economic implications of the so-called liberal communitarian debates in the context of Japan. I also published some papers where I criticized and the dichotomy of Asia and the Western civilizations to find a common ground for human rights and democracy. So I understand that my role in this colloquium is to widen the framework of our debates in such a way that philosophical voice different from the Confucian Taoists and Sandelian standpoints and the social concern of another Asian society different from China can be incorporated in our endeavor to develop the cross-cultural philosophical discussions presented in this book. I'd like to make some comments to perform this role of mine. In the book, liberalism is depicted as a common target or, be it on the wall, both for Chinese philosophy and Sandel's theory. Tondombai shows some sympathy to Rosian liberalism in the conclusion of his short chapter two of this book, but he makes his claim in a very brief and brushing way. Anyway, this is an exception that makes the general anti-liberal stance of the book more vivid. The different two philosophical camps, Chinese philosophy and Sandelian republicanism, may be able to make an alliance by sharing the same enemy that is liberalism. This may be one strategy to bring the gap between the two different philosophical perspectives, but I don't think it is a good way if we are to explore for new philosophical horizon in which people with a variety of perspectives can be engaged in sincere public liberation beyond dogmatic preconception. The problem is not just that liberal perspectives are excluded from the outset. A more serious problem is that liberalism is unfairly caricatured as a philosophy that supports the socially responsible self-centeredness of the last native individuals or the greedy pursuit of self-interest in the unregulated market economy. It seems to me that these charges against liberalism in the book are something like, to use Japanese phrase, Wara-nin-gyo-dadaki, battering a strong figure of liberalism. This is not only philosophically unfair, but politically dangerous, given the concentration in the world, as you've mentioned. Anti-liberal passions and movements such as religious intolerance, ethnic discriminations, chauvinism like America first, and hate speech against minorities and dissidents are mounting in the current book, including even the Western developed countries. To be sure, Sandel and other contributors to the book do not welcome these tendencies, saying that their standpoints can admit of diversity and pluralism. But this claim seems to be dependent on their own liberal interpretation or reinterpretation of Republican confusion and Taoist values. The philosophical upneagation of liberalism is bound to, under my liberal bulwark, against the current dangerous tendencies to incite intolerance and discriminations. I think that our more fruitful and more urgent task is to redefine or re-identify liberalism in such a way that its commitment to open-mindedness, non-discrimination, and free critical discussion can be more clearly advanced and separated from the negative stereotypes and really imposed on that. If we carry out this task, liberalism will become more acceptable, both for Sandel and the advocates of Chinese philosophy, and a wider and sounder form of philosophical rapprochement than their anti-liberal alliance can be brought about. I have developed my own redefinition of liberalism along this line in my earlier works. I cannot enter into the full expression of my view here, but let me present some key points of my view. Let me allow to use some philosophical jargon here. Three points. First, the fundamental value of liberalism is not freedom, much less negative freedom, but justice. Liberalism is committed to the primacy of justice over freedom. Justice here means not one of the competing conceptions of justice, like utilitarianism, libertarianism, or egalitarian theories of rights, but the common concept of justice that underlies and constraints these competing conceptions of justice. The normative core of the common concept of justice is the prohibition of non-universalizable discrimination. It implies the test of perspectival as well as positional reversibility that can be formulated as a following maxim. Examine whether your conducts or claims to others can be justified for the reasons that you could not reject, even if you had their positions and perspectives, provided they are willing to apply the same reversibility test to themselves. Justice-based liberalism, in this sense, is diametrically opposed to self-centeredness and licentious greed. It requires us to make critical self-examination to undertake accountability to other persons affected by our conducts and claims, and to show fairness and open-mindedness to other persons with positions and perspectives different from others. It provides the best interpretation of two historical sources of liberalism. I mean, enlightenment as critical rationalism as opposed to dogmatic rationalism, and tolerance as open-mindedness to other persons as opposed to the modest, vividly type of coexistence through strategic compromise. I think that it is possible to reinterpret both the Christian-governed rule due to others, as you would be done by, and the Confucian counterpart do not do to others what you would not want them to do to yourself in this liberal way by adding the counterfactual antecedent. If you were others with your perspective, as well as their positions to these two maxims. Second, anti-perfectionism is a corollary of the perspective of reversibility test of justice. But it has nothing to do with the conception of the unencumbered self that Sandel critically ascribed to liberalism. Sandel's own conception of the reflectively situated self, or the self-interpreting being implies the individual person's responsibility to interpret her conception of the good life and the unavoidability of the proliferation of competing interpretations of traditional shared conception of the good life in a given political community. These implications offer a good reason to accept the liberal anti-perfectionism. But all that it means is that a righteous life should not be legally enforced or stipulated. Public deliberation about what is a good life can be conducted without resourcing to legal regulations. Moreover, even from this anti-perfectionist perspective, legal regulations can be used to facilitate people to exercise their right to develop and pursue a righteous life as they conceive it. Just as their right to pursue happiness as listened from their right to happiness itself can be legally protected. Third and last point, the conception of the individual rights as vetoes over the collective goal has often be criticized as a symbol of liberal egocentrism. This criticism fails because it only looks at the conflict between the individual interests and the communal responsibility on block. With reference to the social melodies of contemporary Japan, which I call the poverty of rights-blind communality, I advocated a redefined conception of individual rights as a normative device to strike a balance between conflicting responsibilities that individuals have for different spheres of community to which they belong, such as families, neighborhood, workplace, clubs, professional associations, local or national communities, and global human society. Its point can be briefly shown in the following way. If a specific communal sphere requires too much devotion from a person, he would not be able to perform his responsibility for other communal spheres. When the so-called Kaisha Shui, company-ism, as a communitarian regimentation of capitalism, prevailed in Japan, this problem became serious, with the result that the companies which became workers' constitutive community prospered while families and civil society undermined. Individual rights as a veto over excessive demands from a certain communal sphere is indispensable for a person to meet competing responsibilities for other communal spheres in a balanced way so that he can mature his community. Sandeol presented a conception of the multiply-situated self in the last few pages of his book, Democracy Is This Content. I think that this view of multiplicity of our communal belongingness can lead him to accept my redefined conception of individual rights. I wish Sandeol would say, yes, that's so. You are completely right. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Inoue. We have four, I think, really quite fascinating reactions to this book, one sort of Goldilocks reaction that Sandeol got it just right, not too thick or not too thin, and then three other quite different liberal critiques, some asking for the feasibility and the applicability of some of these ideas and others giving different definitions of what liberalism is and how congruent with these ideals Professor Sandeol's own ideas are. So let me turn to Michael Sandeol for his reactions. Well, thank you, Liz, and I'm so grateful to the panelists for traveling all this way and for engaging in such a stimulating way with the ideas in the book. And how to respond. Well, let me begin with the very pointed challenge that Joseph ended with, which is, what can we realistically do? Can I give even a single example of what we can realistically do to foster in the modern world with all its challenges either a Confucian or a civic Republican virtue? Here's one, the short answer is civic education broadly conceived, but that's very abstract. So I would like to give you one example that goes back to the time when I was coaching Little League Baseball. My son, Adam, was a baseball player and I coached his team from the time they were very young up to until they reached high school. And when they were, oh, maybe 11 years old, I noticed a problem that kept happening again and again. All of the kids playing baseball would love to try to hit home runs. That was the most heroic thing imaginable. But when they were playing in the field, trying to field the ball and catch the ball, they often had trouble paying attention. And so I created a kind of prize and the prize was not for the person who hit a home run or made the most spectacular play. But if when trying to field the ball at that age, especially, it was not very successful if a ball came your way and you tried to field it off and it would go through your legs. And so it was important to have other players come in case the ball came through your legs to field it and pick it up. So I said, if anyone succeeds in backing up a play and redeeming the error of a teammate and making an out, there would be a reward for the entire team and the reward was a Snickers candy bar. Now at age 11, a Snickers candy bar was quite a strong reward. But the reward was only conferred for an attempt to help to play as a team, not to seek individual heroics. And to try to attach, I tried to attach at least some small glory and honor to that team play. Now, and it worked. It worked. Soon all the 11 year olds were backing up their teammates. And we won the championship. And I suppose you could say that this cultivated a kind of civic Republican virtue of contributing to the common good and also a Confucian virtue being part of a team of a community. The political significance of this was not lost on some of my conservative friends. By conservative, I mean ardently individualistic, capitalist friends. Because when this story was written up in the newspaper, several of them wrote to me and said, complain, Sandal, you're ruining baseball. You're destroying the individual heroics that are at the heart of the American pastime. Now, I suppose, in no way sense they would say that maybe this was encouraging a kind of illiberal attitude. Maybe not. Maybe not. But there is in small gestures and small forms of civic education, as well as large ones, there are ways of teaching virtue, not just in schools, not just didactically, but through the organization of everyday life and of social life. And that's where I think the most powerful forms of the cultivation of the kind of virtue, I think civic life requires, can best be found. Now, there is, so that's my reply, Joseph, to your question, your challenge. In some ways, the other three presentations raise a question about, not just about academic philosophy and whether liberalism is a necessary alternative to conservative or hierarchical Confucian tradition. But also, in a way, these presentations were all about philosophy in the world, philosophy as a whole. And I think that's the right emphasis. We have different views, perhaps, about how best to describe the philosophies by which we live in the West, in China, in other parts of Asia. But here's my general reply to the worries, the very strong, the strong, to the worries, the very strong worries expressed, especially by Chai Bong and by Inoue Sensei. Before I get to that, I want to say that Professor Chu's presentation, given her interest in Marx's moral philosophy, leads me to want to hear more about whether she thinks that today in China, Marx or Confucianism is the more powerful, legitimating vision or ideal. So that's a question that occurred to me listening to Professor Chu. The response I would put to Chai Bong and Inoue Sensei is this, when I first began traveling in East Asia, I noticed that most of the people who invited me, the professors, the hosts, disagreed with my critique of liberalism and thought that it was potentially dangerous for their societies and told me sometimes more, sometimes less explicitly that the task really was to instill liberalism in societies that were hierarchical and conservative or futile, as some of them saw those societies. And they invited me even though they thought what I had to say was dangerous and on the wrong track and it's also what they were doing. So I kept noticing this and what my main reply was that in Tatsu actually talks about, in his always vivid rhetoric, talks about the unholy alliance of Confucians and civic republicans. I added that. Trying to make a point by advanced by sharing the same enemy, the enemy being liberalism. My reply to that is, and Tatsu knows this deep down, that actually we have an alliance and that is what we share as philosophers, despite our philosophical disagreements is that we are, both of us, leaning against the dominant, what we take to be the dominant self-images of our societies. Leaning against what we take to be the excesses of our societies and that leads us to different philosophical viewpoints. But perhaps that purpose, that origin of the philosophical perspectives we advance is a deep kind of sharing that goes beyond the actual positions and views. So that was one thing that occurred to me as I listened, especially say 15, 20 years ago when I would travel to East Asia, that what I had in common with my philosophical friends, if not the actual position was this, critical stance toward the excesses as we saw them in our respective societies. But now China, it poses a different kind of challenge today because what I find in China is that in many ways, the audiences with whom I've engaged, especially on what money can't buy on the moral limits of markets, their pro-market intuitions and enthusiasm are as thorough going as any I've encountered anywhere else in the world with the possible exception of the United States. When I travel to Europe or to Latin America or to Japan, the moral intuitions in the critique of markets are much closer to mine. Whereas with Chinese audiences, as with American audiences, the critique of markets and of market individualism runs very deep. And when I gave some examples to test this, for example, examples about price gouging, should there be laws preventing sellers of goods from raising the price in the wake of a national disaster, the price of a flashlight or of bottled water or of a snow shovel after a blizzard or umbrellas even after a rainstorm. In most European countries in Canada and most of Latin America and in Japan, if I say how many think there's something wrong with raising the price, most people, the majority will say there's something wrong, it's unfair. And except in the US and in China, where most people think that's the way the market works, that's a blind demand. The shopkeeper could have anticipated this and stocked more shovels and made more money and so on. And so this leads me to my second reply to, it's really to ask for a counter reply, to the worry that the critique of liberalism and the growing attention to Confucianism as a moral source, moral tradition, that these are dangerous. I think that the growing interest in the Confucian tradition in China is important and worth encouraging because without some attempt to grapple with and reinterpret for the modern world, the moral traditions that have called the deepest claim on societies. The real danger is that societies given over to market capitalism and the self-understandings that go with them wind up with a moral vacuum of meaning. After a certain period when GDP rises, people begin to ask, and I see this in China as a visitor, as an outsider, as an observer, people begin to ask, is this all there is? GDP alone, affluence alone, prosperity alone are not sufficient sources of meaning either to sustain a good life or to hold a society together. I think not only ordinary members of the public, but the leadership in China is aware of this. And in GDP-ism, it's not inadequate or a self-sustaining ideology or legitimating public philosophy. And in the absence of moral meaning, that empty space will be filled by the default alternative, which is not liberalism or Confucianism. It's a kind of vengeful, strident nationalism. That is the default source of meaning that fills places whose moral culture has become hollowed out. And I think we see that, tendencies in that direction today in the US, in China, and in many other places, which is why I think the project of trying to find a public philosophy rooted in, renovated but rooted in traditions of moral sources and meaning is enormously important if we were to create the kind of public cultures hospitable to the, well, the kinds of human relations and political arrangements that liberals and the critics of liberalism share. So really, I would like to put that in a way as a reply, but also as a question or a challenge to see whether, especially the critics of the Confucian turn have suggested. Thank you very much, Michael. And I'll turn back to the panelists. I guess this very interesting interchange about whether we have a moral vacuum in China and East Asia and if so, whether it's wise to fill it with Confucianism, I think may resonate, sound differently to those familiar with certain episodes in East Asian history. We have, after all, the Japanese effort at state Shintoism during the Second World War, and we had right at that same moment in China, Jiang Kai-shek's effort to combine Confucianism with sort of quasi-fascism, the blue shirts in China and so forth. So there are historical episodes in East Asian history where this revival of Confucianism I think had rather unhappy outcomes, which may be part of the reason that some of our East Asian colleagues are more averse to the idea than we may be. But let me turn back to the panelists. I don't know, Professor Chu, would you like to begin and answer about whether it is Marx or Confucius that has greater moral authority or greater legitimizing power in contemporary China? Your question. It's hard to me to answer this question, which one is more powerful, but I think what I want to say that first of all, in China right now, people cares about moral philosophy, not in the traditional way. I mean, in the 1980s, there is a kind of reform for the so-called textbook because the textbook was written and the principle of Soviet Union's interpretation on Marxist. But I think in the 1980s, there will have a great change in Marxist philosophy in the academic world in China. So people try to reconsider Marxist in the perspective as Marxist's own writings and also in the perspective of Chinese philosophy. Because Marxist philosophy and the Chinese philosophy shares some common good, like both of this kind of two thoughts hope to give some practical experience to the ordinary people, like as I see that in Chinese philosophy, it's a kind of moral anthropology and it's kind of a culture structure in Chinese people. So this is the precondition for Chinese people to consider Marxist philosophy because Marxist philosophy also hope to solve the problems for the workers, the proletariat and Marxist philosophy cares not about the problem of science. I mean, the classical western philosophy considering the problem of science but Marxist philosophy considering the real life, the real condition life of human beings. So that's what Marxist philosophy and the Chinese philosophy share. I mean, the common good of this two kind of thoughts. And the other one is that Marxist philosophy is open with practice. So it's not a kind of doctrine or fixed doctrine. So with the Chinese experience, especially the achievement that China made in these years, the Chinese scholars hopes that they can understand or interpret Marxist philosophy in a Chinese way. So that's what I cannot support this question. Thank you. Should we ask Joseph Chan if he has some, I'll ask each of the panelists to just quickly respond to Michael's comments and then we'll open things more broadly. Joseph? Yes, I think Michael for the wonderful example that he gave. On a theoretical level, I agree that at the end of the day, moral changes would mostly come from individual agents who believe in the morality that they want to advocate and act upon it through interaction and association with others. But as a political theorist or generally people who like to think about how institutions can be structured in order to make possible on a grander scale this kind of moral education, I think we should go beyond a little bit this individual examples of moral education. So what social institutions do we want in a pluralistic society that can do the job that you want society to do? So that's the question I'm still interested in. Well, the very brief answer would be to create more public spaces and class-mixing social institutions within civil society, creating civic spaces, public gathering places to lean against the tendency today for the affluent and those of modest means to live essentially separate lives. I think that's the single and a large-scale biggest way of enabling people to encounter one another in a way that creates a sense of sharing in a common life. Can I say something? Please, Professor. Michael said that I talk of an unholy alliance between the Confucianism and Sander, but I didn't say that. Well, let me say two things about this. Well, in 2009, we had a conference featuring on Michael Sander's political philosophy at the Chiba University in Japan. And at that time, I was invited to make a comment and the judges was there, too. And in that presentation, why I was said that, well, what I call the universalist turn of Michael Sander from the, a little bit of Paloquian Communitarianism is quite well philosophically justifiable and even more liberal than the Rosian political liberalism. And at the end of my presentation, I said, welcome to the authentic liberal clan to Michael. He just smiled at me without saying thank you. But my interpretation of Michael's political philosophy is, well, it's one of the very good version of the liberalism if properly reinterpreted. And anyway, I don't go into this point, but let me say something about Confucianism. As I said, I'm not an expert in Confucianism, but I'd like to say something about Confucianism because the advocates of Confucianism who contributed to this book are well presenting the view, a poor view, improbable to view of Confucianism. Well, in my judgment, this judgment of mine was formed by learning from the Japanese scholars who are specializing in the history of Chinese and Japanese political thought like Amariyama Masao or Mizoku Juzo. And as far as, well, this conception of Confucianism is well concerned. Well, there are a lot of the competing interpretations of what Confucianism is all about, even within this tradition. And there is a kind of a liberal potential in this tradition. And among the Western scholars, like William Theodore de Barry published a book, Liberal Tradition in China, and he talked about the Neo-Confucian liberalism or something like that. But anyway, to generalize, Confucianism is committed to moral control of politics. And it's not just me that a ruler governed the people by ruler's own virtue. Ruler's virtue itself must be always critically checked. Ruler's must be under moral control of his own great scholars and people. So let me mention one important aspect of the Confucianism. I don't know how to translate this term into English. In Japanese, Confucian term, Daido Shiso. Anyway, it is a principle that the world is the world's world, Tenka or Tenka no Tenka Nari, which means the world is not private property of the king or the emperor. If the emperor abuses his political power to pursue his own private interests at the sacrifice of public interest, then he would lose moral entitlement to govern the world. And so in Confucian tradition, revolution or even killing monarch justify in this life, this kind of a very critical and even revolutionary element of the Confucianism is totally, I'm afraid, neglected in the book. So if properly reinterpreted the alliance between Confucian and Sandeul's republic, quite welcome, even for a person like me. Thank you, Professor Hump. Yes, Michael, I think you're absolutely right. We are all reacting to or against the dominant self-image of our societies and against the exes of our societies. I think one interesting way to look at what it means to encourage the revival of Confucianism in East Asia, I'm thinking more in terms of Korea here, but there is also an article in this volume, which written by Robin Wong, which deals with the gender issues and Confucianism. Now she has a very interesting interpretation of Confucianism and what it means for women and gender issues. But of course, if you were to talk about reviving Confucianism in Korea, the biggest constituency against it would be women. Because for them, Confucianism is almost misogynist. Because given how it is still deeply rooted in Korea, where 70% of Koreans still families perform ancestor worship, we're the only country in the world that actually persists in performing ancestor's worship, according to Chushi Jali, exactly to the letter. Now, what that means socially is that of course, on Lunar Thanksgiving and New Year, coming up soon, of course, we have this massive migration of families all going back home to their villages, which means that even if you were the woman CEO of a major corporation, what do you do when you go back to your in-laws house? You go into the kitchen and you cook. You prepare for the ancestor worship. Now, let's put, so there's a, again, it's what the dominant self-image is of the society. And so it would be interesting to see what, how Chinese women react to this particular revival of Confucians, other than the way that Robin won. Thank you very much. I think we're going to turn now to the audience. But first, I think in the audience is one of the contributors to the book, if I'm not mistaken, Professor Zhu Huiling. And I wonder, Professor Zhu, if you would like to say any very brief comments, either about your contribution or about your reactions to the panel, and then we'll open it up more broadly. Thank you so much for this great opportunity. And it's my great honor to have one of my articles to be included in Michael's new book. I have been studying Michael's political philosophy since I was a doctoral candidate. I think I would like to, I prefer to label Michael's political philosophy as a republicanism rather than communitarianism, not because it's too narrow or too thick or too thin, but because it's too narrow to include Michael's political philosophy. Hey, Professor Sandel emphasize the constitutive self and the civic virtue, the relationship between politics and morality, which makes it more suitable for us to categorize his political philosophy as republicanism rather than communitarianism, and which make his political philosophy corresponds somehow to Confucianism. And I think that's one of the reason why he is so popular in China, and because most of the Chinese are easy to accept most of his ideas, and such as the civic virtue, his emphasize on loyalty and patriotism and the relationship between politics and morality. And so in the academic field, many people are doing research on liberalism, and some are doing research on the relationship between liberalism and Confucianism. They are trying to combine the two theories, and some of other intellectuals are doing some research on conservatism, but I don't think there are too many people are doing some research on republicanism. I think it is a valuable political theory which Chinese should pay more attention to. So that's why I don't want, as a very young Chinese scholar, I don't want to label myself as a liberalist Confucianist or other theory, but I do want to combine some theories from other, especially more emphasize on civic republicanism. But I do have some doubts to Michael's observation about the people's reaction in China. I think that your sample isn't limited, because in China, the people who have the chance to attend your lecture, students from very famous universities, and all some ethnic from commerce, they are successful students of all people. So they pay less attention. It's easier for them to pay less attention to fairness or just they are easy to pursue individual success. So if you have, next time, if you have chance to have a bigger audience or a bigger composition of audience, I think maybe you have a different answer. So next time, we'll send him out to Ningxiao or Ching Hai and see how they react to his arguments. Okay, I think we will open the floor and I will ask people, I think there are at least a couple of microphones around. Is that correct? Who has the microphones? We have just one microphone here, or do we have two? Okay, and so I will ask you to please be very brief to first identify yourself briefly, then be very brief. And if you wish to direct your question to a particular person, to please do so, but I'll take a number of different questions and then we'll turn back to the panelists. So please raise your hands, we'll take one right there. One question and please identify yourself and be quite brief. Just one question? Yes. Okay, all right, I'll try to make two to one then. Chen from medical school actually. So I guess the two questions I have are related. The first one was initially, what was your initial motivation to write the book? Why now? And you've been working on justice and our philosophical questions, but why now the contrast between the sort of the Western culture philosophy and the Confucianism and the Chinese culture? The second one is about the export of values and the philosophy. Because World War II, after that, I think the United States has been very actively involved in the development in Korea, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. For example, baseball was brought by Americans to South Korea and Japan. So basically under the surface of substance material, the US is also exporting values, philosophies to those Asian countries. So if you watch the news from now from the administration of President Xi, so One Belt, One Road, we have actually had really ramping up our effort to explore the Chinese philosophy, Chinese values to a lot of countries all over the world. For example, South America and Africa. Okay, I think we've got the idea. Yeah, so what's the implications of that? All right, thank you very much. And then over here, this lady on the edge there. Okay. Thank you, panelists. I'm Qianye from Carver County School. Yesterday I also attended the Belfast Center's lunch. Thank you, Professor Ham. So my question is to both Professor Ham and Professor Sandow. In Professor Sandow's speech, I remember you mentioned the default setting in the context of the rising China's GDP and economic growth. And to me, I feel that nationalism and Confucianism is competing with each other, are competing with each other in China. But from Professor Ham's speech, I feel a sense that Confucianism is a prey for nationalism. And I do agree with that personally because at least for the region, I mean, at least in North Asia, it is really a danger if nationalism is on the rise because China, Japan, Korea will have very complicated history. So I wonder if Professor Ham would elaborate on this and I also want to hear a response from Professor Sandow. Thank you. Professor Mansbridge down here. Can we have a microphone? Thanks very much. I address this to Michael and to the other panelists. I've worried a bit about the use of the word liberalism here because the liberalism has many facets and it has GDP-ism and it has openness to new ideas. I wonder if we might want to disaggregate liberalism a bit and I appreciate the comments of the panelists on that. Thank you. Yes. Hi, Dr. Sandow and other panelists. I'm Wei Xiangliang. I'm from Boston University School of Public Health. I want to ask, what's the implication for China like the authoritarian regime? What's the implication of constitutionally decent today? Because I'm from Taiwan. Actually, we have the strong anxiety from China. I believe everybody, maybe can I understand, but especially for Taiwan or some countries in other than China. So what's the implication for constitutionally decent? Thank you. So we'll take just a couple more and then turn back to our panelists and have another round. We'll take those two right there. Thank you. I'm Hao Jian. I'm visiting scholar of Fairbank Center. My question is for Sandow. I heard at least two professors here talk about combining the confusions with Marxism. I want you to hear your response. How to combine these two kinds of philosophy? Marxism and the confusions. Thank you. And right next to you there and then we'll go back to the panelists. Hello, I'm Jiang from Kennedy School and my question is for Professor Sandow. You know, in China, I'm wondering how to balance the social impact and the profit for the business, some business company just like this to the Chinese special context. Thank you. Great, thank you. Michael, would you like to take a crack at some of these? Okay, so some of them have overlapping themes. What's the motivation to engage in comparative philosophy? What's the relation between nationalism and Confucianism? Are they competing or are they mutually reinforcing? Can we disaggregate what we mean by liberalism? Is it GDPism, openness to new ideas or something else? Related is the question, what's the implication of Confucianism for China today, which is related in turn to this last question about the relation between Confucianism and Marxism. Well, these do overlap a lot, really. And I think the, first as for motivation, I think that comparative philosophy, Joseph made this point in his talk, comparative philosophy should not mainly be, in my view, the comparative history of ideas. There's a place for that and scholars can do useful work in that, but that's not really what's most interesting at least to me, what's most, for me what motivates an attempt to engage in comparative philosophy is the aspiration for mutual learning. And to do that, it's necessary for the interlocutors to take the ideas seriously, not just as episodes in the history of ideas, and to take them seriously means to question and challenge and reason and argue about how to interpret the respective philosophical texts. Now, this element of argument and interpretation is also partly a response to the earlier disagreement or difference of emphasis that came from the panel discussion about whether Confucianism today in China is a dangerous cover for traditional authoritarian practices or whether it holds the promise of providing a moral foundation that can fill a vacuum of meaning. That's a big unanswered question that has come up here and we've not fully resolved. I would like to, I suppose, qualify my hopeful answer by saying the implication of Confucianism for China today depends and what it depends on is whether it's just taken off the shelf, so to speak, as a political tool or an ideological instrument, in which case I would have the same fears that Chaibong articulated, if that's all it is. But if instead it's considered that the attention to the Confucian tradition is understood as an attempt initially by scholars, as it would have to be, but ultimately for a wider public, to engage with an interpretive project, competing interpretations, including, to take the one example that I think is very important, that came up earlier, the role of women. One of the very interesting essays in the book by Robin Wang, a Confucian scholar who's interested in feminist theory, she's offered a kind of reinterpretation of the Confucian tradition that is more hospitable to feminism than is commonly supposed. That's the kind of, now others may disagree with that reading, but it's the starting point for an argument, for a debate about how to interpret a tradition, and if that interpretive project can get going, then I think the Confucian tradition can be potentially an important moral resource for public philosophy, but not if it's just the off the shelf ideological tool variety, and maybe that's the greater risk, it may well be, but then the solution to that, the response to that is, all right, let's jettison the tradition, I think that's too quick, I think the response is, well, that's the wrong way to go about it, we have to provide an alternative, a constructive, contestable, interpretive project that can attend to this very important moral tradition. But with arguments, with disagreements, with competing interpretations. Professor Cham? Yes, I'd like to pick up Michael's response to various questions, as well as to Chaibong's comment. First of all, let me say I was totally struck by what you said, that now you are not a Confucian, because I have not seen you for some time, now I realize. That's why. And people have changed, you know, I don't think, I don't know, I think the world that you have served has changed, and I can perfectly understand where you come from, because in Taiwan, people are reacting against Chinese culture, including Confucianism, simply because they come from mainland China. In Hong Kong, we are following the steps of Taiwan. Now this overbearing hegemony of Beijing, you know, looms so large in our minds that we feel we have to resist everything that is somehow, somewhat related to this thing called China. And of course, you know, but of course there are other people in mainland China who again see wrongly or correctly the association between the rise of China and the call of Confucianism, then they have taken the right of the rise of China to think that yes, China is so big and so powerful now because we are a Confucian country. So let's talk about Confucianism and let's reject completely all these foreign ideological apparatus in framework. Let's just have total self-confidence in our own indigenous culture. I think that is an extremely dangerous move. But go back to Chai Bong's concern. Let's say we destroy Confucianism. Let's say we also either destroy China or turn China into just another liberal democratic country. Then we ask this question, what can China contribute? What can a modern China, powerful China contribute to the project of modernity? If it is just another affluent capitalist liberal democratic country that with all the ills and drawbacks that we've seen in the West, my conclusion is that we want China to become a much better country and also to contribute to the whole thing called modernity by experimenting on something which is not what we have seen in the West, but realizing that in its own culture there are all kinds of bad practices that we want to strip of, combining things that make China or other great civilizations a source of insight or new additions to the ideas of modernity. So in that sense, we can talk about Christianity or other traditional religion, but in China it happens that Confucianism or a bit of Taoism and Buddhism are still these traditional sources of moral imagination, so to speak, for us to tap on and to build a better country for not just the Chinese people, but for mankind. Yes, Professor Inogre. Someone asked the question, why Confucianism now? And I think there are two answers. And well, I don't think these answers will reflect the real motivations of the publisher of this book, but one is concerned about the political context of the context of China. As you know, communist government, even though they are officially upholding the Marxist creed, actually they abandoned it. The reality of the China is a kind of state-to-governed capitalism, a little bit as well, well, very, very savage kind of capitalism. In my view, I'm sorry. So discussing Confucianism is safer for Confucian Chinese scholars than discussing Marxism. If you take Marxism seriously, then you have to deny the legitimacy of the current Chinese regime. This is one cynical reason. Another more sympathetic reason is, I said earlier that advocates of Confucianism in this book, their view of, I said in a lot of dismissing ways that their conception of Confucianism is a lot of poor or something like that, but there is a little bit understandable element in the book. Even those people who emphasize the importance of the values of harmony or the primacy of social roles, even those people are the very important provisors like that this kind of harmony is not unitary or repressive or social division is not fixed one. It's open to diversity and fluid accommodation or something like that. So, as for Chinese scholars, the politically effective way to give some critical edge to their argument is to reinterpret Confucian philosophy, not in a radical way but in a moderate way but which still has some critical implications. So, let me revise my little bit of harsh comment on that. Sure. I think there are all the questions that are related in very interesting ways. Let me just start with the nationalism Confucianism. As I mentioned earlier, it's you'll find many early nationalist thinkers in China, Korea and maybe in Japan too who call for the discarding of Confucianism for nationalist purpose. So, there's no natural linkage between nationalism and Confucianism. As I said again, Confucianism is a universalizing philosophical system so it doesn't matter, you can be a Korean or Chinese or Japanese or American if you want to be and you can still be a Confucian but nationalism is something very different. And so, what is interesting of course is when nationalism starts to appropriate Confucianism for its own purposes. That's where things become very dicey and dangerous and that's what I wanted to point out. And the second comment relates to both the question about disaggregating liberalism and the concept of liberalism and, but one, I think the way in which at least I'm using the term is really about individual freedom in that sense. Also about market, but I think it's connected in that way but let's focus on individual freedom. And I think if you contrast liberalism, that kind of liberalism and Confucianism, the way I would put that describe the difference is to, in liberalism we err on the side of individual freedom. That is we say that for instance if it's individual versus community or something, we first try to emphasize it could be wrong, it could go wrong, it could be excessive but we give the pride of place to the individual. In Confucianism, I think the way I view it is that you give the person in position of authority the benefit of the doubt. That you somehow say that okay, if that person is a teacher or a senior person, somebody higher up in the bureaucracy, whatever, you think that that person had gotten there for whatever, some good reason and that you defer to that person. And so the first instinct of a traditional Confucian society is you err on the side of authority, right? And so I think that's where for instance, what's the connection, what's the implication of Confucianism for authoritarianism? And I think that's the propensity. That has always been the dominant propensity of Confucianism to err on the side of authority, right? That somehow authority is deserved that you give the benefit of the doubt and give them a chance first to try things out. And I think that's the danger of Confucianism. Professor Chu, do you wish to make any comments? Okay, so we'll turn open for one more round here. And let me choose you in the front here, Francesca. Right here. I thank you very much. I'm Sherry from law school. So my question is about, can you tell us more about the relationship between moral control and the rule of law? Because the discussion today, let me think about the Confucianism and legalism. So like in the case, Professor Sandel mentioned the price control. So what's the relationship between moral and the rule of law? Yes. Hi, I'm San Masoud. I'm a night fellow at MIT. We've heard a lot about Confucianism in the sort of East Asian context, but I'm just wondering, but perhaps from Professor Perry or Professor Sandel, if you could tell a little bit about the adoption or otherwise of ideas, debates around Confucius within the Western philosophical tradition today, or perhaps within the educational tradition. There's something right there. Elton Chen from Yale and US College. I have a question for Professor Sandel. In the book, you mentioned that you sort of see that now that some civic virtue might also be moral virtues for people to be good people, not just good citizens. The Confucian case, however, is that it's the other way around. We want people to be good human beings, and therefore from them they become good citizens. So you talk about one side of the case. I wonder what your opinions is on the other side of the case. Thank you. And we have the mic that can go, where's the other microphone? Yeah, to the left there and then to the right. Hi, I'm Jane Chu. I'm a night fellow at MIT. So my point I would like to raise is related to what Professor Perry was saying early on about how to feel the vacuum of morality in China. So the Chinese government is leading this very strong campaign to push Confucianism, not just within China, but beyond the border internationally as well. So I just wonder what are the implications or concerns about this kind of top down led initiative to push one ideology, philosophy, or religion, if you call it, people tend to think Confucius in different shades of kind of thinking. And because I guess we're already aware of the kind of lack of religious freedom, for instance, in China. So I just wonder whether this kind of initiative would exacerbate the situation. Thank you. Hi, I'm Zach from the Law School, and my question is directed to Professor Sandel and in your conversation with Joseph, when you're discussing about the institution such as the open space to cultivate the civic virtue, but my question is confronting this certain technological architecture, such as Facebook and Twitter, as we witness and law school professors like Sunstein and Lessig also mentioned about how they can influence the deliberation process and how civic virtue is founded. Do you think that both Republicanism and liberalism are both under the same attack and also how Confucianism in the institutions in China and the technical architecture, how the design can resist this kind of technical change? Thanks, so we'll take just two more questions or just get right there in the middle. Hello, my name's Dave from Boston University study comparative religion also about Communism. My question would be, like right now in China, there are a lot of like ministry about Confucianism and also about relationship between business and also Confucianism, like for example, like Changiang Business School actually have a lot of people teaching Confucianism more like for people working in business, more like kind of a shared value about Confucianism. And also thinking about the ministry, compared with Christianity, churches, I've been to India also, India has a lot of temples to Buddhism have a lot of temples too, but like Confucianism right now, like actually terms of ministry, what kind of policy should be better? Okay, thank you. And a final, is there a final question right in the middle there? Hello, I'm Zhou Wenren from the Harvard Indian Institute. I got a question for Professor Han. My question is that you said you stopped being a Confucianist. So my question is that, well, you stopped being a Confucianist, but can you adopt totally abandoned the Confucian traditions? For example, would you allow your son to call your first name? So my question is really that, sometimes it's kind of easy to abandon the official ideology. And but, can we totally abandon the culture that is essentially a part of our tradition? Okay, thank you. These were terrific questions and I know there'll be many more, but you'll have an opportunity after we formally close this session to talk to the panelists out there in the lobby during the book signing. So let me turn back again, first to the other panelists and then I'll give Michael the final word here. So those are the other panelists who would like to make responses? Well, yes, I'll have to. That's great, thank you for the question. I think your question really gets to the heart of the issue. Speaking as a Korean, we're very Confucian. There's no escaping it. So our language is completely, well it's best fit for Confucian. I always wonder whether Korean language was the one that we used today is created by Confucians or it just happened to fit Confucian because it's incredibly hierarchical. As some of you know, we have 13 different ways to say please eat, depending on the term you use for the king and to your slave, right? So, and you have to be a perfect master of that language when you talk to your classmates, your one year senior, two year senior, or your teachers, it's a very complicated language that constantly reinvests the sense of authority, relations, but family relations. So what I'm saying is that it's not that we can ever escape this, at least not in my lifetime. My generation, it would seem. But then the question of whether you would then advocate Confucianism, that's something. So you could be a, for a Korean woman to be criticizing Confucianism, that's perfectly fine. She's a Confucian, she's probably more Confucian than almost anybody in certain ways, but then ideationally she would be a severe critic and not just in terms of theory, but of course the institutions that she thinks derive from Confucianism and that she feels is very oppressive for her gender. So it's never a matter of abandoning your tradition. It's just how you deal with that tradition. There's some ways of affirming it and some ways of rejecting it. It's just, again, trying to read, be able to read, or have your own position, have your own view, judgment as to which position was required at certain juncture in your country's history or your society's evolution. And I think that's really, again, as I said at the beginning, an interesting challenge put forth to any intellectual. Do you adapt to changing times? Do you adapt your philosophy to changing times? Do you sometimes abandon philosophies and embrace others? I think it was a class of the Strauss who said bricolore, intellectual is like a, bricolore is like a tool, a handyman. You're used, you're called to do all kinds of jobs. And now you'd normally think that philosophers are intellectual as somebody who has this grand standard universal vision and you just hang on to it or articulate it, but in certain ways I find myself increasingly becoming a bricolore and trying to figure out my place in history, where exactly I fit and whether this means I embrace or reject or Confucianism or other things. Thank you. Other panelists, you guys, were you knowing? If Santa has something to say. He'll have the last word. Well, the last question I will mention the important distinction between the official ideology and the way of living, actually way of living. I think this is an important discussion. But as far as the way of living is concerned, it cannot be reduced to certain specific form of religion. Average people, general public, most of them don't read any classical text of Confucius or something like that. They just receive the well, traditional way of life and also they adjust and change these forms. For example, even Christianity, countries with Christian traditions, do you think that the Christmas tree can be traced to the Christian, well, did he just thought? It has nothing to do with that. It has a German folk tradition, which Christians, Christian missions incorporate. And there are a lot of examples. For example, we Japanese will celebrate the birth of newborn babies in the Shinto style and also wedding ceremony in the Shinto style. But as far as people died, we will conduct our funeral in the Buddhist style. So it's a kind of religious syncretism. The people, well, just not passive. They are well, actively, well, their way of life, well, absorbing some part of this religion and other part of this, like that. So I don't think if you were really interested in the way people live, then I think you should abandon some religion has a dominant influence on the way people live. Thank you. Professor Chan, Professor Chu? No? Neither of you, okay. In that case, we will turn back to Professor Sandel for his concluding thoughts. On the relation between civic virtue and moral virtue, I think it goes both ways. I think to be a good citizen can cultivate qualities of character that are important to living a good life. I also agree with Aristotle that to live a good life, it's not enough simply to display private virtues or virtues related to one's immediate family, but it's also necessary to engage with the world, to deliberate with fellow citizens about the collective destiny. That element of sharing, of participating in self-rule develops qualities of character and judgment and concern that we can't fully realize in private life or even family life alone. Now, holding those two views, it gets me in trouble sometimes with my liberal friends and in a few cases also with Confucian scholars who questioned that view of the relation between the two. I would just like to conclude, may I read just a few sentences to conclude? It's about the project of mutual learning and it goes back to the question, what motivates all this? And it's also, well, why do this and what can one learn? Not only by doing comparative philosophy, but for that matter by being curious and traveling. Any project of mutual learning between Chinese and Western philosophy should begin by acknowledging a certain asymmetry. Our friend and former colleague, Tu Weiming, once observed that China is a learning civilization, whereas the West is a teaching civilization. He didn't mean this as a compliment to the West. I think he was suggesting that societies that see themselves as delivering instruction to the rest of the world fall into a certain hubris. Their teaching devolves into preaching. Beyond generating resentment as civilization bent on teaching and preaching loses its capacity to encounter the world, to listen and to learn from it. That's really the spirit that animates this project as far as I'm concerned. And so I really just wanna close by saying that I'm so grateful to my colleague, Liz Perry and to the panelists. Not only for, in the case of the panelists, traveling a great distance to be part of this discussion, but also for what I take to be the gift, and it is a gift of their critical engagement. Thank you very much. Thank you all so much. I would like to thank Professor Sandel for this wonderful presentation. Thank Professor Chan, Professor Chu, Professor Ham, Professor Inouye, and all of you. And again, to thank the co-sponsoring institutions, the Asia Center, the Fairbank Center, the Korea Institute, the SAFRA Center, and especially the staff of the Harvard Yenjing Institute and Lindsay Strogatz, who did all the hard work. Thank you very, very much.