Confucian justification of leadership democracy : a distinction between Confucian ethics and politics

• Main Author: Jin, Yutang
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Oxford 2021
• Subjects: Philosophy; Philosophy, Chinese; Political science

My doctoral study focuses on the relationship between classic Confucian thought and democratic theory, examining whether canonical Confucian texts in the pre-Qin period (770-221 BC), especially the Analects, the Mencius and the Xunzi, can provide intellectual sources of justification for democracy. In Confucian political theory today, there is a crucial debate on whether the stretch of Confucian thought can lend support to democracy. Examining the relationship between Confucianism and democracy not only helps to clarify different flavors of Confucianism to which various normative theories subscribe, but also has a crucial bearing on envisioning ways in which the Confucian tradition can be renewed under modern conditions. For some intellectual historians, democratic thinking is tangential to Confucian political thought, the latter of which is about a multi-layered hierarchy where popular welfare serves as a means of securing stable political order. Consequently, there is no political agency assigned to the common people. While Confucian meritocrats also read Confucianism as denying the common people any meaningful say, they take popular welfare to be the gist of Confucian political legitimacy. Confucian democrats, in contrast, believe that, despite the heavy dose of elitism in Confucianism, Confucian values require democracy as its political form. In light of the dispute over textual interpretations, I situate my work in the emerging field of Confucian political theory that attempts to interpret and revamp Confucianism in light of modern political vocabularies and changing social contexts. My research transcends the traditional disciplinary boundary between Confucian philosophy and democratic theory and makes a fresh contribution to Confucian political theory. The central questions guiding my thesis are whether core Confucian values, which I recast as plebeian and elitist ones, can provide justification for democracy, and if so, what form the democracy thus justified takes. Correspondingly, the main arguments of my thesis are 1) that a proper distinction between Confucian ethics and politics, which weaves together the Mencian idea of popular approval and Confucian respect for ordinary people's natural dispositions, justifies electoral democracy as the best expression of Confucian values, and 2) that the democracy thus justified is elitist democracy or what I call "Confucian leadership democracy" that combines popular approval with elite governance. Working on this thesis involves a close examination of existing interpretations of classic Confucian texts made by as various commentators as traditionalists including Loubna El Amine (Chapter I), Confucian meritocrats including Daniel A. Bell, Bai Tongdong and Kang Xiaoguang (Chapter II) and twentieth century New Confucians including Mou Zongsan and Xu Fuguan (Chapter III). In Chapter IV, I propose Confucian leadership democracy as the best expression of Confucian plebeian and elitist values.