Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics 1108499422, 9781108499422

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Conventions
Introduction
PART I: Confucian Constitutionalism
1 Interest, Morality, and Positive Confucianism
2 Virtue, Ritual, and Constitutionalism
3 Before and after Ritual: Moral Virtue and Civic Virtue
PART II: Wang, Ba, and Interstate Relations
4 The Psychology of Negative Confucianism
5 Hegemonic Rule: Between Good and Evil
6 Responsibility for All under Heaven
Conclusion: Between Old and New
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics Surprisingly little is known about what ancient Confucian thinkers struggled with in their own social and political contexts and how these struggles contributed to the establishment and further development of classical Confucian political theory. Leading scholar of comparative political theory Sungmoon Kim offers a systematic philosophical account of the political theories of Mencius and Xunzi, investigating both their agreements and disagreements as the champions of the Confucian Way against the backdrop of the prevailing realpolitik of the late Warring States period. Together, they contributed to the formation of Confucian virtue politics, in which concerns about political order and stability and concerns about moral character and moral enhancement are deeply intertwined. By presenting their political philosophies in terms of constitutionalism, Kim shows how they each developed a way to authorize the ruler’s legitimate use of power in domestic and interstate politics in ways consistent with their distinctive accounts of human nature. Sungmoon Kim is Professor of Political Theory and Director of the Center for East Asian and Comparative Philosophy at City University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Confucian Democracy in East Asia: Theory and Practice (Cambridge, 2014), Public Reason Confucianism:  Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (Cambridge, 2016), and Democracy after Virtue:  Toward Pragmatic Confucian Democracy (2018).

Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics The Political Philosophy of Mencius and Xunzi

SUNGMOON KIM City University of Hong Kong

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–​321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi –​110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06-​04/​06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/​9781108499422 DOI: 10.1017/​9781108645089 © Sungmoon Kim 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-​1-​108-​49942-​2 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Sejin

Contents

Preface page ix Conventions xiii Introduction PART I  Confucian Constitutionalism 1 Interest, Morality, and Positive Confucianism 2 Virtue, Ritual, and Constitutionalism 3 Before and after Ritual: Moral Virtue and Civic Virtue

1 27 59 89

PART II  WANG, BA, and Interstate Relations 4 The Psychology of Negative Confucianism 5 Hegemonic Rule: Between Good and Evil 6 Responsibility for All under Heaven

117 147 178



206

Conclusion: Between Old and New

Bibliography Index

219 233

vii

Preface

This book has a long and complicated origin. After graduating from college, I  attended the Academy of Korean Studies, a national research center for humanities and social sciences in South Korea, in order to further my studies in Confucian philosophy and political thought, while improving my classical Chinese. Although my original goal at the Academy was to study the modern implications of Confucianism in relation to liberalism and democracy, I was instantly drawn to the rich history of Korean Neo-​Confucian political thought during the Chosŏn 朝鮮 dynasty (1392–​1910) and in the end decided to write my MA thesis on the political conflict between two towering Korean Neo-​ Confucian scholars in the sixteenth century  –​Yi Hwang 李滉 (1502–​1571), better known by his pen name T’oegye 退溪, and Cho Sik 曺植 (1501–​1572), also known as Nammyŏng 南冥. While writing my thesis (entitled “The Politics of the Neo-​Confucian Literati and the Confucian Scholars’ Charisma during the Chosŏn Period”), which in part aimed to investigate the enormous moral power held by the Korean Neo-​Confucian scholars vis-​à-​vis the king from the perspective of “moral charisma,” I realized that Korean Neo-​Confucians had been profoundly inspired by Mencius, especially his ideas of the “Great Man” (da zhangfu 大丈夫) and “outstanding person” (haojie zhi shi 豪傑之士), and this realization impelled me to develop my theoretical framework in reference to Mencius’s moral and political thought (as well as Max Weber’s theory of charisma). Shortly after, when I  became a PhD student at the University of Maryland at College Park (UMD), I  took a course on Nietzsche and Freud and decided to write for the term paper about Mencius’s political thought, more precisely his view of a Confucian scholar’s moral charisma as a source of political liberty, against the backdrop of the political psychology of Realpolitik drawn from Nietzsche and Freud’s political and psychological insights. After several years of revision, this paper was published by the journal History of Political Thought and Chapter 4 of this book, though thoroughly revised and ix

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substantially expanded, is based on this paper dating back to my second year of graduate school at UMD. Upon finding a full-​time faculty position, however, my most pressing concern was to develop a political theory of Confucian democracy, my long-​ time passion, and this preoccupation with contemporary Confucian political theory prevented me from developing a book-​length research project on early Confucian political thought, though I continued to read, write, and publish on Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, the three giants of classical Confucianism, virtually without any contact with scholars in Chinese philosophy and sinology. It was only after I joined the City University of Hong Kong in 2009 and became acquainted with scholars such as Philip J. Ivanhoe, Eric Hutton, Eirik Harris, Bryan Van Norden, and David Wong, among others, that I was introduced to the recent “analytical turn” of Chinese philosophy as well as the virtue-​ethical and moral-​psychological interpretation of Confucianism. Frankly, my initial interaction with analytic Chinese philosophers was not always productive. We scholars tend to welcome cross-​/​multi-​disciplinary studies that challenge the traditional academic disciplines but we are rarely told how difficult it is to have a full-​fledged and meaningful conversation or understanding across existing disciplinary boundaries and how frustrating it can be to have one’s position understood, let alone accepted, by those outside his or her immediate academic discipline. As a political theorist trained in political science from the beginning of college life, it is not always easy to communicate with, learn from, and (for better or worse) influence scholars trained in ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and logic, even when we all deal with the same classical Chinese texts. Oftentimes, as I have learned, our different background disciplinary trainings critically determine the concepts that guide our research and the different types of literature to which we aim to contribute casually lead us to rely on vastly different points of reference. For example, where political theorists are interested in subjects such as power, leadership, regulation, sanction, political order, and interstate relations, philosophers are drawn to questions concerning desire, mind, human nature, moral sentiment, moral motivation, moral judgment, and moral character. Where political theorists believe it is important to consider the political context in which the conversation between A and B is taking place in figuring out the purpose of their conversation and its practical consequences relative to the interlocutors’ political positions, philosophers tend to pay (far more) attention to the mode of moral reasoning in which A and B are engaged and how moral judgment or moral education is attained by undergoing a certain psychological process. The “good” thing about the field of Chinese philosophy, which is commonly considered to include the history of Chinese political thought, is that this multi-​ /​cross-​disciplinary demand is not a mere option but a must. Put differently, unless one develops a certain level of philological skill sufficient for accessing the classical texts, understands and is capable of employing philosophical languages, and becomes reasonably familiar with the historical and sociological

Preface

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facts about ancient China, it is technically impossible to produce a work that can appeal to the students of Chinese philosophy. In this regard, I  am not fully confident that this book is of the quality that can satisfy both political scientists who want to learn about classical Confucian political thought and the experts in classical Chinese texts and philosophers who deem ethical and moral psychological questions far more important than questions concerning governance and its undergirding institutional structures. All I can say is that this book is the outcome of a years-​long engagement of a political theorist with philosophers, philologists, and sinologists, and I  hope that it presents something not only acceptable but also appealing to them and worthy of serious engagement. In writing this book, I  have incurred numerous debts. As was the case with my earlier books, I  benefited immensely from my daily, intermittent conversations with my colleagues at the Center for East Asian and Comparative Philosophy and the Department of Public Policy of the City University of Hong Kong (CityU). Although many of them have recently left CityU, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Youngsun Back, Ruiping Fan, Eirik Harris, P.  J. Ivanhoe, Richard Kim, and Hsin-​wen Lee. The following scholars have discussed with me some seminal ideas developed in this book and I am grateful for their comments and friendship:  Steve Angle, Elton Chan, Joseph Chan, Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Fred Dallmayr, Loubna El Amine, Owen Flanagan, Eric Hutton, Michael Ing, Chenyang Li, Hui-​Chieh Loy, Susan Shim, Kwong-​ loi Shun, Sor-​hoon Tan, Justin Tiwald, Bryan Van Norden, and David Wong. Special thanks are due to my two Korean PhD students, Kyung Rok Kwon and Subin Lee, who read the early draft of the manuscript and offered me some critical comments. I am also grateful to my teachers at the Academy of Korean Studies who introduced me to Confucian philosophy and the history of Korean political thought, including Hyongjo Han, Jin-​deok Choi, Byoung-​ryon Park, and the late Hyong-​hyo Kim, as well as Jim Glass at UMD, for whose class the first draft of Chapter 4 was originally written. Finally, I would like to thank Robert Dreesen, my editor at Cambridge University Press, for his encouragement and support. All six main chapters have been extensively revised and substantially expanded from my earlier publications. It is important to note, however, that this book is not a mere collection of previously published essays as I have both revamped many of my earlier arguments, often based on my new interpretation of the classical texts, and added more materials in critical engagement with Chinese philosophers, ethicists, and philologists. Therefore, this book supersedes my arguments expressed in my previous publications. Chapter  1 has been substantively revised and expanded from “Politics and Interest in Early Confucianism,” Philosophy East and West 64:2 (2014), pp. 425–​448 and I am grateful to the University of Hawai’i Press for permission to reprint the essay here. An earlier and much shorter version of Chapter 2 was previously published as “Confucian Constitutionalism:  Mencius and Xunzi on Virtue,

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Ritual, and Royal Transmission,” Review of Politics 73:3 (2011), pp.  371–​ 399 and I  am grateful to the University of Notre Dame (via Cambridge University Press) for permission to reproduce this essay. Though Chapter  3 is newly written, substantive portions have been reproduced from “Before and after Ritual:  Two Accounts of Li as Virtue in Early Confucianism,” Sophia:  International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Metaphysical Theology and Ethics 51:2 (2012), pp. 195–​210 and I am grateful to Springer Nature for permission to reprint the relevant portion from the essay. An earlier version of Chapter  4 was published as “The Origin of Political Liberty in Confucianism: A Nietzschean Interpretation,” History of Political Thought 29:3 (2008), pp. 393–​415 and I am grateful to Imprint Academic for permission to reproduce this essay. Chapter 5 has been thoroughly revised and substantially expanded from “Between Good and Evil: Xunzi’s Reinterpretation of the Hegemonic Rule as Decent Governance,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 12:1 (2013), pp. 73–​92 and I am grateful to Springer Nature for permission to reuse the essay here. Finally, some portions of Chapter 6 have been drawn from “Confucian Humanitarian Intervention? Toward Democratic Theory,” Review of Politics 79:2 (2017), pp. 187–​213 and I am grateful to the University of Notre Dame (via Cambridge University Press) for permission to reprint the relevant part from this essay. Last but not least, I  would like to thank my wife Sejin for her love and support. Without her understanding and encouragement, I  would not have been able to finish this book, which has been in the making for a long time since the year we got married. I dedicate this book to her. This work was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. CityU11670216).

Conventions

Unless otherwise noted, all English translations of the Lunyu 論語 (The Analects of Confucius) have been adapted from The Analects, trans. D.  C. Lau (New  York:  Penguin, 1979). I  have also consulted Confucius:  Analects with Selections from Traditional Commentaries, trans. Edward Slingerland (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003) and The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998). For the Mengzi 孟子, I have quoted, unless otherwise noted, from Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau (New York: Penguin, 1970) and consulted Mencius, trans. Irene Bloom and ed. Philip J. Ivanhoe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009) as well as Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries, trans. Bryan W. Van Norden (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2008). For the Xunzi 荀子, I have quoted, unless otherwise noted, from Xunzi: The Complete Text, trans. Eric L.  Hutton (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2014)  and consulted Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, 3 vols., trans. John Knoblock (Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press, 1988, 1990, 1994). Chapter and section numbers follow Knoblock for the sake of consistency with my previous publications. For the occurrence of important terms of art or phrases, I  have provided a translation followed by the Pinyin Romanization and the original Chinese character(s) in parenthesis –​for example, “virtue” (de 德) or “revering the king and expelling the barbarians” (zun wang rang yi 尊王攘夷). In some special cases involving terms whose English translations do not effectively convey their original meanings, I have generally used their Pinyin Romanization alone, even though I follow the aforementioned convention in their first occurrences and wherever necessary in the given context. Such special terms include ren (benevolent/​human-​hearted), yi (righteous/​social norms), li (ritual/​ritual propriety), zhi (wisdom), ba (hegemon), and badao (hegemonic rule).

xiii

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Conventions

Chinese characters 禮 (ritual), 利 (profit), and 理 (good order or principle) are all transliterated as li following the Pinyin system but I distinguished them by adding * for 利 (i.e., li*) and ** for 理 (i.e., li**). Thus, unless otherwise indicated, throughout this book, li refers to 禮. Following Bloom, I  transliterated the name of the last king of the Shang dynasty 紂 as Zhòu and distinguished it from the name of one of the ancient Chinese dynasties, 周, by rendering it as Zhou.

Introduction

In the past two decades, Confucian political theory has rapidly established itself as one of the most vigorous subfields of political theory, obliterating the image of Confucianism as a relic of the “feudal” age and the single greatest obstacle to East Asia’s modernization. Of course, Confucianism as a set of intellectual ideas or as a world religion has long been incorporated into modern education since East Asia’s full-​scale “encounter with the West” in the late nineteenth century. In the last century, Confucianism has been taught or engaged in many academic disciplines and programs including sociology, history, sinology, religious studies, East Asian studies, and, most recently, philosophy. Despite the ongoing controversy in the Anglophone academic world as to whether Confucianism, and so-​called “Chinese philosophy” in general, can be properly considered “philosophy,” as the term and its intellectual practice are understood in the discipline,1 an increasing number of philosophers have begun to recognize Confucianism as an important subject worthy of exploration and are thus eagerly integrating it into their curriculum and research, thereby enriching and reforming the discipline of philosophy to be more multi-​ cultural and cross-​cultural comparative. Political theorists in political science, however, have not yet expressed equivalent enthusiasm for Confucianism as an academic subject and this is quite surprising, even unfortunate, considering the fact that they are often situated in an environment in which some of their more empirically minded colleagues are actively engrossed in Confucianism understood as a political culture or value system in relation to various indicators of modernity such as economic development and democratization.2 Seen in 1 On this controversy and for a forceful criticism on West-​centrism in the philosophy departments of North America, see Bryan W. Van Norden, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). 2 See, for instance, Doh Chull Shin, Confucianism and Democratization in East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Chong-​Min Park and Doh Chull Shin, “Do Asian Values

1

2

Introduction

this way, recent interest in and development of Confucian political theory among political theorists in their endeavor to de-​provincialize politics and “the political” signals the rise of a new intellectual movement that is long overdue, catching up with what other disciplines have done long ago.3 But what do we mean by “Confucian political theory”? Does it only refer to a constructive philosophical project concerned with the present and future of contemporary East Asia and beyond, one that puts Confucianism in dialogue with liberalism and democracy? Indeed, the recent emergence of Confucian political theory has been propelled largely by contemporary Confucian political theorists who commonly cite classical Confucianism as the guiding philosophical inspiration for their reconstruction of Confucianism into a modern political theory. Not surprisingly, creative intertwinement between history of political thought and normative political theory has been one of the most salient and exciting features of Confucian political theory and it is arguably for this reason that highly abstract and purely analytic forms of political theory, which dominate normative political philosophy of the West, are nearly non-​ existent in Confucian political theory.4 In most cases, key normative arguments advanced by Confucian political theorists are difficult to make sense of or to justify, unless supported by some textual evidence, and only then is the theory in question considered to retain its “Confucian” credential. Accordingly, much of Deter Popular Support for Democracy in South Korea?” Asian Survey 46 (2006), pp. 341–​361; Adrian Chan, “Confucianism and Development in East Asia,” Journal of Contemporary China 26:1 (1996), pp. 28–​45; Kyung-​Dong Kim, “Confucianism, Economic Growth and Democracy,” Asian Perspective 21:2 (1997), pp. 77–​ 97; Gregory K. Omatowski, “Confucian Ethics and Economic Development:  A Study of Adaptation of Confucian Values to Modern Japanese Economic Ideology and Institutions,” Journal of Socio-​Economics 25:5 (1996), pp. 571–​590. To the best of my knowledge, until very recently, Benjamin I. Schwartz’s classic book The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985) has been the only book-​length work by a political theorist on Chinese political thought in which Confucian political theory is given substantive attention. 3 See, among others, Brooke A. Ackerly, “Is Liberalism the Only Way toward Democracy? Confucianism and Democracy,” Political Theory 33:4 (2005), pp. 547–​576; Daniel A. Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy:  Political Thinking for an East Asian Context (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2006); Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism:  A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2014); Sungmoon Kim, Confucian Democracy in East Asia: Theory and Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); idem., Public Reason Confucianism:  Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (New  York:  Cambridge University Press, 2016); idem., Democracy after Virtue:  Toward Pragmatic Confucian Democracy (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2018); Joseph Chan, Doh Chull Shin, and Melissa S. Williams (eds.), East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy: Bridging the Empirical-​Normative Divide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Daniel A. Bell and Chenyang Li (eds.), The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 4 Arguably, Chan’s Confucian Perfectionism presents the most abstract and analytic form of Confucian political theory, but even Chan supplies an appendix at the end of the book where he provides a textual interpretation of several key passages of the classical Confucian texts that he believes are essential to his normative argument (pp. 213–​232).

Introduction

3

the normative disagreement among contemporary Confucian political theorists can be attributed to their different interpretations of key Confucian texts. However, while contemporary Confucian political theory’s methodological eclecticism has made a remarkable contribution to the development of Confucian political theory by encouraging many normative Confucian political theorists to simultaneously engage the history of Confucian (and other East Asian) political thought, it has, somewhat ironically, kept them from actively pursuing a full-​scale investigation of classical Confucian political theory in its own intellectual context with close attention to individual Confucian thinkers’ distinctive philosophical contributions. That is, recent enthusiasm for cross-​ cultural comparison between classical Confucianism and Western political theory, though important, has mainly encouraged Confucian political theorists to highlight the general features of classical Confucianism in comparison with Western philosophical traditions, but in doing so they have paid less attention to Confucian political theory as developed by classical Confucians themselves –​ their internal disagreement (and agreement), debate, and evolution, especially during the formative stages of the tradition. As a result, in political theory, we have many accounts of a general and idealized Confucian view of several important philosophical concepts and ideas such as justice, freedom, human rights, equality, autonomy, political participation, citizenship, and so on, which are mainly West-​inspired, but surprisingly little has been discussed of how the classical Confucians, individually or together, struggled in their own social and political contexts or how their intellectual struggles, often involving internal disagreement and debate, eventually contributed to the development of classical Confucian political theory.5 Even when existing studies on classical Confucian philosophy draw due attention to the disagreement or debate between the classical Confucians, their focus has predominantly been on the disagreement over “ethical” issues, such as whether the classical Confucians held contrasting accounts of human nature in a philosophically robust way or how such difference gave rise to equally contrasting methods of moral self-​cultivation, without making much effort to extend this ethical concern to a broader political question of how the classical Confucians thereby advanced distinct political theories via internal disagreement and debate in ways plausible in their own political contexts.6 Despite the plethora of studies on classical Confucian philosophy, little work has been produced that investigates whether classical Confucian thinkers, especially Mencius Note that, throughout this book, by “classical Confucianism” I mean pre-​Qin Confucianism, more specially the philosophical thought developed by Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi. Accordingly, by “the classical Confucians” I strictly refer to these three ancient Confucian masters. 6 Though Loubna El Amine’s Classical Confucian Political Thought:  A New Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015) intends to provide a rather holistic picture of classical Confucian political theory, it, too, falls short of articulating how classical Confucian political theory was advanced via internal debate and disagreement by focusing mainly on the common ground that binds the three ancient Confucian thinkers as “political realists.” 5

4

Introduction

(372–​289 bce) and Xunzi (c. 310–​235 bce), who came after Confucius (551–​ 479 bce), each had a coherent political theory and whether or how they developed a more systematic Confucian political theory in the course of wrestling with their predecessors’ ideas. The relative disregard of classical Confucianism as a coherent and systematic political theory in the English-​speaking academic world is rather surprising if we turn to Chinese and comparative philosophy, where exciting philosophical innovations have been made through careful reconstruction of and comparison between Mencius’s and Xunzi’s overall philosophical systems (in modern academic language), especially with regard to their contrasting views of human nature, different accounts of moral motivation, reasoning, and judgment, and their equally different methods of moral self-​cultivation, which are then engaged with contemporary virtue ethics, epistemology, empirical psychology, evolutionary biology, and even neuroscience. Though book-​length studies that thoroughly examine each Confucian thinker’s moral philosophy are also scant relative to the studies on, for example, Plato’s or Aristotle’s moral philosophy, despite their parallel impact on the East Asian moral and political tradition,7 several pioneering works in early Confucian ethics and philosophy, many of which are produced in the form of anthology, help us to attain a comprehensive philosophical understanding of Mencius’s and Xunzi’s ethical theories.8 Comparable intellectual endeavors are deplorably lacking in political theory, as strikingly evidenced by the virtual absence of a book-​length study (including anthologies) dedicated to the political theories of Mencius and Xunzi –​what they have in common as Confucians, where they part company, and whether or how Xunzi’s political theory is indebted to Mencius’s seminal insights and ideas.

7 Until today, the most comprehensive study on Mencius’s moral philosophy and ethics is one offered by Kwong-​ loi Shun, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought (Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press, 1997), but this book also does not sufficiently engage Mencius’s political philosophy. Also see Philip J. Ivanhoe, Ethics in the Confucian Tradition (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002); Bryan W. Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Confucian philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), ­chapter 4. For Xunzi’s moral philosophy, see Kurtis Hagen, The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2007); Janghee Lee, Xunzi and Early Chinese Nationalism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004); Antonio S. Cua, Human Nature, Ritual, and History: Studies in Xunzi and Chinese Philosophy (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), part 1. 8 Essays compiled in Xiusheng Liu and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi (Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett, 2002) combine to provide a comprehensive picture of Mencius’s moral philosophy. For Xunzi’s ethics and moral philosophy, see Eric L. Hutton (ed.), Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi (Dordrecht:  Springer, 2016); T. C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000); T. C. Kline III and Justin Tiwald (eds.), Ritual and Religion in the Xunzi (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014). For a short yet pointed comparison of Mencius’s and Xunzi’s ethical theories, see Kim-​chong Chong, Early Confucian Ethics (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2007).

Introduction

5

This book is motivated to fill this critical lacuna in both Chinese philosophy and Confucian political theory by systematically reconstructing Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political theories from several guiding philosophical angles, which I discuss shortly. The Paradigm of Confucian Virtue Politics There are several guiding propositions that underlie this book, which combine to constitute what I call the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics. The paradigm of Confucian virtue politics will provide an important backdrop against which the distinctive characteristics of Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political theories, to be presented in the following chapters, will be highlighted and evaluated. First, virtue understood as excellent trait of character is the central concern for both Mencius and Xunzi, and their political theories are predicated on their respective virtue ethics, which begins with a specific account of human nature, supports a specific method of moral self-​cultivation, and aspires to the moral ideal of the “sage” (shenren 聖人) as the final destination of moral self-​cultivation. Let us call this the virtue proposition. Though some scholars challenge the virtue-​ethical interpretation of Confucian ethics due to the danger of assimilating it into Western virtue ethics, especially the Aristotelian variation,9 there is deep consensus among contemporary scholars that the Chinese character de 德, which I render as virtue, is concerned with human excellence and flourishing and that its cultivation and proper performance in order to become a gentleman (junzi 君子) or even a sage is at the heart of classical Confucianism.10 Insofar as Confucian ethics is perfectionist in nature, so is Confucian politics, even when it is profoundly concerned with order (zhi 治) and stability. Second, Confucian virtue ethics, as subscribed to by both Mencius and Xunzi, generates a specific mode of perfectionist politics, namely, virtue politics, which relies primarily on the ruler’s moral character for its moral goal and

9 These critics tend to capture the nature of Confucian ethics in terms of “role ethics.” See Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics:  A Vocabulary (Honolulu, HI:  University of Hawaii Press); Henry Rosemont Jr., “Rights-​Bearing Individuals and Role-​Bearing Persons,” in Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility, ed. Mary I. Bockover (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1991), pp. 77–​101. 10 Ames and Rosemont, two of the most vigorous critics of the virtue-​ethical interpretation of Confucian ethics, nevertheless admit that in classical Confucianism de is centrally concerned with “excellence” in the sense of “excelling at becoming one’s own person” (Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation [New York: Ballantine Books, 1998], p. 57). Even granting Ames and Rosemont’s more dynamic and process-​focused interpretation of the Confucian self, it seems difficult not to understand their notion of “excellence” in terms of a character trait. For an argument that there is meaningful difference as much as similarity between Confucian and Aristotelian virtue ethics, see Jiyuan Yu, The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue (New York: Routledge, 2007); May Sim, Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

6

Introduction

political viability. Let us call this the virtue politics proposition. In Confucian virtue politics, therefore, the ruler is considered to be the primary object of moral self-​cultivation because the moral and material well-​being of the people, the telos of Confucian politics, hangs critically on his virtuous character, or, more precisely, his care for the people. Therefore, Confucian virtue politics does not make the impossible demand that all members of the political community be perfectly virtuous for it to function properly, nor does it assume that as long as the ruler is virtuous, good government will naturally follow. In emphasizing the ruler’s robust moral character, Confucian virtue politics stipulates that the ruler, if his self is properly cultivated, helps maintain the institutional apparatuses or the “model” (fa 法) against various political contingencies. The third proposition is the moral education proposition. To be morally legitimate and to flourish politically, Confucian virtue politics cannot rely on the ruler’s robust character alone, despite its foundational importance. It also requires the people’s virtue, making the people’s moral cultivation the most profound perfectionist concern of the Confucian state. More specifically, in Confucian virtue politics, the people’s moral well-​being is realized in the form of a state-​centered moral education. If the ruler’s virtue is the locomotive of a good government, what puts the government on a firm moral foundation is the people’s appreciation of the moral and aesthetic value of good form (wen 文) that underlies good government. Moral education enables the people to develop moral taste and motivates them to subject themselves to the political order, willingly reciprocating the material and moral well-​being that they enjoy under good government with voluntary obedience. Though penal codes and punishment are not completely eliminated from the Confucian state, it aims to use such coercive measures minimally, and, when it does, only for the purpose of the people’s moral correction and reform. Fourth, since the people’s moral flourishing cannot be expected or attained in poverty, Confucian virtue politics makes it its critical role, no less important than to provide moral education, to create socioeconomic conditions that enable the people to build a fiduciary society and devote themselves steadily to moral development in association with others. We can call this the material condition proposition. Like other institutions that govern the people’s personal conduct and social interactions across all spheres of their life, socioeconomic order and institutions that satisfy the people’s material well-​being are predicated on ritual (li 禮), which not only places the people (and the ruler) each in their proper place, thereby achieving social harmony, but, more importantly, helps them to overcome their natural desires for profit so that they (the desires) can be put in balance with morality and the common good. Now, notice that all of these key propositions of Confucian virtue politics are strongly supported by Confucius’s vision of good government. Precisely in the sense that they are rooted in and vindicated by Confucius’s own thought, I  say that they constitute the “paradigm” of Confucian virtue politics, after which political theories of later Confucians were modeled, albeit in varying

Introduction

7

degrees, thereby forming the (internally diverse) tradition of Confucian virtue politics. Then, how is each proposition supported by Confucius? Although Confucius never actively concerned himself with the question of human nature, the virtue proposition is attested throughout The Analects. One telling piece of evidence is found in his conversation with his student Yan Hui, who asks about ren 仁 (casually translated in English as benevolence or human-​heartedness), the Confucian virtue par excellence.11 Confucius replies, “To return to the observance of ritual through overcoming the self constitutes ren … [T]‌he practice of ren depends on oneself alone, and not on others. [Therefore] do not look unless it is in accordance with li; do not listen unless it is in accordance with li; do not speak unless it is in accordance with li; do not move unless it is in accordance with li.”12 Yan inquires to Confucius about ren because it is the most important virtue that his teacher has been talking about and yet its content remains most elusive. Confucius’s core message is that ren is a character trait, or, more accurately, a set of traits one acquires (de 得) by, most crucially, immersing oneself in the practice of ritual, a set of rules and norms guiding one’s proper personal and social conduct –​not because it is imposed top-​down as a moral maxim but because its moral meaning is realized in the course of critical self-​reflection (si 思) that recalibrates one’s desire in a way appropriate to his or her specific situations, making the practice of ren self-​originated (youji 由己).13 Confucius relates this “acquisition model” of moral self-​cultivation with his own life-​long endeavor to become a sage, although he never believed that he had arrived at sagehood.14 At fifteen I set my heart on learning; at thirty I took my stand; at forty I came to be free from doubts; at fifty I understood the Decree of Heaven; at sixty my ear was atuned [sic]; at seventy I followed my heart’s desire without overstepping the line.15

For Confucius, however, the primacy of virtue does not end with ethics. It extends to politics, with which the Decree of Heaven (tianming 天命) is originally associated in the Zhou 周 political discourse, the ancient civilization that Confucius was eager to revive,16 with a moral demand that in order to entertain For a classic account on the nature of ren in classical Confucianism as the virtue par excellence encompassing all other virtues, see Wing-​tsit Chan, “The Evolution of the Confucian Concept Jen,” Philosophy East and West 4:4 (1955), pp. 295–​319. 12 The Analects 12.1. 13 For Confucius’s emphasis on reflection (si), see The Analects 2.15. Also see Sor-​hoon Tan, Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), p. 47. 14 For the acquisition model by Confucius, see Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), p. 2. 15 The Analects 2.4. Also consider Confucius’s following description of the gentleman’s moral character: “The gentleman has yi as his basic stuff and by observing li puts it into practice, by being modest (sun 孫) gives it expression, and by being trustworthy in word (xin 信) brings it into completion” (The Analects 15.18). 16 The Analects 3.14. 11

8

Introduction

the Mandate of Heaven the ruler be (or strive to be) virtuous by subjecting himself to ritual as well as by leading the people by means of ritual.17 The first dimension of the virtue politics proposition, concerning the ruler’s moral character, is most clearly addressed in Confucius’s following statement: “When those above love li, none of the common people will dare be irrelevant; when they love what is righteous (yi 義), none of the common people will dare be insubordinate; when they love trustworthiness (xin), none of the common people will dare be insincere. In this way, the common people from the four quarters [i.e., the world] will come with their children strapped on their backs.”18 The point here is the central importance of the ruler’s robust moral character, which can inspire the people toward goodness. In this vein, Confucius famously defines good government (zheng 政) in terms of being corrected in goodness (zheng 正), asserting that if a ruler sets an example by being correct, none would dare to remain incorrect.19 But the virtue politics proposition does not valorize the ruler’s moral character alone as though it yields certain magical power that attracts the people without the institutional means to facilitate their moral transformation –​hence its second dimension concerning the people’s moral enhancement beyond mere political compliance.20 Consider the following statement by Confucius: Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with li, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.21

Earlier we noted that Confucius understood li as indispensable to his acquisition model of moral self-​cultivation, though without clarifying the nature of the relationship between li and ren or moral virtue more generally –​instrumental or intrinsic? –​to which I return in Chapter 3. What the passage above reveals is that li is an indispensable means for good government as well, an institutional mechanism by which people can be morally reformed and political order can be attained therewith. Thus, in the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics, political order and stability is not a value

17 Notice that both the Decree of Heaven and the Mandate of Heaven are translations of the same Chinese term tianming. Modern scholars tend to translate tianming as the Mandate of Heaven when it is explicitly associated with the ruler (his political legitimacy, more precisely) while rendering it as the Decree of Heaven when it is concerned with an individual moral agent in relation to his (Heaven-​given) moral nature or moral mission. 18 The Analects 13.4. Also see 14.41. 19 The Analects 12.17. Also see 13.3; 13.6. 20 Admittedly, however, several statements by Confucius, some of which (allegedly) describe sage-​ king Shun’s government, do highlight a certain “magical” or “charismatic” force of the ruler’s moral character (see The Analects 2.1; 12.19; 15.5). My argument is that the ruler’s moral character does not fully explain the way in which Confucian virtue politics actually operates in the non-​ideal political context. 21 The Analects 2.3.

Introduction

9

in itself. It is one of the positive byproducts that the li-​based moral transformation of the people yields.22 Of course, the fact that Confucian virtue politics does not valorize political order and stability for its own sake neither entails that it downplays the critical importance of such political goods nor suggests that it does not acknowledge ritual’s more active, as I  will argue, “constitutional” contribution to political order and stability. In fact, as we shall see in the chapters that follow, one of the major political differences (if not outright disagreements) between Mencius and Xunzi is whether to understand li as sociopolitical institutions that can directly address the problem of disorder that defined the political situation of the Warring States period (475–​221 bce), admittedly the most turbulent period in Chinese history. Confucian virtue politics’ largely instrumental approach to political order only suggests that the classical Confucians did not appreciate the pure “political” value of order and stability, which has no (long-​term) internal connection with the ethical relationship between the ruler and the ruled and does not facilitate the moral cultivation of the people. No classical Confucian ever attempted to derive “political morality” that is internal to the standard of ordered political rule as such in the way Bernard Williams understands political morality in relation to what he calls “the Basic Legitimation Demand,” which is concerned with the “first” political question (in the Hobbesian sense) of “securing order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation.”23 This second dimension of the virtue politics proposition naturally justifies the moral education proposition. When Ji Kangji, a usurper of the ruling authority of the state of Lu 魯, Confucius’s home country, asked how the ruler can “inculcate in the common people the virtue of reverence, of doing their best and of enthusiasm,” Confucius replied, “Rule over them with dignity and they will be reverent; treat them with kindness and they will do their best; raise the good and instruct those who are backward and they will be imbued with enthusiasm.”24 More tellingly, when asked by Ranyou, his student, what more can be done if there are numerous people and they have been made prosperous by the state, Confucius famously replied that they should be educated.25 It is a matter of controversy whether the virtues that Confucius thinks are expected of the common people as a result of state moral education are the same sorts So, I disagree with El Amine, when she asserts that “[t]‌he standard in politics is therefore not virtue (the moral edification of the people), but rather the establishment and maintenance of political order” (Classical Confucian Political Thought, pp. 10–​11). I critically revisit El Amine’s central argument in the concluding chapter. 23 Bernard Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 3. Williams claims that “the BLD [Basic Legitimation Demand] is itself a moral principle,” not in the sense that it represents a morality that is prior to politics but in the sense that it is “inherent in there being such a thing as politics” (p. 5). 24 The Analects 2.20. 25 The Analects 13.9. 22

10

Introduction

of virtues required of the ruler for good and effective government. Equally controversial is whether they are the same moral virtues that are concerned with human excellence and flourishing or whether the virtues required of the common people in their political capacity of “the ruled” have only indirect connection with their moral self-​cultivation toward sagehood. If so, what is the nature of such virtues? Or how can we make sense of their distinctive nature? Again, and as we will see later in this book, meaningfully different responses to these questions lead Mencius and Xunzi to qualitative different versions of Confucian political theory. As Confucius’s response to Ranyou clearly shows, however, moral education can hardly be effective if people are impoverished, as they cannot afford to think beyond their material survival, and this concern gives rise to the material condition proposition. Like political goods such as political order and stability, in Confucian virtue politics, socioeconomic conditions do not hold a value of intrinsic moral importance, independent of what they aim to facilitate, namely, the people’s moral well-​being and flourishing. Nevertheless, no classical Confucian believed that it would be possible to lead the people toward goodness without creating the socioeconomic conditions under which they have sufficient means to support them and their families. It is for this reason that Confucius singles out “enough food” as one of the three core elements that buttress good government, along with enough arms and trust between the ruler and the people.26 Two Aims In suggesting (a) the primacy of virtue as the wellspring of human excellence and flourishing, (b) a mode of government relying primarily on the ruler’s moral character, (c) moral education of the people, and (d) the material conditions for the people’s moral well-​being as the key constituents of the paradigm of virtue politics, however, Confucius did not develop an articulate political theory in which these components are coherently interweaved into a systematic whole. Although none of the later classical Confucians advanced a systematic political theory in the form of a philosophical treatise paralleling Aristotle’s Politics or Cicero’s On the Commonwealth, mainly due to the vastly different way of The Analects 12.7. Also see Joseph Chan, “Is There a Confucian Perspective on Social Justice?” in Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia, eds. Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), pp. 261–​277; Sor-​hoon Tan, “The Concept of Yi (义) in the Mencius and Problems of Distributive Justice,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93:3 (2014), pp. 489–​505. It is highly debatable, however, whether this implies that the classical Confucians believed in the overriding value of the so-​called “right to subsistence” vis-​à-​vis civil and political rights, as Bell claims (see Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy, pp. 237–​243). For an argument that counters Bell’s claim, see Sungmoon Kim, “Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights: A Mencian Perspective,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 74:1 (2015), pp. 149–​185, esp. at pp. 174–​178. 26

Introduction

11

forming philosophical thought, Mencius and Xunzi immediately took on the tasks of articulating human nature, illuminating the nature of key virtues and their internal relations, explicating moral psychology and the method of moral self-​cultivation, and extending virtue ethics to virtue politics in both domestic politics and interstate relations. The result was the emergence of two different models of Confucian virtue politics, though both maneuvered within the same political paradigm. One of the central aims of this book is to articulate what Mencius and Xunzi have in common as the advocates of the political paradigm provided by Confucius, why and where they part company despite their shared commitment to the Kingly Way (wangdao 王道), the ideal Confucian statecraft, and how in doing so they each created a distinctive Confucian political theory, enriching the paradigm in ways that go far beyond Confucius’s seminal ideas and propositions. Chapters in Part I are intended to serve this aim, though each chapter from a different angle. Together, they illuminate the inextricable and complex relationship between Confucian virtue ethics and virtue politics and the relationship’s distinct configuration in each thinker’s political theory more specifically. I approach such a configuration from the overarching framework of “Confucian constitutionalism,” about which I explain shortly. That being said, there is another important aim of this book in relation to Confucius’s original political thought. To explicate the background of this second aim, however, it seems necessary to make a brief historical excursion. Confucius lived during the last moments of the Spring and Autumn period (771–​476 bce), which began with the destruction of the Western Zhou (1046–​771 bce); though Zhou’s political power and symbolic authority as the suzerain ruler governing “all under Heaven” (tianxia 天下) had significantly waned throughout this period and its decline further accelerated during Confucius’s lifetime, it had yet to collapse completely and no regional rulers governing the realm called guo 國, though only nominally subject to Zhou as the “feudal” lord, dared to arrogate to themselves the title of “king” (wang 王), the political title exclusively held by the Zhou suzerain as the Son of Heaven (tianzi 天子). By making it his Heaven-​bestowed mission to restore the bygone civilization of the Western Zhou,27 Confucius held an unflinching commitment to Zhou political ritualism and believed that it alone could provide a reliable normative standard according to which the political turmoil of his time could be rectified.28 Despite his occasional indignation at the munities

27 For Confucius’s prophetic sense of mission for the transformation of the world, see Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Trouble with Confucianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 4–​15. 28 We can have the most contextualized (and proper, in my view) reading of Confucius’s famous idea of the “rectification of names” (zhengming 正名) against the backdrop of his commitment to Zhou political ritualism. As a method of government, zhengming requires that the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, the father a father, and the son a son (The Analects 12.11).

12

Introduction

and usurpations perpetrated by local rulers, powerful families, and ambitious ministers,29 Confucius took for granted domestic and interstate moral hierarchies that Zhou political ritualism authorized and thus he never gave up his global vision of Confucian virtue politics, at the heart of which lay a universal kingship by a virtuous ruler.30 Both Mencius and especially Xunzi, who came two generations after Mencius, belonged to a radically different world, however. What differentiates the Warring States period from the Spring and Autumn period is the rise of the independent and de facto sovereign states untrammeled by Zhou political ritualism. Though Zhou collapsed in 256 bce, right before the reunification of the Middle Kingdom by Qin 秦 (221 bce), a Legalistic state from the west, by Mencius’s time Zhou had completely lost control over former feudal states, and several powerful states, all claiming the title of “king,” were violently vying for supremacy in their struggle to become the universal ruler, driving interstate relations into war –​hence the Warring States period. Mencius and Xunzi each defended Confucianism not only against the champions of the competing schools of thought such as Daoists, Mohists, and Yangists, but more importantly, as far as their political theories are concerned, upheld the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics in the face of the eminent threat of Realpolitik, the ethos of which profoundly influenced the mindset of the rulers and accordingly the nature of interstate relations of the time. The second aim of this book, therefore, is to investigate how Mencius and Xunzi responded to the challenge of Realpolitik in both domestic and interstate political contexts. As will be shown, they both embraced the new political environment ushered in by the breakdown of Zhou political ritualism as the binding normative norm and wrestled to reinvent Confucian virtue politics in ways that better restrain the ruler’s arbitrary use of power and unchecked pursuit of private interest without hampering his legitimate use of power in the service of the well-​being of the people. Notwithstanding this common “constitutional” concern, though, it will also be discussed, Mencius and Xunzi placed different emphasis on the two, albeit intimately related, dimensions of Confucian virtue politics (“enabling” and “constraining”) and their contrasting assumptions of human nature further encouraged them to organize their idea of constitutional politics differently –​Mencius was deeply concerned with how to countervail the ruler’s political power by means of the minister’s moral virtue, whereas Xunzi was far more interested in defending the ritual institutions that could See The Analects 3.1; 16.1–​3. In 14.21, Confucius even urges Duke Ai of Lu to launch a punitive expedition (tao 討) against a minister who assassinated Duke Jian of Qi and usurped the power, which is a critical violation of Zhou political ritualism. In Chapter 6, I discuss how Mencius and Xunzi creatively re-​appropriated the Zhou practice of punitive expedition under new interstate political circumstances during the Warring States period. 30 On Confucius’s unswerving commitment to Zhou political ritualism, see Kung-​chun Hsiao, A History of Chinese Political Thought, Vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Sixth Century a.d., trans. F. W. Mote (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 93–​101. 29

Introduction

13

(re)constitute a civil polity out of political disorder. While chapters in Part I focus directly on the different modes of Confucian constitutionalism suggested by Mencius and Xunzi, chapters in Part II relate their constitutional visions to the assessment of the “Way of the Hegemon” (badao 覇道) and punitive expedition as the crucial methods of interstate governance for the sake of the well-​being of all under Heaven. Conceptual Frameworks While aiming to be a work of history of political thought, this book’s methodology is somewhat different from the one commonly employed in traditional history of political thought. Generally speaking, studies in history of political thought take the interaction between the historical context and production of meaning seriously, with special attention to a political theorist’s intention and the vocabularies that he or she employs.31 Thus in history of political thought, the key concern is often what kinds of concepts or ideas a theorist as an author employs or develops in the given historical context in order to make sense of or justify political relations, practices, and institutions and how they undergo historical transformations in meaning or even transvaluations in the course of being challenged by other theorists with alternative perspectives or further articulated by later scholars conditioned by a different historical context. Though this book intends to be sensitive to the historical context in which Mencius and Xunzi were developing their distinctive political ideas, often via critical conversation with kings and ministers of their time (a point which has been given surprisingly little attention by contemporary scholars),32 its ambition to derive a cogent and (more or less) systematic political theory from the texts of the Mengzi 孟子 and the Xunzi 荀子, significant portions of which are allegedly attributed to the historical Mencius and Xunzi, renders its guiding methodology to be more philosophically reconstructive and analytical than historical and descriptive. As the term “reconstructive” suggests, in analyzing the classical texts I  do not assume that they possess an esoteric or hidden philosophical message awaiting a perspicacious interpreter’s correct comprehension.33 Though some people in East Asia who are “comprehensively” See Quentin Skinner’s essays in Meaning and Context:  Quentin Skinner and His Critics, ed. James Tully (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1988). 32 In analytic Chinese philosophy in particular, it is commonly neglected that many of Mencius’s and Xunzi’s interlocutors were political leaders, and, accordingly, their statements tend to be understood apolitically as pure philosophic arguments concerning, for example, moral motivation, moral reasoning, and moral action but rarely as political argument on government and statecraft. 33 Compare my approach with Tongdong Bai’s, who understands the classical Confucian texts as sacred texts written by ancient sages and believes that they contain profound and esoteric meanings. See his Jiubang xinming: Gujinzhongxicankaoxiade gudianrujiazhengzhizhexue [A New Mission of an Old State:  The Contemporary and Comparative Relevance of Classical Confucian Political Philosophy] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2009). 31

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Introduction

committed to Confucianism as a moral and philosophical doctrine would still regard these texts as sacred texts  –​especially the Mengzi, which was canonized by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–​1200) as one of the Four Books (sishu 四 書) of Neo-​Confucianism  –​holding the ancient sage’s profound messages, I  approach them as philosophical texts that reflect the historical conditions in which they are embedded and whose less-​than-​organized compositions as political texts require reconstructions for the sake of philosophical intelligibility of each thinker’s political thought. By reconstructing a cogent and systematic Confucian political theory through textual analysis, therefore, I mean the following. I assemble Mencius’s and Xunzi’s otherwise-​scattered statements bearing their important political insights and judgments, reorganize them in a philosophically intelligible way, and use them to reconstruct a coherent political argument against the backdrop of their own political contexts. In reconstructing the constellations of Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political ideas and arguments into a coherent and systematic political theory, I employ several conceptual frameworks that I hope can shed new light on the comparative understanding of their political thought. Negative and Positive Confucianism The first conceptual framework that I  introduce is positive versus negative Confucianism. Negative Confucianism is meant to describe the dimension of Confucian virtue politics that stresses the importance of constraining the ruler’s pursuit of private interest and arbitrary use of power so that he can be on the right track of government (namely, the Kingly Way) in the service of the moral and material well-​being of the people. While negative Confucianism is supremely concerned with the constraining dimension of Confucian virtue politics, positive Confucianism refers to the aspect of Confucian virtue politics that enables the ruler, properly constrained by the logic of negative Confucianism, to legitimately exercise his political power and authority for the sake of public interest or common good. Central to the ruler’s legitimate exercise of political power is his (or the state’s) ability to coordinate the people’s conflicting interests effectively with a view to generating the public interest. The underlying assumption of positive and negative Confucianism is that, barring some exceptions, the ruler, whose power should be at once restrained and enabled, is a non-​Confucian political agent who ascends the throne by hereditary right and therefore is not necessarily virtuous. To put this assumption in the historical context of the Warring States period, what the framework of negative and positive Confucianism aims to illuminate is that Mencius and Xunzi grappled with how to constrain and simultaneously empower the rulers of their time, who were driven to a life-​and-​death struggle with others, and thus generally drawn to Realpolitik, knowing that they did not necessarily possess the moral character required to become a sage-​king. As such, this framework draws attention to both thinkers’ shared political realism.

Introduction

15

In employing the positive-​ versus-​ negative-​ Confucianism framework, my core argument is that although both Mencius and Xunzi acknowledge both dimensions of Confucian virtue politics, Mencius is strongly attracted to negative Confucianism, while Xunzi pays more attention to positive Confucianism. As will be discussed shortly, Mencius’s strong virtue monism as well as his ethico-​religious ideal of Confucian virtue politics allows relatively little room for his political theory to constructively engage with, let alone empower, a less-​ than-​virtuous ruler, and this difficulty leads Mencius to generally concentrate on negative Confucianism. On the contrary, Xunzi, who defines the ruler (jun 君) in a formal-​institutional fashion, as one who “is good at forming community”34 or as “the pivot and crucial point in controlling social divisions [among the people],”35 has far more freedom than Mencius in justifying the ruler’s political authority in terms of an ability to form community and coordinate (the divisions and allotments of) the people, as long as he is properly checked by ritual and yi. Virtue and Ritual Constitutionalism Many Western observers of China have long identified the absence of the principled division of power as one of the defining characteristics of the Confucian state, and they have commonly understood the Confucian state in terms of patrimony, overgrown bureaucracy, and rule of men (as opposed to rule of law).36 As a result, readers may reasonably raise questions regarding my earlier, seemingly anachronistic, attribution of terms such as “constitutional” and “constitutionalism” to Confucian virtue politics, anachronistic in light of the dominant Western liberal-​legal understanding of “constitutionalism,” which is nested in the interrelated discourses of protection of rights, due process, rule of law, and Rechtsstaat. Of course, in the modern liberal discourse, constitutionalism is far from merely a formal political concept, generally concerned with the constitution (i.e., make-​up) of a civil polity as it symbolizes the substantive liberal ideal of good government, at the core of which lies the disciplined institutional restraint of the state’s coercive power.37 I hold that if it is agreed that constitutionalism, which at once enables and constrains political power, is a widespread and adaptable phenomenon capable of insinuating itself into institutions in multiple ways, then understanding constitutionalism in a premodern non-​Western culture should require attention to 34 Xunzi 9.16a. 35 Xunzi 10.4. 36 Max Weber, The Religion of China:  Confucianism and Taoism, trans. Hans H.  Gerth (New York: The Free Press, 1951); Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, trans. H. M. Wright and ed. Arthur F. Wright (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964); Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate:  A Trilogy (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1968). 37 See Stephen Macedo, Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue, and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990).

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Introduction

the local language by which constitutionalism is mediated, the local context in which such a language is deployed, and the cultural grammar that governs such a context. In this regard, I  wholeheartedly agree with Chaihark Hahm (and others) that ritual played an important “constitutional” role in traditional Confucian politics.38 I also find David Schaberg’s argument appealing, when he presents the Rituals of Zhou (Zhouli 周禮), created during the Han dynasty, as a sort of constitutional text by understanding the word “constitution” as a translation of the term politeia as used by the ancient Greeks in pursuit of good government. More specifically, Schaberg writes, “[T]‌he term ‘constitution’ (as translation of politeia) is useful in that it identifies the Zhouli system as a monarchy, but one with certain internally justified arrangements for the distribution of power and responsibility. By reading the Zhouli ‘constitutionally,’ we can begin to imagine how its framers would answer the kinds of questions a Plato or an Aristotle might ask of them.”39 This said, however, in this book I do not go as far as to suggest that Confucian virtue politics presents a form of constitutionalism that imparts to the countervailing force an independent and legally entrenched base of power or right vis-​à-​vis the ruler. Throughout this book, and like Schaberg, I follow the lead of Aristotle, who first provided the definition of constitution, which still remains the term’s most capacious definition, and understand constitution as a translation of the Greek term politeia, that is, as “the organization of a [state or civic body], in respect of its offices generally, but especially in respect of that particular office which is sovereign in all issues.”40 Of special interest is that after equating constitution with “civic body” as such, Aristotle points out two key elements as central to assessing the polity’s constitutional nature: first, the nature of the end for which the polity exists and, second, the mode of rule that the people and various forms of associations they form are subject to.41 In this broad definition of constitution, the term “constitutional” can be associated with a polity that is civil, the end of which serves the well-​being of the people, and whose use of power is authoritative (not authoritarian). The paradigm of Confucian virtue politics clearly shows that Confucian virtue politics meets this minimum standard of constitutionalism, while buttressing one specific mode of government, namely, monarchy. The fact that Confucian virtue politics has both negative and positive dimensions, however, bears far-​reaching implications in relation to its constitutional nature. It implies that Confucian virtue politics is predicated on a Chaihark Hahm, “Law, Culture, and the Politics of Confucianism,” Columbia Journal of Asian Law 16 (2003), pp. 253–​301. 39 David Schaberg, “The Zhouli as Constitutional Text,” in Statecraft and Classical Learning: The Rituals of Zhou in East Asian History, eds. Benjamin A. Elman and Martin Kern (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 33–​63, at pp. 33–​34. 40 Politics 1278b6. The English translation is adapted from Aristotle, Politics, trans. Ernest Barker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 41 Politics 1278b15. 38

Introduction

17

special form of constitutional politics, which realizes its constitutional goals –​ authoritative use of political power and enhancement of the well-​being of the people –​not by means of arbitrary rule of man but in a principled manner in which the ruler is at once constrained and enabled as the authoritative pivot of social coordination. In this book, Confucian constitutionalism is understood mainly in terms of this double-​edged engagement with the ruler or the state as a practical mechanism to actualize the broad constitutional goals of Confucian virtue politics.42 What distinguishes Confucian constitutionalism understood in this way from liberal constitutionalism, which is commonly (and unfortunately) equated with constitutionalism as such, is that for its actualization it utilizes mediums other than rights, rule of law, and an independent judiciary.43 It is, among other things, virtue and ritual (more accurately, ritual institutions) that underpin Confucian constitutionalism. Between virtue and ritual, depending on which element is given more practical weight in the creation and principled operation of the civil polity, Confucian constitutionalism takes the form of either virtue constitutionalism or ritual constitutionalism. Virtue constitutionalism is a mode of Confucian constitutionalism that relies for its negative function on the Confucian-​educated minister’s charismatic moral virtue as the countervailing force against the (non-​Confucian) ruler’s brute political power, while for its positive function, it resorts to the ruler’s ability to extend his care to the people or transform his private interest into public interest. While the locomotive of virtue constitutionalism comes from the key political agents’ moral character, what animates ritual constitutionalism is not only moral character, which has the foundational importance in Confucian virtue politics, but, more importantly, ritual institutions that help overcome the chaotic state of nature, coordinate the people’s socioeconomic transactions, render social relations civil, and recalibrate the ruler’s otherwise-​ abusive power toward the well-​being of the people. As such, virtue constitutionalism and ritual constitutionalism are not mutually exclusive and they each contain elements of both negative and positive

42 Compare my understanding of Confucian constitutionalism with Bui’s idea of classical Confucian constitutionalism focused on the rectification of names (zhengming) and traditional norms and institutions embodied in the li. See Ngoc Son Bui, Confucian Constitutionalism in East Asia (New York: Routledge, 2016), chap. 1. Though Bui reconstructs and justifies a generic mode of classical Confucian constitutionalism in reference to Confucius’s ethical and political thought, I provide far more nuanced and sophisticated political theories of Confucian constitutionalism advanced by Mencius and Xunzi in the chapters of Part I. 43 In this regard, I fully agree with Graham Walker, when he says, “Defining quality of constitutionalism is not having definite texts; it is the public articulation of (at least some of) a polity’s normative architecture,” which can be materialized “via all forms of influential public discourse” (Graham Walker, “The Idea of Nonliberal Constitutionalism,” in Nomos XXXIX: Ethnicity and Group Rights, eds. Ian Shapiro and Will Kymlicka [New  York:  New  York University Press, 1997], p. 165).

18

Introduction

Confucianism. However, they nonetheless signify distinct modes of Confucian constitutionalism with differing emphasis on either negative or positive Confucianism. In this book, I present Mencius and Xunzi as the champions of virtue constitutionalism and ritual constitutionalism, respectively. Moral and Civic Virtue The third conceptual framework I  employ in this book is the distinction between moral and civic virtue. Like the other conceptual frameworks, this distinction is not the classical Confucians’ own creation, but I believe it captures powerfully an important difference between Mencius and Xunzi in the way they conceptualize virtue. By “moral virtue” I mean a set of character traits that are directly concerned with human excellence and flourishing. Since it concerns a person’s moral well-​being qua human being, it can also be called human virtue. In classical Confucianism moral virtues are the virtues whose cultivation is believed to ultimately lead one to sagehood. Such virtues include ren (benevolence), yi (righteousness), li (ritual propriety), and zhi (ability to distinguish between right and wrong), among others, and Mencius famously called them the four cardinal (human) virtues, which all human beings are born with in terms of Heaven’s decree (ming). “Civic virtue” is distinguished from moral virtue as it refers to a set of character traits that are primarily concerned with the creation and sustenance of the political community and thus only has an indirect relationship with human excellence and flourishing. In other words, in classical Confucianism civic virtues are the virtues that are directly instrumental to ritual order and social harmony but whose cultivation alone does not necessarily lead to sagehood. The effect of civic virtue is more institutional than personal and its intrinsic moral value, independent of its instrumental contribution to the political community, is less obvious than that of moral virtue. It is important to note, however, that the distinction between moral virtue and civic virtue that I  attribute to classical Confucianism is only heuristic, and, like the distinction between virtue constitutionalism and ritual constitutionalism, they are not mutually exclusive. In fact, and as will be argued in Chapter 3, there is no stark separation between moral virtue and civic virtue in classical Confucianism, as the two are connected, albeit not directly –​ which, I  suspect, is the reason why Mencius and Xunzi do not create a conceptual distinction between the two. One of the greatest advantages of acknowledging the practical distinction between moral virtue and civic virtue in classical Confucian political theory is that it makes it possible to differentiate between li as ritual propriety, which extends from Heaven-​bestowed human nature, and li as a set of civic virtues that are socially required for sustaining ritual institutions and maintaining political order. As will be shown, while li is one of the cardinal moral virtues for Mencius, for Xunzi it is primarily a civic virtue, and this distinction is closely related to a specific mode of Confucian constitutionalism advocated by each thinker.

Introduction

19

Strong and Tempered Virtue Monism Confucian ethics as conceived by Mencius and Xunzi is monistic in its structure in that it does not (clearly) distinguish between private and public, nor between moral and civic. Furthermore, Confucianism does not recognize the analytical distinction between ethics and politics –​hence Confucian virtue politics in which ethics and politics are inextricably intertwined. This, however, does not mean that classical Confucians always believed that harmony between moral and civic and between ethics and politics, as we now distinguish, was easy to attain. In fact, for both Mencius and Xunzi, the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics was essentially a normative paradigm, close to what John Rawls calls a “regulative ideal,” something that ought to be pursued despite the practical difficulty of achieving it under the non-​ideal political circumstances. In a sense, what distinguish Mencius and Xunzi as political thinkers are the different ways in which they responded to the challenge of a political reality that belies a seamless continuum between ethics and politics, and this difference, I contend, further differentiates the two also as virtue ethicists. Therefore, the final conceptual framework that I rely on in this book is the structural difference between Mencius’s virtue ethics, which is strongly monist, and Xunzi’s virtue ethics, whose monistic structure is (more) tempered by the demand of political reality. Strong virtue monism, which I associate more closely with Mencius, stipulates a perfect harmony between moral virtue and civic virtue. In strong virtue monism civic virtue is thought to spontaneously extend from moral virtue, and, therefore, it holds no independent moral significance, philosophically or practically. In contrast, tempered virtue monism, which I attribute mainly to Xunzi, weaves personal moral virtue and good political consequences (or civic virtue that is instrumental to such consequences) in a non-​straightforward manner, creating wider room for political agency to maneuver with a view to the public good. In fact, civic virtue is one powerful outcome of tempered virtue monism; it is required for the common people who are bad by nature (according to Xunzi) in order for them to nonetheless comply with and sustain ritual-​based political order without possessing the “sprouts” of moral goodness or becoming perfectly good. Political virtue, a special form of civic virtue pertinent to the ruler and other key political agents, is yet another important product of tempered virtue monism, as it allows political actors to make tough decisions required by the circumstances, thereby bringing about better political consequences that could not have been attained by adhering to strong virtue monism. The strong and tempered virtue monism framework will turn out to be especially useful in making sense of Mencius’s (what I  call) normative political dualism between ren and bu ren (what is not ren), and between the Kingly Way and what deviates from it, including badao. It will also help us understand the moral ground of Xunzi’s surprising embrace of badao as a mode of statecraft that can buttress a decently moral state. In short, this framework, though concerned with different modes of Confucian virtue ethics, is useful

20

Introduction

in understanding and illuminating key political differences between Mencius and Xunzi. I would like to close this section by making one caution and one suggestion. First, the caution. The four conceptual frameworks that I have introduced are intended for more effective philosophical reconstructions of Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political thought into coherent and systematic Confucian political theories. Though they are my own creation, and hence not offered by the classical Confucians themselves, this does not imply that they are West-​originated normative standards according to which Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political thought ought to be interrogated and rearranged. It is worth emphasizing that these frameworks have been derived from my textual interpretation, even though some of them (such as the distinctions between negative and positive and between moral and civic), I  admit, are inspired by Western political theory, and they are then used, not imposed upon, in order to make the comparison between Mencius and Xunzi more systematic and intelligible. The suggestion that I would like to make is related to this last point about a systematic and intelligible comparison between Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political theories. The near-​complete absence of coherent and systematic reconstructions of classical Confucian political theory has prevented political theorists and philosophers from having a productive “theoretical” discussion regarding classical Confucian political thought, and the debate among them has largely revolved around philological questions. To be sure, there is no way of denying the foundational importance of philological rigor and exegetical competence when it comes to interpreting ancient texts and I hope that this book offers new exegetical insight for philologists and sinologists, and I am certainly open to their critical engagement with my textual interpretation. What I additionally anticipate in framing my textual interpretation in reference to several conceptual dyads, which, to repeat, are never intended as stark contrasts, is a debate on our philosophical perspectives or frameworks that guide our interpretive or reconstructive philosophical projects that we call “political theory.” This way, we can make classical Confucian political theory a more robust subfield of political theory, accessible not only by classicists and sinologists but also by political theorists and scientists who may not have direct linguistic access to the classical texts. Outline of the Book This book consists of two parts, each comprised of three chapters. In Part I, I  reconstruct Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political theories under the broad philosophical perspective of Confucian constitutionalism. It is here I  introduce the four conceptual frameworks and present two distinct modes of Confucian

Introduction

21

virtue politics that Mencius and Xunzi developed within the parameter of the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics. In Chapter 1, I investigate the complex relationship between morality, interest, and politics in Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political thought. The central concern of this chapter is the question of motivation: how the classical Confucians address the motivation of the ruler, otherwise preoccupied with his private interest, to subject himself to public interest, at the heart of which lies the well-​being of the people, and, in Xunzi’s case in particular, how people who are bad by nature are motivated to voluntarily comply with ritual-​based civil order. By understanding creation and sustenance of civil order as the positive ambition of Confucian virtue politics, which requires the transformation of private interest into public interest, and capturing the ruler’s authoritative exercise of power in the service of public interest in terms of positive Confucianism, this chapter shows that Mencius’s seminal insight into how to realize positive Confucianism in the Warring States context (on top of negative Confucianism, central to which is the constraint of the ruler’s arbitrary power and unchecked private interest) is given further articulation by Xunzi, who extends his Confucian predecessor’s original concern, namely the formation of public interest, to the more fundamental political question of the creation of public order by means of effective coordination of the people’s socioeconomic transactions. Contrary to the studies that draw attention to purely moral and intrinsically good motivation in Mencius’s and Xunzi’s ethics, this chapter illuminates the important prudential ground in their political theories, which underlies both the formation of public interest and the creation and sustenance of public order. The fact that Confucian virtue politics does not endorse arbitrary rule by man but espouses disciplined political practice with two –​negative and positive –​dimensions opens the possibility that it is predicated on a sort of constitutional politics, what I call Confucian constitutionalism. Chapter 2 claims that while equally committed to the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics (or the Kingly Way), Mencius and Xunzi developed two distinctive, though closely related, modes of Confucian constitutionalism in the face of Realpolitik that dominated the political ethos of their time –​virtue constitutionalism and ritual constitutionalism respectively. More specifically, I argue that Mencius valorizes the moral authority of the virtuous ministers as the countervailing force against the monarch who ascends the throne by hereditary right and gives selective ministers the ritually sanctioned right to depose a tyrannical ruler as a procedural mechanism by which to resolve the constitutional crisis caused by misrule in a way consistent with the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics. Xunzi, on the other hand, places much stronger emphasis on the institutional stability of kingship undergirded by ritual institutions, which makes the Confucian polity less dependent on an individual ruler’s personal charisma. In making this argument, I pay special attention to Xunzi’s criticism of Mencius’s idealization of royal transmission between legendary sage-​kings by individual

22

Introduction

merit and interpret it as a political critique of virtue constitutionalism from the standpoint of ritual constitutionalism. In Chapter  3 I  shed new light on Confucian virtue ethics from the perspective of the virtue and ritual constitutionalism framework introduced in Chapter 2, specifically on how different types of Confucian constitutionalism affect the monistic structure of Confucian virtue ethics differently. The argument goes as follows:  Mencius’s and Xunzi’s differing accounts of human nature lead them to describe the state of nature (i.e., the pre-​li state) differently and this difference in turn leads them to conjecture the origin of civil order differently, ultimately leading them to approach the nature of Confucian virtues differently, li in particular. For Mencius the state of nature is understood not so much as a chaotic state of life-​and-​death struggle but as an archaic state in which humans’ inner voice of morality has yet to be awakened. For him, li denotes first and primarily the moral virtue of ritual propriety, whose “sprout” everyone possesses, and whose arduous cultivation contributes to genuine human excellence and flourishing. In Mencius, ritual institutions, articulated by the former sage-​kings, are the social expression of the inner sense of ritual propriety and thus they do not require a special set of character traits for their survival in addition to the cardinal human virtues. While Mencius subscribes to the strongly monistic structure of li by singularly conceiving of it as the moral virtue of ritual propriety, Xunzi, who begins his political theory with the assumption of the anarchic state of nature, understands li primarily as a set of civic virtues that buttress ritual institutions and by implication political order. For Xunzi, therefore, li’s value is primarily political, which consists in its instrumental contribution to political goods such as order and stability, although he never dismisses the dimension of li as a moral resource that can be intrinsically conducive to one’s moral self-​cultivation toward sagehood (long) after the establishment of civil-​ritual-​political order. After reconstructing Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political theories with reference to the conceptual distinctions between negative and positive Confucianism, between virtue and ritual constitutionalism, and between moral and civic virtue in Part I, in Part II I turn to how they understand two specific modes of government –​namely, the Kingly Way and badao –​in both domestic and interstate contexts under the new “Warring States” political circumstances. In Chapter 4, I explore the psychological origin of negative Confucianism, as suggested by Mencius, against the backdrop of Realpolitik of his time and discuss how his strong virtue monism entails normative dualism between ren and bu ren and between the Kingly Way and whatever deviates from it, leading him to completely dismiss the normative value of badao. As an advocate of Confucian virtue politics who considers one-​man monarchy as the only legitimate form of government, Mencius never took issue with the institution of kingship as such, even when many rulers of his time exploited it for Realpolitik purposes. However, Mencius seems to have been keenly aware that the king’s unique political position as a solitary man above or beyond the political

Introduction

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community easily makes him tempted by “great ambition” to become a universal king by subjugating all under Heaven and forgetting about the people’s suffering in his quest, thereby making him vulnerable to moral failure, and, worse, susceptible to tyranny. Mencius’s repeated frustration with the rulers of his time, generally drawn to Realpolitik, and his observation of the way in which the ideal of sage-​kingship was manipulated by ambitious feudal lords and ministers, led him to blur the critical moral difference between badao and tyranny, finding both equally bu ren, as well as to increasingly doubt a harmonious entwinement of sagehood and (hereditary) kingship, or the possibility of sage-​kingship under Warring States circumstances. Mencius’s theoretical breakthrough was to develop a political theory of negative Confucianism, at the heart of which lies moral rectification of the ruler by the virtuous ministers who enjoy certain ritually sanctioned political liberties. Then, in Chapter 5, I turn to Xunzi and investigate his careful affirmation of badao as a mode of statecraft morally acceptable in both domestic and interstate contexts. What is interesting about Xunzi is that despite his unflagging commitment to the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics, he not only recognized an important practical value of badao, which Mencius did also, without actively endorsing it, but further affirmed that there is a Confucian moral value, trust or trustworthiness (xin) more specifically, in the way in which badao operates, normatively distancing it from outright bad forms of rule such as tyranny. Though Xunzi admitted that badao neither aims at moral edification of the people nor relies on the core Confucian moral virtues like ren and yi as its governing principle, he thought that, nonetheless, it could provide a critical moral-​political bulwark against the anarchic state of nature and thus approximate certain features of the Kingly Way, rendering the state decently moral. One of my central aims in this chapter is to show that Xunzi’s political theory of badao was developed (consciously, I believe) in the course of resolving the tension between Mencius’s normative political dualism and his acknowledgment of the practical utility of badao, thereby expanding the scope of Confucian virtue politics. I attribute Mencius’s and Xunzi’s differing attitudes toward badao to strong virtue monism and tempered virtue monism respectively. Toward the end of Chapter 5, I discuss Xunzi’s endorsement of the role of the hegemon in interstate relations under the Warring States circumstances, and this is another place where Xunzi parts company with Mencius, who never acknowledged the hegemon’s moral and political role as the Heaven-​ appointed officer (tianli 天吏) in interstate governance. Despite this difference, Xunzi wholeheartedly agreed with Mencius on how the ideal global vision of Confucian virtue politics could be realized in a drastically altered interstate context. In Chapter 6, I investigate how Mencius and Xunzi made Confucian virtue politics relevant in the new interstate context, occupied by de facto sovereign states without compromising its global vision. I argue that the classical

24

Introduction

Confucians creatively re-​appropriated the Zhou political practice of punitive expedition, which posits interstate moral hierarchy between the suzerain and feudal states, in a way relevant to the new interstate context where old feudalism had become obsolete and thus no visible political institution representing the Mandate of Heaven, the role played by the Zhou king, could be identified. First, I show that they reinstated interstate moral hierarchy, first by recognizing the political reality in which there exist large/​strong states and small/​weak states, all liberated from Zhou political ritualism, and then by promoting reciprocal relationships between large/​strong and small/​weak states so that small/​weak states’ political self-​determination could be given sufficient protection. Second, in order to extend Heaven’s beneficence to all people under Heaven beyond the state border, which, according to the Zhou political discourse, was the central task of the Son of Heaven, Mencius and Xunzi reconceptualized punitive expedition in terms of punishment of a tyrant by any virtuous ruler so that the well-​being of the people living beyond one’s territory could also be taken care of by a timely military intervention. By justifying a ruler’s extension of care and responsibility across borders, the classical Confucians could approximate the global vision of Confucian virtue politics without denying the Warring States reality of state sovereignty. I conclude this book by critically revisiting Loubna El Amine’s “new interpretation” of classical Confucian political thought, which aims to uncover the overtly political dimension of classical Confucianism, unhinged by its virtue ethics. After articulating El Amine’s core argument and also appreciating its contribution to Confucian political theory, which unfortunately has not been recognized by many of El Amine’s critics, I show why my approach in this book can better achieve the goal that she intended with her “new” interpretation.

Part I CONFUCIAN CONSTITUTIONALISM

1 Interest, Morality, and Positive Confucianism

Confucianism is sometimes understood as an ethical system that consciously opposes the pursuit of material interest. The opening page of the Mengzi is most telling in this regard: upon King Hui of Liang’s question of how to make his state profitable, the quintessential political question that no sensible political leader can afford to avoid, Mencius responds, “Why must you mention the word ‘profit’ (he bi yue li* 何必曰利)? All that matters is that there should be ren and yi.”1 As Mencian Confucianism became dominant in mainstream Chinese politics during the twelfth century, later Confucians, especially orthodox Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​Confucians who were strongly influenced by Mencius, rarely challenged the (by then firmly established) Mencian dichotomy between morality and interest.2 In fact, they actively criticized those who advocated the social utility of promoting interest by calling them “despoilers of the Dao” or “followers of the Way of the Hegemon.”3 In the Mencian Confucian tradition, which occupied a central place in both China and Korea, stark contrast between morality and interest was the norm.4 Mencius 1A1 (modified). 2 Unless otherwise specified, throughout this chapter by “interest” I  mean “material interest” understood as the natural desire for profit. 3 See, for instance, Hoyt C. Tillman, Utilitarian Confucianism: Ch’en Liang’s Challenge to Chu Hsi (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University’s Council on East Asian Studies, 1982) and James T. C. Liu, Reform in Sung China: Wang An-​shih (1021–​1086) and His New Policies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959). 4 This general account is not to dismiss the fact that outside of the orthodox Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​ Confucian schools, there were minority Neo-​Confucian scholars such as Chen Liang and Wang An-​shi (see n3 above) who held a much more flexible and accommodating view toward human desires for material interests. In a private conversation, Stephen Angle reminded me that even the orthodox Neo-​Confucians were not always hostile to human desire (yu 慾) and Zhu Xi himself, the great compiler of (the mainstream brand of) Neo-​Confucianism, never opposed the satisfaction of all human desire even as he upheld a stark contrast between human desire (renyu 人慾) 1

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Confucian Constitutionalism

That being said, predominance of the so-​called “Mencian orthodoxy” in the later (Neo-​)Confucian political tradition does not necessarily mean that classical Confucians including Mencius himself actually supported the dualism between morality and interest, especially in relation to their conception of a civil polity. In fact, if the Mencian orthodoxy goes as far as to claim that the ideal Confucian civil polity can be achieved only when the desire for interest is suitably suppressed, a serious philosophical problem arises, for it can hardly account for Mencius’s own advocacy of “benevolent government” (renzheng 仁政), at the core of which lies the enhancement of the people’s moral and material well-​being. All the more problematic, the Mencian orthodoxy, again understood in relation to formation and sustenance of the Confucian civil polity, offers no clear explanation as to precisely whose desire for interest is to be suppressed (if this is indeed the way to go) –​the people’s, the ruler’s, or both? It is perhaps because of their general subscription to the Mencian orthodoxy that many Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​Confucians, despite their remarkable contributions to metaphysics, ethical theory, and moral psychology, made relatively fewer contributions to political theory as they failed to recognize the significant political, and “constitutional,” implications of material interest, properly transformed, for Confucian virtue politics. In this chapter I investigate what can be called the “morality of interest” in the political thought of Mencius and Xunzi by going beyond the traditional Mencian orthodoxy. Specifically, I  engage with the following questions, which have rarely been taken seriously by both Neo-​Confucians and contemporary Confucian political theorists: were classical Confucians such as Mencius and Xunzi clearly aware of the important moral, if not philosophical, distinction between private interest and public interest when grappling with the problem of material interest? On what grounds –​moral, prudential, or both –​did they make the claim that the ruler must voluntarily submit himself to the Confucian moral norms and (institutional) rules, particularly the li? Were they solely interested in constraining the ruler’s private interest and political power, as some contemporary scholars suggest?5 How and moral mind (daoxin 道心) that embodies Heavenly Principle (tianli 天理) and advocated the slogan of “uphold Heavenly Principle and overcome human desire” (cun tianli er renyu 存 天理遏人欲). Also see Stephen C. Angle, Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross-​Cultural Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 79. Certainly, as Angle rightly notes, the many prominent Neo-​Confucians including Zhu did not advocate a radically ascetic doctrine and they indeed distinguished moral from natural desire, believing that only the latter should be overcome. That said, it is still the case that the dominant majority of orthodox Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​ Confucians in Song-​Ming China and Chosŏn Korea subscribed to the simple Mencian orthodoxy, as far as the normative dyad of “interest and morality” is concerned, if not that of “desire and morality.” For them, pursuit of interest was commonly understood as natural, thus morally uncultivated desire for profit. 5 See Chaihark Hahm, “Ritual and Constitutionalism:  Disputing the Ruler’s Legitimacy in a Confucian Polity,” American Journal of Comparative Law 57 (2009), pp. 135–​203 and Jaeyoon Song, “The Zhou Li and Constitutionalism:  A Southern Song Political Theory,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36:3 (2009), pp. 423–​438. Note that both Hahm and Song capture the

Interest, Morality, and Positive Confucianism

29

could they make the argument that the ruler can secure royal power more effectively and enhance his own interest more legitimately by allowing himself to be restrained by the sociopolitical institutions of the li and moral principles of ren and yi? Furthermore, what would motivate ordinary people to bring themselves to Confucian morality and ritual order? If Xunzi is right in claiming that human nature is originally bad, why would people accept the moral paragon (namely, a sage) as their ruler prior to their moral transformation, a problem that is unlikely to arise for Mencius, who holds the contrary view of human nature? In short, how can we make sense of the two dimensions of Confucian virtue politics –​positive Confucianism, in which the ruler, irrespective of whether or not he is fully virtuous as a person, exercises political power with sufficient (if not fully legitimate) authority and popular support, and negative Confucianism, more focused on constraining the ruler’s untrammeled pursuit of his private interest resulting in an arbitrary exercise of political power?6 I argue that compared with the Neo-​Confucians who were preoccupied with negative Confucianism,7 both Mencius and Xunzi possessed a far more flexible and sophisticated view on interest and thus a greater insight into both dimensions of Confucian virtue politics, although, as will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter  4, Mencius was more strongly drawn to negative Confucianism than Xunzi was. My central claim is that, despite many differences, Mencius and Xunzi strove under the new political circumstances of the warring states to reconstruct a civil-political order that could best serve negative ambition of (Neo-​)Confucian virtue politics in terms of Confucian constitutionalism. In a sense, this chapter aims to show that Confucianism encompasses positive as well as negative dimensions of constitutionalist politics in a uniquely Confucian moral-​political outfit that I present in this book in terms of Confucian virtue politics. 6 For an excellent study on the negative (i.e., constraining) and positive (i.e., enabling) aspects of constitutional politics, see Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Although Holmes’s purpose is to investigate the modern ideal of liberal constitutionalism, he also deals with such pre-​liberal political theorists as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin, who allegedly advocated absolute kingship as the harbinger of modern constitutional politics. In this chapter I approach the political theories of Mencius and especially Xunzi, who unswervingly championed kingship from a similar viewpoint, that is, from the perspective of constitutionalism’s two functions. 7 Neo-​Confucian scholar-​officials deemed themselves representatives of the public voice (gonglun 公論) or the authentic meaning of the Way (dao 道) by means of moral remonstration or vehement political opposition. However, the Neo-​Confucian negative Confucianism that starkly opposed political power (held by the king) and moral authority (assumed by the Confucian scholar-​ officials) had been occasionally met with brutal persecution of the scholar-​ officials who saw themselves as the carriers of the Way. See John W. Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983) and Blood and History: The Donglin Faction and Its Repression 1620–​ 1627 (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press 2002) for China and Edward W. Wagner, The Literati Purges: Political Conflict in Early Yi Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974) for Korea.

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the people’s well-​being by refusing what would later in the tradition become the stringent dichotomy between morality and interest, and instead attempted to reinvent a new type of interest, enlightened by ren and yi and harnessed by the institutions of the li. That is, they regarded interest as something that can be transformed and productively redirected in the service of a benevolent government. After examining Mencius’s advocacy of creative entwinement between the Kingly Way and interest, and his unarticulated idea of positive Confucianism, I  then highlight Xunzi’s innovation by showing how he was able to bring Mencius’s nascent insight on positive Confucianism to full fruition in the course of critically engaging with him. Mencius on Interest: Beyond Negative Confucianism Morality and Interest Mencius’s strikingly provocative response to King Hui, in part because of his stern tone and vehemence, convinced some of the later Confucians that Confucian morality and interest are inherently incompatible, or even contradictory. From a political theoretical standpoint, however, there is more at stake. By placing morality in direct opposition to interest, Mencius in his political rhetoric renders his own Confucian political theory negatively oriented toward the ruler’s political power. While upholding a positive Confucian moral-​ political ideal –​namely, the Kingly Way –​and devoting himself to turning a ruler of his time into a sage-​king, Mencius puts equal, at times more, emphasis on constraining the incumbent political ruler, absorbed in the quintessential Realpolitik question of “enriching (one’s own) state, and strengthening (one’s own) military (fu guo qiang bing 富國强兵),” by means of ren and yi. He says, “When the prince is benevolent, everyone is benevolent; when the prince is dutiful, everyone is dutiful; when the prince is correct, everyone else is correct. Simply by rectifying the prince one can put the state on a firm basis.”8 In this view, not only is there no harm in curbing the ruler but, in a profound sense, “to curb [the ruler] is to love him.”9 Why then is Mencius objecting to the ruler’s pursuit of material interest, who is only doing so with a view to enriching and strengthening his own state?10 Quite surprisingly, notwithstanding the inevitable entanglement between politics (and public policies) and material interest, Mencius asserts that a ruler who actively pursues interest will ultimately be doomed. When Qin and Chu went to war, Song Keng, the famous pacifist, tried to persuade the kings of 8 Mencius 4A20. 9 Mencius 1B4. 10 As noted, however, Mencius does not dismiss the importance of material interest per se as he recognizes its indispensability to the people’s economic well-​being. My goal at this point is only to explicate why he believes that the ruler should not actively pursue material interest in governing his state.

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both countries to end the hostilities by highlighting the nonprofitability of war. Mencius, however, criticizes Song Keng’s seemingly innocuous argument: If you place profit before the kings of Qin and Chu, and they call off their armies because they are drawn to profit, then it means that the soldiers in their armies retire because they are drawn to profit. If a subject, in serving his prince, cherished the profit motive, and a son, in serving his father, and a younger brother, in serving his elder brother, did likewise, then it would mean that in their mutual relations, prince and subject, father and son, elder brother and younger brother, all cherished the profit motive to the total exclusion of ren and yi. The prince of such a state is sure to perish. If, on the other hand … a subject, in serving his prince, cherished ren and yi, and a son, in serving his father, and a younger brother, in serving his elder brother, did likewise, then it would mean that in their mutual relations, prince and subject, father and son, elder brother and younger brother, all cherished ren and yi to the exclusion of profit. The prince of such a state is sure to become a true King. What is the point of mentioning the word “profit” (he bi yue li*)?11

Here Mencius does not further explain why relentless pursuit of interest would lead to the ruining of a state.12 What is certain, though, is that in asking “What is the point of mentioning the word ‘profit’?” Mencius is not simply conveying impatience with this topic, criticizing the commonly held belief that enhancement of material interest –​a rich state, in King Hui’s case –​is one of the significant ways to measure political success. There seems to be a deeper political message in this empathetic statement; that is, if interest is the core medium of sociopolitical relations, such relations would inevitably be ruined. On the flip side, if sociopolitical relations are based on ren and yi, thus being modeled after the five cardinal moral bonds (wulun 五倫), the ruler would become a true king, a moral-​political paragon who is entitled to reign over all under Heaven. Arguably, in Mencius’s political thought, a true king is meant to be a sage-​king who achieves everything by means of “effortless action” (wuwei 無爲) with no motive for (private) interest.13 What is at issue here is how to understand the phrase “終去仁義懷利以相接 (zhong qu ren yi huai li* er xiang jie)” in the original text of the Mengzi, Mencius 6B4. 12 By way of comparison, Confucius offers a clear answer by drawing attention to the fact that if sociopolitical relations are based on interest, resentment (yuan 怨) arises inevitably (The Analects 4.12), one of the strongest antisocial passions that according to modern Western social contractarians can relegate civil society into a state of war. For the liberal and Confucian responses to resentment in relation to the creation of civility, see Sungmoon Kim, “Self-​ Transformation and Civil Society: Lockean vs. Confucian,” Dao 8:4 (2009), pp. 383–​401. 13 Mencius’s wuwei ideal of kingship is most clearly addressed in Mencius 4A4. For the theme of wuwei in Mencius’s moral philosophy, see Edward Slingerland, Effortless Action: Wu-​Wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 131–​173. This does not mean that Mencius’s ideal sage-​king literally does nothing. As will be discussed shortly, Mencius acknowledges that in materializing the government of wuwei, it is essential to first create a proper socioeconomic condition that can facilitate wuwei statecraft (Mencius 1A7; 7A22–​23). 11

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which Lau translates as “all cherished the profit motive to the total exclusion of morality [in relating with one another].” One way of understanding this phrase is to conceive of the morality of ren and yi and interest as mutually incommensurable. Then the phrase may be rendered as, “having departed from ren and yi, people would be related to one another inevitably or solely in mediation of interest.” However, this moralistic, quasi-​deontological, rendition is fraught with problems because mutual incommensurability between interest and morality is incompatible with Mencius’s overall philosophical thought. Notice that Mencius explains the political meaning of bu ren (literally, “what is not ren”) not so much in relation to interest but in terms of cruelty and tyranny, when he says, quoting Confucius, “There are two ways and two only:  benevolence (ren) and cruelty (bu ren). If a ruler ill-​uses his people to an extreme degree, he will be murdered and his state annexed; if he does it to a lesser degree, his person will be in danger and his territory reduced. Such rulers will be given the posthumous names of ‘Yu’ and ‘Li’ [i.e., ‘benighted’ and ‘tyrannical’].”14 Likewise, in his famous rationalization of the killing of tyrants Jie and Zhòu by sage-​kings Tang and Wu, Mencius argues unequivocally that what goes against ren and yi is not so much interest but a particular action of cruelty: “A man who mutilates benevolence (zei ren zi 賊仁者) is a mutilator (zei 賊), while one who cripples rightness (zei yi zi 賊義者) is a crippler (can 殘). He who is both a mutilator and a crippler is an ‘outcast.’ I have indeed heard of the punishment of the ‘outcast Zhòu,’ but have not heard of any regicide.”15 In the same spirit, Mencius blames badao as bu ren for its reliance on force in governing the people despite frequent allusions to ren by its practitioners, for he believes that government resorting to force would inevitably lead to cruelty.16 For instance, commenting on Confucius’s reproach of his former student Ran Yu, who, while serving the usurper of Lu, only made his immoral lord richer rather than morally transforming him, Mencius says: From this it can be seen that Confucius rejected those who enriched rulers not given to the practice of benevolent government. How much more would he reject those who do their best to wage war on their behalf? In wars to gain land, the dead fill the plains; in wars to gain cities, the dead fill the cities. This is known as showing the land the way to devour human flesh. Death is too light a punishment for such men. Hence those skilled in war should suffer the most severe punishment; those who secure alliances with other feudal lords come next, and then come those who open up waste lands and increase the yield of the soil.17 Mencius 4A2. There could be a question regarding my interpretation of bu ren, following Lau, as cruelty. Since I  believe that this statement by Mencius is so critical in understanding the overall normative outlook of his political theory and his notion of negative Confucianism in particular, I will return to it in Chapter 4 with fuller attention to important philological and interpretive questions involved in my rendition of bu ren as cruelty. 15 Mencius 1B8. 16 Mencius 2A3. I elaborate Mencius’s view on badao in Chapter 4. 17 Mencius 4A14. 14

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Like the usurper of Lu, when inquiring of Mencius as to how he can make his state profitable, King Hui must have been dreaming about “open[ing] up waste lands and increas[ing] the yield of the soil.” Mencius’s statement here, however, reveals that what he objects to is not material interest as such but the aggressive war (and cruelty that follows) brought about by a ruler’s unbridled desire to profit his own state, with which he identifies himself.18 Put differently, Mencius’s criticism is pointing at the material interest that satisfies the ruler’s personal ambition and therefore one that is in service of the politics of cruelty, not at that which promotes the well-​being of the people. Mencius describes the politics of cruelty, the polar opposite of his ideal benevolent government, in the following way: “In years of bad harvest and famine, close on a thousand of your people suffered, the old and the young being abandoned in the gutter, the able-​bodied scattering in all directions, yet your granaries were full and there was failure on the part of your officials to inform you of what was happening. This shows how callous those in authority were and how cruelly they treated the people.”19 Seen in this way, it is heavily problematic to approach Mencius’s seemingly moralistic response to King Hui without regard to the sociopolitical context of the Warring States period in which the politics of cruelty was prevalent under the slogan of “enriching one’s own state and strengthening one’s own military.” If Mencius was indeed convinced that Confucian virtue politics is fundamentally incompatible with all pursuits of material interest, he could not have said that “those with constant means of support will have constant hearts [i.e., morality], while those without constant means will not have constant hearts,”20 nor that “benevolent government must begin with land demarcation,” which deeply concerns the people’s basic interest and well-​being.21 Moreover, the dualistic framework that pits interest (including the interest that profits the state) against morality makes it impossible to make sense of Mencius’s detailed socioeconomic policy suggestions, which are inextricably intertwined with his broad moral-​political vision.22 Therefore, it is of critical importance to understand that Mencius’s idea of good government involves two stages: first, a negative stage that is devoted to curbing the ruler’s single-​minded pursuit of his private interest and arbitrary exercise of political power and second, a positive stage where people become morally transformed by the example of the virtuous (i.e., morally rectified) 18 More on this in Chapter 4. 19 Mencius 1B12. 20 Mencius 1A7. 21 Mencius 3A3. 22 See Sungmoon Kim, “The Secret of Confucian Wuwei Statecraft: Mencius’s Political Theory of Responsibility,” Asian Philosophy 20:1 (2010), pp. 27–​42; Sor-​hoon Tan, “The Concept of Yi (义) in the Mencius and Problems of Distributive Justice,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93:3 (2014), pp. 489–​505; Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought:  A New Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 68–​73.

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ruler. Furthermore, it is important to note that the second stage involves two stages of its own:  the positive goal of Mencian Confucian virtue politics, namely the moral elevation of the people, can be achieved only after securing their basic material well-​being.23 In my view, Mencius’s position with regard to interest is rather modest despite his occasional moralistic gestures. Mencius’s core claim seems to be that if sociopolitical relations involving many forms of socioeconomic transactions are solely based on interest as the natural, uncoordinated desire for profit without consideration of ren and yi, they will inevitably be ruined.24 For him, what must be proactively avoided is pure material interest that is completely insulated from the internal and external regulatory mechanisms of morality as well as human relationships formed solely in mediation of material interest, which inevitably results in social conflict. In short, at issue is not so much the contrast between morality and interest but the contrast between interest enlightened and regulated by morality (both moral principles and moral institutions) and bare material interest. I believe it is in this spirit that Confucius says, “[A]‌man [should] remember what is right at the sight of profit (jian li* si yi 見利思義).”25 Here, Confucius does not seem to be concerned with the rigid contrast between interest (li*) and morality (yi); rather, given his deep interest in the people’s economic well-​being,26 what concerns him seems to be how to properly regulate the natural desire (yu 慾) for profit by means of morality in the service of the public good. At the center of Confucius’s statement is the belief that one’s desire for material interest can be reformulated by moral concerns. By understanding “he bi yue li*” from the perspective of Confucius’s “jian li* si yi,” we are now able to see Mencius’s political thought in a fresh light. In this view, what are opposed to the morality of ren and yi are cruelty and violence that necessarily accompany all forms of government deviating from the Kingly Way, on the one hand, and interest that singularly serves the ruler’s personal ambition on the other, which in his view ineluctably leads to politics of cruelty. Therefore, for Mencius interest (or the desire for it) is not bad in itself that must be suppressed or eliminated. Rather, it should be reconstructed in ways that can undergird the moral end of Confucian virtue politics, which is to serve the people’s material (and ultimately moral) well-​being. The question is, how is this to be achieved?

23 Mencius 1A7; 3A4. Daniel Bell goes one step further by asserting that we can derive “a right to be fed” from the Confucian commitment to the material well-​being of the people, especially Mencius’s. Daniel A. Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy:  Political Thinking for an East Asian Context (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 45–​47. 24 Bloom’s translation better conveys my interpretation than Lau’s: “Finally … abandon humaneness and rightness and encounter one another based on a preoccupation with profit” (Mencius, trans. Irene Bloom [New York: Columbia University Press], p. 135). 25 The Analects 14.12. 26 The Analects 4.26.

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Extending Private Interest to Public Interest The following conversation between Mencius (M) and King Xuan of Qi (X), which took place at the Snow Palace, one of King Xuan’s secondary palaces, provides an important clue. X:  Does even a good and wise man have such enjoyment as this? M: Should there be a man who is not given a share in such enjoyment, he would speak ill of those in authority. To speak ill of those in authority because one is not given a share in such enjoyment is, of course, wrong. But for one in authority over the people not to share his enjoyment with the people is equally wrong. The people will delight in the joy of him who delights in their joy, and will worry over the troubles of him who worries over their troubles. He who delights and worries on account of all under Heaven is certain to become a true king.27 Apparently, King Xuan built the Snow Palace solely in his private interest. What is worth noting is that Mencius does not urge the king to get rid of this luxurious palace, nor does he recommend him to lead a frugal life.28 What bothers Mencius, it appears, is that he is seeking only his private interest without regard to the material well-​being of his people, whom he ought to treat as if they were his children and therefore with whom he, as a father and mother to the people (min zhi fumu 民之父母), ought to share his wealth and goods.29 In other words, in Mencius’s judgment, the king’s critical moral and political failure lies in his complete negligence of what we call public interest. For Mencius, public interest can be attained by extending the ruler’s private interest (including his self-​love and love toward his own family) to the general public. Mencius’s idea of “extension” is best illustrated in another conversation with King Xuan of Qi.30 When the king confesses that he has a weakness for material goods, Mencius replies without taking issue with the weakness Mencius 1B4 (modified). 28 For an investigation on Mencius’s (and Confucius’s) complex view on the moral correlation between virtue and the material goods, see Youngsun Back, “Confucian Heaven (天 Tian):  Moral Economy and Contingency,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8:1 (2016), pp. 51–​77. 29 Elsewhere Mencius criticizes the same king by saying, “There is fat meat in your kitchen and there are well-​fed horses in your stables, yet the people look hungry and in the outskirts of cities men drop dead from starvation. This is to show animals the way to devour men. Even the devouring of animals by animals is repugnant to men. If, then, one who is father and mother to the people cannot, in ruling over them, avoid showing animals the way to devour men, wherein is he father and mother to the people?” (Mencius 1A4). 30 Mencius’s notion of extension has been discussed and analyzed by many contemporary Chinese philosophers in relation to his theory of human nature, moral psychology, and moral self-​ cultivation. For instance, see David B. Wong, “Reasons and Analogical Reasoning in Mengzi” and Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Confucian Self Cultivation and Mengzi’s Notion of Extension,” both in Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi, eds. Xiusheng Liu and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett, 2002), pp. 187–​220 and pp.  221–​241, respectively. Also see David S. Nivison, “Motivation and Moral Action in Mencius,” in The Ways of Confucianism: Investigations in 27

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itself: “In antiquity Gong Liu [allegedly the founder of the predynastic Zhou clan] was fond of material goods too … You may be fond of material goods, but so long as you share this fondness with the people, how can it interfere with your becoming a true king?”31 Therefore, in the Mencian civil polity the morality of ren and yi and interest do not amount to a zero-​sum relation. The Kingly Way can be achieved not by suppressing or eliminating the desire for material interest but by transforming the ruler’s private interest into a general public interest in which both the ruler and the ruled benefit. One may claim that my argument thus far is misguided because of my putative misunderstanding of Mencius’s theory of extension. The critic may say (rightly, I believe) that what Mencius wants to extend in his conversation with King Xuan is not private interest but the heart of commiseration, the sprout of ren, which is inherent in one’s heart-​mind (xin 心). Indeed, Mencius does encourage King Xuan, who becomes compassionate toward the ox about to be sacrificed, to extend this compassionate heart to his people, if he wants to exercise the Kingly Way.32 Mencius offers a general moral account of his notion of extension when he says (to the king), “Treat the aged of your own family in a manner befitting their venerable age and extend this treatment to the aged of other families; treat your own young in a manner befitting their tender age and extend this to the young of other families, and you can roll all under Heaven on your palm … In other words, all you have to do is take this very heart here and apply it to what is over there. Hence one who extends his bounty can bring peace to the Four Seas.”33 Love of one’s family, especially one’s desire to care for the material well-​being of the family members, is undoubtedly a private interest. Mohists, the passionate advocates of inclusive care (jian ai 兼愛), found fault with Confucians, especially Mencius, for their so-​called “graded love.” In their judgment, inclusive care, to which impartial benefit to the entire populace of the world is central, may begin with (or at least may not renounce) private love biased toward oneself or one’s family members, but as a political goal it can only be achieved by going beyond private love and actively seeking to benefit all under Heaven.34 Mencius does not agree with the Mohist principle of ethical consequentialism, Chinese Philosophy, ed. Bryan W. Van Norden (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1996), pp. 91–​119. In the present context, however, I understand Mencius’s notion of extension as more directly relevant to politics, and the formation of political judgment more specifically. My concern here is not primarily with the congruence between moral motivation and moral action/​judgment but with the congruence between private and public interests. From a philosophical standpoint, the two questions are intimately related but probing into this connection goes beyond the scope of this chapter. 31 Mencius 1B5 (modified). Though Lau translates the Chinese word “huo貨” as “money,” I interpret it more broadly, encompassing all material goods. Bloom translates the term as “wealth.” 32 Mencius 1A7. 33 Ibid. 34 In Mencius 3A5, Yi Zhi, the Mohist, reportedly says, “There should be no gradations in love, though the practice of it begins with one’s parents.” For the Mohist idea of inclusive care, see

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focused on material (and political) benefits to all,35 and claims that love toward others can be gradually attained by extending one’s love of his or her own family to others. Therefore, for Mencius, love of others is neither a deontological moral imperative nor a matter of material consequentialism; rather, it is what one achieves through moral growth, by cultivating one’s capacity to extend, not overcome, his or her private interest to others. When the ruler is capable of this, it generates a public interest that serves the well-​being of the people with clear priority to the worst-​off,36 thus solidifying the foundation of the civil-​political order of the state. Mencius is often regarded as a political idealist, especially in comparison to Xunzi.37 Considering Mencius’s ethico-​ religious aspiration toward the ideal of Confucian virtue politics, which in Xunzi’s view, as will be shown shortly, ultimately undermines its institutional foundation, this characterization of Mencius is understandable. We can even understand Mencius’s supreme interest in negative Confucianism –​a mode of Confucian virtue politics geared toward putting the ruler on the right track (i.e., the Kingly Way) by restraining his private interest and power by means of the ministers’ virtue –​as a political corollary of his idealism. However, it is equally important to realize that for Mencius the people’s moral and material well-​being, which is the positive ambition of Confucian virtue politics, could not be attained merely by curbing the ruler’s quest for private interest and his discretionary exercise of power. Mencius’s positive Confucianism offers a realistic way to achieve the Confucian political ideal by encouraging the ruler, restrained by the logic of negative Confucianism, to extend his private interest to the general public, thus transforming it into public interest. Xunzi’s Vision of Positive Confucianism The Problem of Compliance Because of his vehement criticism of Mencius’s doctrine of human nature (that human nature is good [xing shan 性善]), Xunzi is commonly understood as the archrival of Mencius not only in his moral philosophy but also in his political theory. Indeed, unlike Mencius, who approached the Kingly Way and badao in Chris Fraser, The Philosophy of the Mozi: The First Consequentialists (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), chap. 6. 35 According to Bryan Van Norden, one of the important differences between early Mohism and Western utilitarianism is that unlike the latter, which takes a psychological dimension of benefit seriously, the former “identifies benefit (li*) with having particular concrete goods, and harm (hai 害) with lacking these goods:  wealth (fu富), populousness (zhong 衆), and good order (zhi 治).” See Bryan W. Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 145. 36 See Mencius 1B5. 37 Hyŏng-​hyo Kim, Mengjawa Sunjaŭi ch’ŏraksasang [The Philosophy of Mencius and Xunzi] (Seoul: Samjiwŏn, 1990).

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binary terms of good and evil, Xunzi identified badao as one of the reasonable modes of statecraft that stands between the Kingly Way and tyranny, and he did not embrace the abdication doctrine that Mencius espoused.38 Despite these differences, however, Xunzi and Mencius have much in common: they both believe in human moral perfectibility39 (they part company only with regard to how to cultivate a person morally, owing to their differing accounts of human nature),40 they both believe that at the core of Confucian benevolent government is moral and material well-​being of the people,41 and they both support the removal, or even killing, of a tyrant by a virtuous subject as “the Heaven-​appointed officer.”42 Most importantly in our context, Xunzi agrees with Mencius’s presumption that there is a tension between the morality of ren and yi and interest in principle, when he says, “When superiors love righteousness (yi), then the people conduct themselves in a refined manner even in private. When superiors love wealth, then the people are willing to die for profits (li*). These two are the crossroads to order and anarchy.”43 It is sometimes argued that Xunzi is more of a Legalist than a Confucian because of his emphasis on Legalistic rule by ritual operating on the Daoist ideal of wuwei and his explicit reliance on reward and punishment for sociopolitical control, while the traditional Confucian ideal of wuwei statecraft is predicated on the ruler’s all-​encompassing moral virtue and aimed at moral cultivation of the people. However, the proponents of this view overstate their case. While embracing badao as one of the reasonable modes of statecraft, Xunzi blames it for failing to adopt ren and yi as its operating moral principles44 and he also believes that Legalistic statecraft that is completely dependent on the system of reward and punishment will eventually fail.45 In fact, when he asserts that human nature is originally bad (xing e 性惡), his intent is unarguably Confucian. Let me explain why. 38 Xunzi 18.5a–​c. I discuss Mencius’s advocacy of abdication and his realistic acceptance of hereditary system in Chapter 2. 39 Xunzi 2.10; 3.9a–​c; 4.9; 8.21; 8.11; 19.6; 23.4a; 23.5a. 40 See Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000). 41 Xunzi 9.4; 11.9a; 11.12; 12.5; 27.68. 42 Xunzi 15.1d; 18.2; and, albeit arguably, 13.9. 43 Xunzi 27.66 (Knoblock’s translation). It should be noted that Xunzi, too, abhors the sociopolitical relations mediated purely in terms of interest (Xunzi 15.1d). I followed Knoblock’s translation here because while Hutton retains the original Chinese character 羞 xiu and translates it as “a sense of shame” (p. 305), Knoblock, following many Chinese commentators, including the Qing scholar Wang Nian-​sun 王念孫, replaces 羞 with 義 and translates it as “righteousness.” I find Knoblock’s translation more convincing as it renders Xunzi’s statement more coherent with the remainder of the text than Hutton’s translation. Hutton offers an explanation for his choice to retain the original Chinese character on p. 381m. Note that Hak-​chu Kim, a leading Xunzi scholar in South Korea, also follows Wang’s commentary. See Sunja [Xunzi], trans. Hak-​ chu Kim (Seoul: Yŭlyumunhwasa, 2001), p. 770. 44 Xunzi 7.1. 45 For instance, Xunzi says, “Whenever people act, if they do so for the sake of rewards and prizes, then they will desist if they see that they will be harmed and injured. Thus, rewards, prizes,

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From Xunzi’s viewpoint, the problem with Mencius’s theory of human nature is twofold: not only does it lack empirical support,46 but, more importantly, it would ultimately make the Confucian project of moral self-​cultivation pointless or even impossible. Mencius says, people’s nature is good. I say: this is not so. In every case, both in ancient times and in the present, what everyone under Heaven calls good is being correct, ordered, peaceful, and controlled. What they call bad is being deviant, dangerous, unruly, and chaotic. This is the division between good and bad. Now does he really think that people’s nature is originally correct, ordered, peaceful, and controlled? Then what use would there be for sage kings? What use for ritual and yi? Even though there might exist sage kings and ritual and yi, whatever could these add to its correct, ordered, peaceful, and controlled state?47

If men are naturally good and good implies being correct, ordered, peaceful, and controlled, where does the social evil, disorder in particular, come from? Mencius would argue that men become morally depraved largely because of their lack of effort to become good or due to the social and political environment in which they happen to be situated.48 However, Xunzi would challenge why human nature, which Mencius claims is Heaven-​endowed49 and thus good, is so easily susceptible to external forces and/​or why it is so morally frail.50 He then would ask, Is it then not the case that Mencius has critically misunderstood the essential characteristics of human nature and, more fundamentally, the nature of Heaven? How can Mencius’s theory of human nature adequately account for the supreme importance of the sociopolitical, not just moral-​educative, institutions of ritual in the Confucian moral-​political tradition as the pivot of social coordination and regulation? More importantly, what purpose do the sage-​kings serve, who, in Xunzi’s view, are the inventors of ritual institutions and the masters of ritual-​based statecraft?51 For Xunzi, the greatest irony of Mencius’s theory of human nature is that sole concern punishments, penalties, circumstantial conditions, and deception are not sufficient to get the utmost effort out of people or to make people willing to die … Thus, the way constituted by using rewards, prizes, punishments, penalties, circumstantial conditions, and deception is the way of menial servants and vendors hawking wares. It is insufficient for joining together the great masses or refining the state and its clans” (Xunzi 15.5). 46 Xunzi 23.3b. 47 Xunzi 23.3a. 48 Mencius 6A2; 6A8. 49 Mencius 7A1; 7B24. 50 According to Benjamin I.  Schwartz, it is the fundamental moral-​political question that the Mandate of Heaven, around which both the Zhou civilization and Confucianism revolve, gives rise to:  “The heavenly mandate is mainly about the moral ritual condition of mankind, and Heaven already relates to man largely in terms of the moral question. The moral question itself is not Socrates’ question –​What is the good? –​but rather the question –​Why man’s departure from the good?” (The World of Thought in Ancient China [Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1985], p. 51). 51 In a different place, Xunzi criticizes Zisi, Confucius’s grandson and allegedly the author of Zhongyong 中庸 (The Doctrine of the Mean), and Mencius for only “roughly model[ing]

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with development of the nascent goodness of human beings would ultimately diminish the moral and political significance of the (sage-​)king, even though Mencius may have never intended this.52 According to Xunzi, men have the desire for material goods and their self-​ interestedness inevitably, if unregulated, relegates society into a relentless life-​ and-​death struggle.53 The sage-​king (or the Son of Heaven54) is the supreme moral-​political authority (shi 師) who re-​forms (wei 僞) human nature by means of the institutions of “ritual, music (yue 樂), penal codes (xing 刑), and royal ordinances (zheng 政),” or simply ritual institutions (lizhi 禮制).55 What is important, however, is that Xunzi does not point out man’s natural desire for profit or material interest as the cause of social chaos as such.56 Rather, in his judgment, the real cause of social chaos lies in the natural equality that defies proper (i.e., ritual-​ordered and hierarchical) social regulation of the desire for material goods and boisterous passions accompanying its unchecked pursuit.57 Ritual provides a quintessential institutional mechanism in which men, otherwise radically equal, are socially divided (fen 分) and morally distinguished (bie 別) according to multiple criteria such as virtue, merit, age, and/​or status.58 While in Mencian negative Confucianism, ritual institutions are understood chiefly as the apparatus to constrain the ruler’s arbitrary power,59 for Xunzi themselves on the former kings and [failing to] understand their overall system (lue fa xianwang er bu zhi qi tong 略法先王而不知其統)” (Xunzi 6.7), not just because of their inadequate understanding of human nature. 52 It is unclear though whether Xunzi understood Mencius’s account of “human nature is good” (xing shan 性善) as implying full goodness, which is not Mencius’s claim, or nascent goodness in terms of the innateness of moral sprouts. 53 Xunzi 19.1a. 54 As noted in the Introduction, historically, the Son of Heaven is the official title of the rulers of the Zhou dynasty who claimed that their moral-​political authority to reign over all under Heaven was granted by the Mandate of Heaven. As the sage-​king refers to the Son of Heaven who possesses supreme moral virtue in addition to the Mandate of Heaven (institutionally affirmed through the ruler’s hereditary right to the throne), it is only coincidental that the Son of Heaven is also the sage-​king. In the Xunzi, however, Xunzi often interchanges these two concepts because he is more interested in kingship as the moral and political institution than a particular king’s personal moral virtue, that is, whether the person who occupies the institution of kingship is fully virtuous or not. 55 Xunzi 23.1a–​b. 56 On the view that for Xunzi (natural) desire is morally malleable and not bad in itself, see Siufu Tang, “Xing and Xunzi’s Understanding of Our Nature” and Eric L. Hutton, “Xunzi on Moral Psychology,” both in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, ed. Eric L. Hutton (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 165–​200 and pp. 201–​227, respectively. 57 Xunzi 9.3. 58 See Xunzi 4.12; 9.16a; 10.1; 10.3a; 10.4; 12.6–​7. For an excellent investigation of Xunzi’s political theory of allotments or social divisions (fen), see Eirik L. Harris, “Xunzi’s Political Philosophy,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, ed. Eric L. Hutton (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 95–​138. 59 Mencius often invokes Zhou political ritualism, explicitly or implicitly, when he discusses moral and political prerogatives of the aristocrats vis-​à-​vis the ruler (Mencius 4B3; 5B9) but it is

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they play important positive political functions  –​regulating the people’s conflicting interests, coordinating their complex socioeconomic transactions, and, ultimately, transforming the chaotic state of nature into a “well-​ordered society.” How, then, does ritual exert this remarkable positive political power? More specifically, how is it possible that common people in the pre-​li state who are uncultivated and narrowly self-​interested subscribe voluntarily to rule by ritual without the use of coercion?60 Mencius would respond that people are predisposed to be moral and would find morality attractive or even enjoyable once the “sprouts” of virtue that are innate in them are carefully cultivated.61 They would be spontaneously aroused by the excellent moral virtue of the ruler who cares about them, as is shown (so Mencius argues) in the case where people under the reigns of tyrants Jie and Zhòu eagerly welcomed the soldiers of sage-​kings Tang and Wu.62 Xunzi, who believes men are naturally bad, has difficulty accepting this Mencian virtue-​oriented optimism and this generates what can be called “the Xunzi problem”: given Xunzi’s xing-​e thesis, how is it possible that people who have yet to be morally transformed can appreciate the goodness of the sage-​king’s moral virtue in the first place, and thus welcome and voluntarily subscribe to his moral rule without positing the (at least partial) goodness of human nature? Many contemporary students of Chinese philosophy have wrestled with the Xunzi problem and other related philosophical conundrums arising from his xing-​e thesis.63 For instance, noticing basically the same problem, Erin Cline suggests that in order to offer a compelling explanation of the origin of morality, “[i]‌t seems likely that Xunzi’s account will need to be modified questionable whether the rituals that he cites in such occasions are coherently connected with his philosophical thinking on ritual understood as the moral virtue of ritual propriety. In this regard, I agree generally with Sato when he says, “Mencius had not proposed a complete system of political discourse in which the term li occupied its central place as he had with the term renyi (benevolence and righteousness).” See Masayuki Sato, The Confucian Quest for Order:  The Origin and Formation of the Political Thought of Xun Zi (Leiden: Brill, 2003), p. 208. 60 If this process is dependent on purely or mainly coercive measures, Xunzi may safely be called a Legalist. 61 Mencius 4A27. Also see Eric L. Hutton, “Moral Connoisseurship in Mengzi,” in Liu and Ivanhoe (eds.), Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi, pp. 163–​186 and Bryan W. Van Norden, “Mengzi and Xunzi: Two Views of Human Agency,” in Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, eds. T. C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), pp. 103–​134. 62 Mencius 1B11. 63 See, for instance, Donald J. Munro, “A Villain in the Xunzi,” in Chinese Language, Thought, and Culture: Nivison and His Critics, ed. Philip J. Ivanhoe (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1996), pp. 193–​201; Eric Hutton, “Does Xunzi Have a Consistent Theory of Human Nature?” and David B.  Wong, “Xunzi on Moral Motivation,” both in Kline III and Ivanhoe (eds.), Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, pp. 220–​236 and pp. 135–​154, respectively. Recently, Erin Cline has called the philosophical problems that Xunzi’s account of human nature raises with regard to the origin of morality “Xunzi’s Dilemma.” According to Cline, Xunzi’s Dilemma consists of three related sets of problems: “(1) If the sages started out with the same nature as other humans, how did they turn themselves into beings who not only recognized morality but

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in order to show why and how people would respond positively to the Way presented by the sages.”64 If we approach the Xunzi problem purely as a philosophical conundrum focused on an apparent inconsistency between bad human nature and the origin of morality, thus decontextualizing the fact that the sages who offer the rituals and the standards of righteousness are all, according to Xunzi, also kings (new dynasty-​founders more precisely), and if we understand “morality” here in terms of moral virtues alone, of the kind Mencius valorizes such as ren and yi, the consummation of which would ideally enable one to become a sage (if not a sage-​king), there indeed seem to be significant difficulties with Xunzi’s moral theory. When the Xunzi problem is presented as this sort of moral-​philosophical conundrum, much seems to hang on how we interpret Xunzi’s puzzling acknowledgement of the inherent capacity for morality in every human being in the following statement: Anyone on the streets can become a Yu [an ancient sage]. How do I  mean this? I say: that by which Yu was Yu was because he was ren, yi, lawful, and correct. Thus, ren, yi, lawfulness, and correctness have patterns that can be known and can be practiced. However, people on the streets all have the material (zhi 質) for knowing ren, yi, lawfulness, and correctness, and they all have equipment (ju 具) for practicing ren, yi, lawfulness, and correctness. Thus, it is clear that they can become a Yu. Now if ren, yi, lawfulness, and correctness originally had no patterns that could be known or practiced, then even Yu would not know ren, yi, lawfulness, and correctness and could not practice ren, yi, lawfulness, and correctness.65

To be sure, Xunzi, unlike Mencius, does not claim that humans have articulate moral inclinations such as the four sprouts that each correspond with the four cardinal moral virtues. The text quoted above, however, clearly shows that Xunzi believes some elements (zhi 質 or ju 具) in human nature are essential for recognizing and practicing morality. Xunzi does not fully explicate what the innate capacity for morality consists of or whether it is a sort of moral sentiment.66 If we interpret this capacity as an innate disposition toward morality, also loved and delighted in it? If they did not possess the same nature, why and in precisely what ways were the sages different from everyone else? (2) What initially motivated people to embrace the rituals and the standards of righteousness offered by the sages? (3) If they were so motivated, what accounts for their ability to commit themselves to following the models and standards provided by the sages?” (Erin M. Cline, Confucius, Rawls, and the Sense of Justice [New York: Fordham University Press, 2013], p. 194). 64 Cline, Confucius, Rawls, and the Sense of Justice, p.  195. Also see Wong, “Xunzi on Moral Motivation.” 65 Xunzi 23.5a. 66 Those who are persuaded that Xunzi has a coherent moral theory refuse to attribute any innate moral quality to what they deem to be bare mental capacity. See, for instance, Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Morality as an Artifact:  The Nature of Moral Norms in Xunzi’s Philosophy,” in Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy, ed. Justin Tiwald (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Hutton, “Does Xunzi Have a Consistent Theory of Human Nature?”

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then Xunzi would turn out to be much closer to Mencius.67 This may resolve the Xunzi problem but the distinctiveness of Xunzi’s moral theory would disappear with it. In contrast, if we understand the capacity in question as a bare capacity, devoid of any moral content or predisposition, to enable us to merely distinguish good from bad once we have been educated by sages about good and bad, we can have a way to make Xunzi’s moral theory internally coherent. But the thorny question still remains: even if this capacity is not a moral predisposition toward goodness as such, if it is the capacity that, upon external stimuli (i.e., moral education by ritual and/​or teachers), can enable every human being to distinguish between good and bad as well as to practice the good, is it not a kind of moral capacity, even if a hidden one?68 A more fundamental question, far more germane to the present context, is whether tackling the Xunzi problem purely as a problem of his moral theory can help us understand Xunzi’s broader political concerns. As we have seen, the contemporary debate surrounding the Xunzi problem does not pay enough attention to the fact that Xunzi advances his xing-​e thesis against the political backdrop of the late Warring States period and he criticizes Mencius precisely for his xing-​shan thesis’s inability to do justice to the role that (sage-​)kingship and the institutions of ritual are supposed to play in Confucian political theory, not merely for its inadequacy as a philosophical account of human nature per se. This political deficit in the contemporary interpretation of Xunzi’s philosophical thought has led many scholars to understand the Xunzi problem mainly as a philosophical problem of the origin of morality, but hardly as a political problem of compliance. Furthermore, it has led these scholars, as I  argue in Chapter  3, to pay little attention to the fact that by “morality,” which should be instilled in the people and thus make them good, Xunzi means not only conventional Confucian moral virtues such as ren and yi, directly concerned with human excellence and flourishing, but also civic virtues such as lawfulness and correctness (and being ordered, peaceful, and controlled, as noted earlier). These civic virtues, in contrast, were never consciously acknowledged by Mencius in relation to his theory of human nature, nor made integral to his political theory. The Regulation of Interest Among recent scholars, Eric Hutton, in his endeavor to render Xunzi’s account of human nature coherent, has paid rare attention to the question of political compliance in Xunzi’s political theory by offering an explanation as to how 67 This view is held by Yiu-​Ming Fung, “Two Senses of “Wei 僞”: A New Interpretation of Xunzi’s Theory of Human Nature,” Dao 11:2 (2012), pp. 187–​200. 68 Cline distinguishes the Xunzian capacity for morality from the Mencian moral sprout by calling the former “hidden or latent” and the latter “visible and active from the start” (Confucius, Rawls, and the Sense of Justice, p. 195).

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Xunzi can show that sage-​kings are able to attain political compliance from the common people without violating his xing-​e thesis. According to Hutton, Xunzi’s core argument can be interpreted as follows: people are drawn to yi and the sage-​king’s virtuous rule, not because they “like” to practice moral virtue or participate in moral government but simply because they like for other people [in this case, the rulers] to act morally toward them.69 “For Xunzi,” Hutton continues, “this desire of good treatment from others is such that it makes people amenable to those who satisfy the desire, and thus accounts precisely for the reason why the sages can take control of the people without compulsion, and without an explicit contract.”70 Indeed, there is nothing in Hutton’s account to suggest that people naturally have any tendency themselves to do what is good. Let us call Hutton’s argument the good treatment argument. However, Hutton’s explanation, though interesting, leaves an important question unanswered. Note that Hutton’s good treatment argument was initially motivated to offer a rejoinder to Donald Monro’s claim that Xunzi seems, albeit implicitly, to acknowledge the innateness of yi. In addition to the passages that Munro cites, Hutton additionally draws attention to a seemingly more challenging case, namely Xunzi 27.63, where Xunzi says that people possess a “fondness for yi” (hao yi 好義). And it is in the course of interpreting “fondness for yi” in a way consistent with Xunzi’s xing-​e thesis that Hutton advances the good treatment argument, implying that uncultivated people would still like yi to be done to them, even though they have no natural moral desire to cultivate or practice it themselves. The problem lies in Hutton’s liberal rendition of yi as “good treatment.” As discussed earlier, at the core of yi in Xunzi’s political thought are social divisions (fen) and distinctions (bie), which undergird a quite rigid form of moral and sociopolitical hierarchy and inequality, as Hutton himself clearly acknowledges.71 Now, according to Hutton’s reasoning, even if one, a petty man (xiaoren 小人), is told to belong to a low(er) social class by a sage who allegedly possesses insight into one’s proper role as well as a grand vision of social harmony and “utmost equality” (zhi ping 至平),72 he would take this as “good treatment” and willingly participate in his given roles. More strikingly, as Xunzi’s yi is deeply gendered, as far as the argument goes, a woman, even if virtuous, ought to receive her heavily gendered and undignified social role that confines her to the inner quarters as good treatment and happily commit herself to such a role. How could this deeply gendered and hierarchical order that yi prescribes be good for all?

69 Hutton, “Does Xunzi Have a Consistent Theory of Human Nature?,” p. 226. 70 Ibid., p. 227. 71 Eric L. Hutton, “Ethics in the Xunzi,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, ed. Eric L. Hutton (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 67–​93, at p. 84. 72 Xunzi 4.12. For an explication for how hierarchical social divisions can generate “utmost equality” in Xunzi’s political thought, see Sungmoon Kim, “The Political Economy of Confucian Harmony,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 78:2 (2019), pp. 493–​521.

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In my view, this difficulty arises because Hutton does not pay close attention to the social and political chaos that, as Xunzi claims, bad human nature inevitably leads to. If political compliance and political order can be attained only if the ruler treats the people well, which I think is close to Mencius’s position given his virtue-​centered ideal of benevolent government, and if the malleability of human nature, though originally bad, allows it to be easily governable by the ruler’s “good treatment,” why does Xunzi take pains to fundamentally re-​form human nature by means of, among other things, ritual institutions? By understanding the political relationship between the ruler and the ruled largely in terms of modus vivendi pivoted around the ruler’s personal beneficence, Hutton seems to downplay the farther-​reaching “constitutional” implications of Xunzi’s political theory, culminating in his advocacy of rule by ritual. Put differently, Hutton’s explanation does not sufficiently explain the quintessentially political nature of good treatment offered by the sage-​kings in creating a civil order and the more lasting motivation behind the common people’s willingness to remain in a ritual-​based political order thus created, even when there are less-​than-​virtuous rulers at the helm and they are placed into unequal roles and obligations. Interestingly, however, Xunzi asserts that people would voluntarily subscribe to rule by ritual and remain so. Why is this the case? The answer Xunzi provides is surprisingly Hobbesian: Those who calculate take what they consider to be the greater, and those who plan follow what they approve of. People do not exchange two for one, because they understand the numbers. If one goes forth following the Way, then it is like exchanging one for two –​what loss would there be? If one departs from the Way and instead, looking within, chooses based on oneself alone, then this is like exchanging two for one –​what gain would there be? Given the chance to exchange the fulfillment of a hundred years’ accumulated desires for a moment’s satisfaction, if one nevertheless does it, this is because one does not understand the numbers.73

But why is the Confucian Way predicated on the rule by ritual so profitable for all? According to Xunzi, it is because everyone would be worse off without ritual. What is important here is that in making this apparently Hobbesian argument, Xunzi supposes a significant moral transformation in the people, thus parting company with Hobbes, who allows no meaningful moral self-​ transformation in the formation of a civil order.74 However, Xunzi’s idea of moral transformation is not only distinguished from Mencius’s, which is focused on the development of one’s nascent moral sprouts, but seems to involve a more complex process than the model of re-​formation stipulates, 73 Xunzi 22.6c. The Hobbesian character of this statement was earlier noted by Van Norden, “Mengzi and Xunzi,” p. 121. 74 For a comparative study of Hobbes’s and Xunzi’s political theory of civil government, see Sungmoon Kim, “From Desire to Civility: Is Xunzi a Hobbesian,” Dao 10:3 (2011), pp. 291–​ 309. Also see Wong, “Xunzi on Moral Motivation,” pp. 136–​137.

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which Philip J. Ivanhoe attributes to Xunzi.75 Let us investigate this transformative mechanism in Xunzi’s political theory further. According to Mencius, a person who has fully developed his Heaven-​ endowed nature experiences a cosmic unity with Heaven.76 In this Heavenly state, desire for power and interest is rendered absolutely incompatible with morality, which apparently includes a certain divine quality.77 Therefore, in Mencius (as Xunzi interprets), positive Confucianism where morality is creatively entwined with interest is required and meaningful only in the transitioning period in which, or to the extent to which, nonideal politics is transformed into the ideal moral state. In the ideal state, every man, given one’s innate goodness, becomes virtuous and therefore there is no need for government or politics (zheng 政), which is essentially a mechanism by which to morally correct (zheng 正) the people.78 The politics in this ideal state is called “the politics of nonaction” (wuwei er zhi 無爲而治), not only in the sense of the government being predicated on the ruler’s effortless action, the political ideal championed by Confucius and upheld by both Mencius and Xunzi, but, more importantly (and more worrisome, in Xunzi’s view), in the sense that the corrective function of politics is no longer required, because the people, as far as Mencius’s reasoning goes, will spontaneously (ziran 自然) follow the Way, if only their innate moral goodness is perfectly realized.79 Xunzi, however, squarely opposes this Mencian wuwei thesis that would ultimately annihilate the political institution of kingship. For one, Xunzi does not acknowledge Heaven’s ethico-​religious authority in terms of “decree” that 75 Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation, p. 32. 76 Mencius 7A1. 77 See Julia Ching, Mysticism and Kingship in China:  The Heart of Chinese Wisdom (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 99–​101; Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Trouble with Confucianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 15–​17. 78 Mencius 7B4. Also see The Analects 12.17; 13.6; 13.13. Benjamin Schwartz’s following statement well captures the ethico-​religious framework of Mencius’s political thought: “In an ideal world the ‘heavenly’ would be totally immanent and actual and man would simply be ‘continuous’ with Heaven. All men would be sages. In the actual world, however, the human may easily lose his ‘infant’s heart.’ Nevertheless, he is endowed with the marvelous power to ‘perfect his own person’ and on this level Heaven itself relates to man as the ‘other’ which has endowed him with this capacity for the realization of the good. At times, one even senses that Mencius treasures this conscious yu-​wei [youwei] self-​effort as much as he does the ideal wu-​wei spontaneity” (The World of Thought in Ancient China, pp. 289–​290). 79 See Mencius 4A4 and 7B32. The Confucian ideal of wuwei statecraft is best illustrated in The Analects 2.1, where Confucius says, “Governing with excellence (de 德) can be compared to being the North Star: the North Star dwells in its place, and the multitude of stars pay it tribute.” Also see The Analects 15.5 for Confucius’s extolment of sage-​king Shun’s wuwei-​like government. That said, there is an alternative way to interpret the Confucian ideal of wuwei statecraft. That is, insomuch as the ruler is truly virtuous, the people, morally cultivated or not, would be spontaneously drawn to his rulership, fulfilling their proper social roles. But this interpretation, solely focused on the ruler’s brilliant (or magical?) moral charisma, neither accounts for the stability of the Confucian civil polity over generations nor explains the people’s motivation in their

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Mencius presents as the metaphysical foundation of the goodness of human nature. Nor, according to Xunzi, are Heaven and men connected in any direct or obvious way, cosmologically or, albeit controversially, morally,80 as Heaven is a part of nature that follows its own unique mechanism, without intervening in human affairs.81 The moral implications of this radical separation between men and Heaven are striking. The denial of a moral correlation between men and Heaven enables Xunzi to give up belief in the idea of morality that is completely decoupled from the worldly interests. Accordingly, even morally re-​formed men, including sages, still possess the natural desire for material interest: “All people share one thing in common: when hungry they desire to eat, when cold they desire warmth, when tired they desire rest, they like what is beneficial and hate what is harmful. This is something people have from birth; perfect political compliance. Mencius’s insight here seems to be that the wuwei ideal can be a sustained political ideal only if the potential threat to political compliance is permanently eliminated and his philosophical solution is to allow for the theoretical possibility that everyone can become more or less good by realizing, in varying degrees, Heaven’s decree within one’s nature. Interestingly, some contemporary scholars attempt to explain the origin of ritual order and the motivation of political compliance on the part of the people in Xunzi’s political thought in terms of the ruler’s moral charisma. See T. C. Kline III, “Moral Agency and Motivation in the Xunzi,” in Virtue, Nature and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, pp. 155–​175; Aaron Stalnaker, “Xunzi on Self-​Cultivation,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, pp. 35–​65, at p. 58 (though Stalnaker does not employ the term “charisma”). 80 “The Way is not the way of Heaven, nor is it the way of Earth. It is that whereby humans make their way, and that which the gentleman takes as his way” (Xunzi 8.3). 81 See Xunzi 17.1. For Xunzi’s areligious and non-​cosmological understanding of Heaven, see Janhee Lee, Xunzi and Early Chinese Naturalism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005); Kurtis Hagen, The Philosophy of Xunzi (Chicago, IL:  Open Court, 2007). Challenging a thoroughly areligious reading of Xunzi’s conception of Heaven, however, Edward Machle argues that Xunzi’s conception is not incompatible with the view that embraces certain religious qualities of Heaven. See his Nature and Heaven in the Xunzi:  A Study of the Tian Lun (Albany, NY:  State University of New  York Press, 1993). For a similar argument emphasizing important religious dimensions in Xunzi’s idea of Heaven, see Michael J. Puett, To Become a God: Cosmological Sacrifice, and Self-​Divinization in Early China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 181–​188; Paul R. Goldin, Confucianism (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 2011), pp. 79–​88; and essays collected in T. C. Kline III and Justin Tiwald (eds.), Ritual and Religion in the Xunzi (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014). My own position is that even if we grant that strong religious implications are found in Xunzi’s account of ritual practices and that he acknowledges an important normative underpinning of good social order with his notion of “(natural) patterns” (li** 理), which constitutes the underlying structure of ideal social order, his outright rejection of any obvious cosmological connection between the Way of Humans (ren dao 人道) and the Way of Heaven (tian dao 天道) imparts to his political theory a distinct characteristic, especially in comparison with Mencius’s that is deeply embedded in the moral-​ cosmological discourse of the Mandate of Heaven. Put differently, for Xunzi the normativity of the Way of Humans is rooted in “patterns,” not necessarily in Heaven. I return to the critical importance of the Mandate of Heaven in Mencius’s political theory in Chapter 6. On Xunzi’s idea of li**, see Eric L. Hutton, “Moral Reasoning in Aristotle and Xunzi,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 29:3 (2002), pp. 355–​384.

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it is not something one awaits to become so. This is something in which [sage-​ king] Yu and [tyrant] Jie were the same.”82 Sages are not completely void of the desire for material interest (then they simply would not be human!); rather, they place morality over their desire for interest, or more profoundly, in them such desire is morally transformed.83 Thus understood, the goal of moral transformation, which the kings should emulate in their statecraft, lies not so much in the expunging as in the reforming of natural desire for material interest by means of moral governance relying on ritual. Yi and profit are two things that humans have. Even Yao and Shun could not get rid of the common people’s desire for profit. However, they were able to cause their desire for profit not to overcome their fondness for yi. Likewise, even Jie and Zhòu could not get rid of the common people’s fondness for yi. However, they were able to cause their fondness for yi not to defeat their desire for profit. And so, when yi defeats profit, it is an ordered age. When profit overcomes yi, then it is a chaotic age.84

Insofar as men are naturally self-​seeking, kingship and government predicated on ritual institutions hold perpetual significance. In this way, Xunzi restores the institutional dimension of Confucianism that has been obscured, if not wholly dismissed, by Mencius.85 Xunzi’s core assumption is that the Confucian moral-​ political statecraft holds unmitigated significance not only during the process of the people’s moral transformation, as Mencius assumes, but even after the completion of the transformation (if completion is ever possible). At this point, it should be stressed that Xunzi employs the term “interest” on two levels. On the first, which is in the pre-​li state, interest refers to the natural desire for profit, which has yet to be guided by morality. Interest on this level is what ignites men’s antisocial passions, thus the root of social chaos. To control this unruly interest the ruler must reign over it by marshalling majestic august and powerful authority as the institutional pivot of social coordination.86 Only then is he able to drive the people into a ritual-​based civil and political order. In this second stage, people, being constrained by ritual institutions and underlying moral norms, start to develop a different type of interest, namely moral interest, an interest that mediates between private interest and public interest.

Xunzi 4.9. 83 Therefore, Hagen claims that in Xunzi it is not so much desires as such but motivation structures that undergo changes in the process of moral training and education. See Kurtis Hagen, “Xunzi and the Prudence of Dao: Desire as the Motive to Become Good,” Dao 10:1 (2011), pp. 53–​ 70. In this chapter, I understand the moral transformation of desire in terms of both changes in its motivational structures and changes in its nature and scope, which is supported by the arguments by Van Norden and Wong. 84 Xunzi 27.63. 85 See Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China, p. 286. 86 This bespeaks the undemocratic and authoritarian nature of Xunzi’s political theory. A helpful discussion on this, see Hui-​ chieh Loy, “Xunzi Contra Mozi,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, pp. 353–​575. 82

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In my view, the most interesting feature in Xunzi’s political theory is his belief that what proximately undergirds the civil order of the Confucian polity is not necessarily sage-​making moral virtues, however desirable they are, but the moral interest developed by the people in what we today call civility, which directly undergirds their ordered transactions and relationships. Xunzi explicates the civic and constitutional character of moral interest as the following: “By safeguarding their responsibilities, each will have sufficient food and clothing. The important and the trivial will have their appropriate grade made clear by rank and dress. There is profit only from looking up to one’s superiors, and none will try to presume power over others. So who could offer private favors?”87 In the pre-​li state people are single-​mindedly preoccupied with private self-​interest. However, since there is no moral and sociopolitical mechanism here that can constrain this interest and coordinate the conflict of interests, strife among groups and individuals is inevitable. The king (ideally the sage-​ king), however, does not strive to expunge men’s desire for private interest as such, which is impossible to do. Profoundly concerned with bringing about and maintaining civil order, he rather draws his attention to reconstructing this fundamental human desire in a way that can be conducive to forming moral interest and, ultimately, public interest. Thus, Xunzi says, “All those who say that good order must await the elimination of desires are people who lack the means to guide desire and cannot handle the mere having of desires. All those who say good order must await the lessening of desires are people who lack the means to restrain desire and cannot handle abundance of desires.”88 For Xunzi, desires, which all humans have, are malleable and thus subject to moral purposes and when properly “nurtured” in light of moral purposes, they can buttress political order and social harmony. This implies that only the kind of private interest that is compatible with and further bolsters the civil order can become, to use de Tocqueville’s celebrated phrase, “self-​interest rightly understood.” As David Wong puts it, for Xunzi, “any path to self-​ transformation must start from the self-​interested nature of human beings, and not from a capacity for an approval that can motivate independently of self-​ interest. Changing oneself on the basis of approval would be changing oneself on a more sophisticated and long-​term view of what is in one’s self-​interest, but it would be self-​interest after all that.”89 Earlier, we noted the difficulty with Hutton’s good treatment argument. Now Xunzi himself provides a far more persuasive argument for the political utility of creating a ritual order when he says,

87 Xunzi 25.47 (Knoblock’s translation). 88 Xunzi 22.5a. 89 Wong, “Xunzi on Moral Motivation,” p. 142.

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If [people] live apart and do not help each other, then they will be impoverished. If they live together but have no social divisions, then they will struggle with each other. Poverty is a catastrophe, and struggle is a disaster. If you wish to save them from catastrophe and eliminate disaster, then nothing is better than to make clear social divisions and so employ the masses. If the strong threaten the weak, if the wise terrorize the stupid, if the people below disregard their superiors, if the young bully their elders, if you do not govern by virtue –​if it is like this, then the old and the weak will face the worry of losing their means of nurture, and those in their prime will face the disaster of divisive struggle.90

According to Xunzi, ritual order is good for all members of society, especially those who are worse-​off, because the method of social divisions, if guided by the principle of yi, can make socioeconomic transactions among the people ordered, regulated, and peaceful. Not only can it prevent the strong, the wise, the young (and, I add, men) from oppressing or taking advantage of the weak, the stupid, the old (and women), but it can further remove poverty and bring about productive economy that ensures material sufficiency for all.91 Otherwise stated, for Xunzi ritual order offers a powerful coordination mechanism –​we can call this hierarchical regulation in contradistinction to “no regulation” (free market) or “equal self-​regulation” (democracy)  –​in the face of fundamental injustice commonly found in the pre-​li state. In Xunzi’s vision, therefore, only when human desires are properly constrained by ritual and only when the conflict of interests is effectively regulated by yi-​based social divisions can civil order be attained. Ultimately, Xunzi’s own ideal of benevolent government rests on these complex institutional mechanisms of social divisions and ritual ordering, which at once creates a political community and benefits all members belonging to it. In order for people to live, they cannot be without community. If they form communities but lack social divisions then they will struggle with each other. If they struggle with each other then there will be chaos, and if there is chaos they will be impoverished. Thus, to lack social divisions is the greatest harm to people, and to have social divisions is the root benefit for the whole world. And the lord of men (jun) is the pivot and crucial point in controlling social divisions … In ancient times, the former kings divided up people and differentially ranked them. Thus, they caused some to be praised and others disdained, some to be generously provided for and others thinly provided for, some to live in ease and leisure, and others to live in labor and toil. They did not do this to gain a reputation for perversity, arrogance, and self-​aggrandizement. Rather, they did it in order to make clear the proper forms for ren, and in order to promote the smooth operations of ren.92

Thus understood, the reason people accept ritual order is neither because it is modeled after the Way of Heaven nor because they are intrinsically motivated to Xunzi 10.1. 91 Also see Kim, “Political Economy of Confucian Harmony”; El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought, pp. 68–​73. 92 Xunzi 10.4. 90

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prefer the good form that undergirds ritual order. They accept ritual order because they are better off when their social conduct is regulated by ritual institutions than when they were free in the state of nature. For Xunzi, as with Confucius, ren is the moral virtue par excellence and it is the foundation of ritual. But in his political theory, ren obtains its most profound political significance in relation to the civil-political order brought into existence by ritual institutions. Put differently, outside of ritual institutions, neither ren in a politically relevant sense nor interest properly understood is possible. In Xunzi’s political thought, these three –​ren, interest, and ritual institutions –​are inextricably entwined.93 As noted, as a moral philosopher Xunzi never gave up the core (Mencian-​) Confucian conviction that all humans can become sages. Nevertheless, his more astute political sensitivity seems to have led him to approach the Confucian civil polity and its social participants far more realistically than his predecessors, including both Confucius and especially Mencius. For Xunzi, the art of statecraft consists in transforming the people, who used to be “boorish” (lou 陋) due to their single-​minded pursuit of self-​interest, which blocked them from appreciating the good of civil order,94 first into citizens who are civically virtuous (i.e., correct, ordered, peaceful, and controlled), thus capable of developing a moral interest in ritual order, as well as balancing their private interests with public interest.95 Only those who have been civically transformed can be further trained as gentlemen, through the strenuous and painstaking process of moral education by ritual and teachers, fully immersed in virtues of ren and yi, resulting in profound moral satisfaction in the Way.96 93 See Xunzi 27.21, where Xunzi explicates the intimate relationship between ren, yi, and ritual: “The gentleman dwells in ren by means of yi, and only then is it ren. He carries out yi by means of ritual, and only then is it yi. In implementing ritual, he returns to the roots and completes the branches, and only when is it ritual. When all three are thoroughly mastered, only then is it the Way.” Xunzi would claim that when there is this trinity between ren, yi, and ritual that constitutes the Confucian Way, only then is it profit. 94 For Xunzi’s special yet repeated usages of the term lou 陋, which Hutton translates as “boorish,” see Xunzi 4.9–​10. 95 Here I adopt the term “citizen” generally in terms of social membership in a civil-​political community without positing political equality, which is integral to the term’s original Greek etymology and Greco-​Roman republican practice. 96 See Van Norden, “Mengzi and Xunzi,” p. 123. Compare my two-​staged argument with Ivanhoe’s following statement where he recaps why the powerful and crafty in the Xunzian state of nature would agree to follow the Way: “The Confucian Way offers just such an ideal, a way of life that allows one to satisfy most of one’s basic desires –​without incurring the liabilities which plague those in the state of nature –​while opening up new and profound sources of satisfaction, sources which are available only to those who are inside and committed to the project of the Confucian Way” (Philip J. Ivanhoe, “A Happy Symmetry: Xunzi’s Ecological Ethic,” in Kline III and Tiwald (eds.), Ritual and Religion in the Xunzi, pp. 43–​60, at pp. 46–​47. Apparently, Ivanhoe does not seem to pay sufficient attention to the important civic dimension of enlightened self-​interest and leaves unexplained the precise political mechanism in which satisfaction of basic desires is acquired and further brings about profound moral satisfaction “without incurring the liabilities which plague those in the state of nature.”

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As such, the most urgent and realistically achievable political goal for Xunzi consists in unifying the people by re-​channeling their desire for material goods or private interest in a manner conducive to civility, the social foundation of political order and the wellspring of productive economy. Virtuous leadership makes this unity more stable and firmer: “[Under virtuous leadership, t]hose who commit violent brutalities and those who are audacious in using force will transform for one and live honestly. Those who are biased for one side and those who are crooked with selfishness will transform for one and avoid prejudice. Those who are arrogantly disruptive and those who are stubbornly unruly will transform for one and become concordant. This is called the great transformation leading to unity.”97 For Mencius, it should be recalled, self-​transformation primarily means an ethico-​spiritual transformation by which one experiences a cosmic unity with Heaven. Since Heaven is the ultimate source and guarantor of what is public (gong 公), one can only become a “public man” in its most authentic sense by unifying with Heaven.98 Mencius called the public man, understood in this ethico-​religious sense, “the Great Man” (da zhang fu 大丈夫), who “dwells in the wide house of the world, occupies his proper place in the world, and carries out the great Way of the world.”99 Mencius never identified the public man saliently in political or civic terms, although, as discussed earlier, he implicitly acknowledged the possibility of the public in relation to the ruler’s desire for profit.100 In marked contrast, Xunzi, who is skeptical of the ethico-​religious meaning of Heaven and the moral-​cosmological correlation between men and Heaven, defines the Confucian public with direct reference to Confucian ritual institutionalism. That is, by participating in the institutions of Confucian ritual, Xunzi is convinced, a natural man can be ethico-​politically transformed into a public man, namely, into a citizen.101 Clearly, this is qualitatively different from the Mencian ethico-​religious self-​transformation. For Xunzi, it seems, ethico-​ political self-​transformation is sufficient to enact the Confucian civil-political

97 Xunzi 15.5. 98 Mencius 7A1; 7A13. 99 Mencius 3B2 (Bloom’s translation). 100 To clarify, it is not my intent to argue that Mencius dismissed wholesale the important public (gong) dimension of the state, for then he would not be able to uphold the public interest in terms of the well-​being of all members of the political community. However, we should not forget that for Mencius the ultimate reservoir of the public was Heaven and thus he always placed Heaven over the interest of the de facto independent and sovereign state (guo 國) as it was emerging as a new political reality during the Warring States period. For Mencius, the public man referred to not so much the statesman narrowly defined (i.e., one who serves or contributes to the state) but rather one who fulfills one’s Heaven-​bestowed decree. 101 In Wong’s words, for Xunzi, “[g]‌oodness and right are determined by the rules created by the sages. They cannot be prior to the sages in the sense required by their having innate desires for these things” (“Xunzi on Moral Motivation,” p. 145).

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order, which is urgently required during the formative stage of state building or rebuilding as it had become one of the most urgent political concerns during the late Warring States period. Once ethico-​politically transformed, people are expected to voluntarily participate in ritual,102 which would leave the ruler with not much to do but the arduous maintenance of the system of ritual itself. Hence, despite Xunzi’s criticism of Mencian wuwei statecraft, the operating principle of the Xunzian civil polity is equally “nonaction,” though in the markedly different sense.103 Now we are down to one remaining question. If people subscribe voluntarily to the moral and sociopolitical order of the ritual because it fully nourishes their natural desire by transforming it into civil desire and thereby enhances their moral interests, why does the ruler also subject himself to Confucian ritual institutionalism, when it appears to substantially curtail his freedom in exercising political power? Xunzi’s answer is simple –​because doing so is advantageous to him as well.104 The Prudential Foundation of Positive Confucianism Mencius realized that in order for Confucian politics to be practicable in the nonideal world, it cannot rely solely on what I called negative Confucianism. While negative Confucianism can contribute to the well-​being of the people by constraining the ruler, it is limited in making the ruler actively serve the people. This realization led Mencius to wrestle with how to make the ruler commit himself to the well-​being of the people without serious curtailment of his private interest. As we have seen, the gist of Mencius’s positive Confucianism lies in extending the ruler’s private interest to the people. This pragmatism falls short of Mencius’s ultimate political ideal relying mainly on the ruler’s world-​transforming moral virtue and aimed at the people’s ethico-​religious self-​transformation,105 but it nevertheless approximates that ideal by providing apposite socioeconomic conditions –​“benevolent government” in other words –​that can facilitate the people’s moral development and flourishing. From Xunzi’s standpoint, however, Mencius’s political theory leaves much in ambiguity. Most problematically, Mencius never offers a clear explanation For an excellent interpretive study on voluntarism that the li animates, see Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper, 1972). 103 Xunzi 17.3b; 21.5a; 21.7a; 21.7d. Xunzi’s wuwei government is qualitatively different from Mencius’s idealized wuwei statecraft. While Xunzi’s wuwei government is what positive political Confucianism of the li has achieved, Mencius’s wuwei statecraft is a governing style relying primarily on the ruler’s world-​transformative moral virtue. 104 See Daniel A. Bell, China’s New Confucianism (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 43. 105 For Mencius, sage-​ king Shun best illustrates this Confucian political ideal. According to Mencius, the driving force of Shun’s wuwei statecraft is his great filial piety, the root of ren (see Mencius 4A28; 5A1; 5A2; 5A3; 5A4; 7A35). On the account of filial piety as the root of ren, see The Analects 1.2. 102

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on the question of motive for his positive Confucianism. Why would a ruler share what he deems to be his material goods with the people? Why would he voluntarily bring himself to the institutions of ritual that would seriously constrain his freedom? What makes Xunzi a unique Confucian political thinker, especially in comparison with Mencius, is his unequivocal acknowledgment that even virtuous rulers (even sage-​kings!) possess the desire for material interest. According to Xunzi, a ruler desires to practice the Kingly Way neither because of the Mandate of Heaven nor due to his immaculate commitment to Confucian morality. What motivates a ruler to practice the Kingly Way, at least initially, is his deep interest in worldly (largely material) goods.106 Consider the following statement by Xunzi: To be so noble as to be Son of Heaven; to be so rich as to possess the whole world; to have a reputation as being a sage king; to control all others while not being controlled by any other –​these are what people’s natural dispositions are the same in desiring, but a true king is the only one who has all these … Thus, people’s natural disposition is such that their mouths like good flavors, and there are no finer flavors than the ones enjoyed by a true king. People’s ears like good sounds, and there are no greater sounds than the music he enjoys. People’s eyes like good sights, and none are more numerous than the exquisite decorations and the women he enjoys. People’s bodies like ease, and there is no greater comfort than the safety, stability, leisure, and peace he enjoys. People’s hearts like profit, and there is no income more abundant than the one he enjoys. Combine what everyone under Heaven is the same in wishing for –​he possesses all these things … How could anyone who is not crazy, confused, stupid, or ignorant look upon such a life and not be filled with delight?107

Historically, Confucians, especially those in the Mencian strain, always exhorted the ruler to become the paragon of moral virtue, one who is completely free of desire for power and private interest. Only if he is singularly devoted to morality, they argued, can the ruler become a sage-​king.108 Xunzi observes, however, that in reality the king stands at the peak of worldly interests that combine riches, honor, and rank. Should a ruler keep himself from those worldly interests that accompany his majestic position? If not for such worldly In his essay examining the origin of ritual order, Chenyang Li claims that it is not so much the sage-​kings’ moral sentiment but their aversion of disorder that motivated them to establish ritual institutions and attributes to Xunzi the position that “there is nothing intrinsically good about being morally good except that it prevents the bad” (“Xunzi on the Origin of Goodness: A New Interpretation,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38:1 [2011], pp. 46–​63, at p. 60). Though I welcome Li’s political interpretation, I still wonder whether it can fully explain the sage-​kings’ internal motivation without taking into account their (morally tamed) desire for the worldly goods, when Xunzi clearly states that sages also possess desire for material interest. 107 Xunzi 11.7b. 108 For instance, Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning (聖學十圖) dedicated by Yi Hwang 李滉 (1501–​ 1570), one of the most renowned Neo-​Confucian scholars during the Chosŏn 朝鮮 dynasty (1392–​1910), to King Sŏnjo 宣祖 (r. 1567–​1608) mentions nothing about power or profit, 106

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interests, Xunzi wonders, why would anyone bother to assume the kingship in the first place? That being said, it is important to realize that even here Xunzi’s deepest concern still points to civil politics. It is clearly vindicated in his statement that “these are also what people’s natural dispositions are the same in desiring, but only the rituals and regulations pertaining to the Son of Heaven are such as to be like this. When regulations and measures have been set and when government orders have been taken up, then if an official neglects something crucial, he is punished with death, and if a duke or feudal lord neglects ritual propriety, he is relegated to obscurity.”109 That is to say, instead of making the ritual institutions serve the ruler’s private interest, Xunzi subjects the ruler’s interest to the sociopolitical and moral institutional framework set by ritual aimed to secure political order and, more fundamentally, promote the well-​being of the people who then would “respond to [the ruler] like a shadow or echo.”110 Against Mohists who insist on the virtue of frugality, especially on the ruler’s part, Xunzi thus empathetically defends the majestic panoply of the king from this institutional-​political perspective. [The ancient sage-​kings] understood that in the matter of being a lord and superior to others, to lack beautiful things and ornaments will leave one incapable of uniting the people, to lack wealth and generous endowments will leave one incapable of managing one’s subordinates, and to lack strength and the power to inspire awe will leave one incapable of stopping those who are violent and overcoming those who are brutal. Thus the former kings were sure to strike great bells, beat sounding drums, blow on reeds and pipes, and play lyres and zithers, in order to fill up their ears. They were sure to have carving, polishing, engraving, and inlay, insignias and ornaments, in order to fill up their

and it is sage-​learning (shengxue 聖學) of this sort that orthodox Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​Confucians in China and Korea thought the ruler ought to be modeled after. For the English translation of Ten Diagrams, see Michael C. Kalton (trans.), To Become a Sage (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 1988). 109 Xunzi 11.7b. 110 Ibid. This explains an important question that has been sidelined so far –​that is, what if other forms of political arrangement (say, based on law, force, or bureaucracy) would benefit the ruler more effectively? If the ritual institutions are found to be less effective in satisfying the ruler’s desire for material interests than an alternative political arrangement, would Xunzi find it justified for him to opt out from the current political system in favor of a more advantageous one? Though important, this challenge would have a real force only if it is agreed that Xunzi acknowledges desire for material interest as the sole motivational force. But as will be argued shortly, Xunzi is also concerned with how the ruler can exercise his political power in a morally edifying way, which would truly secure the long-​term institutional basis of his interest, now his moral interest. My argument so far has been only to show the important prudential ground of Xunzi’s ritual institutionalism, which is often eclipsed by his staggering emphasis of virtue ethics. Of course, it is a completely different matter whether Xunzi’s ideal regime indeed secures both its institutional efficacy in satisfying the ruler’s material interest and moral-​political legitimacy better than other forms of political arrangement, which is basically an empirical question. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to clarify this important question.

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eyes … Only afterward did they increase their personnel, set up official posts, promote rewards, and make strict punishments, in order to make the people’s hearts watchful. They thereby caused all the people to know that what they feared and dreaded lay here with the kings … When it is like this, then the myriad things will obtain what is appropriate to them. When there are changes in circumstances, one will obtain the appropriate response.111

As Hutton interprets this passage, “Xunzi’s explicit justification is that the king should control the things that the common people desire and fear in order to motivate them.”112 And, perhaps more importantly, and as Loy rightly notes, without extravagant consumption and lavish display it would be quite difficult for any large-​scale authoritarian regime of the sort Xunzi espouses to function effectively.113 Yet, Xunzi’s concern is not limited to realist motivation of the people in subjecting them to a panoply of kingship or effective rulership per se. What is more important is his observation that the ruler’s interest (i.e., the moral interest that has become compatible with and further enhances the public interest) can be maximized authoritatively and legitimately only within the institutional framework of ritual, which not only enables the people to find their proper social places, thereby avoiding social chaos and enriching their lives, but, in the long run, also drawing them to its beauty and awesomeness, after which they model their lives and by which they regulate their personal conduct and social relations.114 Outside of this framework, the moral and aesthetic essence of which Xunzi captures in terms of good form (wen 文),115 there can be no interest, and only strife prevails perennially. In short, ritual institutions constrain the power and private interest of the ruler while exalting his moral-​political authority and enhancing his true interest, which is connected to the survival and flourishing of his state. And it is the good form of ritual institutions that brings, albeit slowly, the people, originally bad yet now civically transformed, to genuinely enjoy ritual order and the Kingly Way for non-​instrumental reasons.116 As Xunzi puts it, “Ritual is the height of good order and proper distinction. It is the fundamental point for making the state

111 Xunzi 10.9. 112 Eric L. Hutton, “Un-​Democratic Values in Plato and Xunzi,” in Polishing the Chinese Mirror, eds. Marthe Chandler and Ronnie Littlejohn (New York: Global Scholars Publications, 2008), pp. 313–​330, at p. 324. 113 See Loy, “Xunzi Contra Mozi,” pp. 367–​368. On this ground Loy considers Mozi’s criticism of Confucian rituals (finding them entirely wasteful) mistaken as he also champions a similar kind of the authoritarian state that Xunzi is eager to justify. 114 For the political importance of public display in Xunzi’s political theory, see El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought, pp. 97–​99. 115 Xunzi 3.4. 116 It is for this reason that Xunzi criticizes, among others, Mozi for understanding one corner of the Way, but does not realize that no one corner is sufficient to fully exhibit the Way (Xunzi 21.4). Otherwise stated, in Xunzi’s view, while Mozi rightly understood the importance of the

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strong. It is the way to inspire awe pervasively. It is the critical element for gaining accomplishments and fame. When kings and dukes follow it, that is the means whereby they obtain the whole world. When they do not follow it, that is the means whereby they obliterate their own alters of soil and grain.”117 As such, for Xunzi, Confucian moral and sociopolitical institutionalism of ritual, grounded in the self-​interest of the ruler as well as of the ruled, plays a critical constitutional role by simultaneously reforming and nourishing interest for both parties. In this way, although starting from a radically different view of human nature, Xunzi joins Mencius on Confucianism’s common positive moral-​political perfectionist ambition. It was their shared conviction that positive Confucianism can be attained not by suppressing the desire for material interest but by transforming it into the public interest that is profitable for both the ruler and the ruled. Conclusion For many Confucians, Mencius’s “he bi yue li*” gave rise to the idea that Confucian morality and interest are opposed to each other and orthodox Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​Confucians in particular reinforced this moralistic view on the basis of the typical Neo-​Confucian binary between the Heavenly principle and human desire. In this chapter, I tried to show, contrary to this conventional view, that Mencius himself never held the dualism between Confucian morality (ren and yi) and interest without qualifications. Nor was Xunzi, I argued, an apologist of the Chinese Realpolitik or Legalism, preoccupied with political order and the ruler’s interest in it. Central to my argument has been that despite holding seemingly contrasting accounts of human nature, Mencius and Xunzi were not so distant from each other when it comes to their positive Confucian political aspirations. Although Mencius was deeply interested in negative Confucianism and presented positive Confucianism in a less systematic way than Xunzi, primarily in terms of the pragmatic vehicle toward the Kingly Way of wuwei statecraft,

consequentialist dimension of the Way, which Xunzi also shares, he critically failed to grasp, among other things, the non-​instrumental dimensions of the Way, which renders it a good form, the deepest moral and aesthetic source of political legitimacy and ruling authority. See also Hutton, “Ethics in the Xunzi,” pp. 79–​81; Harris, “Xunzi’s Political Philosophy,” pp. 114–​115. 117 Xunzi 15.4. Also see Wong, “Xunzi on Moral Motivation,” pp.  146–​151; Eirik L.  Harris, “The Role of Virtue in Xunzi’s 荀子 Political Philosophy,” Dao 12:1 (2013), pp. 93–​110, esp. pp.  103–​109. I  fully agree with Hagen when he says, “The motivation to stay on the path of Confucian self-​cultivation, at least at early stages, comes precisely from a prudential calculus … Virtues and aspirations developed by strictly prudential reasoning could, in exigent circumstances, incline one to assent to a course of action that is not itself prudential –​indeed one may end up cultivating a character that would choose death over disgrace. So, we cultivate a non-​prudential based character, but our incentive to go down that road is nothing other than prudence” (Hagen, “Xunzi and the Prudence of Dao,” p. 63).

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he never dismissed the moral value of interest –​namely, the publicly extended interest or moral interest  –​as a realistic rapport between the ruler and the ruled, binding them equally to the ritual-​based Confucian civil-political order. What troubled Mencius was rulers’ single-​minded pursuit of private interest and the pathological situation in which men’s sociopolitical relations are mediated purely in terms of private interest without regard to morality and, by extension, public interest. Xunzi, however, noticed a fundamental weakness in Mencius’s political theory, grounded in his apolitical theory of human nature. If Mencius is right in believing that human nature is good and every person is capable of moral self-​ transformation by concentrating on his inner capacity, Xunzi wondered, on what basis would Mencius be able to uphold the supreme moral significance of kingship and ritual, the core institutions of Confucian virtue politics, in his “Confucian” political theory? Furthermore, how could Mencius account for the motivational aspects of ritual institutionalism and Confucian kingship in general without paying adequate attention to people’s natural desire for profit? In Xunzi’s judgment, however, even a sage-​king who is alleged to have successfully transformed himself still possesses self-​interest and Confucian political theory must take into account this realistic assumption, especially with regard to the origin and sustenance of the Confucian civil-​political order. For him, self-​interest was an important moral resource that helps both the ruler and the ruled to voluntarily subscribe to the institutions of ritual, thus fulfilling the positive purposes of Confucian virtue politics –​namely, the stable civil order and the moral and material well-​being of the people. He believed that only from this prudential and consequentialist ethical foundation can one further achieve a good order of social harmony. And when people are immersed in it for a long time, they can derive deep pleasure and intrinsic motivation toward the Kingly Way.

2 Virtue, Ritual, and Constitutionalism

In the previous chapter, we noted that there are two dimensions of Confucian virtue politics –​positive and negative –​and Xunzi brought Mencius’s underdeveloped idea of positive Confucianism to full fruition by actively expounding upon the critical role that material interest can play in creating and maintaining the Confucian civil-political order. In distinguishing between positive and negative Confucianism as two different modes of exercising Confucian virtue politics, however, it is far from my intention to argue that they are incompatible or mutually exclusive. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin of Confucian virtue politics and they combine to give rise to an interesting political dynamic that at once enables and constrains the ruler’s political power. What is important here is that when recast from the perspective of its uniquely political, and as will be shown “institutional,” dynamic, we realize that it is utterly inadequate, and seriously misleading, to capture Confucian virtue politics in terms of an undisciplined “rule by man.” Admittedly, until the mid-​twentieth century, Chinese Confucian politics was commonly viewed as one of patrimonialism in which the empire is the private possession of the ruler –​a patriarch, whose ruling legitimacy is based solely on hereditary right. If there was any positive political effect that Confucianism had, as we have been told, it was nothing more than the image of a benevolent father and the rhetoric of a benevolent government that covered up for an otherwise Legalistic ruler singularly devoted to his political security and private interest. In this widely held view, the real engine that propelled Chinese politics under this benign Confucian mask was “rule by law” or “Legalism” (fazhi 法治), at the core of which were the bureaucratic apparatuses effectively controlled by the ruler’s judicious manipulation of rewards and punishments.1 1 See, for instance, Herrlee G. Creel, Chinese Thought from Confucius to Mao Tse-​tung (Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press, 1953). On the Chinese Legalism of this conventional understanding, see Zhengyuan Fu, China’s Legalists:  The Earliest Totalitarians and Their Art of

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Originally uneasy, the alliance or intertwinement between rule by law and rule by virtue became firmly institutionalized in the Chinese empire during the Han dynasty (206 bc–​220 ad). As the empire, which was founded on Legalism (and in part Daoism), employed Confucianism as its official ruling ideology, Confucianism “degenerated” (according to the so-​called “authentic” Confucians who insisted on Confucius’s original teachings) into what some scholars call “Legalistic Confucianism,” in which the original moral aspiration of Confucian virtue politics diminished significantly due to the ruling elites’ dominant concern with political order and stability.2 Under the Legalistic Confucian political structure, we are told, there was no room for an institutional arrangement that could effectively constrain the imperial power undergirded by centralized bureaucracy. Recently, however, students of Confucianism have begun to challenge this popular account of traditional Confucian politics in China. Their common argument is that Confucian rituals or li, commonly understood as a docility enhancing social mechanism, in effect exercised a critical “constitutional” function by constraining the arbitrary use of power by the ruler. According to this new interpretation, the Confucian ruler is not above the li. On the contrary, the ruler is systematically controlled by the li (i.e., negative Confucianism) that confers moral and political authority on him and simultaneously enables him to exercise political power legitimately and with sufficient popular support (i.e., positive Confucianism).3 As Chaihark Hahm puts it, “[I]‌n East Asia the constitutionalist goal of putting effective restraint on the government and the educative goal of creating citizens who will demand such restraint should be pursued by taking into account [the] cultural idiom and vocabulary of Confucianism. Ruling (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996). As recent scholarship on Han Fei, the synthesizer of pre-​Qin Legalism, amply suggests, however, it is a different matter whether a particular Legalist thinker did subscribe to the established view of Legalism, mainly offered by its critics including Confucians. See Paul R. Goldin (ed.), Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Han Fei (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013). 2 On the historical formation of Legalistic Confucianism and Legalism more generally during the Han dynasty, see Joseph R. Levenson and Franz Schurmann (eds.), China: An Interpretive History from the Beginnings to the Fall of Han (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971). Tu Wei-​ming calls Legalistic Confucianism a “politicized Confucianism” and distinguishes it from original Confucianism advanced by pre-​Qin Confucian masters, especially the version supported by Mencius. See his “Probing the ‘Three Bonds’ and ‘Five Relationships’ in Confucian Humanism,” in Confucianism and the Family, eds. Walter H. Slote and George A. DeVos (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 121–​136. 3 See Chaihark Hahm, “Constitutionalism, Confucian Civic Virtue, and Ritual Propriety,” in Confucianism for the Modern World, eds. Daniel A. Bell and Chaibong Hahm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 31–​53; Bui Ngoc Son, Confucian Constitutionalism in East Asia (London:  Routledge, 2016), chaps. 1 and 2.  Also see Jaeyoon Song, “The Zhou Li and Constitutionalism: A Southern Song Political Theory,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36:3 (2009), pp. 423–​438 and Wm. Theodore de Bary, “The ‘Constitutional Tradition’ in China,” Journal of Chinese Law 9 (1995), pp. 7–​34, although both Song’s and de Bary’s discussions are limited to Chinese Neo-​Confucian experiences.

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Among the Confucian terms and concepts … ‘ritual propriety’ can provide a fruitful means of appropriating the Confucian cultural idiom for the project of establishing constitutionalism … This is because the Confucian notion of li lies at the intersection of politics and education. It is a marvelous combination of education, self-​cultivation, training, discipline, restraint, authority, and legitimacy.”4 And, arguably, this is what we have observed in Chapter 1 with regard to Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political theories of negative and positive Confucianism, though I  have consciously avoided explaining the two dimensions of Confucian virtue politics explicitly in terms of constitutionalism. Without implicating Mencius and Xunzi with the modern Western conception of constitutionalism, I aim to highlight in this chapter some important constitutional elements in their political thought in relation to their own conceptual tools such as virtue and ritual.5 Li, however, is only one of the components, albeit an important one, that buttresses the constitutional dynamic of Confucian virtue politics. Although Confucius (re)defined government (zheng 政) in terms of “correction [of the ruler as well as the people]” (zheng 正)6 and presented li as a complex set of institutional apparatuses to achieve such noncoercive moral correction,7 this does not mean that Confucian virtue politics is directly analogous to ritual ethics or rule by ritual.8 One of the critical problems in understanding the negative (or constraining) dimension of Confucian virtue politics exclusively in terms of “rule by ritual” (lizhi 禮治, or “ritual politics”) is that it does not do justice to the other side of Confucian virtue politics, often identified in terms of “rule by virtue” (dezhi 德治, or “virtue politics”), which understands the essence of government as consisting in the moral cultivation of the people by the transformative power of the ruler’s moral virtue. As discussed in the Introduction, in Confucius’s original political thought virtue politics and ritual politics denote two interconnected modes of Confucian virtue politics because in Confucius li gained a fresh moral meaning as a socially recognized and ordered expression of ren, the Confucian moral virtue par excellence.9 By rediscovering moral and civil value in ritual politics Hahm, “Constitutionalism, Confucian Civic Virtue, and Ritual Propriety,” p. 43. 5 For a more detailed discussion on my usages of “constitutionalism” and “Confucian constitutionalism,” see the Introduction. 6 The Analects 12.17; 13.6; 13.13. 7 See The Analects 2.3. 8 Most notably, Herbert Fingarette tends to reduce Confucian virtue ethics-​cum-​politics to ritual ethics. See his Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper, 1972). Despite some fascinating arguments, Michael Ing also shows the same tendency when he understands Confucian ethics wholly in terms of ritual or its dysfunctions. See Michael D. K. Ing, The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 9 On the fresh moral meaning of li in relation to ren in Confucius’s philosophical thought, see Tu Wei-​ming, “Li as Process of Humanization,” in Humanity and Self-​Cultivation (Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1979), pp. 17–​34. Also see Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 72–​85. 4

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of the Zhou civilization and redefining ritual politics in terms of virtue politics (in mediation of ren, which had undergone conceptual transformation from manliness into inner moral virtue),10 Confucius offered an alternative paradigm of politics to the one based on sheer force. It is by Mencius and Xunzi that virtue politics and ritual politics were given a more systematic framework and philosophical formulation as two distinct, though intimately connected, modes of Confucian virtue politics along with their core concern with negative and positive Confucianism. In this chapter, I argue that as second-​generation Confucians, Mencius and Xunzi firmly established virtue (or character)-​centered politics and ritual (or institution)-​centered politics as the two main pillars, together buttressing the scaffold of Confucian virtue politics as an alternative to the various political platforms and proposals toward Realpolitik that emerged during the Warring States period. Put differently, by drawing attention to distinctive institutional politics specific to each mode of Confucian virtue politics, I claim that Mencius and Xunzi developed two distinct models of Confucian constitutionalism  –​ virtue constitutionalism and ritual constitutionalism. More specifically, I investigate whether Mencius’s and Xunzi’s philosophical positions in respect to Confucian virtue politics are opposed to each other, as they appear to be, or whether they are complementary to each other despite their differing moral philosophical premises. Special attention will be paid to Xunzi’s criticism of Mencius’s idealization of royal transmission between sages by individual merit or “abdication” (shanrang 禪讓)11 in Book 18 of the Xunzi. I  will interpret Xunzi’s statements there as a political philosophical critique of virtue constitutionalism of the kind Mencius espouses from the standpoint of ritual constitutionalism. But before delving into textual interpretation, one question must be addressed –​in understanding Mencius’s and Xunzi’s distinct political philosophical positions, why does it matter whether one defends or rejects the idea of abdication? The Issue In The Trouble with Confucianism, Wm. Theodore de Bary identifies one of the “troubles” of Confucianism as the shift from abdication, which was idealized by both Confucius and Mencius, to hereditary transmission. According to de Bary, this shift involves a serious violation of the goals and standards that Confucianism originally set for itself because hereditary transmission of the throne inevitably violates the grand premise of the Confucian tradition: that 10 See E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 15. 11 Though the English term “abdication” does not convey the Confucian moral ideal of “yielding to the worthy,” I nevertheless adopt this term for the Chinese concept of shanrang, following the conventional contrast in Chinese political theory between abdication and hereditary succession.

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the true king ought to be a (universal) “sage-​king” in whom moral authority and political power are seamlessly entwined.12 In the Confucian ethico-​ political tradition, the sage-​king is understood to be the paradigmatic man who encompasses both moral charisma and political power and mediates between Heaven and the people. Thus Mencius extols the Way employed by the sage-​kings Yao and Shun as “the culmination of humanity.”13 Xunzi, too, hails the sage-​kings of Chinese antiquity as moral-​political and cultural heroes who transformed the anarchic state of nature into a civilized and ordered state by means of ritual institutions.14 For Confucians, hereditary transmission of kingship tarnishes the brilliant moral and political quality associated with the ideal of sage-​kings, namely moral virtue, which like charisma is a purely individual quality that cannot be transmitted from father to son.15 Yet, if we approach the Confucian ideal of abdication from the standpoint of hereditary transmission, it looks quite destabilizing, even subversive, as it valorizes the ruler’s purely personal moral charisma but rejects its institutionalization. As we will see shortly, Xunzi rejects the abdication legend (and, by implication, the abdication doctrine) in spite of its idealization by many earlier Confucians, including Mencius. If it is granted that the abdication doctrine was originally contrived to critique the anti-​Confucian reality of hereditary transmission, it can be inferred that by rejecting the abdication legend (and doctrine), Xunzi affirms the reality (and legitimacy) of hereditary royal transmission.16 In what follows, I  argue that Xunzi’s and Mencius’s differing attitudes toward abdication are attributable to their equally differing accounts of human nature, leading them to prefer different models of Confucian virtue politics. More specifically, I draw attention to the complex nature of the two thinkers’ respective political theories –​an interesting integration of political realism into Mencius’s supposedly idealistic political theory, undergirded by the Mandate of Heaven, and idealistic elements in Xunzi’s otherwise realistic political theory –​as well

Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Trouble with Confucianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 1–​ 2. Elsewhere I  argued that this shift denotes the fundamental breakdown of Confucian political moral economy according to which there should be congruency between moral virtue and political power and status. See Sungmoon Kim, “Contingency and Responsibility in Confucian Political Theory,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 44:6 (2018), pp. 615–​636. 13 Mencius 4A2. 14 Xunzi 23.2a. 15 Since both Mencius and Xunzi (especially the former), following the lead of Confucius, believe that virtue has a power (a sort of potency) to attract the people to its possessor and even transform them toward goodness, it can be understood as a pure form of “charisma” in the Weberian sense. 16 For a seminal discussion on Xunzi’s defense of the hereditary system, see Henry Rosemont Jr., “State and Society in the Xunzi: A Philosophical Commentary,” in Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, eds. T. C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), pp.  1–​38. 12

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as how Xunzi advances his Confucian political theory by critically engaging with Mencius’s philosophical position. Mencius’s Defense of Abdication and Virtue Constitutionalism The Trouble with Abdication The last book of The Analects records cases of abdication that allegedly took place first between Yao and Shun, then between Shun and Yu, as follows: Yao said, “Oh, you Shun! The orderly succession of Heaven now rests upon our shoulders. Hold faithfully to the mean. If those within the Four Seas should fall into hardship and poverty, Heaven’s emoluments [read: the Mandate of Heaven] will be cut off from you forever.” Shun charged Yu with the same words.17

What is remarkable about this depiction of handing over the throne is that there is “neither conquest nor struggle; neither antagonist, nor rival to overcome, nor any countervailing power to be met,” as de Bary observes.18 In this mythic spectacle, power is either nonexistent from the beginning or has been completely erased.19 What is present, instead, is virtue, which is presented as the sole foundation of political authority of sage-​kings Yao, Shun, and Yu. Therefore, what Yao calls “the orderly succession of Heaven” does not merely refer to the succession of the power-​line, or what later Confucians called the Princely-​Line (wang tung 王統); it also includes the line of brilliant moral virtue, namely, the Sagely-​Line (dao tung 道統).20 Here several questions arise: how does the reigning king as the Son of Heaven appoint his successor? Who authorizes the succession? And how is the successor’s moral virtue, the single criterion for his qualification to succeed the throne, identified? The famous conversation between Mencius (M) and Wan Zhang (WZ) in 17 The Analects 20.1. The English translation is adopted from Confucius, Confucius: Analects: with Selections from Traditional Commentaries, trans. Edward Slingerland (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003). It is generally agreed that Book 20 of the Lunyu 論語 (“Yao yue” 堯曰) is a later interpolation, perhaps after the rise of Mohism, which popularized the abdication legend (see Herrlee G. Creel, Confucius and the Chinese Way [New York: Harper and Row, 1949], pp. 182–​210). This philological issue, however, does not affect the historical premise of the current chapter that by the time of Mencius and Xunzi, the abdication legend had become popular not only within the Confucian school but more broadly among the common people. On the popularity of the abdication legend during the late Warring States period, see Sarah Allan, Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early Chinese Bamboo-​Slip Manuscripts (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2015). 18 De Bary, Trouble with Confucianism, p. 2. 19 For the latter possibility, see John B. Henderson, Scripture, Canon, and Commentary:  A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 21–​37. 20 For the (Neo-​)Confucian consciousness of the Sagely-​Line (or the Lineage of Dao) vis-​à-​vis the Princely-​Line, see Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Liberal Tradition in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 13–​14. Also see Seung-​Hwan Lee, Yugyo tamnoŭi chihyŏnghak [A Typology of the Confucian Discourse] (Seoul: Purŭnsup, 2004), pp. 121–​129.

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Book 5A of the Mengzi centers around some conundrums that the abdication legend gives rise to. The following shows the first half of the conversation. WZ: 

Is it true that Yao gave the world to Shun? M:  No, the king [the Son of Heaven] cannot give the world to another. WZ:  In that case who gave the world to Shun? M:  Heaven gave it to him. WZ:  Does this mean that Heaven gave him detailed and minute instructions? M:  No, Heaven does not speak but reveals itself through its acts and deeds. WZ:  How does Heaven do this? M: The king can recommend a man to Heaven but he cannot make Heaven give this man the world … In antiquity, Yao recommended Shun to Heaven and Heaven accepted him; he presented him to the people and the people accepted him. Hence I  said, “Heaven does not speak but reveals itself by its acts and deeds.”21 Mencius’s argument is composed of several propositions. First, the world (i.e., the universal kingdom called “all under Heaven”) is not the private property of the king, who is the Son of Heaven. Second, therefore, the king cannot (or is not entitled to) make a personal, purely discretionary, decision regarding to whom to hand over the world, no matter how great the candidate’s virtue may be. Third, as the supreme authority over all under Heaven, kingship must be transmitted, in today’s legal language, “in due course” and the ultimate source of such a procedural legitimacy lies in the Mandate of Heaven. Finally, kingship, which has been conferred by the Mandate of Heaven, will simultaneously be accepted by the people. The last point is worth special attention. Here Mencius does not seem to be referring to the Mandate of Heaven and the people’s acceptance as two separate sources for moral-​political legitimacy of royal transmission. Rather, Mencius seems to claim that the people’s welcoming of a new, putatively virtuous, candidate reflects the will of Heaven. Not surprisingly, this seemingly radical identification of the will of Heaven with the people’s support in Mencius’s political theory has convinced some contemporary scholars to regard him as a protodemocratic thinker. But does Mencius indeed identify Heaven directly with the people, thereby advocating “the ultimate supremacy of the people and their right to overthrow tyranny”?22 Even if it is acknowledged that Mencius is genuinely concerned with the people’s well-​being, believing that political authority is “justified by its ability to protect and promote the people’s well-​ being,”23 does he also believe that the people collectively possess the (ritually 21 Mencius 5A5. 22 See Luke Glanville, “Retaining the Mandate of Heaven:  Sovereign Accountability in Ancient China,” Millennium 39 (2010), pp. 323–​343, at p. 325. 23 Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism:  A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 27. Contrary to this view, however, Loubna El Amine

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sanctioned) power to choose a ruler whom they find virtuous and declare their choice as the will of Heaven? Or is Mencius making a normative statement that a ruler, allegedly appointed by Heaven, ought to be accepted by the people in order to make his moral and political legitimacy complete, instead of saying that Heaven’s appointment will naturally and automatically be followed by the people’s support? Direct normative equation of Heaven with the people is logically unstable because we can derive two different propositions from it. On the one hand, since in this equation the Mandate of Heaven is directly congruent with the will of the people, the people cannot logically refuse the ruler whose moral-​political authority to rule has already been conferred by the Mandate of Heaven. Doing so is a kind of self-​denial. Yet, on the other hand, it can be stated that regardless of his current position or status, any person who has the support of the people has de facto the Mandate of Heaven. To unravel this philosophical conundrum and to clarify Mencius’s position, let us turn to the latter half of the conversation between Mencius and Wan Zhang, which proceeds as follows: WZ: May I  ask how [Shun] was accepted by Heaven when recommended to it and how he was accepted by the people when presented to them? M: When he was put in charge of sacrifices, the hundred gods enjoyed them. This showed that Heaven accepted him. When he was put in charge of affairs, they were kept in order and the people (bai xing 百姓) were content. This showed that the people (min 民) accepted him … Hence I said, “The king cannot give the world to another.” Shun assisted Yao for twenty-​eight years … Yao died, and after the mourning period of three years, Shun withdrew to the south of Nan Ho, leaving Yao’s son in possession of the field, yet the feudal lords of the whole world coming to pay homage and those who were engaged in litigation went to Shun, not to Yao’s son, and ballad singers sang the praises of Shun, not of Yao’s son. Hence I said, “It was brought about by Heaven.” Only then did Shun go to the Middle Kingdom and ascend the throne. If he had just moved into Yao’s palace and ousted his son, it would have been usurpation of the world, not receiving it from Heaven.24

has recently claimed that “[w]‌hat Mencius means, then, by his statement that the people are more important than the ruler is not that their well-​being is the ultimate aim of Confucian government, for which the ruler is a mere means, but rather that they are developmentally (rather than normatively) more important than the ruler, that is, that no political order can obtain without their needs being satisfied first” (Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015], p. 51). Although it is certainly true that Mencius was not the champion of democracy understood as rule of, by, and for the people, it is difficult to deny Mencius’s normative interest in the people given his vehement moral criticism of the then-​rulers who failed to create socioeconomic conditions for their moral and material flourishing. See Chapter 1 and the Conclusion for more on this. 24 Mencius 5A5.

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Here we can see that Mencius has two classes of “people” in mind who vicariously represent the will of Heaven and accept the new Son of Heaven –​ the laypeople and the feudal lords. Implicit in Mencius’s statement is the argument that Heaven’s approval can be confirmed only when both laypeople and feudal lords accept the new ruler (the universal king reigning over all under Heaven more precisely). The question is whether there is any politically meaningful difference between the laypeople and the feudal lords in their modes of accepting the new king. Generally, the Chinese term min means people in their capacity as subjects; in its conventional usage, it does not refer to nobility.25 For example, when depicting the scene in which sage-​king Tang (or Wu) was engaged in the punitive expedition of tyrant Jie (or Zhòu), by “people” Mencius generally means laypeople, who welcome the virtuous intervener as though they “longed for a rainbow in time of severe drought”  –​in other words, enthusiastically.26 Likewise, when Mencius encourages King Xuan of Qi to share his joy with his “people,” as we have seen in Chapter 1, he clearly has in mind laypeople including the worst-​off members of society, such as widows, widowers, and orphans.27 These are the people who sing songs of praise to the new king and welcome him by approaching him on the road. As the second part of the conversation between Mencius and Wan Zhang shows, however, in some contexts, Mencius broadens the scope of “people” so as to include the nobles, be they ministers in the feudal state or, albeit rarely, feudal lords, who used to be Zhou king’s subjects. Even more rarely, he uses the term “people” to refer to the aristocratic class. For instance, when criticizing King Xuan of Qi, who had just annexed Yan (a state almost the same size as Qi), for his critical violation of the Confucian norm of righteous war (yizhan 義戰),28 Mencius refers to the “people” (zhong 衆) of Yan as the party with whom the terms of withdrawal must be negotiated. 25 For an illuminating discussion on the social status of min in ancient China, especially as understood by Confucius, see Ji-​bin Zhao, Lunyu xintan [A New Interpretation of the Analects] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1959). According to Hyŏn-​kŭn Chang, until the early Zhou period “min” had referred to (war) slaves, especially those whose eye was skewered as a sign of their status, but by the time of Mencius min became generally identified with “commoners,” peasants in particular. Originally, bai xing referred to a special group of people, mostly aristocrats, who possessed their family names (xing 性) and took part, in various capacities, in government with the ruling class. But like min, it also underwent radical transvaluation in the course of the Warring States period and by the time of Mencius it widely referred to the people in general as “the ruled,” although the subtle difference between min and bai xing is occasionally noticed in the Mengzi. See Hyŏng-​kŭn Chang, “Tongyang-​esŏŭi min, chŏngch’i kaenyŏm-​ŭi hyŏngsŏng mit pyŏnch’ŏn [The Formation and Evolution of the Concepts of the People and Politics in East Asia],” in Minbon-​kwa minjuŭi kaenyŏmjŏk t’ongsŏp [The Conceptual Consilience between Minbon and Minju], ed. Chŏng-​kŭn Sin (Seoul: Sungkyunkwan University Press, 2017), pp. 25–​58. 26 Mencius 1B11. Also see 7B4. 27 Mencius 1A7. 28 I discuss Mencius’s and Xunzi’s ideas of morality of war under the circumstances of the new interstate order during the Warring States period in Chapter 6.

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Now you double your territory without practicing benevolent government. This is to provoke the armies of the whole world. If you hasten to order the release of the captives, old and young, leave the valuable vessels where they are, and take your army out after setting up a ruler in consultation with the people of Yan, it is still not too late to halt the armies of the world.29

Certainly, it is unrealistic to insist that Yan’s entire population be consulted regarding the conquering army’s terms of withdrawal and Mencius indeed seems by the “people” here to have meant selected members of the aristocratic class. But precisely who are these “people” who are entitled to this special authority? Can any aristocratic member be granted this political privilege? Perhaps a more reasonable interpretation would be that “the people of Yan” that Mencius recommends King Xuan to consult with during the process of restoring Yan’s social and political order are Yan’s “trusted ministers of the noble families” (shi chen 世臣). Indeed, this interpretation has textual support. Mencius defines the old (and, by implication, stable and well-​ordered) state as a state that consists of (many) ministers of noble families.30 He further stresses the importance of the existence of such ministers in governing the (feudal) state: “It is not difficult to govern. All one has to do is not to offend the [trusted ministers of the] noble families. Whatever commands the admiration of the [trusted ministers of the] noble families will command the admiration of the whole state; whatever commands the admiration of a state will command the admiration of the whole world.”31 In short, Mencius divides the subjects of the king into two distinct groups: passive subjects consisting of laypeople who are the beneficiaries of a benevolent government, and active subjects such as feudal lords (of the whole kingdom) or the ministers of noble families (within the feudal state). This distinction shows that the “people” who are entitled to approve of the ruler are feudal lords if the ruler in question is the Son of Heaven, or the ministers of noble families if the ruler in question is a feudal lord. Unless approved by the active subjects (feudal lords or the ministers of the noble families), a candidate for a royal position cannot attain ruling legitimacy even with support from the laypeople.32 Therefore, given the ingrained class distinctions among the people and specific political rights (passive or active) tacitly attached to each class in Mencius’s abdication doctrine, it would be a mistake to understand Mencius’s justification of abdication as an expression of naive idealism. Quite the contrary,

Mencius 1B11 (emphasis added). 30 Mencius 1B7. 31 Mencius 4A6. 32 Several scholars, therefore, capture Mencius’s view of laypeople’s limited political right with an analogy of “barometer” or “thermometer” that merely indicates the success or failure of government without any meaningful influence on public decision making. See Justin Tiwald, “A Right of Rebellion in the Mengzi?,” Dao 7:3 (2008), pp. 269–​282, at p. 272; Stephen C. Angle, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy:  Toward Progressive Confucianism (Cambridge: Polity, 2012), p. 40; El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought, pp. 42–​44. 29

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Mencius’s seemingly idealistic identification of people with Heaven could in practice mean that the Mandate of Heaven is represented vicariously by the will of active subjects who are thought to share certain responsibilities, imposed by Heaven, with the ruler to serve the people’s moral and material well-​being. The implications of Mencius’s “realism” are indeed far-​reaching:  Mencius’s justification of abdication, originally focused on the sage-​king’s brilliant moral character, can be subverted to serve the ministers’ interest, that is, to uphold the ministers’ political authority to approve and occasionally constrain royal power with a view to the people’s well-​being. Mencius, however, does not dismiss the fact that the ministers’ political authority is always a power relative to the kingship, as a Heaven-​established moral-​political office, and therefore that ministership (political right, authority, and power of the ministers) is fundamentally dependent on the existence of kingship. In my judgment, the most striking part of Mencius’s political theory is the surprising “conservative turn” that he takes –​from his original espousal of abdication to defense of hereditary kingship, without the political backdrop of which the political right, authority, and power of the ministers become unintelligible.33 In another conversation between Mencius and Wan Zhang, Wan asks whether it is the case that virtue declined with Yu who chose his own son to succeed him, instead of a good and wise man. Mencius responds as follows: No, it is not. If Heaven wished to give the world to a good and wise man, then it should be given to a good and wise man. But if Heaven wished to give it to the son, then it should be given to the son. In antiquity, Shun recommended Yu to Heaven, and died seventeen years later. When the mourning period of three years was over, Yu withdrew to Yang Cheng, leaving Shun’s son in possession of the field, yet the people of all under Heaven followed him just as, after Yao’s death, the people followed Shun instead of Yao’s son. Yu recommended Yi to Heaven, and died seven years later. When the mourning period of three years was over, Yi withdrew to the northern slope of Mount Qi, leaving Yu’s son in possession of the field. Those who came to pay homage and those who were engaged in litigation went to Qi instead of Yi, saying, “This is the son of our prince.” … All this was due to Heaven and could not have been brought about by man. When a thing is done though by no one, then it is the work of Heaven; when a thing comes about though no one brings it about, then it is decreed. A common man who comes to possess the whole world must not only have the virtue of a Shun or a Yu but also the recommendation of the king [the Son of Heaven]. That is why Confucius never possessed the world. On the other hand, he who inherits the world is only put aside by Heaven if he is like Jie or Zhòu. Confucius said, “In Tang 唐 [the name of Yao’s dynasty] and Yu 虞 [the name of Shun’s dynasty] succession was through abdication, while in Xia, Yin and Zhou it was hereditary. The basic principle was the same.”34 In a similar vein, Robert Eno argues that the passages under investigation have “the effect of delegitimizing arbitrary cession of thrones and of supporting the institutional status quo,” calling Mencius’s position to this effect “institutional conservatism” (The Confucian Creation of Heaven:  Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery [Albany, NY:  State University of New York Press, 1990], p. 255n28). 34 Mencius 5A6. 33

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While refuting Wan Zhang’s (tacit) claim that hereditary kingship began when the kings lost their personal moral charisma, Mencius simultaneously denies the Weberian contention that charisma, whatever forms it takes, is eventually routinized and turned into traditional authority.35 That is, the father–son transmission from Yu to Qi is as legitimate (both morally and politically) as the abdication from Yao to Shun and from Shun to Yu because it, too, was in accordance with the Mandate of Heaven and supported by the people, through the mediation of virtue alone. Mencius even justifies the hereditary transmission between Yu and Qi by referring to the authority of Confucius. There appears, however, a logical jump in Mencius’s reasoning. If, as Mencius claims, legitimacy of the royal transmission lies in the Mandate of Heaven, the people’s approval, and ultimately the royal candidate’s excellent moral virtue, which enables and vindicates the other two sources of political legitimacy, it entails the absurd claim that all kings after Qi in the Xia dynasty –​ including the notorious tyrant Jie, Xia’s last king –​are to be regarded as kings, the possessors of brilliant moral charisma in principle, simply because of the fact (ex post facto) that they inherited the throne from their predecessors “in due course,” that is, legitimately. Or, at the very least, Heaven never intervened in the royal transmissions that historically took place. Does this mean that all royal successors, including Jie, were virtuous, hence possessing Heaven’s blessing to rule? This logical problem is generated by the fact that in the end Mencius singles out the incumbent king’s recommendation as the most decisive factor regarding abdication. This condition implies that without the reigning king’s recommendation, not even a sage whose moral virtue is commensurate with that of Confucius can become a king.36 According to Mencius’s most developed

35 However, Mencius sometimes admits, albeit unwittingly, that the sage-​king’s pure (personal) charisma does get routinized and that the routinized charisma exerts traditional authority. For instance, when asked why sage-​king Wen (the cofounder of the Zhou dynasty with his son sage-​king Wu), despite his matchless moral virtue (and enthusiastic welcoming by the people of Shang), was not able to conquer Shang, then ruled by tyrant Zhòu, and the punitive expedition was only accomplished by his son, Mencius points to the benevolent customs and mores that the rulers of Shang inherited from predecessors since its founding by the sage-​king Tang. According to Mencius, even Zhòu was able to hold the “traditionalized charisma” of the Shang dynasty, which made King Wen’s expedition extremely difficult (Mencius 2A1). On the routinization of charisma into tradition, see Max Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building, ed. S. N. Eisenstadt (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1968). Weber’s concept of “lineage charisma” as a mode of the charisma routinized is especially relevant in the present context. See Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 1135–​1139. 36 According to Yuri Pines, Mencius had a particular reason for introducing the ruler’s recommendation as the most crucial factor in deciding abdication. Having witnessed how the abdication legend could be taken advantage of by usurpers in the states like Qi and especially Yan, Mencius had to moderate the inherent radicalism of his earlier interpretation of the abdication legend, which made abdication doctrine vulnerable to usurpation by wicked ministers like Zi Zhi of Yan.

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doctrine of abdication, then, the Mandate of Heaven is relegated to the will of the Son of Heaven, and the will of the Son of Heaven is placed, albeit tacitly, over the royal candidate’s moral virtue and the people’s approval. Here we can see a remarkable twist having taken place in Mencius’s doctrines of abdication and the Mandate of Heaven, commonly associated with his political idealism. Moral Virtue as Power My interpretation of Mencius’s political theory thus far may not seem to fit comfortably with the conventional view of Mencius’s belief in the people’s right to rebellion or tyrannicide. However, as Justin Tiwald has recently argued, there is no evidence in the Mengzi that Mencius upholds the laypeople’s right to revolution –​the right to remove the incumbent ruler and enthrone a new ruler whom they support.37 For example, it was Tang and Wu (then the feudal lords of Xia and Shang, respectively) who dethroned (and killed) tyrants Jie and Zhòu, then founded the new dynasties of Shang and Zhou. In addition, if a feudal lord has lost his ruling legitimacy due to his tyrannical behavior, laypeople may be able to engage in collective protest against him, but the right to replace him is held exclusively by the ministers of noble families or (preferably) the morally excellent ones among them. In the context of his theory of rightful regicide, Mencius distinguishes those who possess the positive moral-​political right from passive subjects, by calling the former “Heaven’s appointed officers.”38 In principle, the Son of Heaven is the only Heaven-​appointed officer with the mandate to reign over all under Heaven. What is at issue now is not only who can take the office of the Son of Heaven but, more eminently, who is qualified to replace the bad ruler with a qualified one. That is, who is qualified to play the role of Heaven-​appointed officer as one who can dethrone (and enthrone) the Son of Heaven during a constitutional crisis caused by his serious misrule? According to Tiwald, there is one visible qualification in becoming a Heaven-​appointed officer, namely the possession of at least 100 square li of territory.39 Certainly, this is in line with my earlier argument that the political right to dethrone a tyrant and enthrone a new king is held and exercised exclusively by the feudal lords (who, according to Zhou political ritualism, own at least 1,000 square li) or the ministers of the noble families (who own at least 100 square li) if the ruler to be replaced is a feudal lord. But for Mencius, it seems, possession of a certain amount of territory (and the social status and political power attached to it, again according to

See Yuri Pines, “Disputers of Abdication: Zhanguo Egalitarianism and the Sovereign’s Power,” T’oung Pao 91:4 (2005), pp. 268–​271, at pp. 275–​280. I discuss in greater detail the potential political pathology associated with the ideal of the sage-​king and the abdication doctrine in particular in Chapter 4. 37 Tiwald, “A Right of Rebellion.” 38 Mencius 2B8. 39 Tiwald, “A Right of Rebellion,” p. 276.

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Zhou political ritualism) is only a necessary condition to become a Heaven-​ appointed officer. Mencius certainly does not regard any minister of the king or anyone whose enfiefment was at least 100 square li as entitled to the role of a Heaven-​appointed officer, with the political power to dethrone (or even kill) and enthrone a monarch. The more important qualification according to Mencius is the would-​be Heaven-​appointed officer’s moral excellence.40 For instance, the territorial qualification alone cannot account for Mencius’s great admiration of Yi Yin’s sagacious ministership.41 When Tai Jia, Tang’s grandson, went astray, Yi Yin took him into custody and gave him the world back after only three years of regent rule.42 Obviously, in adjudicating Yi Yin’s controversial action (i.e., his assumption of the role of the Heaven-​appointed officer), Mencius’s focus was not so much on Yi Yin’s territory but on his brilliant moral virtue and his political sagacity that extended from it.43 It should now be clear why Mencius so harshly berates the hegemons, such as Duke Huan of Qi, who, their official status being merely feudal lords, rationalized their quasi-​imperial powers in terms of “revering the (Zhou) king and expelling the barbarians (zun wang rang yi 尊王攘夷).” Since they emerged during a cultural and political crisis when the Zhou king had lost substantial political power in order to maintain the kingdom and since they, at least, did not arrogate to themselves the title of king, the hegemons, even those who were not appointed by the Zhou king, must have justified their moral status in terms of Heaven-​appointed officer.44 For Mencius, however, hegemonic rule or badao The virtue qualification to become a Heaven-​appointed officer is most saliently pointed out when Mencius engages with the question as to who is qualified to initiate a punitive expedition. I discuss this question in great detail in Chapter 6. 41 Yi Yin was one of the most sagacious ministers of sage-​king Tang, the founder of the Shang dynasty. According to Mencius, Yi Yin accepted the position of minister only after Tang cordially invited him three times (Mencius 5A7). 42 Mencius 7A31. Also see 2A2; 5A7; 5B1. 43 Since Tiwald discusses Heaven-​appointed officer in the context of rebellion on a scale of the entire kingdom, the would-​be Heaven-​appointed officer he has in mind is a feudal lord who is loved and esteemed by the people. Since Yi Yin, formerly prime minister, meets (substantially, if not perfectly) the procedural condition that designates a Heaven-​appointed officer, I suppose that Tiwald would not oppose my presentation of Yi Yin as one. According to Tiwald, procedural condition stipulates that (1) the would-​be Heaven-​appointed officer must have spent time in a position of political authority and his policies must have earned the overwhelming approval and appreciation of the people; (2) if he happens to get such a position and the people do indeed overwhelmingly approve of him (as evidenced by singing songs in praise of him, taking his roads, etc.), this is Heaven’s sign that he is the next Heaven-​appointed officer (Tiwald, “A Right of Rebellion,” pp. 277–​278). The Mengzi does not document the people’s reception of Yi Yin’s regent rule, but, considering his wide reputation as a sage and given his previous political performance in Tang’s court, there is no reason to doubt his positive reception by the people in the wake of his regent rule. 44 Initially, though, Duke of Huan of Qi, the first official hegemon, was appointed by King Zheng of Zhou as a senior (ba 伯) of the feudal lords to protect the Zhou royalty from internal and external threats. To the extent that he was appointed by the Son of Heaven, the hegemon’s 40

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is despicable because it is in principle opposed to the Kingly Way devoted to “benevolent government.” The hegemons may possess territory of 100 square li and minister status in the court of the Zhou king,45 but they lack what Mencius regards as the Heaven-​appointed officer’s most important qualification –​moral virtue. According to Mencius’s virtue-​based reformulation of Zhou political ritualism, only “sagacious ministers” such as Fu Yue, Yi Yin, and the Duke of Zhou (who was the minister of King Wu and King Cheng) are qualified to be Heaven-​appointed officers, solely by virtue of their moral character. This last point leads us to conclude that for Mencius, only those morally excellent among the noble families can become Heaven-​appointed officers within the feudal state. However, here arises a problem. Does Mencius’s moral theory, as discussed in Chapter 1, not vindicate a proposition that everyone, irrespective of his social origin, can become a sage-​minister, and, by extension, a Heaven-​appointed officer, especially in times of crisis? Recall that Yi Yi and Shun, who was Yao’s minister for twenty-​eight years, were originally farmers. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Mencius believes in the goodness of human nature and believes that anyone can become a sage. His reasoning is as follows: if one’s nature is endowed by Heaven and this heaven-​endowed nature can be fully realized by continuous moral self-​cultivation, then there should be no reason to doubt one’s moral perfectibility to become a sage like Yao and Shun.46 However, though anyone can become a sage, Mencius does not believe that anyone can become a sage-​king. Shun’s dramatic ascendance from farmer to king is almost impossible to repeat in a world where hereditary transmission of “kingship” (formerly feudal lordship) has become the norm. What is possible, however, is for a farmer (or anyone, for that matter) to become a sage-​minister by virtue of his brilliant moral virtue. Although Mencius’s moral theory suggests that anyone can become a Yao or a Shun, his political theory concentrates on the remarkable transformation of a person of humble origin into a charismatic minister. Consider the following statement by Mencius: Shun rose from the fields; Fu Yue was raised to office from amongst the builders; Jiao Ge from amidst the fish and salt; Guan Zhong from the hands of the prison officers; Sun Shu-​ao from the sea and Bo-​li Xi from the market. That is why Heaven, when it is about to place a great burden on a man, always first tests his resolution, exhausts his frame

original moral status was Heaven-​appointed officer. I discuss the ba system in the interstate context in Chapters 5 and 6. 45 Historically, the hegemons possessed the territory of 1,000 li or more, thus elevating them to the position of the Son of Heaven at least in terms of land and political power. 46 See Mencius 3A1. Julia Ching powerfully recapitulates Mencius’s “revolutionary” idea as the following: “(1) that sagehood is no longer limited to rulers or high ministers, and therefore, that it is no longer a concept tied to politics, and (2) that everyone is therefore equal, in his or her access to this exalted state” (Mysticism and Kingship in China: The Heart of Chinese Wisdom [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], p. 84).

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and makes him suffer starvation and hardship, frustrates his efforts so as to shake him from his mental lassitude, toughen his nature and make good his deficiencies.47

It is widely held that Mencius’s greatest political passion was to turn a ruler of his time into a sage-​king who could reunite the whole world by means of the Kingly Way. But it should not be forgotten that Mencius was not insensitive to the challenges posed by hereditary kingship, in which a ruler’s political authority is not entwined with moral authority, and this realization impelled Mencius to emphasize moral self-​transformation through which a layperson is morally and politically empowered and can even ultimately become a sage-​ minister who can both assist, and, more importantly, constrain the ruler whose ruling authority is now in principle connected with Heaven, not necessarily by means of his personal moral virtue but in mediation of the institution of kingship, to which he has a hereditary right.48 Mencius calls such a charismatic moral hero a “great man” (da zhang fu 大丈夫), who “cannot be led into excesses when wealthy and honored or deflected from his purpose when poor and obscure, nor can be made to bow before superior force.”49 For Mencius, this describes the ideal moral character of the (sage-​)minister in Confucian bureaucracy who takes “curbing the ruler” as the most important and effective way to “love him.”50 In Chapter 1, I captured this constraining dimension of Mencian Confucian virtue politics in terms of negative Confucianism. My discussion thus far reveals that there is an important constitutional dimension in Mencius’s idea of negative Confucianism. Mencius can be called a conservative to the extent that he never challenged the political legitimacy of hereditary kingship, with which the moral ideal of sagehood was no longer affiliated, despite his unswerving commitment to the ideal of sage-​kingship. But when he realized that the rulers (i.e., former feudal lords), each claiming the title of kingship,51 would no longer entertain their special connection with Heaven under the reality of hereditary transmission, he uncovered and further justified the “special connection” between

47 Mencius 6B15. This is the only phrase where Mencius gives a positive evaluation of Guan Zhong, the minister of Duke Huan of Qi. Guan Zhong is discussed extensively in Chapter 5 with a focus on the badao that he and Duke Huan exercised. 48 Hereupon, Mencius’s political theory turns to what I call the project of reverse moral economy. See Kim, “Contingency and Responsibility.” 49 Mencius 3B2. 50 Mencius 1B4. 51 Most notably, in 344 bc, of the former feudal lords Wei Hui Hou (r. 369–​335 bc) first adopted the title of “king” that had previously been reserved for the Zhou Son of Heaven, the practice to be followed by other feudal lords. The man is better known as King Hui of Liang, Mencius’s famous interlocutor. This practice then was enthusiastically followed by the rulers of Qi, Zhao, Yan, and Zhongshan. On these historical incidents, see, Mark E. Lewis, “Warring States Political History,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 b.c., eds. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 587–​650, at pp. 602–​603.

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ministership and the Mandate of Heaven. Mencius’s abdication doctrine notwithstanding, his realism shifted the focus of his virtue-​based political theory from the ruler, whose ruling authority has been decoupled from his personal moral character and authority, to the ministers who allegedly have achieved a high level of moral self-​cultivation, perhaps even reaching moral perfection (in the case of the legendary sage-​ministers). In this way, Mencius was able to integrate the position of Heaven-​appointed officer, originally called upon to cope with political emergencies, with the daily operations of royal bureaucracy, thereby institutionalizing political rivalry between the ruler and the ministers. Xunzi’s Rejection of the Abdication Doctrine and Ritual Constitutionalism Considering Mencius’s defense of abdication and attribution of the first incident of the father–​son transmission between Yu and Qi to an instance of abdication by highlighting Qi’s virtue, notwithstanding his ultimate acquiescence to the reality of the hereditary system, and given that Xunzi advances his account of human nature by criticizing Mencius’s xing-​shan thesis, it does not seem far-​ fetched to assume that Xunzi’s refutation of the abdication doctrine is, at least partially, aimed at Mencius. As sophisticated of a political theorist as he is, Xunzi proceeds his refutation quite methodically by focusing on three versions of the abdication legend that were most prevalent during his time. ( 1) Yao and Shun abdicated and yielded their thrones. (2) (Only) at death, the kings (the Sons of Heaven) relinquished all claims. (3) The kings had to abdicate due to old age and infirmity. In what follows, I  examine Xunzi’s criticism of each of these versions and attempt to reveal (and reconstruct) Xunzi’s distinct political theory in comparison with that of Mencius. Against the First Abdication Legend Xunzi responds to the first abdication legend as follows: This is not so. As for the Son of Heaven, his power and position are supremely revered, and there is no rival to them in the whole world. To whom could he yield the throne? He follows the Way and virtue purely and completely. His wisdom and kindness are profound and luminous. Facing south, he renders decisions for the whole world, and all those living as commoners are stirred to submit and follow and thereby become transformed and fully compliant with him. In all the world, there are no well-​bred men in hiding, and no good men who have been forsaken. That which conforms with him is affirmed, and that which diverges from him is repudiated. How would he come to relinquish the world?52

52 Xunzi 18.5a.

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Recall Mencius’s reasoning, according to which Yao abdicated to his “minister” Shun, and Shun to his “minister” Yu. From Xunzi’s viewpoint, however, the existence of another charismatic figure (besides the king himself) not only contradicts the king’s absolute, hence indivisible, moral and political authority, it also erodes the exclusive connection between the king as the Son of Heaven and the Mandate of Heaven. By affirming that “[i]‌n all the world, there are no well-​bred men in hiding, and no good men who have been forsaken,” Xunzi reveals his conviction that a king’s subject can entertain Heaven’s beneficence –​ be it moral, political, economic, or cultural –​only by virtue of the king’s all-​ encompassing moral charisma, particularly, as we discussed in Chapter 1, his ability to maintain and develop the ritual institutions. Therefore, Xunzi’s reasoning goes, there can be no charismatic moral splendor (sheng 聖) independent of the king’s charismatic effect of moral transformation of all. For Xunzi, insofar as one is the king’s subject, he acquires virtue only through the mediation of the king’s institutional artifices and, to that extent, his virtue cannot be commensurate with that of the king himself. Xunzi describes the king’s matchless charisma in the following way: “The Son of Heaven has no partner. That is to say, he has no equal … He sees things without looking upon them, and hears things keenly without listening to them. He is trusted without speaking, knows things without having to ponder them, and accomplishes things without moving. That is to say, everything is perfectly arranged for him. The power of the Son of Heaven is utterly overwhelming, his body is utterly at ease, and his heart is utterly joyful. His intentions are frustrated in nothing, and his body labors at nothing, because he is given unsurpassed honor.”53 Yi Yin’s response to sage-​king Tang’s invitation, as related by Mencius, does not merely collide with Xunzi’s idea of the king. By Xunzi’s standard, it is a kind of blasphemy. What do I  want Tang’s presents for? I  much prefer working in the fields, delighting in the Way of Yao and Shun. [Only after Tang sent a messenger for the third time did Yi Yin change his mind and say,] Is it not better for me to make this prince a Yao or Shun than to remain in the fields, delighting in the Way of Yao or Shun? … Heaven, in producing the people, has given to those who first attain understanding the duty of awakening those who are slow to understand; and to those who are the first to awaken the duty of awakening those who are slow to awaken. I am among the first of Heaven’s people to awaken. I shall awaken this people by means of this Way. If I do not awaken them, who will do so?54

Mencius’s Yi Yin claims (a) any person (even of humble origin) can entertain the Way of sage-​kings Yao and Shun and by extension the Mandate of Heaven without relying on sage-​king Tang’s charismatic mediation; (b) it is rather Yi Yin’s moral charisma that enables Tang to become a sage-​king (Tang, at this Xunzi 24.1. 54 Mencius 5A7. 53

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point, is described not as a charismatic sage-​king but as a potential sage-​king who is ready to listen to a sage); (c) therefore, it is indeed upon Yi Yin himself, not upon Tang, to enlighten the people in morality (ren, yi, li, zhi) and in moral relationships (wulun). Here, not only is Mencius dividing the Confucian ruling power into two, he is also putting the sage-​minister’s moral authority over the ruler’s (or even the universal king’s) political power. Moreover, Mencius’s abdication doctrine undermines the infallibility of the king that Xunzi assumes. As we have already seen, Mencius rationalizes the first incident of the father–​son transmission of the throne by arguing that Yu’s throne “had to” be given to his son Qi, because people chose Qi instead of Yi, Yu’s sagacious minister, even if Yu originally recommended Yi to Heaven. Of course, underlying Mencius’s rationalization (and the people’s choice of Qi over Yi) is the observation that Qi’s moral virtue was superior to, or at least parallel to, Yi’s –​hence, no qualitative difference from abdication despite taking the form of hereditary succession. But then we are faced with a puzzling question: why did Yu not recommend Qi to Heaven in the first place? If Qi truly possessed more excellent moral virtue than Yi, how should we understand Yu’s choice of Yi over Qi, whom the people and Heaven would have ultimately chosen? Recently, in a series of essays, Qingping Liu has identified the essence of Confucian ethics in terms of “consanguinitism,” which denies the values of individuality and sociability.55 But what we find in Yu, as narrated (and reconstructed) by Mencius, is the exact opposite –​Yu here shows an extreme version of anti-​consanguinitism that goes against the wish of the people and the Mandate of Heaven. Perhaps it was because Yu was afraid of the possible charge his action would likely elicit, that is, the privatization of the world. But why should his “abdication” to Qi be a problem, given Qi’s proven record of public service and his demonstrated virtue after the demise of Yu? In Xunzi’s judgment, this logical conundrum results inevitably from the abdication myth that Mencius (or his school) propagated. Against the Second Abdication Legend In Mencius 5A4, Xianqiu Meng asks Mencius whether it is true that “Shun stood facing south, while Yao stood facing north, at the head of the feudal lords, paying homage to him.”56 What is at issue in this question is whether the former sage-​king had become the new sage-​king’s subject upon abdication.

See Qingping Liu, “Family versus Sociality and Individuality:  On Confucianism as ‘Consanguinitism’,” Philosophy East and West 53:2 (2003), pp. 234–​250; “Is Menicus’ Doctrine of ‘Extending Affection’ Tenable?” Asian Philosophy 14:1 (2004), pp. 79–​90; “On Confucius’ Principle of Consanguineous Affection:  A Reading of the Dialogue about the Three-​ Year Mourning in the Lunyu,” Asian Philosophy 16:3 (2006), pp. 173–​188. 56 According to Confucian rituals (more accurately Zhou political ritualism endorsed by the classical Confucians), the ruler faces south and his subjects face toward him, that is, toward the north. 55

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Because of this ambiguity, there seems to have emerged the second popular belief regarding the abdication legend that “[only a]t the point of death, Yao and Shun relinquished it.”57 Xunzi counters the second version of the abdication legend by observing: Again, this is not so … When the sage king has died, if there is no sage left in the world, then certainly there is simply no one adequate to have the world relinquished to him. If there is a sage left in the world, and he is among the king’s descendants, then the world does not desert him. The court does not change location. The state does not alter its regulations. The world remains calm, no different from before. One Yao succeeds another Yao, so what switch is there? If the sage is not among the king’s descendants, and is instead among the three dukes, then the world goes and sides with him, as if returning and restoring a former ruler to the throne. The world remains calm, no different from before. One Yao succeeds another Yao, so what switch is there? … And so, while the Son of Heaven lives, the world exalts this one man, behaves with paramount compliance, and is ordered. He assigns rank by judging virtue, and when he dies, then whoever is able to assume responsibility for the world is sure to take possession of it. When the social divisions according to ritual and yi are completely implemented, what use would be served by relinquishing the throne and yielding it to others?58

Here, Xunzi emphasizes the dynasty’s uninterruptibility and unchangeability –​ namely, the “constitutional continuity” of the Confucian body politic in addition to the indivisibility and sovereignty of the king’s power.59 As we saw earlier, Mencius tried to overcome the constitutional crisis (particularly at the moment of royal transmission) by relying on the authority of the ministers of noble families (ideally, the “sage-​ministers”), working as Heaven-​appointed officers. For Xunzi, however, Mencius’s alternative is far from the best solution to the problem. Rather, it is likely to exacerbate the problem by dividing the Confucian ruling power between the king and his ministers, thereby relegating the kingship to a noncharismatic ordinary ruler. What is noteworthy is that by drawing attention to the indivisible and uninterruptible sovereign authority of the Son of Heaven, Xunzi places the emphasis not so much on an individual ruler’s personal charisma but on the office of the kingship as a moral-​political institution. Recall that Mencius’s doctrine of abdication is premised on the excellent personal moral virtue of individual sage-​kings such as Yao, Shun, and Yu. For example, in the Mengzi, Shun is described as a morally immaculate son and brother who remained filial and fraternal to his violent father and brother, in spite of their repeated attempts to kill him. Mencius attributes Shun’s moral perfection to his remarkable virtues of filial piety and fraternal responsibility 57 Xunzi 18.5b. 58 Ibid. 59 Again, “constitutional” in the broad sense of creating institutional political structures (including ones that aim to restrain the ruler’s arbitrary use of power) and enacting social norms and ritual order with a view to good government.

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(xiaoti 孝悌).60 Likewise, Mencius presents Yu as the paragon of public service, who never stopped at his house during his eight years of public service, even when he passed by it three times.61 Despite his occasional allusions to the sage-​kings, however, Xunzi rarely offers detailed descriptions of the heroic moral virtue of particular sage-​kings. Instead, he explains the personal characteristics of the sage or sage-​king in a highly abstract and general manner, shifting our attention from a particular king as a moral hero to the critical political roles he (or the kingship) plays as a ruler (or as a moral-​political institution). When Xunzi discusses the way to be a ruler, his prominent interest is clearly in the ruler’s moral character as the profound engine enabling him to maintain the ritual institutions: “There are chaotic lords; there are no states chaotic of themselves. There are men who create order; there are no rules creating order of themselves … Thus, rules cannot stand alone, and categories cannot implement themselves. If one has the right person, then they will be preserved. If one loses the right person, then they will be lost. The rules are the beginning of order, and the gentleman is the origin of the rules.”62 For Xunzi, kingship (or rulership in general) has a paramount “constitutional” significance because it is understood as the antithesis of and the civilized bulwark against the chaotic state of nature. In Chapter 1 (and as will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapter), we have examined Xunzi’s account of the rise of ritual with special attention to his interest in civic virtues. Now we can revisit it from a slightly different angle, with focus on the political role of kingship as an office to run ritual institutions. People’s nature is bad … Thus, if people follow along with their inborn dispositions and obey their nature, they are sure to come to struggle and contention, turn to disrupting social divisions and order, and end up becoming violent. So, it is necessary to await the transforming influence of teachers and models and the guidance of ritual and yi, and only then will they come to yielding and deference, turn to proper form and order, and end up Mencius  5A1–​4. 61 Mencius 3A4. 62 Xunzi 12.1. Also see 21.5a; 21.7d. After establishing institutional and character-​based theories as the two dominant models of Confucian political theory, Angle and Tiwald single out Xunzi as the paragon of character-​based theory by drawing on Xunzi 12.1 and related passages. See Stephen C. Angle and Justin Tiwald, Neo-​Confucianism:  A Philosophical Introduction (Cambridge:  Polity, 2017), pp. 191–​193. I  do not deny that Xunzi, just like any Confucian would as far as one subscribes to the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics, emphasizes the pivotal importance of the ruler’s moral character and virtue, but I think that his ultimate concern lies with rules and regulations that bring about and maintain order. Interestingly, Angle and Tiwald enlist the help of the Song scholar Hu Hong’s 胡宏 (1101–​1161) interpretation of the passage in order to reinforce their claim but, in my view, the point of Hu Hong’s argument does not seem to lie in the importance of the ruler’s moral character per se but the critical importance of reforming rules (and by implication, attaining good rules) that create order. Unfortunately, Angle and Tiwald do not discuss how Mencius’s political theory would square with the two models. 60

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becoming controlled … Now without teachers or proper models for people, they will be deviant, dangerous, and not correct. Without ritual and yi, they will be unruly, chaotic, and not well ordered. In ancient times, the sage kings saw that because people’s nature is bad, they were deviant, dangerous, and not correct, unruly, chaotic, and not well ordered. Therefore, for their sake they set up ritual and yi, and established proper models and measures. They did this in order to straighten out and beautify people’s inborn dispositions and nature and thereby correct them, and in order to train and transform people’s inborn dispositions and nature and thereby guide them, so that for the first time they all came to order and conformed to the Way.63

Understanding the people, unregulated, as essentially acting on desire for material interest and (antisocial) passions, Xunzi is strongly convinced that such desires and passions would drive them to unending struggle, and ultimately to a fatal state of disorder. In Xunzi’s view, the power that can overcome such an archaic state of nature should be sought “outside” of human nature, concretized in various moral-​political (hence “artificial”) institutions undergirding ritual and yi. For anybody in the state of nature to enter into the state of ritual and yi, he must be re-​formed (wei 僞) by the ritual institutions, originally created by ancient sage-​ kings and now maintained by the incumbent ruler, whoever he may be.64 Xunzi makes this point clear when he says, “In order for people to live, they cannot be without community. If they form communities but lack social divisions then they will struggle with each other. If they struggle with each other then there will be chaos, and if there is chaos they will be impoverished. Thus, to lack social divisions is the greatest harm to people, and to have social divisions is the root benefit for the whole world. And the lord of men (jun) is the pivot and crucial point in controlling social divisions.”65 For Xunzi, therefore, the essence of the sage-​kings lies not so much in their world-​transforming moral virtues as such, but in their creation, (virtuous) maintenance, and transmission of the “model” of Confucian ritual-​based political order, or ritual constitutionalism.66 Now sages are long gone (hence his repeated claims to study the “later kings” [hou wang 後王]), but Xunzi believes that as long as kingship (occupied by any ruler) is pivoted around this supreme Confucian political mission, even if the ruler in question may not be supremely virtuous as the ideal of Confucian virtue politics stipulates, a reasonably viable 63 Xunzi 23.1a–​2a. 64 Inspired by Xunzi, therefore, Japanese Confucian theorist Ogyu Sorai (荻生狙徠, 1666–​1728) famously revivified the notion of zuo zi wei zhi sheng 作者謂之聖 (“The maker is called a sage”), which had been dismissed by the Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​Confucians. See Masao Maruyama, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1974), pp. 69–​134. 65 Xunzi 10.4. Here Xunzi does not stipulate that the “lord of men” be a sage-​king. His definition of jun is strictly institutional without any association to the ruler’s moral character. 66 Barring some exceptional cases, for Xunzi the term “fa” means not so much the “law” narrowly conceived (as the Legalists later used it) but the “model” of social, political, and cultural institutions.

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moral-​political order of the Confucian polity could still be secured.67 In fact, as will be discussed in Chapter 5, it is precisely on this ground that Xunzi, contrary to Mencius, finds badao morally acceptable and further investigates its normative standard from a Confucian standpoint. Thus understood, what is of critical importance in Xunzi’s political theory is not necessarily the transfer of power from one virtuous king to another, because the continuity of the Confucian civil and moral-​political order (or, more comprehensively, “constitutional order”) rests on ritual institutions, the bulwark against the chaotic state of nature. Thus the salient question for Xunzi is how Shun as a ruler preserved the Confucian model that he had inherited from Yao, rather than what kind of person he was (as a son, for instance, a point that was so important for Mencius) –​hence his repeated saying, “One Yao succeeds another Yao, so what switch is there?” Whereas for Mencius the ruler’s moral character is of crucial political significance because of its special ability to achieve a cosmic unity between Heaven and humans, for Xunzi its importance consists mainly in its power to maintain ritual institutions, consisting of, among other things, the criminal legal system and governmental bureaucracy, against all kinds of situational variations.68 To be sure, though Xunzi denies the cosmological correlation between the Way of Heaven and the Way of humans, which is the metaphysical foundation of Mencius’s moral and political theory, and despite his closer attention to the institutional dimensions of Confucian virtue politics, Xunzi never makes the Machiavellian suggestion of separating politics from morality, nor does

Kurtis Hagen presents Xunzi’s ritualism as one of “Confucian constructivism” and distinguishes it from mere conventionalism. See his The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2007), pp. 32–​35. Hagen understands “constructivism” as a concept of philosophy of science but when approached with reference to Xunzi’s political theory, I find some interesting resonance between my idea of Confucian ritual constitutionalism and his political re-​appropriation of Confucian constructivism, at the core of which lies “the practical realization of social harmony through an intelligent use of moral categories and norms” (32n58). Of course, one important difference between Hagen and me is that while I believe that Xunzi believed in only one right construction of the sociopolitical world (“the Way,” as he called it), Hagen subscribes to the view that it is contingent upon the social circumstances to decide which specific mode of social construction should be adopted. For a helpful discussion on this meta-​ ethical question in relation to Xunzi’s philosophy, see David B. Wong, “Xunzi’s Metaethics,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, ed. Eric L. Hutton (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 139–​164. For a conventionalist interpretation of Xunzi, see Chad Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 319–​334. 68 Therefore, I  find Eric Hutton’s following statement more germane to Xunzi (and Confucius) than to Mencius, though it broadly concerns Confucian virtue politics: “[I]‌f there are people who do have robust character traits and are resistant to situational variation, they can design and reliably maintain the broad range of institutions and situations that facilitate good behavior for everyone else.” See Eric L. Hutton, “Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought,” Philosophical Studies 127:1 (2006), pp. 37–​58, at p. 50. 67

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he explore the Confucian concept of “the political” with its own moral standard internal to its (purely) political institutions, a point to which I  return in Chapter  5. At the same time, however, Xunzi does part company with Mencius, whose commitment to the Confucian Way he generally shares, when Mencius makes Confucian virtue politics essentially pivoted on the ruler’s personal moral virtue, which helps him garner voluntary political compliance from the people, or, in the nonideal situation where most rulers lack such all-​encompassing moral power, on the ministers’ moral virtue countervailing the (less-​than-​virtuous) ruler’s desire for private interests and arbitrary use of power.69 Subscribing neither to Realpolitik of the kind that fascinated many of his contemporaries (including some Legalists) nor to virtue constitutionalism of the Mencian strand, Xunzi places his distinct yet still Confucian political theory somewhere between the two by proposing ritual-​based Confucian political institutionalism (i.e., ritual constitutionalism), which gives more emphasis to positive Confucianism than Mencian virtue constitutionalism allows. Against the Third Abdication Legend Finally, Xunzi counters the third popular claim, that “[w]‌hen Yao and Shun grew old and went into decline, they relinquished the throne,” by arguing: Again, this is not so … As for the Son of Heaven, his power has the utmost weight, and his body has the utmost ease. His heart has the utmost happiness, and nowhere do his intentions suffer being turned back. His body does not endure toil, because he receives reverence unsurpassed. For his garments, people clothe him in the five regular colors, intersperse the mixed colors, provide copious patterning and embroidery, and add further adornment to this with pearls and jade. For his meals, they provide copiously the Grand Livestock, prepare precious and unusual dishes, and assemble fragrant and flavorful ingredients … The three dukes support the yoke or steady the reins. The feudal lords steady the wheels, flank the car, or go before the horse. Behind are arrayed the greater marquises, and next are the grand ministers … The ordinary people scurry away and hide, with none daring to look upon him. Thus, when he inhabits the palace, he is like a supreme spirit, and when he is on the move, he is like Heavenly Shang Di. For holding off old age and fortifying against decline, is there anything better than this? Those who do not suffer from old age are well rested, and for resting, is there anything as comfortable, enjoyable, pleasing, and happy as this? And so I say: There is such a thing as old age for the feudal lords, but there is no such thing as relinquishing the world. Ancient times and the present are one and the same in this.70 69 For example, see Mencius 1A7; 4A4; 4A20; 7A1; 7A4. This, however, is not to argue that Mencius had no interest in actual sociopolitical and economic affairs that require active political engagement (youwei 有爲). Not only did Mencius propose to implement the well-​field system as the socioeconomic backdrop of the Kingly Way, he also thought that a disciplined use of coercion, punishment, or even (just) war was inevitable in the nonideal world. See Mencius 2A4; 3A3; 4A14. For a discussion of the philosophical connection between self-​cultivation and the political order in Mencius, see Kwong-​loi Shun, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 163–​173. 70 Xunzi 18.5c.

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Considering Xunzi’s repeated insistence that the kernel of kingly government lies in the king’s timely and proper appointment of his ministers to various governmental posts and his delegation of the details of governance and administration to them,71 the claim that the king, because of his supreme position, is most “comfortable, enjoyable, pleasing, and happy” makes sense. However, this utterly idealistic depiction of the king’s utmost ease and happiness seems to be critically at odds with Xunzi’s astute sense of political reality. How can he not see any realistic possibility of the tension, even rivalry, between the ruler and his ministers, which is one of the most central concerns of Han Fei, his famous Legalist student?72 Moreover, his assertion that the king’s body does not suffer old age and is fortified against decline (so that he never has to relinquish the world) is neither scientific nor reasonable. In fact, at first glance, Xunzi’s reasoning sounds more like that of a Daoist than that of a Confucian when he implicitly identifies sagely statecraft with the “rule by effortless action” (wuwei zhengzhi 無爲政治).73 However, it is a mistake to characterize Xunzi as an unorthodox Confucian based on his description of the essence of kingship (and by implication rulership in general) in terms of wuwei statecraft, because Confucius and Mencius essentially do the same.74 Yet, when praising the kings for their wuwei statecraft, Confucius’s focus, and even more so Mencius’s, is always on their world-​transformative moral charisma. According to Confucius, “The rule of virtue (de) can be compared to the Polar Star which commands the homage of the multitude of stars without leaving its place.”75 Similarly, Mencius illustrates Shun’s brilliant moral virtue by observing that “when Shun lived in the depth of the mountains, he lived amongst trees and stones, and had as friends deer and pigs. The difference between him and the uncultivated man of the mountains then was slight. But when he heard a single good word,

71 Xunzi 13.1–​2. Also see El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought, pp. 118–​124. In this regard, I agree with Yuri Pines, when he says that “[t]‌he price for [the monarch’s] omnipotence [in Xunzi’s political theory] is refraining from exercising their limitless power,” even though Xunzi is simultaneously persuaded that as the foundation of the sociopolitical order, “the power of the monarch should be theoretically limitless.” See Yuri Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), p. 106. 72 So Han Fei writes, “The ruler must not reveal his desires; for if he reveals his desires his ministers will put on the mask that pleases him. He must not reveal his will; for if he does so his ministers will show a different face. So it is said: Discard likes and dislikes and the ministers will show their true form; discard wisdom and wile and the ministers will watch their step” (Hanfeizi 5). The English translation is adopted from Han Fei Tzu:  Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 16. 73 On the Daoist-​Wuwei dimension in Xunzi’s thought, see Edward Slingerland, Effortless Action: Wu-​wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 246–​264. 74 Most notably, Confucius extols Shun’s wuwei statecraft in The Analects 15.5. See Chapter 1n79 for my earlier discussion of the Confucian understanding(s) of wuwei politics. 75 The Analects 2.1.

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witnessed a single good deed, it was like water causing a breach in the dikes of the Yangzi or the Yellow River. Nothing could withstand it.”76 What distinguishes Xunzi from his Confucian predecessors is his finding that the real locomotive of the wuwei government is the moral-​political institutions that the ancient sage-​kings have created (and transmitted to later generations), not so much their personal moral characters that attract people to virtue. It is by virtue of such sacred institutions that the kings were able to bring the people from the state of nature to civil order and educate them in morality. The king, as a person, might appear to do nothing, but the kingship (or rulership more generally) as a political institution (and other institutional/​bureaucratic apparatuses undergirding it) ceaselessly and unfailingly achieves all kinds of things. The more vigorously the institutions operate (i.e., youwei 有爲), the less the king has to do and the more energetic and formidable his “body” becomes. It is therefore worth noting that Xunzi concludes his refutation of the third abdication legend by hinting at the “body” that is more institutional than personal. As for saying, “Yao and Shun relinquished the throne and yielded it to others” –​this is empty talk. It is a rumor circulated by shallow people, a doctrine spoken by boorish people. They are people who do not understand the patterns of what is conflicting and what is agreeable, and do not understand what changes happen to greater and lesser entities, supreme and non-​supreme ones. They are people who have never been able to take part in attaining the greatest order in the world.77

According to Xunzi, people who propagate the abdication legend do not understand the “patterns” of what is conflicting and what is agreeable and the “changes” that happen to the greater or supreme entity called the world (i.e., the former Zhou kingdom), which is distinguished from the feudal states as subparts of the Zhou body politic.78 That is, such people do not understand how the state (ideally the world) as a “body politic” operates as a fundamental tool for kingly government and how “the greatest order in the world” is achieved and maintained. Michael Nylan insightfully captures this expansive notion of the “body” of the king in the following way: In early Confucian theory, geographic boundaries are emphatically (a) permeable and (b) expandable, because the health of the body and body politic is thought to depend always on flow and change, rather than on fixedness. In addition, (c) neither the body

76 Mencius 7A16. 77 Xunzi 18.5c. 78 Note that one of my key assumptions throughout this book is that whenever Xunzi alludes to the Son of Heaven or the king, or the world, his otherwise universalist argument is generally applicable to the now independent and sovereign states, all claiming “kingship” for themselves, in the context of the Warring States period. Therefore, although Xunzi’s statement about the formidability of the “body politic” here does not in principle apply to the former feudal states, which were integral parts of the Zhou kingdom, it generally applies to the states (guo) under the unique political circumstances of the late Warring States period.

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nor the state is ever seen as the “possession of one man.” Instead, both are conceived as entities held in trust, in effect “works in progress” extending over space and time. To the Confucian, these obvious “facts” attesting to the blurry boundaries of the body and body politic by no means precluded order, for (d) order in the Confucian tradition emanates from a stable –​precisely because it is not rigidly placed –​center attuned to social and cosmic patterns. In the body, the center was defined as the heart/​mind, locus of the proper motivations for social interaction; in the body politic, as the ruler or, in the absence of a good and wise ruler, the sage.79

Thus, by the “healthy body of the king” Xunzi seems to signify a viable body politic represented by a well-​operating kingship. That is to say, when Xunzi says that the king’s body does not suffer old age and is fortified from decline, he is emphasizing not only the ease of the king’s daily life but, more profoundly, the imperishability of the kingship as a representation of the civil and political order of the Confucian state and its various institutional embodiments. The following statement by Xunzi best presents the supreme significance of the state in his political theory. [T]‌he state is a heavy responsibility to bear. If one does not use what has been accumulated to support it, then it will not stand. [Perhaps someone might ask:] But the state is such that what it relies upon to support it is new with each generation. That way of doing things would be to reject change fearfully … That being the case, how can there be any state that securely remains firm for a thousand years? I  say:  Take hold of a model (fa) that is trustworthy for a thousand years to support it, and then run the state together with men who are trustworthy for a thousand years. [Perhaps someone might ask:] But people do not even have longevity of a hundred years, so how can there be men who are trustworthy for a thousand years? I say: Those who use a model that is trustworthy for a thousand years to support themselves are men who are trustworthy for a thousand years.80

Xunzi’s message is clear: even though the ruler as a person is bound to perish, his model (fa) and the state that it underpins are permanent. And it is by means of such a model of government, which makes Confucian virtue politics more institution-​oriented, that the state as the tool representing the Confucian body politic can be sustained for 1,000 years. In this view, the virtuous ruler is one who is committed to the model of Confucian ritual institutionalism and is able to employ it wholeheartedly against all situational variations.81 Right to Rebellion? Would Xunzi’s political theory allow the right to rebellion? Earlier we saw that, contrary to the conventional view, Mencius’s abdication doctrine does not 79 Michael Nylan, “Boundaries of the Body and Body Politic in Early Confucian Thought,” in Boundaries and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives, eds. David Miller and Sohail H. Hashmi (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 112–​135, at p. 115. 80 Xunzi 11.2b. 81 My argument in this section, based on the reinterpretation of the king’s physical body in terms of the body politic, may be found question-​begging for some readers because, after all,

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necessarily entail the popular right to rebellion or tyrannicide, which would further exacerbate the constitutional crisis. Recall that in Mencius’s political theory ministers (ideally sage-​ministers) play the role of Heaven-​appointed officers not only in preventing constitutional crises (by means of remonstrance), but more critically (though very rarely), in resolving them, by, for instance, deposing the incumbent ruler.82 Surprisingly, Xunzi’s political theory, which strongly emphasizes the permanence of the Confucian ritual-​based political order (or fa in Xunzi’s own term), turns out to be in a better position to justify the popular right to rebellion or tyrannicide, although it, like Mencius’s, does not allow laypeople to rise against the ruler, despite its renewed attention to the normative conception of the people. Xunzi justifies the killing of Jie and Zhòu as follows: It is not the case that Tang and Wu snatched away the world. They cultivated their ways and carried out what was yi for them, they established benefits for the whole world and eliminated harms to the whole world, and the world then went over to them. It is not the case that Jie and Zhòu abandoned the world. They went against the virtue of Tang and Wu and disrupted the social divisions that come from ritual and yi. Their beastly conduct accumulated in them what was ruinous and made complete in them what was bad, and the world then abandoned them. When the world goes over to a person, he is called king (wang 王), and when the world abandons a person, he is called perished (wang 亡). And so, from this it can be confirmed that Jie and Zhòu did not possess the world, and that Tang and Wu did not commit regicide against their lords.83

Accordingly, Xunzi’s position does not seem to be appreciably different from Mencius’s: not only does Xunzi claim that tyrants such as Jie and Zhòu lost the world because they lost the people, but he also attributes the (ritually sanctioned) right to remove the ruler (in this case the universal king) only to selected agents, feudal lords in particular. That said, there are two important differences between Mencius and Xunzi with regard to tyrannicide.

Nylan’s historical analysis of the early Confucian conception of the body and the body politic notwithstanding, Xunzi provides no philosophical account for the connection between the two. However, if we interpret Xunzi’s third refutation of the abdication legend in light of the arguments advanced in his first two refutations –​focused on the indivisibility of the ruler’s sovereign power and the unchangeability of the Confucian model respectively –​his final argument, as I interpret it here, about the imperishability of the Confucian state as the body politic, makes perfect sense, rendering later refutations systematically built on the earlier one(s). Although there is no way to know with any certainty whether Xunzi (or the later compilers of the Xunzi) indeed deliberately arranged the three abdication legends and his subsequent refutations of them in this way, this way of reading Xunzi seems to do justice to the systematic nature of his political theory. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me with this question. 82 See Mencius 5B9: “If the prince made serious mistakes, they [ministers of royal blood] would remonstrate with him, but if repeated remonstrations fell on deaf ears, they would depose him … If the prince made mistakes, they [ministers of families other than the royal house] would remonstrate with him, but if repeated remonstrations fell on deaf ears, they would leave him.” 83 Xunzi 18.2. Also see 13.9.

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First, unlike Mencius, Xunzi is completely silent about the Mandate of Heaven in deposing a tyrannical ruler and enthroning a new ruler. Its political implication is rather striking, because Xunzi does not have to get embroiled in the philosophical conundrum of who is qualified to be the Heaven-​appointed officer during a constitutional crisis. In fact, Xunzi shows no interest in who is entitled to choose the next ruler, the prerogative that Mencius, enlisting the authority of Zhou political practice, ascribes to the (virtuous) ministers of the noble families. Skipping this question altogether, Xunzi offers a much more straightforward procedure by which the constitutional crisis can be overcome. According to Xunzi, if, after the king’s death, the one who is supposed to inherit his throne is unfit and inadequate to carry the world, one of the feudal lords, who is ranked right below the Son of Heaven in terms of ritual status, should “step in,” though as a champion of Confucian virtue politics he stipulates this procedure under the condition that the feudal lord in question “is able to have virtue that shines and power to inspire awe that piles up.”84 The point is that Xunzi does not allow ministers to arbitrate the selection process, although it remains quite ambiguous how similar constitutional crises within the independent and sovereign states of his time should be resolved. That said, Xunzi’s silence on the virtuous arbitrator(s) among the ministers, holding a Heaven-​given right to depose and/​or select the ruler, is remarkably consistent with his notion of indivisibility of the sovereign power. The second difference is closely related to the first one:  Xunzi’s apparent nonchalance toward the Mandate of Heaven enables him to focus directly on “harm to the people” or “the people’s enthusiastic support” as the two sides of a single justification for tyrannicide. As I show in Chapter 6, this is a philosophical stance, at which Mencius, too, will ultimately arrive, especially in the course of his philosophical struggle with moral justifiability of punitive expedition during the Warring States period in the virtual absence of the Son of Heaven, the institution representing the Mandate of Heaven. But Xunzi makes it abundantly clear that it is none other than the people’s well-​being that justifies political authority and by implication the right to tyrannicide. Again, Xunzi does not explicitly grant this right to laypeople, but he seems to hold a far more positive view on their political agency than Mencius, when he says, “When the common people feel at ease with the government, only then will the gentleman feel at ease in holding his position. There is a saying, ‘The lord is the boat. The common people are the water. The water can support the boat. The water can also overturn the boat.’ ”85 For Xunzi, people are not mere thermometers or gauges that only passively “indicate” the success of government. From Xunzi’s normative perspective, they do have power to overthrow

Ibid. 85 Xunzi 9.4. 84

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the ruler.86 He just does not relate his new normative conception of the people with an equally new vision of political representation. Ultimately, the reason Xunzi finds Jie and Zhòu deserving of removal from the throne (and even killing) boils down to their utter failure in fulfilling their institutional roles as kings. When Xunzi notes that Jie and Zhòu were a wang not in the sense of king (王) but in the sense of “being perished” (亡),87 he draws our attention to their colossal failure in maintaining any viable government, let alone the model of kingly government –​hence, as will be discussed in Chapter 5, his endorsement of badao as a morally decent mode of government despite its distance from the Kingly Way. In short, what is at stake here is not so much (or not merely) the ruler’s personal moral failure as his political failure to secure the civil-​political order of the Confucian state that “kingship” represents. Conclusion In this chapter, I have identified two distinct models of Confucian virtue politics advanced by Mencius and Xunzi  –​virtue constitutionalism and ritual constitutionalism  –​by a close reading and reinterpretation of the texts in which they grapple with the legend of abdication involving ancient sage-​kings. Countering a conventional view that attributes Mencius and Xunzi to political idealism and political realism, respectively, I have argued that both Mencius and Xunzi developed fairly realistic political theories, and that the difference between the two lies mainly in their preferred mode of Confucian virtue politics (character-​centered versus ritual-​centered). More specifically, I have shown that, underneath Mencius’s and Xunzi’s contrasting views on abdication, there is important disagreement between the two with regard to the meaning of kingship (or rulership in general) within the context of Confucian civil-​political order –​personal or institutional. In the next chapter, I explore the implications of the different modes of Confucian constitutionalism advanced by Mencius and Xunzi on their differing conceptualizations of virtue –​moral and civic.

It may be objected that all I have shown so far is that Xunzi seems to allow the laypeople the power to overthrow the tyrannical ruler, but not the right to do so. In this regard, it can be said, Xunzi, like Mencius, may not support the popular right to rebellion. This is a reasonable objection but hardly an insurmountable one. First, my argument here is not to show that Xunzi actually advocated the popular right to rebellion (including tyrannicide) but that this right is implicit in his political theory when it is systematically reconstructed. Second, the distinction between power and right is not always straightforward. In fact, in one of the Hohfeldian conceptions of right, right is a form of power. On this view, allowing the laypeople the power to rebellion is concomitantly to acknowledge that they hold the political right to do so, although this right, as newly vindicated, is not sanctioned by traditional Zhou political ritualism that Xunzi otherwise subscribes to. For the Hohfeldian conceptions of right, see Wesley N. Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, ed. Walter W. Cook (London: Routledge, [1919] 2016). I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to clarify this issue. 87 Note that the Chinese characters王 and 亡 have the same phonetic sound. 86

3 Before and after Ritual: Moral Virtue and Civic Virtue

One of my core arguments in previous chapters has been that the different modes of Confucian virtue politics advanced by Mencius and Xunzi (virtue constitutionalism versus ritual constitutionalism in particular and negative Confucianism versus positive Confucianism to a lesser degree) are closely connected with the classical Confucians’ contrasting accounts of human nature and moral self-​cultivation. The underlying assumption was that Confucian ethics, as conceived by both Mencius and Xunzi, despite important differences in their moral and political philosophy, is a kind of virtue ethics, focused on human flourishing and moral development, and that Confucian virtue ethics gives rise to a uniquely Confucian form of virtue politics, which recalibrates the key political concerns –​namely, order and stability –​toward good form (wen) undergirded by Confucian rituals (li), and good government (zheng) committed to the moral and material well-​being of the people. An important question has not yet been addressed, however, and that is how to understand the structure of Confucian virtue ethics, especially in relation to li, when it is understood in classical Confucianism both as one of the cardinal moral virtues and as sociopolitical institutions that undergird an ordered civil polity. Is li a virtue of intrinsic value or is it an instrument for moral development that leads to virtue? Or, is li a virtue of both intrinsic and instrumental value? If the latter, how should we understand li’s two dimensions, especially in relation to politics? If we analytically disentangle li’s instrumental dimension from its intrinsic moral dimension, what fresh light can it shed on the political philosophies of Mencius and Xunzi? In short, how should we understand the nature of li as virtue in classical Confucian ethics and political theory? Despite, or because of, the critical importance of li in Confucian moral and political theory, existing studies offer multiple and radically different interpretations of li as virtue. For instance, drawing from The Analects, Sor-​ hoon Tan claims that li is primarily the constitutive means of a Confucian 89

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community1 and as a complex set of rituals, ceremonies, and etiquettes it creates a “semiotic structure” in which the members of the community communicate with one another by using “signs,” or, in other words, by ritualistically performing their given social roles.2 In Tan’s interpretation, li is understood primarily as a means that can produce social virtues that help one to become a good member of the community in complex relationships with others and within his or her variegated social roles. However, in this interpretation, it is unclear precisely in what sense li itself is a virtue, as was suggested by the classical Confucians, or whether it has an instrumental or noninstrumental connection with the formation of moral character, the central concern for both Mencius and Xunzi. While Tan’s Analects-​inspired understanding of li is focused on its social dimensions, obfuscating its nature as virtue that constitutes moral character, Eric Hutton’s interpretation of early Confucianism, in part motivated as a virtue-​ethical response to the so-​called “situationist critique,”3 highlights the intimate connection between li and a robust moral character. Hutton claims, “Xunzi makes it clear that a proper ruler is an expert in ritual himself and promotes ritual practice generally, and that this is crucial for transforming the people. Considering these points, one can see how acknowledging situationist concerns might actually drive one to emphasize the importance of robust, virtuous character even more, rather than less.”4 Unlike Tan, Hutton’s main concern is to illuminate li’s noninstrumental contribution to the formation of a good and stable character. However, by presenting this aspect of li as equally proscribed by key early Confucians (Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi in particular) Hutton largely dismisses notable differences between Mencius and Xunzi in their characterizations of li as virtue, and, consequently, the important political dimension in their accounts of virtue. More specifically, Hutton does not sufficiently articulate whether for Mencius and Xunzi moral character refers to the same set of inner traits, or that some inner traits are more important than others under special political circumstances, given their contrasting accounts of human nature.

Sor-​hoon Tan, “From Cannibalism to Empowerment: An Analects-​Inspired Attempt to Balance Community and Liberty,” Philosophy East and West 54:1 (2004), pp. 52–​70, at p. 54. 2 Ibid., pp. 57–​61. For similar accounts of the li, see Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper, 1972); Chenyang Li, “Li as Cultural Grammar: On the Relation between Li and Ren in Confucius’ Analects,” Philosophy East and West 57:3 (2007), pp. 311–​329. 3 The situationist critique of virtue ethics draws attention to psychological findings that suggest the vulnerability of character traits in the face of situational pressures and thus the weakness of virtue ethics as it is pivoted on the notion of virtue as stable character traits. On this characterization of the situationist critique, see Edward Slingerland, “The Situationist Critique and Early Confucian Virtue Ethics,” Ethics 121:2 (2011), pp. 390–​419. 4 Eric L. Hutton, “Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought,” Philosophical Studies 127:1 (2006), pp. 37–​58, at pp. 50–​51. 1

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Why are there markedly different characterizations of li in contemporary studies –​a roles-​enabling semiotic structure on the one hand and a virtue that is constituent of formidable moral character on the other? This seeming puzzle, however, is hardly surprising if the monistic structure of Confucian virtue ethics is taken into account, which I capture in Chapter 5 in terms of virtue monism. Confucian virtue monism draws attention to the structural aspect of Confucian virtue ethics that does not allow the (Republican) separation between private and public and between moral and civic. The distinction between moral and civic (or lack thereof) is especially germane to the present context where we investigate the nature of li as a Confucian virtue. As William Galston aptly notes in reference to the Western political tradition, moral virtue is one thing and civic virtue is another: while moral virtue is a human virtue that is “desirable for its own sake [and] for all individuals,” civic virtue is “valued instrumentally, for its contribution to sustaining a political community,” making the two hardly congruent with one another.5 Even perfectionist republicans such as Paul Weithman, who challenge the civic republicans’ stark severance of civic virtue from moral virtue, do not deny the important difference between them, one mainly concerned with human excellence and flourishing and the other directly undergirding political community. Rather, their core argument is to uphold the comprehensive and monistic grounding of civic virtue on human excellence, emphasizing the foundational importance of moral virtue vis-​à-​vis civic virtue, not so much the wholesale denial of the latter’s significance.6 Confucian virtue monism acknowledges no distinction, let  alone a categorical separation, between moral virtue and civic virtue. On the one hand, Confucian virtue can be viewed plainly as civic virtue as it is related with the performance of given social roles. In this interpretation, used by Tan and other Confucian “role-​ethicists,”7 community is constitutive of a person and thus “personal growth and communal growth are interdependent both qualitatively and quantitatively.”8 There is no moral virtue independent of one’s William A. Galston, “Pluralism and Civic Virtue,” Social Theory and Practice 33:4 (2007), pp. 625–​635, at p. 625. Note that Galston does not use the term “moral virtue” but his notion of “human virtue” is generally congruent with what I mean by moral virtue in contradistinction with civic virtue. 6 Paul Weithman, “Political Republicanism and Perfectionist Republicanism,” Review of Politics 66:2 (2004), pp. 285–​312. For the contrast between Galston and Weithman, see Sungmoon Kim, Public Reason Confucianism:  Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 177–​180. 7 For instance, see Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2011); Henry Rosemont, Jr., “Rights-​Bearing Individuals and Role-​Bearing Persons,” in Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility, ed. Mary I. Bockover (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1991), pp. 71–​101; A. T. Nuyen, “Moral Obligation and Moral Motivation in Confucian Role-​ Based Ethics,” Dao 8:1 (2009), pp. 1–​11. 8 Tan, “From Cannibalism to Empowerment,” p.  54 (my emphasis). For Tan’s more detailed account on this point, see her Confucian Democracy:  A Deweyan Reconstruction (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 17–​62. 5

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social positions or roles in the community as such, as there is no human (hence human excellence or flourishing) separate from one’s social identities. On the other hand, there can be the claim, similar to perfectionist republicanism, that civic virtue, which concerns one’s standing as a member of the political community, is grounded in one’s human excellence, which, by Mencius’s account, is acquired by being responsible for Heaven’s decree innate in one’s nature and therefore, in principle, there can be no civic virtue without being personally good, that is, being ren and yi. Given the monistic structure of Confucian virtue ethics, should we conclude that in the Confucian tradition the philosophical distinction between moral virtue and civic virtue is completely irrelevant? In this chapter, I probe into the question of how we should understand the moral and civic dimensions of Confucian virtue with special focus on li. Instead of revisiting much-​discussed questions of how li is internally related with ren9 or whether practicing li involves moral agency,10 here I focus on the nature of li as virtue by examining the two classic accounts of it suggested by Mencius and Xunzi, still within the shared paradigm of Confucian virtue monism –​li primarily as moral virtue and li primarily as civic virtue. The central purpose of this chapter is to examine how their different accounts of human nature and their equally different understandings of the state of nature (i.e., the pre-​li state) led them to approach the nature of li differently in relation to politics.11 Mencius on Ritual Propriety as Moral Virtue The First Description of the State of Nature Xunzi is often compared with Thomas Hobbes because of his portrayal of the pre-​li state as chaotic, full of self-​interested individuals permanently mired in a

9 Tu Wei-​ming,“The Creative Tension between Jen and Li,” in Humanity and Self-​Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1979), pp. 5–​16; Kwong-​loi Shun, “Jen and Li in the Analects,” Philosophy East and West 43:3 (1993), pp. 457–​479. 10 Sin Yee Chan, “The Confucian Notion of Jing 敬 (Respect),” Philosophy East and West 56:2 (2006), pp. 229–​252; Karyn Lai, “Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility,” Philosophy East and West 56:1 (2006), pp. 69–​83. 11 It is worth noting that, the plethora of studies on Mencius’s moral philosophy notwithstanding, none of them are (centrally) devoted to the investigation of the place of li in Mencius’s philosophical system. For instance, none of the contributors in an important volume on Mencius’s moral philosophy edited by Xiusheng Liu and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002]) pay attention to li. In contrast, there is indeed a great deal of studies on li in Xunzi’s thought but most of them are predominantly interested in its moral and religious implications and rarely in its civic-​political importance. See, for instance, T. C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000); T. C. Kline III and Justin Tiwald (eds.), Ritual and Religion in the Xunzi (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014); Antonio S. Cua, Human Nature, Ritual, and History: Studies in Xunzi and Chinese Philosophy (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005); Kurtis Hagen, The Philosophy of Xunzi:  A Reconstruction (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2007).

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life-​and-​death struggle.12 Indeed, Xunzi begins his political theory based on the account of a bad human nature (xing-​e) by presenting civil government, at the core of which lie kingship and ritual institutions, as a remedy for the ineluctable pathologies arising from the state of nature. Xunzi’s political theory is foundationalist in the sense of being grounded on the underlying assumptions of human nature and the state of nature. The systematic nature of Xunzi’s political theory, as we have seen in the previous chapters, is generally attributable to its clearly foundationalist mode of reasoning. Mencius, however, does not self-​consciously ground his theory of government, which he calls “benevolent government,” on the foundationalist statement of the state of nature. In fact, Mencius provides no theory of the state of nature in relation to either the xing-​shan thesis or his political theory, despite his highly sophisticated philosophical account of human nature. Put differently, Mencius does not attempt to derive an account of the state of nature from his theory of human nature in order to lay the foundationalist ground for his political theory. And the absence of psycho-​political foundationalism in Mencius’s political thought makes it difficult to understand it in a structurally coherent manner, which I believe partly explains the paucity of contemporary studies on Mencius’s political theory relative to those investigating Xunzi’s political philosophy.13 The fact that Mencius’s political thought does not rely on any foundational account of the state of nature does not mean, however, that he is completely silent on this topic. Interestingly, there are two seemingly contrasting accounts of the state of nature in the Mengzi and in both cases the overcoming of the state of nature is entwined with the origin of li both as a set of sociopolitical institutions and as the moral virtue of ritual propriety. Interestingly, though, the absence of a systematic foundational account of the state of nature in Mencius only implies that he has more freedom in depicting the natural state, both normatively and descriptively, without compromising the internal coherence of his moral and political philosophy. By investigating Mencius’s complex account of the state of nature, we can come to a clear understanding of the nature of li as virtue in his philosophical system. First, in his conversation with Yi Zhi, a Mohist, who criticizes Confucianism’s special attention to family affection and its emphasis on mourning rites from the perspective of “inclusive care,”14 Mencius forcefully defends this particular

12 See, for instance, Heiner Roetz, Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 68–​74. 13 For seminal studies on the overall outlook of Xunzi’s political philosophy, see Henry Rosemont Jr., “State and Society in the Xunzi: A Philosophical Commentary,” in Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, eds. T. C. Kline and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), pp. 1–​38; Eirik L. Harris, “Xunzi’s Political Philosophy,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, ed. Eric L. Hutton (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 95–​138. 14 My translation of jian ai as “inclusive care” is indebted to Chris Fraser, The Philosophy of the Mozi: The First Consequentialists (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).

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Confucian ritual practice (and graded love) by asserting that it is a natural expression of the innate moral sentiment of ren, which, as a moral virtue, is “singularly” rooted (ben 本) in filial and fraternal responsibility (xiaoti 孝悌).15 What is interesting is that while justifying the mourning rites (and by extension Confucian ritual practice in general) as an expression of care,16 Mencius unwittingly reveals his view of the state of nature wherein ritual institutions and practices have yet to arise. Presumably there must have been cases in ancient times of people not burying their parents. When the parents died, they were thrown in the gullies. Then one day the sons passed the place and there lay the bodies, eaten by foxes and sucked by flies. A sweat broke out on their brows, and they could not bear to look. The sweating was not put on for others to see. It was an outward expression of their innermost heart. They went home for baskets and spades. If it was truly right for them to bury the remains of their parents, then it must also be right for all dutiful sons and benevolent men to do likewise.17

According to Mencius, the state of nature is not a state of war; it is not a state where, as Hobbes describes it, individuals are madly driven by their boisterous unsocial passions such as envy, jealousy, hatred, and resentment, and thus mutually entangled in a life-​and-​death struggle for self-​preservation. Nor is it a state of scarcity where, as Xunzi describes it, people have a natural desire for profit, and thus they contend with one another without any sense of shame, equity, or justice.18 In Hobbes’s political theory, individuals, who are fearful of violent death, are necessitated to resort to rationality that enables them to enter into a social contract in which they transfer their natural rights to the sovereign body and attain security in return. In Xunzi’s political theory, individuals, whose nature, under the condition of radical equality, disposes them to act in a disorderly manner, are given moral and sociopolitical order by the group of sage-​kings who created ritual institutions as the complex mechanism for sociopolitical coordination and, eventually, moral edification of the people. There is nothing, however, that would drive man to a civil state in Mencius’s account of the state of nature. Man in the Mencian state of nature is neither irrational nor self-​interested. Strikingly, there is no meaningful difference between the Mencius criticizes Mohists for making the root of ren two, namely, filial piety and inclusive care (encompassing the universal care for strangers). According to Qingping Liu, however, Mencius’s reinterpretation of ren in terms of compassion does make him vulnerable to the very criticism that he raises to Mohists. See his “Is Mencius’ Doctrine of ‘Commiseration’ Tenable?” Asian Philosophy 11:2 (2002), pp. 73–​90. 16 In various places in the Lunyu, Confucius (and his disciples) pays extra attention to mourning ritual as one of the most sacred moral obligations owed by a filial son to his parents and thus presents it as the core of Confucian ritual practice. See The Analects 1.9; 17.21; 19.17. 17 Mencius 3A5. 18 On the critical difference in the account of the state of nature between Hobbes and Xunzi, see Sungmoon Kim, “From Desire to Civility:  Is Xunzi a Hobbesian?” Dao 10:2 (2011), pp. 291–​309. 15

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natural state and the civil state, whose distinction is marked only by the sons’ “sweat” upon witnessing the remains of their parents being preyed upon by animals and insects.19 As the demarcation between the natural state and the civil state is socially tenuous, Mencius presumes no fantastic transformation of the self in transitioning from the natural state to the civil state marked by the establishment of the mourning rites, of a kind that is found, for instance, in the Rousseauean democratic social contract.20 In the passage, however, the sons’ “sweat” is not a mere physical reaction. Though there seems to be no dramatic transformation from “a stupid, limited animal into an intelligent being and a man,” sweat reveals that something remarkable has happened within the self. Previously, a man had only an archaic or primordial relationship with his parents and presumably with other family members. Family at this stage must be primarily a unit of labor (e.g., for hunting, collecting, and, possibly, for a rudimentary form of agriculture) as well as the place of procreation, and thus it probably does not have any ethical significance to its members. It may have been formed naturally, possessing a socioeconomic significance to the people, but not a legal or political one. The archaic man must have been in awe of the inscrutable nature, and may have even developed a primordial religious sensibility (e.g., fear) toward the unknown(able) deity behind it, which the people of Shang later called Shangdi 上帝 (Lord-​on-​High). But the sacred is still too far from the man. Nothing yet has happened within himself, something that would signal the dawn of what Karl Jaspers calls the axial age.21 19 I admit that Mencius’s example of the man breaking a sweat is situated in the context of his response to the Mohist challenge, attempting to show that people’s affection for those who stand in special relationship to them are indeed stronger. That is, Mencius does not present this story in terms of political theory, nor in the context of natural versus civil. In this respect, the story alone may not be able to substantiate my argument here that man in the Mencian state of nature is neither irrational nor self-​interested and undergoes no fantastic self-​transformation. However, this objection does not pose a formidable challenge for my overall claim because, as will be clearer shortly, my goal here is only to demonstrate that Mencius’s view of the pre-​li state is consistent with his view of human nature and thus it is qualitatively different from both Hobbesian and Xunzian accounts of human nature. 20 Rousseau says:  “The transition from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting in his behavior justice for instinct, and by imbuing his actions with a moral quality they previously lacked … his faculties are used and developed; his ideas are expanded; his feelings are ennobled; his entire soul is raised … and [therefore he is] transformed from a stupid, limited animal into an intelligent being and a man.” See Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, pp. 166–​167 in The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses, ed. Susan Dunn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). 21 Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (London:  Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953). For a similar attention to Mencius 3A5, see Sangjun Kim, Maenjaŭi ttam sŏngwangŭi p’i: Chungch’ŭnggŭndaewa tongasia yugyomunmyŏng [Sweat of Mencius, Blood of the Sacred Kings: Confucian Civilization and Universal Human Values] (Seoul: Akanet, 2011), pp. 96–​103, though Kim relates Mencius’s sweat metaphor to the emergence of religious sensibility in the Confucian tradition and further to the genealogical evolution of human species.

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The sons’ “sweat” reveals the world-​historic moment of self-​awareness, an earth-​shattering realization that man is not merely an animal under the sway of a ruthless nature or a mere unit of (re)production.22 The sweat reveals ex post facto that man possesses and has always possessed an inner world (xin 心) that is internally connected with Heaven, the cosmic bastion of morals. As Mencius puts it, “For a man to give full realization to his heart (xin) is for him to understand his own nature, and a man who knows his own nature will know Heaven. By retaining his heart and nurturing his nature he is serving Heaven.”23 Therefore, man is by nature oriented toward morality, if not being fully moral from the beginning. Mencius expresses this natural predisposition to morality that is pre-​reflective in terms of “the heart of not being able to bear” (bu ren ren zhi xin 不忍人之心). After identifying the essential characteristic of human goodness with the heart of compassion, he concludes: As far as what is genuinely in him is concerned, a man is capable of becoming good. That is what I  mean by good … The heart of compassion is possessed by all men alike; likewise the heart of shame, the heart of respectfulness, and the heart of right and wrong. The heart of compassion pertains to benevolence, the heart of shame to righteousness, the heart of respectfulness to ritual propriety, and the heart of right and wrong to wisdom. Benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom are not welded on to me from the outside; they are in me originally. Only this has never dawned on me. That is why it is said, “Seek and you will find it; let go and you will lose it.”24

The sons’ sweat represents his Heaven-​given heart of respectfulness (cirang 辭讓) and this heart, according to Mencius, pertains to ritual propriety. Upon breaking a sweat, which is an instant (or even instinctive) response of the body (shen 身) to Heaven-​endowed nature,25 the archaic, primordial human relationships (primarily and most importantly, family relationships) are given a fresh meaning in which they become ethical relationships. Mencius’s point,

22 This is not to say that self-​awareness here is equivalent to the sudden self-​enlightenment emphasized in Zen Buddhism and Wang Yang-​ming’s moral philosophy. In a fuller sense, Mencian moral self-​cultivation requires a sustained period of cultivating the “sprouts” of moral virtue, subsequently accompanied by a training in moral reflection (si) (see Mencius 6A15 for Mencius’s emphasis of moral reflection). My point here is simply that in Mencius moral reflection or concentration begins with certain “pre-​reflective moral tendencies.” For the importance of pre-​ reflective moral tendencies in Mencius’s program of moral self-​cultivation, which distinguishes him form other moral self-​cultivationists including Aristotle, see Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Confucian Self Cultivation and Mengzi’s Notion of Extension,” in Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi, eds. Xiusheng Liu and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002), pp. 221–​241, at p. 234. 23 Mencius 7A1. 24 Mencius 6A6 (translation modified). 25 Here no Cartesian separation between mind and body is posited. For a helpful essay on the early Confucian conception of body and its relation to li, see Jane M. Geaney, “Guarding Moral Boundaries: Shame in Early Confucianism,” Philosophy East and West 54:2 (2004), pp. 113–​142.

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though implicit, is that Confucian ritual practices such as mourning rites are possible only after man’s self-​awakening in the voice of innate morality or Heaven’s decree.26 Put differently, it is not the complex model of the ritual institutions consisting of (codified) rites and ceremonies (also called li 禮, narrowly construed), music (yue 樂), penal codes (xing 刑), and royal ordinances (zheng 政) that transform a primordial, archaic man into a moral person. On the contrary, according to Mencius, it is by possessing the heart of respectfulness (primarily toward parents) that a man can be morally awakened in the virtue of ritual propriety, and by practicing ritual property steadily and taking delight in its good form can he become morally good or virtuous.27 From the investigation of Mencius’s passing allusion to the state of nature before the origin of (mourning) ritual in his conversation with Yi Zhi, we can glean two important points regarding the nature of li in his moral and political thought. First, it is not so much the sociopolitical institutions of li, allegedly created by the ancient sage-​kings, but the innate sense of ritual propriety and its arduous social practice that really matter in enabling man to become a true human being. Otherwise stated, it is through the practice of ritual propriety, a moral virtue of human excellence, that the state of nature is transformed into the civil state. For Mencius, ritual institutions and practices are not external to one’s inner world; rather, they are the latter’s external expressions and coalesced social forms. Recall that in Mencius’s story the protagonists do not stop with moral self-​ awareness upon realizing the utter inappropriateness (and inhumaneness) of leaving the remains of their parents unburied, which has created a deep tension in their inner heart of respectfulness, the sprout of li, which is possessed by all humans. All the more remarkable is the fact that the protagonists, the sons, put their moral awareness into a specific moral action by burying their parents in a manner corresponding with their inner heart, which signals the beginning of the mourning rites, and, more significantly, albeit presumably, the beginning of ritual practice more generally given the primordial nature of the child–​parent relationship, the first human relationship whose proper conduct requires ethical guidance and regulation. Ritual institutions only follow once people have been awakened in the sense of ritual propriety. As social institutions they are given concrete forms and are slowly developed by sages who possess the profound understanding of how to design them in ways to resonate properly with the innate sense of ritual propriety possessed by all humans. Of course, whether or not one practices li well by earnestly developing one’s innate moral potential is a different matter. 27 On the importance of long and arduous practice to the development of moral character in early Confucianism, see Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Character Consequentialism: An Early Confucian Contribution to Contemporary Ethical Theory,” Journal of Religious Ethics 19:1 (1991), pp. 55–​70. Also see Eric L. Hutton, “Moral Connoisseurship in Mengzi,” in Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi, eds. Xiusheng Liu and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002), pp. 163–​186 for the centrality of a developed ethical taste in Mencius’s moral philosophy. 26

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Second, and relatedly, for Mencius ritual propriety is primarily a moral virtue, the self-​awareness and subsequent practice of which helps reinvent the archaic, primordial man into an authentic human being. Again, it is important to recall that the archaic man in Mencius’s story is far from uncivil. Unsociability, which was Hobbes’s lifelong political problem in the face of a seemingly perpetual English civil war,28 was never the Mencian problem, even if Mencius found himself in a much more violent situation during the late Warring States period. As we have seen, Mencius’s natural man is only uncultivated ethically because he is not yet morally awakened and has yet to cultivate the sprouts of virtue. What is critically lacking in the Mencian state of nature and thus what Mencius is concerned about most is not so much civility or civic virtue that undergirds political order by overcoming social chaos (again, Mencius’s portrayal of the state of nature is far from chaotic as there is no life-​ and-​death struggle among the people), but character traits that make a person a good or a flourishing human being.29 This is not to say that Mencius dismisses the value of civic virtue wholesale (as I understand it here following civic republicans), which is a ludicrous claim given his profound concern with good government and order.30 Quite the contrary, what my discussion thus far shows, contra El Amine’s claim denying the foundational value of virtue in Confucian political theory, is that for Mencius civic virtue (and by implication politics) does not stand independently of the moral virtue of ritual propriety. For the character traits that enable one to become a good member of moral communities (including the political community), which constitute one’s social self, are extended from the traits that make one a good man qua human being. In Mencius, therefore, there is no separation between moral virtue and civic virtue. Moral virtue and civic virtue are weaved as one thread of virtue ethics, which generates a virtue-​based form of politics, and this seamless continuum between moral virtue and civic virtue 28 Richard Boyd, Uncivil Society: The Perils of Pluralism and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), chap. 1. 29 In Western social and political theory, civility, understood as a distinctively modern and liberal-​ individualistic set of character traits, which helps bring strangers into a shared public space (i.e., civil society) as citizens, is often distinguished from the traditional republican vision of civic virtue, which is more organic and community oriented. In this chapter, I  dismiss subtle characteristics that conceptually distinguish civility from civic virtue and employ the two interchangeably by focusing on their shared civic implications. For a conceptual distinction between civility and civic virtue in the Western philosophical tradition, see Adam B. Seligman, “Public and Private in Political Thought: Rousseau, Smith, and Some Contemporaries,” in The Problem of Trust (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 103–​123. 30 Though El Amine’s claim that in early Confucian political theory “political order, not moral edification, is the end [and] that political order is an end in itself, not a means toward virtue” is certainly overstated, I agree that for both Confucius and, especially, Xunzi “the development of civic-​like qualities” in the people was an important concern. See Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 15.

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(and between virtue ethics and virtue politics) affirms the core stipulations of Confucian virtue monism, rendering Mencius a strong virtue monist. The Second Description of the State of Nature Elsewhere in the Mengzi, however, we encounter a seemingly very different account of the state of nature, a far more institutionalist explanation of the emergence of the civil state. In the time of Yao, the Empire (tianxia) was not yet settled. The flood still raged unchecked, inundating the Empire … birds and beasts encroached upon men, and their trail criss-​crossed even the Central Kingdom. The lot fell on Yao to worry about this situation. He raised Shun to a position of authority to deal with it … Hou Ji taught the people how to cultivate land and the five kinds of grain. When these ripened, the people multiplied. This is the way of the common people: once they have a full belly and warm clothes on their back they degenerate to the level of animals if they are allowed to lead idle lives, without education and discipline. This gave the sage-​king further cause for concern, and so he appointed Xie as the Minister of Education whose duty was to teach the people human relationships (jiao yi renlun 敎以人倫): love between father and son, duty between ruler and subject, distinction between husband and wife, precedence of the old over the young, and faith between friends … The sage worried to this extent about the affairs of the people.31

In this passage, too, Mencius does not offer a detailed account of how individuals in the natural state interacted with one another. In this regard, Mencius is notably different from Xunzi and other philosophers of his time, including Han Fei, Shang Yang, and Mozi, who each built their political theories on their accounts of the state of nature. Mencius says that “once they have a full belly and warm clothes on their back, the people degenerate to the level of animals, without education and discipline” without clarifying what it means to live at “the level of animals” –​irrationality, self-​interestedness, both, or something else? Does such a life naturally entail a Xunzian chaos and poverty? What is certain, though, is that the opposite, namely, “[life at] the level of human beings,” implies a state in which people are educated and disciplined in the five cardinal relationships of humanity, which should be regulated by ritual propriety. Once again, what we see here is typical Mencius as a virtue monist who blurs both the analytical and practical distinctions between moral and civic virtue: the virtues that regulate the five relationships are human/​moral virtues that rescue the people from the level of animals and make them authentic human beings, and simultaneously social/​ civic virtues that animate, sustain, and invigorate the ritual institutions and practices that undergird social relationships and ultimately political order. What is notable in the passage above is the introduction of the sage-​king (and his sagacious ministers) as the discoverer and educator of the virtues, 31 Mencius 3A4.

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especially ritual propriety, implied in the proper conduct of the cardinal human relationships. This finding, however, gives a twist to our investigation of the nature of ritual propriety as virtue in Mencius’s thought thus far. From Mencius 3A5, we have learned that for Mencius ritual propriety is primarily a human/​ moral virtue, the potential of which is inherent in human nature and whose awareness and even the practice of it does not necessarily depend on political leaders and existing ritual institutions. The subsequent argument was that for Mencius, a spontaneous awakening in the heart by Heaven’s decree motivates the people to create rituals in ways that can correspond with their sense of ritual propriety and further enables them to practice rituals in order to express the virtue of ritual propriety in sustained and socially recognizable manners, ultimately resulting in their long-​ term institutionalization. Now, Mencius’s seemingly “new” position revealed in Mencius 3A4 seems to point to a different direction, implying that Confucian virtues are the institutional products of the sagely government, which renders them primarily civic virtues, virtues that not only make the people sociable (i.e., “educated and disciplined”) but are instrumental to sustaining the sociopolitical institutions. Here Mencius does not articulate whether there is an inherent resonance between the sociopolitical institutions created by the sage-​king(s) and human nature, nor does he claim that the purpose of state education and discipline is to develop all commoners to become a sage, which is an impossible project. In any event, Mencius’s eminent concern here seems to be the problem of (moral) governance. This attention to the sociopolitical institutional dimension of Confucian politics in Mencius brings us to the point that he is not merely a moral philosopher of human nature and moral self-​cultivation but a political theorist of Confucian constitutionalism, as we have learned from the preceding chapters. That being said, this institutional interpretation of the transition from the state of nature to a civil state in Mencius’s political thought is fully consistent with his view of human nature. Even when he draws attention to the institutional dimension of Confucian politics, his focus is not so much on political order as such, or the virtues (i.e., civic virtues) that are directly conducive to it, but rather on the way in which ritual institutions can help foster the virtue of ritual property and other Confucian moral virtues, whose capacities are innate in human nature, in the people as well as in the ruler –​hence virtue constitutionalism. In other words, despite his presentation of core Confucian ethical relationships as the institutional products of the sagely government, ritual propriety (and other Confucian moral virtues) is not presented as the character trait that is politically necessary in overcoming the pathological situations arising from the state of nature. As such, for Mencius, conforming to the ritual institutions created by the former sage-​kings is not so much motivated by political problems internal to the state of nature, but is rather propelled internally as a social expression of the heart of respectfulness. In this perspective, all that the sage-​kings had done was to discover, over a long period of time, the forms of ritual institutions that

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best correspond with the heart of respectfulness. Not surprisingly, in Mencius’s moral narrative, sage-​kings resemble moral teachers or moral exemplars (as is best shown in his depiction of Shun) more so than political leaders, who successfully gather disorderly people, create a political community, and coordinate their socioeconomic transactions by allotting proper social roles, as Xunzi’s quite formalistic definition of “the ruler” (jun) describes.32 In short, in Mencius’s philosophical system, politics is subsumed by ethics and civic virtue by moral virtue. At the core of Mencius’s political thought is the moral virtue of ritual propriety that transforms an animal-​like man into an authentic human being, not so much the sociopolitical institutions of li and civic virtues associated with them that function as a civil bulwark against political disorder and social unrest. In the Mencian moral-​political system, one becomes good in the holistic moral sense by developing moral virtues including ritual propriety, virtues of human excellence and flourishing. Here it is not primarily civic and prudential motivations that bring one to conform to the ritual institutions. Xunzi on Ritual Propriety as Civic Virtue The Rise of Ritual Institutions In the previous section, we noted that Mencius does not present the state of nature as an uncivil state or a state of unending social conflict. Nor does he understand man’s natural condition in terms of unsociability, whatever its cause may be, irrationality or unchecked self-​interest. According to Mencius, the defining characteristic of man’s natural condition is the lack of moral self-​ awareness and the subsequent development of the self. In contrast, Xunzi understands the state of nature as an absence of civility. In Xunzi’s view, the state of nature must be overcome, not out of necessity, as Mencius narrates, due to the threat of animals or for fear of natural disasters, but because of the social perils that naturally arise, namely, perennial social contentions and the resulting political disorder and poverty. According to Xunzi, li as ritual order or as a set of ritual institutions, not only as a sense of ritual propriety, arose through conscious effort by the ancient sage-​kings in the course of coping with the perilous human condition of unsociability. From what did ritual arise? I say: Humans are born having desires. When they have desires but do not get the objects of their desire, then they cannot but seek some means of satisfaction. If there is no measure or limit to their seeking, then they cannot help but struggle with each other. If they struggle with each other then there will be chaos, and if there is chaos then they will be impoverished. The former kings hated such chaos, and so they established rituals and yi in order to divide things among people, to nurture their desires, and to satisfy their seeking. They caused desires never to exhaust material goods, and material goods

32 Xunzi 9.16a; 12.6. Also see Harris, “Xunzi’s Political Philosophy,” p. 102.

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never to be depleted by desires, so that the two support each other and prosper. This is how ritual arose.33

While the Mencian civil state, which is closer to a civilized or morally cultivated state than a politically constituted community, is marked by “sweat” and the conscious effort to become a true human being by developing one’s nascent moral virtues, including ritual propriety, the Xunzian civil state is overtly political.34 This point is worth further investigation. As we have seen, at the heart of the transformation from the natural state to the civil state in Mencius’s thought is man’s ethico-​religious self-​transformation. Xunzi, too, pays attention to self-​transformation that occurs during this transition when he stipulates that li “nurtures” the desires of men and, presumably, men then develop a disposition to observe the li. More specifically, according to Xunzi, In ancient times, the sage kings saw that because people’s nature is bad, they were deviant, dangerous, and not correct, unruly, chaotic, and not well ordered. Therefore, for their sake they set up ritual and yi, and established proper models and measures. They did this in order to straighten out and beautify people’s inborn dispositions and nature and thereby correct them, and in order to train and transform people’s inborn dispositions and nature that thereby guide them, so that for the first time they all came to order and conformed to the Way.35

Unlike Mencius, who understands li primarily as a moral virtue (whether potential or developed) and rarely pays attention to its sociopolitical and institutional aspect as a means of authoritative social coordination, Xunzi is evidently fascinated by the remarkable power of the ritual institutions, invented by the ancient sage-​kings, in bringing order to a chaotic state of nature.36 Whereas for Mencius ritual institutions are the social expression or extension of ritual propriety as moral virtue that is internally originated (even though its proper exercise requires education and social guidance), for Xunzi it is the ritual institutions that originate and require the virtue of ritual propriety in Xunzi 19.1a. 34 Although, “the political” in Xunzi’s political thought is still tied with “the ethical.” For a more detailed argument on this point, see Chapter 5 of this book. 35 Xunzi 23.1b. 36 Elsewhere, Xunzi further elaborates how properly nurturing desires in accordance with the heart’s approval can bring about good order: “All those who say that good order must await the elimination of desires are people who lack the means to guide desire and cannot handle the mere having desires. All those who say good order must await the lessening of desires are people who lack the means to restrain desire and cannot handle abundance of desires … If what the heart approves of conforms to the proper patterns, then even if the desires are many, what harm would they be to good order? … If what the heart approves of misses the proper patterns (li** 理), then even if the desires are few, how would it stop short of chaos? Thus, order and disorder reside in what the heart approves of, they are not present in the desires from one’s dispositions” (Xunzi 22:5a). For Xunzi, what the people’s heart approves of and that which conforms to “proper patterns” comes from externally by the sage-​kings, the inventors of ritual institutions, and, accordingly, good order, too, is externally originated. 33

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the people who are otherwise boorish (lu) and lack any sense of goodness. Externally motivated, socially required, and aimed at good political order, ritual propriety in the Xunzian civil state is primarily civic in nature. What is worth special attention here are the key qualities that Xunzi attributes to ritual propriety as civic virtue (or, more accurately, as will be shown shortly, as a constellation of civic virtues). In the passage above, ritual propriety is presented as a set of character traits that are directly opposed to being “deviant, dangerous, and not correct, unruly, chaotic, and not well ordered.” And based on the saliently antisocial characteristics of these pre-​li traits, Xunzi claims that human nature is bad. In his famous critique of Mencius, Xunzi says, Mencius says: people’s nature is good. I say: this is not so. In every case, both in ancient times and in the present, what everyone under Heaven calls good is being correct, ordered, peaceful, and controlled. What they call bad is being deviant, dangerous, unruly, and chaotic. This is the division between good and bad. Now does he really think that people’s nature is originally correct, ordered, peaceful, and controlled? Then what use would there be for sage kings? What use for ritual and yi? Even though there might exist sage kings and ritual and yi, whatever could these add to its correctness, order, peacefulness, and self-​control?37

Note that nowhere in the Mengzi does Mencius define goodness of human nature in terms such as “correct, ordered, peaceful, and controlled” and it is unclear what Mencius would make of these virtues in relation to his idea of moral self-​cultivation or in the context of his political thought. Yet, interestingly, for Xunzi, it is these sorts of virtues  –​civic virtues, or what Jonathan Schofer calls “preservative virtues” –​that are (to be) first formed with the rise of ritual institutions because it is by virtue of them that men in the natural condition are transformed into citizens of the Confucian polity.38 Thus, they may be called Xunzi’s first virtues. This, however, is not to say that preservative virtues are the most important for Xunzi. Certainly, correctness, order, peacefulness, and self-​control are short of being full moral virtues of the sort valorized by Mencius such as ren and yi, as they do not directly concern human excellence and moral perfection. For Mencius, none of these virtues would make one a sage, however arduously Xunzi 23.3a. 38 In reference to “strength of will,” “endurance,” and “guardedness,” Schofer argues that in Xunzi “preservative virtues [are] needed by people who are in the process of shaping their desires and emotions” (Jonathan W. Schofer, “Virtues in Xunzi’s Thought,” in Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, eds. T. C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000], pp. 69–​88, at p. 91). Schofer also adds that “one cannot create a full description of virtues in Xunzi’s ethical outlook by examining only, or even primarily, Xunzi’s discussion of ren, yi, and li. Passages in which Xunzi describes virtuous qualities using unconventional terms of art are crucial for understanding the subtleties of his thought; in fact, they may be more important than his discussions of ren, yi, and li” (p. 75). I find this statement quite revealing. One important difference between me and Schofer is that I identify several key “preservative virtues” as the core attributes of li rather than ethical qualities standing independent of or parallel to it. 37

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practiced. Xunzi, too, is clearly aware of the critical limitations of such virtues, each of which constitutes the totality of ritual propriety as civic virtue, in cultivating one toward moral perfection, the ideal that he shares with Mencius. Even for Xunzi, ritual propriety in its fullest sense ought to be one of moral virtues, concerned with human excellence and moral flourishing, which should be in perfect harmony with other key moral virtues, as he states, “The gentleman dwells in ren by means of yi, and only then is it ren. He carries out yi by means of ritual, and only then is it yi. In implementing ritual, he returns to the roots and completes the branches, and only then is it ritual. When all three are thoroughly mastered, only then is it the Way.”39 Correctness, order, peacefulness, and self-​control (and other related civic virtues) are Xunzi’s first virtues in the sense that they are most urgently needed in transforming the natural state into a civil state as well as in undergirding civil relationships among the people and securing political order. They make people live well, orderly, and peacefully with each other in the political community. Though their relation to moral self-​cultivation to become a sage is neither direct nor obvious, they are indispensable to social order and sustenance of the political community. As a sum of preservative virtues, therefore, for Xunzi, ritual propriety works as a civil bulwark against unsociability and chaos that defines the human condition in its natural state. Xunzi’s following statement offers a vivid illustration of the civic character of ritual propriety required in order to comply with the ritual institutions that are externally imposed against their original nature. Now people’s nature is such that they are born with a fondness for profit in them. If they follow along with this, then struggle and contention will arise, and yielding and deference will perish therein. They are born with feelings of hate and dislike in them. If they follow along with these, then cruelty and villainy will arise, and loyalty and trustworthiness will perish therein. They are born with desires of the eyes and ears, a fondness for beautiful sights and sounds. If they follow along with these, then lasciviousness and chaos will arise, and ritual and yi, proper form and order, will perish therein. Thus, if people follow along with their inborn dispositions and obey their nature, they are sure to come to struggle and contention, turn to disrupting social divisions and order, and end up becoming violent. So, it is necessary to await the transforming influence of teachers and models and the guidance of ritual and yi, and only then will they come to yielding (ci 辭) and deference (rang 讓), turn to proper form and order, and end up becoming controlled.40

According to Xunzi, a man is able to observe the virtues of yielding and deference (ci rang), or simply “respectfulness,” as Lau defines it, which, as we have noted, Mencius understands as the sprout of ritual propriety, only through Xunzi 27.21. For a helpful interpretation of this passage, see Eric L. Hutton, “Ethics in the Xunzi,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 67–​93, at pp. 74–​77. 40 Xunzi 23.1a. 39

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the instructions of a teacher (including and most importantly, a “teacher-​king” [junshi 君師], who is, in principle, the sage-​king) and by means of the models and ritual institutions created by the sage-​kings. Ritual institutions play two important functions. First, as we noted in Chapter 1, ritual institutions divide (fen) the people and make distinctions (bie) among them in order to satisfy the desires of all as well as in an orderly manner, which for Xunzi is the best way to coordinate complex socioeconomic transactions among the people, thereby attaining social harmony.41 Social harmony at this stage, however, is primarily concerned with sociopolitical control than with the overcoming of dangerous unsociability. One can be sociopolitically governable by being controlled when his or her natural desires are satisfied under hierarchical coordination mechanisms, but governability is still short of being equivalent to civility. As we have seen, for Mencius, civic virtue is extended socially from moral virtue, and, from a political standpoint, what makes this extension smooth is the tenuous distinction between the natural state and the civil state, which allows no dramatic change in human nature in the transformation of the former into the latter. By understanding civic virtue as extended or developed from moral virtue without qualitative change, Mencius thus reveals not only his faith in virtue monism, but, more crucially from a political standpoint, civic optimism:  moral self-​ cultivation can ultimately and in principle lead everyone to sagehood and being a good son or brother makes one holistically (or monistically) good in both moral and civic senses,42 requiring no additional vigilance toward incivility. For Mencius, being a good son or brother is directly tantamount to being a good citizen.43 Likewise, Mencius acknowledges no political virtue for the ruler independent of moral virtue; all the ruler has

41 Xunzi says, “If divisions of goods are all even, then they cannot be made ample enough. If people’s authority is all equal, then they cannot be unified. If all the masses are equal in status, then they cannot be put to use. However, just as there is Heaven and Earth, there is a difference between above and below … As for the fact that two nobles cannot serve each other, and two base men cannot employ each other, this is the Heavenly order of things. If people’s authority and position are equal and their desires and dislikes the same, then goods cannot be made sufficient for them, and they will certainly struggle. If they struggle then there will certainly be chaos, and if there is chaos then they will be impoverished. The former kings hated this chaos, and so they established ritual and yi in order to divide up mankind, so as to cause raking of poor and rich and noble and base, so that they might take charge of them. This is the basis for nourishing all under Heaven” (Xunzi 9.3). Also see Xunzi 10.1; 10.4; 10.7; 12.7; 19.1c. 42 Explaining the relationship of ren, yi, li, and zhi, the four cardinal Confucian moral virtues, Mencius says, “The content of ren is the serving of one’s parents; the content of yi is obedience to one’s elder brothers; the content of zhi is to understand these two and to hold fast to them; the content of li is the regulation and adornment of them” (Mencius 4A27). 43 Most notably, Mencius says, “The Way lies at hand yet it is sought afar off; the thing lies in the easy yet it is sought in the difficult. If only everyone loved his parents and treated his elders with deference, the Empire would be at peace” (Mencius 4A11).

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to do is to extend his care for his own family members to the people and treat them as if they were his own children.44 The Principle of Civility Xunzi is not, however, a civic optimist, even though he generally subscribes to virtue monism. In his view, even when people are subject to ritual institutions (primarily for prudential reasons, as we have discussed in Chapter  1), and are thereby being controlled, they are no less susceptible to unsociability than they were in the pre-​li state. For Xunzi, the trouble remains that while the civil state is sure to help the people overcome impoverishment, if undergirded by ritual and yi, which prescribe proper allotments and distinctions, it is never perfectly insulated from incivility, a subject Mencius hardly addresses in his account(s) of the origin of the civil state. The second and more profound role that the ritual institutions play, therefore, lies in overcoming unsociability that characterizes much of the social relationships in the civil state. Xunzi says, Uncontrolled rage will cause you to perish, even though you are full of life. Jealousy will cause you to be maimed, even though you have keen intelligence. Slandering others will cause you to face impasses, even though you are broadly learned. An uncontrolled mouth will cause you to be stained all the more, even though you try to purify yourself. Indiscriminate associations will cause you to starve all the more, even though you try to fatten yourself. Being combative will cause you to be unpersuasive, even though you argue well. An attitude of superiority will cause you not to be recognized, even though you take an upright stance. Oppressiveness will cause you not to be honored, even though you are principled. Greediness will cause you not to be feared, even though you are courageous. Inflexibility will cause you not to be respected, even though you are trustworthy.45

Vices such as “uncontrolled rage,” “jealousy,” “slandering,” “an uncontrolled mouth,” “indiscriminate associations,” “being combative,” “an attitude of superiority,” “oppressiveness,” “greediness,” and “inflexibility” are not traits or tendencies that men in the state of nature alone are susceptible to; they can be possessed by anyone, even a more or less good person who is “broadly learned,” “principled,” “upright,” “courageous,” or “trustworthy.” Put differently, they are vices that anyone can perpetrate when situated in complex social relationships in a civil(ized) society. What is interesting in the above statement is that unlike Mencius, who does not concern himself with the ways in which vice beats virtue due to his unflinching faith in the happy continuum between 44 Consider the following statement by Mencius: “Treat the aged of your own family in a manner befitting their venerable age and extend this treatment to the aged of other families; treat your own young in a manner befitting their tender age and extend this to the young of other families, and you can roll the Empire on your palm” (Mencius 1A7). In Chapter 5, I discuss Xunzi’s view of political virtue from the perspective of what I call tempered virtue monism and contrast it with Mencius’s monistic moral vision of political virtue. 45 Xunzi 4.2.

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moral virtue and civic virtue, Xunzi draws attention to the possible disjuncture between the two by insightfully capturing two dimensions of sociability, a distinction which remains largely obscure in Mencius –​social sociability (i.e., civility) and unsocial sociability (i.e., incivility). To be sure, Xunzi does not go as far as distinguishing between a good man and a good citizen, as Aristotle does.46 Nor does he claim that there is an inherent tension between human/​moral virtue and political/​civic virtue. However, unlike Mencius, Xunzi realizes that civility, which is a virtue that is context-​dependent, is not always or necessarily an extension of being “good” as a person. Insomuch as the Kingly Way consists in not only negating the state of nature, which can be attained by top-​down social control alone, but, more importantly, in making a society genuinely civil, something more is necessary than “good character” as Mencius understands it, which can be directly conducive to sociability. Xunzi’s insight is that even the civil state is vulnerable to conflict, and “civil conflict” arises not only from desire for material goods or other self-​interested desires. Whereas all men are bad or petty (xiaoren 小人) in the state of nature, some persist in incivility in the civil state while some behave more or less civically without (or only rarely) breaking ritual norms and practices, thus without invoking enmity or resentment from others.47 As Xunzi sees it, the most salient mode of civil conflict is one around the subjective and highly contentious judgment on right and wrong, or, more specifically, who is right (the gentleman) and who is wrong (the petty man).48 Every person who engages in brawling is sure to think himself right and the other wrong. If he thinks himself resolutely right and the other person resolutely wrong, then this is to consider himself a gentleman and the other a petty man, and to use the enmity between gentleman and petty man to harm and kill others. He forgets his own person below, forgets his family in the middle, and forgets his lord above. Is this not a grave fault!49

It should be noted that like Mencius, Xunzi, too, holds a moral distinction between the gentleman and the petty man, that the gentleman is a morally cultivated person while the petty man is not.50 Unlike Mencius, however, Xunzi does not always define the gentleman as an immaculate moral paragon who “lives in the spacious dwelling [of ren], occupies the proper position 46 Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle, ed. and trans. by Ernest Barker (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 1276b34. 47 Confucius points to resentment (yuan 怨) as the single greatest vice that could disrupt ritually ordered and harmonious social relationships (The Analects 5.23; 5.25). Also see Chapter 1 (n12). 48 Notice that Xunzi (and all classical Confucians, for that matter) never pays attention to class conflict, though it is, arguably, the most serious “civil conflict” that has preoccupied Western political theory since Aristotle. 49 Xunzi 4.3. 50 Xunzi 2.12.

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[according to li], and goes along the highway [of yi] of the Empire.”51 Without necessarily denying that the highest ideal of the gentleman lies in moral self-​ cultivation toward Confucian sagehood,52 Xunzi simultaneously understands the gentleman pronouncedly in civic terms, as one who does not persist in self-​ righteousness and avoids, among other things, incurring resentment in others, that is, as one who attempts to keep the civil state from deteriorating into a state of disorder.53 Thus, Xunzi says, “The gentleman is tolerant yet not lax, principled yet not oppressive. He debates but is not quarrelsome, investigates keenly but does not aim to astound. He stands along without being superior, and is strong without being violent. He is flexible and yielding yet not unscrupulous. He is respectful and cautious yet congenial … When he points out another’s faults with straight talk and direct accusation, it is not slander or calumny.”54 The petty man behaves in the exact opposite way, in ways that provoke others: “If great-​hearted, then [the petty man] is arrogant and violent. If small-​hearted, then he is perverse and dissolute. If he is smart, then he is a greedy thief and works by deception. If he is unlearned, then as a poisonous villain he creates chaos. If he is heeded, then he is avaricious and arrogant. If he is disregarded, then he is resentful and dangerous. If he is happy, then he is flippant and capricious.”55 Notice that in contrasting the gentleman and the petty man Xunzi’s concern is not merely the monistic moral difference between the two, that one is good and the other is bad. As a political theorist of the state of nature, his more profound concern seems to be to emphasize that the line dividing the gentleman and the petty man in the post-​li state is primarily civic, whether one conducts oneself in a manner that upholds or disrupts ordered social relationships. In the civil state, what can be called “reverse self-​transformation” happens when one, moral training by ritual and yi notwithstanding, becomes the petty man. This does not happen simply because one is totally bad as he once was in the pre-​li state but because he conducts himself in an uncivil manner toward others. In Xunzi’s view, even though poverty is overcome under the ritual institutions and desire for material interest per se is no longer the main cause of social conflict in the civil state, conflict around moral opinions will continue to invoke boisterous passions in the people, driving them to perpetual brawl and mutual distrust. One of the most common ways in which one becomes uncivil is to self-​ righteously persist in what one deems to be right, thus departing from or going 51 Mencius 3B2. 52 Xunzi 2.10. 53 Apparently, Xunzi has two different kinds of gentlemen in mind when he says, “If the gentleman is great-​hearted then he reveres Heaven and follows the Way. If he is small-​minded then he cautiously adheres to yi and regulates himself” (Xunzi 3.6). For the sake of conceptual distinction, we may call the gentleman with a great heart a moral gentleman and the gentleman with a small heart a civic gentleman. 54 Xunzi  3.4–​5. 55 Xunzi 3.6.

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against what is objectively good, which is embodied in the Way, the single right path toward moral truth. The gentleman is one who speaks the truth or in accordance with the Way.56 Not surprisingly, as a Confucian virtue monist singularly committed to the Way, Xunzi is persuaded that the best and surest way to end the state of incivility caused by moral conflict between the gentlemen and the petty men is to uphold the former, who (are believed to) have the right understanding of what the Way, the good, or the truth consists of.57 It may be subject to a contemporary debate whether it is desirable to understand moral conflict in terms of conflict between the gentleman and the petty man or whether the monistic resolution of moral conflict by resorting to the one right Way is morally appealing.58 However, what is more important in the present context is that in order to resolve moral conflict, the Xunzian civic gentleman does not simply impose on others what he deems good, even if it accords with the Way, because doing so would likely exacerbate the ongoing moral (and, by extension, social) conflict among the people, virtually all of whom claim that they have grasped the Way and see themselves as gentlemen. The method that resolves moral conflict most effectively according to Xunzi is moral persuasion, and it is the method that is worth our special attention as it stipulates what can be called “the Confucian principle of civility”: The method of persuasive speaking: practice it with respect and dignity, live it with honesty and integrity, uphold it with firmness and strength, explain it with divisions and differentiations, illustrate it with analogies and examples, and present it with joyfulness and sweetness … If you do so, then rarely will your persuasions fail to be accepted, and

56 Xunzi 5.9. In this regard, Xunzi is differentiated from Confucius, who is generally abhorrent of the use of language in moral persuasion and prefers moral persuasion by example. See The Analects 2.20; 12.17; 12.19; 13.1; 13.4; 13.6; 13.13; 14.41; 19.21. Also see J. G. A. Pocock, “Ritual, Language, Power:  An Essay on the Apparent Political Meaning of Ancient Chinese Philosophy,” in Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1971), pp. 42–​79. This does not mean, however, that Xunzi is unaware of the potential danger of words. For instance, he says, “Arrogance and haughtiness are the downfall of people, but reverence and restraint can halt even the five weapons, for the sharpness of spears and lances is not as good as the keenness of reverence and restraint. Thus, giving someone kind words is more warming than hemp-​cloth and silk, while hurtful words cut people more deeply than spears and halberds. So if there is some place on the broad, flat earth where you cannot tread, it is not because the ground itself is not safe. Rather, it is entirely your own words that endanger your stop and leave you nowhere to tread” (Xunzi 4:1). Nevertheless, Xunzi is seen to understand moral speech as an indispensable component of sociability. 57 Xunzi says for example that “[w]‌hatever words do not agree with the former kings [who understood the Way] or do not accord with ritual and yi are to be called vile words” (Xunzi 5.6). On Xunzi’s monistic commitment to the one right and holistic Way, see Paul R. Goldin, Confucianism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), pp. 84–​88. 58 Bryan Van Norden singles out (classical) Confucianism’s insensitivity to pluralism as one of its weaknesses. See his Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Confucian Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 329.

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even if you do not succeed in persuading people, no one will fail to value you. This is called being able to ennoble what one values.59

At the heart of the Confucian principle of civility is tolerating others, especially the petty men whose view deviates from the Way, and the ability to incur no resentment in them. Xunzi captures the essence of the Confucian principle of civility in terms of “the method of inclusiveness.” [The gentleman] achieves completely what he wants to express, but does so without causing hurt. [It is because] in measuring himself, [he] uses an ink-​line, but in dealing with others, he uses lenience. He measures himself with an ink-​line, and so he can be a model and standard for all under Heaven. He uses lenience in dealing with others, and so he can be tolerant and respond to their needs, and thereby accomplish the greatest affairs in the world. Hence, the gentleman is worthy but can tolerate the sluggish. He is wise but can tolerate the foolish. He is broadly learned but can tolerate the shallow. He is refined but can tolerate the impure. This is called the method of inclusiveness (jian shu 兼術).60

Admittedly, Xunzi’s idea of inclusiveness is qualitatively different from the pluralist inclusion of others who are different on various accounts of social identity including gender, race, ethnicity, and religion  –​the kind advocated by contemporary political theorists valorizing the “politics of difference.”61 Indeed, nowhere in the Xunzi is Xunzi found to proactively acknowledge difference as a value in itself, directly conducive to human flourishing and (democratic) co-​existence. Instead of hailing the value of inclusion as such, for Xunzi the method of inclusiveness holds an instrumental value to the principle of civility that buttresses social harmony and order. It keeps the state of nature at bay, which always lurks in through the mantle of (ostensible) civility. Seen in this way, what are central to the Xunzian principle of civility are the following two propositions: first, that moral conflict between the gentlemen and the petty men should be resolved neither by forceful imposition of (what one deems to be) truth nor humiliating speech, but by means of respectful and tolerant moral persuasion, and, second, that for moral persuasion to happen, even the petty men should be acknowledged as partners of civil conversation, though for Xunzi the ultimate purpose of civil conversation lies in their moral correction and cultivation. In Xunzi’s political theory, therefore, social harmony is not tantamount to mere sociopolitical control by means of the li-​based social divisions and distinctions, however important they are for orderly satisfaction of natural desires as well 59 Xunzi 5.8. Compare this with the following statement by Confucius: “There are three things which the gentleman values most in the Way: to stay clear of violence by putting on a serious countenance, to come close to being trusted by setting a proper expression on his face, and to avoid being boorish and unreasonable by speaking in proper tones” (The Analects 8.4). 60 Xunzi 5.7. 61 See, for instance, Iris M. Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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as for the initial overcoming of the state of nature. Nor can it be attained by state censorship and forced suppression of moral opinions that have arguably derailed from the Way. In its most genuine sense, social harmony can be achieved when all people subscribe to the Way, which in reality is represented most vividly by the ritual institutions created by the sage-​kings,62 and when they are civically transformed via inclusive moral persuasion into sociable members of the civil state. What does the principle of civility discussed thus far have to do with ritual propriety? For Xunzi, it is none other than the virtue of ritual propriety that helps ensure civility in social interactions that are frequently relegated to moral conflict. And it is by making moral conflict civil that ritual propriety further helps conserve the ritual institutions introduced by the sage-​kings as the civil bulwark against the state of nature (and, more fundamentally, bad human nature). More specifically, ritual propriety sets proper boundaries or limits in one’s speech and conduct so that he does not transgress the norms of civility and is kept from provoking others. In its civic understanding, the gentleman is one who conducts himself within the limits of ritual-​based civility:  “The gentleman’s discourse has an outer boundary; his conduct has an outer limit … Whether high or low, small or great, he does not go beyond the limit. It is through this that the gentleman keeps his will and intellect from galloping beyond the outer boundary or their proper dwelling.”63 In Xunzi’s view, in its most profound sense, human conduct (xing 行) should be understood as “[properly] conducting ritual” (xing li 行禮) by “treating the noble with respect, the elderly with filiality, the senior with deference, and the young with kindness, and the lowly with generosity.”64 Conclusion Undoubtedly, in classical Confucianism, ethics and politics, and moral virtue and civic virtue, are inextricably intertwined, and it is ludicrous to present any classical Confucian thinker as purely a moral or political philosopher. Neither Mencius nor Xunzi fundamentally modified the paradigm of virtue politics originally advanced by Confucius, even when they each developed a distinctive mode of Confucian constitutionalism, and they generally subscribed to

62 Though for Xunzi (and for other Confucians) the Way is far more capacious than ritual in its role as the guidance of moral choice and action, it is hardly disputable that ritual approximates the good order of the social patterns that have been countlessly tried and affirmed in actual human experiences. For the complex relations between the Way, ritual, and good order (li** 理) in Xunzi’s philosophical system, see Eric L. Hutton, “Moral Reasoning in Aristotle and Xunzi,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 29:3 (2002), pp. 355–​384. 63 Xunzi 8.13 (the English translation here is adopted from John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, Vol. 2 [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990]). 64 Xunzi 27.16.

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Confucian virtue monism. None of my argument in this chapter departs from or denies the common ground that Mencius and Xunzi share as Confucians. In fact, many of the contemporary studies on the philosophy of Xunzi, which has long been neglected because of the Mencian orthodoxy that occupied the mainstay of the Confucian tradition in East Asia, are largely concentrated on the similarities that he shares with Mencius, despite their contrasting accounts of human nature. Their core argument is that Xunzi is no less a virtue ethicist than Mencius, and there is no qualitative difference between Xunzi and Mencius as far as their ideal politics and the nature of virtue ethics they espouse are concerned. As virtue ethicists, it is often claimed, what differentiates one from the other is just the differing modes of moral self-​cultivation –​development versus re-​formation –​that nevertheless lead to the shared ideal of the gentleman and, ideally, sagehood.65 While in the preceding chapters I challenged the received assumption that takes for granted the single mode of Confucian virtue politics and Mencius’s and Xunzi’s equal subscriptions to it, my aim in this chapter has been to shed new light on the subtle differences in the modes of virtue ethics developed by Mencius, a strong virtue monist, and Xunzi, a tempered virtue monist, especially in relation to their notably different modes of Confucian constitutionalism. My central argument has been threefold: first, there is significant parallelism between Mencius’s and Xunzi’s accounts of human nature and their equally different descriptions of the state of nature understood in this chapter (and throughout the book) as the pre-​li state; second, Xunzi’s political theory developed with the view to overcoming the state of nature pays special attention to ritual propriety as civic virtue, composed of several preservative virtues that directly underpin the ritual institutions introduced as the civil bulwark against social chaos and political disorder; and third, deeply concerned with social harmony and order in the post-​li state, Xunzi upholds what I call “the Confucian principle of civility,” which renders moral conflict between the gentlemen and the petty men civil, thereby keeping the civil state from deteriorating into a state of resentment and unending brawl. That being said, one may still find the distinction between moral virtue and civic virtue in Xunzi’s political theory arbitrary. After all, it may be pointed out, this distinction is my attribution to Xunzi and it is not Xunzi’s own philosophical concept with which he advanced his political theory. But, it should be recalled, Xunzi also did not (nor did Mencius) self-​consciously present himself as a theorist of virtue ethics in the way in which the theory is understood in contemporary ethics and moral philosophy. What seems more important to me is whether this distinction is helpful in illuminating the nature of Xunzi’s virtue ethics and politics in comparison with Mencius’s and whether it can be supported by the sayings of classical Confucians, most importantly Confucius. See, most notably, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000). 65

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Now consider the following conversation between Confucius (C)  and Yuansi (Y). Y: If in one’s conduct one refrains from intimidation (ke 克), from self-​ importance (fa 伐), from ill will (yuan 怨), and from greed (yu 欲), can one be considered ren? C: I would say that this is hard to do but I don’t know that [refraining from such things would] make one ren.66 “Intimidation,” “self-​importance,” “ill will,” and “greed” present a list of the quintessential vices in The Analects, which relegate civil society to a state of disharmony and mutual struggle. According to the passage, Confucius acknowledges the importance of overcoming them, supposedly by means of li,67 although he thinks that refraining from such antisocial passions is still short of being ren. If we understand “intimidation,” “self-​importance,” “ill will,” and “greed” as Confucian incivilities, Confucius’s refusal to equate the overcoming of them directly with ren can help us to see the middle ground, implicitly acknowledged by Confucius, between incivilities and moral virtues, namely, the space of Confucian civilities, the virtues that are more proximately concerned with sociability (and social harmony and order) but whose relationship with genuine human excellence and flourishing (i.e., the telos of moral virtue) is less obvious, even convoluted. If my interpretation of Confucian civilities as the middle ground between incivilities and moral virtues is not far-​fetched, it can be concluded that Xunzi further develops Confucius’s seminal insight in a more explicitly political context in which the civil state ought to be created by overcoming the disorderly state of nature. In Xunzi’s political theory, ritual propriety is featured primarily as a civic virtue composed of several preservative virtues and it is instrumental to the preservation of civilities that undergird the backbone of the ritual institutions. In contrast, firm and quasi-​religious belief in the goodness of human nature, which renders the state of nature far from uncivil and violent, appears to have led Mencius to pay less attention to the political project of carving out a civil ground standing between incivility and moral perfection and identifying the virtues that buttress it. Instead, Mencius was far more attracted than Xunzi to a strong form of virtue monism that does not (explicitly) acknowledge virtue’s instrumental connection to politics in its valorization of pure moral motivation and its intrinsic relation with the formation of moral character. Thus understood, we can conclude that it is Mencius, not Xunzi, who parted more radically with Confucius insomuch as his political theory is concerned. The Analects 14.1 (the English translation is adopted from Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr., The Analects of Confucius:  A Philosophical Translation [New  York:  Ballantine Books, 1998]). 67 Cf. The Analects 12.1. 66

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The fact that Xunzi’s political theory is more faithful to Confucius’s original position will be given additional textual (and interpretive) support when we turn to Xunzi’s positive attitude toward badao in Chapter 5. But before doing so, let us first investigate how Mencius’s strong virtue monism is internally connected with his advocacy of negative Confucianism.

Part II WANG, BA, AND INTERSTATE RELATIONS

4 The Psychology of Negative Confucianism

In Chapter  2, I  argued that Mencius’s and Xunzi’s contrasting attitudes toward the abdication doctrine, and, more importantly, their differing visions of Confucian constitutionalism, ultimately have to do with their differing conceptualizations of kingship –​personal (Mencius) and institutional (Xunzi). It should be cautioned, however, that like most other dyadic theoretical frameworks employed in this book, including “negative and positive,” “virtue constitutionalism and ritual constitutionalism,” and “moral virtue and civic virtue,” the distinction between personal and institutional does not imply a stark dichotomy. It is far from my intention to claim that by emphasizing the personal dimension of kingship (or rulership in general) Mencius has completely dismissed its institutional dimension or that Xunzi has likewise sidelined the personal dimension of kingship in his strong emphasis of kingship as the core organ of ritual constitutionalism. Committed to the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics, they both believe that good government, fully devoted to the people’s material and moral well-​being, is predicated on the ritual institutions and that it is the ruler’s formidable moral character that helps maintain such institutions –​the “model” of Confucian constitutionalism –​against all sorts of situational variations.1 Like other dyadic frameworks employed in this book, the “personal versus institutional” framework is only to clarify the distinctive philosophical contributions that Mencius and Xunzi each make to the political theory of Confucian virtue politics. With this clarification, I now turn to Mencius’s understanding of kingship and its implications for his idea of negative Confucianism. Although in the Introduction I  set out the concept of negative Confucianism in terms of The following ancient saying quoted by Mencius best illustrates the close connection between good character and social-​legal-​political institutions under the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics: “Goodness alone is not sufficient for government; [t]‌he law unaided cannot make itself effective” (Mencius 4A1). 1

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constraining the ruler’s pursuit of private interests and arbitrary exercise of political power by means of ritual and (the ministers’) virtue and discussed why Mencius’s political theory is more oriented toward it than Xunzi’s with special focus on its ethico-​religious characteristics, readers may have found it puzzling that in Chapter  1 I  drew attention to how Mencius’s political theory goes “beyond negative Confucianism” (and has something interesting to say about positive Confucianism) without articulating precisely how the ethico-​religious nature of Mencius’s political theory gives rise to such a political orientation. In fact, considering that the central aim of that chapter was to illuminate the philosophical connection between the prudential concerns implicated in Xunzi’s otherwise virtue-​based political theory and the theory’s orientation toward positive Confucianism, one may think that my examination of the general structure of Mencius’s political theory is incomplete, unless the parallel examination revealing the ethico-​religious underpinning of Mencius’s negative Confucianism is conducted in a philosophically persuasive way. That is what this chapter aims to achieve. I delayed this task for two reasons in Chapter 1, when I was reconstructing negative and positive Confucianism in Mencius’s and especially Xunzi’s political theory. The first reason is that our investigation of Mencius’s philosophical inclination toward negative Confucianism offers an important clue to his extremely negative view of badao, which in turn provides the intellectual backdrop against which the philosophical meaning and historical significance of Xunzi’s normative reconstruction of badao as a morally acceptable and politically viable mode of governance can be best illuminated, the subject around which the following chapter (Chapter 5) is organized. The more important reason, though, is that by examining the ethico-​religious underpinning of Mencius’s idea of negative Confucianism, we can tackle a political theory question of far-​reaching implications that deserves its own focus  –​how we should understand Confucian virtue-​based political theory (Mencius’s political theory in particular) against the background of what it actively opposes, namely Realpolitik, which largely defines the dominant domestic and interstate political reality during the late Warring States period. Therefore, in this chapter I attempt to illuminate the gist of Mencius’s political theory of negative Confucianism by investigating the philosophical struggle in the context of which he constructed his Confucian political theory as the normative antithesis of the prevailing Realpolitik of his time. Since part of the aim of this chapter is to understand Mencius’s “philosophical struggle” with Realpolitik (especially its psychological foundation) and reconstruct his political theory from the perspective obtained by such an understanding, I adopt a different methodology here than that which I have used in previous chapters, though still continuing to engage with philosophical interpretations of the text. First, I approach Mencian negative Confucianism not merely as a political disposition geared toward constraining the ruler’s political power and private interest, but more profoundly (and boldly), as

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a Confucian argument for “political liberty” similar to the way in which Wm. Theodore de Bary attributes the “liberal” tradition to Confucianism.2 Second, I  reconstruct philosophically the psychological origin and key political characteristics of Realpolitik, a mode of politics completely decoupled from any moral or ethical concerns, with reference to Nietzsche’s concept of the “higher man” (Übermensch) and by interpreting it as the political ruler idealized in Realpolitik. My central argument is that in Mencius’s political theory Confucian moral power, though originally a purely individual quality, undergoes remarkable transformation in the course of vigorous engagement with Realpolitik into a form of political liberty, thereby giving rise to a powerful political (and constitutional) claim to negative Confucianism. From Moral Heroism to Political Liberty: De Bary Revisited Wm. Theodore de Bary is one of the first contemporary Confucian scholars who gives the Confucians’ moral virtue and their strong sense of this-​worldly transcendental mission of attaining and transmitting the Way a (distinctively Confucian-​ style) “liberal” interpretation, as the moral-​ political locomotive pushing the Confucians to confront the mundane Realpolitik.3 While vindicating the liberal tradition in Confucianism, originated from Confucius’ and especially Mencius’s moral and political thought, in terms of “moral individualism,” de Bary also presents moral freedom, an important byproduct of moral self-​cultivation, as constitutive of political liberty against the Realpolitik of autocratic power.4

2 In other words, by “political liberty” I mean a particular version of power originated in (a particular interpretation of) Mencius’s political theory, which was creatively re-​appropriated by later Mencian Confucians. Therefore, it is not my intention to imply that Western-​style liberalism is found in Mencius’s political theory or was an integral part of the later development of Mencian Confucianism. 3 See Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Liberal Tradition in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). For the this-​worldly transcendental character of Confucianism (especially Mencian Confucianism and Neo-​Confucianism influenced by it), see S. N. Eisenstadt, “This Worldly Transcendentalism and the Structuring of the World:  Weber’s ‘Religion of China’ and the Format of Chinese History and Civilization,” Journal of Developing Societies 1 (1985), pp. 168–​186; Benjamin I. Schwartz, “The Age of Transcendence,” in China and Other Matters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 65–​68. For the “liberal” reinterpretation of Confucianism, see John W. Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1983); Tu Wei-​ ming, Way, Learning, and Politics: Essays in Confucian Intellectual (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993); Alan T. Wood, Limits to Autocracy: From Song Neo-​Confucianism to a Doctrine of Political Rights (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1995). 4 To capture the essence of (Mencian) Confucianism mainly in moral individualistic terms may seem to be counterintuitive given the Confucian emphasis on the importance of ritual and affective human relationships. But the kernel of de Bary’s argument lies in the observation that the social and political values of Confucianism stem from one’s profound interest in his or her

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According to de Bary, the dialectical relation between moral freedom (or moral virtue) and political liberty in Confucianism is made possible by the “repossession of the Way” in which an individual discovers new meaning in the earlier tradition and realizes his fundamental connectedness with Heaven, allowing him to make a critical stance from the mundane world and to attack prevalent evils and press for reform. Confucians, Mencius in particular, are convinced that the repossession of the Way can be attained only through the “learning for the sake of one’s self (wei ji zhi xue 爲己之學),” which emphasizes a purely individual “responsibility for the Way (zi ren you dao 自任於道)” and its actual “attainment in one’s self (zi de 自得).”5 De Bary captures this Confucian aspiration of self-​empowerment by virtue of a creative reclaim of the Way, as “the cult of individual moral heroism,” tracing the idea back to Mencius with special focus on his famous notions of the “great man (da zhang fu 大丈夫)” and “extraordinary scholar (hao jie zhi shi 豪傑之士).”6 De Bary notes that this Mencian-​Confucian notion of “heroism” is strictly moral, thus going against the term’s conventional understanding. By quoting Wu Cheng 吳澄(1249–​1333), one of the leading Confucian classicists during the Yuan period, he highlights the moral dimension of the Confucian notion of hero: “The world thinks of ‘heroes’ as men capable of spectacular feats of military prowess, great drinking capacity, and extraordinary poetic gift, like Cao Cao and the bold spirits in the Jin period. But these types only glorified themselves and turned their backs on humanity.”7 Central to de Bary’s liberal interpretation of Mencian Confucianism is that it is in mediation of moral heroism that a person (i.e., the Confucian gentleman) can further transform his Heaven-​given moral freedom into a vigorous claim to political liberty, which de Bary believes generated a “liberal” tension between the monarch and his Confucian scholar-​bureaucrats in traditional Confucian politics. To be sure, history attests that, rigorous self-​discipliners themselves, Mencian Confucians (Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​Confucians in particular) firmly believed that the essence of government lies in moral self-​cultivation, which in their view should begin with the ruler’s self-​rectification. This conviction, argues de Bary, “obliged the minister [the Confucian scholar-​bureaucrat], in his relation to the ruler as defined in the Five Constant Relations … to assist the emperor in his moral perfection. Put differently, social and political values are the consequences of the creative socialization of the self, which eventually transcends the polarization of individual and society. This very circularity of the argument, according to de Bary, “conveys the sense of life as a sacred continuum of affective relations, from conjugal love to parental concern and filial devotion, all centering on respect for the personhood of the individual” (Liberal Tradition, pp. 30–​31). For a similar claim, see Tu Wei-​ming, Humanity and Self-​Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought (Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1979), pp. 5–​34. 5 De Bary attributes the latter two elements of Confucianism critically to Mencius (Liberal Tradition, p. 45). 6 Ibid., pp. 68–​72. For the references to Mencius, see Mencius 3B2; 7A10. 7 De Bary, Liberal Tradition, p. 69.

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self-​cultivation and in the conduct of his moral life. In other words, he is to be a minister in the sense of counselor, mentor, [and] preceptor.”8 In Julia Ching’s judgment, the Confucians acted not only as the moral rectifiers of the ruler, but, relying primarily on their own authority as self-​appointed interpreters of the sacred message, “acted as moral judges of their sovereigns rather than as dutiful ministers.”9 There appears, however, to be an important theoretical loophole in de Bary’s attempt to link moral freedom to political liberty in Confucianism. Unless we subscribe to the utterly naive presumption that moral freedom naturally gives rise to political liberty, the question remains precisely how in Confucian politics moral freedom, which is originally inner-​directed, is transformed into a vehicle for political liberty. To be sure, by illuminating the “constitutional” dimension of Confucian politics (what I  call negative Confucianism), which he broadly captures in liberal terms,10 de Bary shows that Confucian political ethics neither supports a Filmerian patriarchy nor is reduced to a mere consanguinitism, despite its frequent family analogy of the political relationship between the ruler and the ruled.11 Nevertheless, de Bary’s otherwise penetrating insight into the transformation of moral freedom into political theory (and Confucian constitutionalism) does not advance to a full-​blown Confucian political theory that offers a philosophical articulation on the way in which such transformation takes place and gains moral significance. In order to directly come to terms with political liberty in Confucianism exercised by Confucian ministers (if not by the people in general), or negative Confucianism, it seems imperative to investigate the Confucian perception of kingship, the very object to which the ministers’ (virtue-​based) political liberty 8 Ibid., p. 52. Also see Tu, Way, Learning, and Politics, p. 10. 9 Julia Ching, “The Goose Lake Monastery Debate,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 1:2 (1974), pp. 161–​178, at p. 175 (quoted from de Bary, Liberal Tradition, p. 57). According to contemporary constitutional scholar Tom Ginsburg, the relationship between the president and the constitutional court in democratic South Korea and Taiwan is strikingly similar to that between the emperor and Confucian scholar-​bureaucrats during the pre-​modern Confucian period in East Asia, and this observation led him to capture the constitutional practices in both countries in terms of “Confucian constitutionalism.” See his “Confucian Constitutionalism? The Emergence of Constitutional Review in Korea and Taiwan,” Law and Social Inquiry 27:4 (2002), pp. 263–​299. 10 Wm. Theodore de Bary, “The ‘Constitutional Tradition’ in China,” Journal of Chinese Law 9 (1995), pp. 7–​34. Also see Wm. Theodore de Bary, “Introduction,” in Confucianism and Human Rights, eds. Wm. Theodore de Bary and Tu Wei-​ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), pp. 1–​26, at pp. 16–​17 for an allusion to “constitutional culture” of traditional Confucian politics. 11 For the inadequacy of the Filmerian interpretation of the Confucian state, see Fred R. Dallmayr, “Confucianism and the Public Sphere:  Five Relationships Plus One?” in The Politics of Affective Relations: East Asia and Beyond, eds. Chaihark Hahm and Daniel A. Bell (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), pp. 41–​59, at p. 51. For an argument that Confucianism is essentially a kind of consanguinitism, opposed to both individuality and sociality, see Qingping Liu, “Filiality versus Sociality and Individuality: On Confucianism as ‘Consanguinitism’,” Philosophy East and West 53:2 (2003), pp. 234–​250.

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is directed. As we have seen in the preceding chapters, no classical Confucian, not even Mencius, the champion of negative Confucianism, ever questioned the legitimacy of a one-​man monarchy. After all, the political disagreement between Mencius and Xunzi revolved around just what is more important –​ the ruler’s moral virtue (or moral character) or ritual institutions, though both are necessary in actualizing Confucian virtue politics. My contention is that Mencius’s recognition of an irrevocable internal break in the moral ideal of sage-​kingship, espoused (and arguably reinvented) by Confucius, enabled him in the political context of the Warring States period to impart new implications to both sagehood and kingship:  the moral (and spiritual) ideal of sagehood became the question of universal moral self-​cultivation, accessible in principle to anyone regardless of social pedigree, while kingship, now deprived of its exclusive moral connection to Heaven and special claim to sagacity, was relegated to a mere political institution, increasingly as the engine of Realpolitik.12 But what made Mencius rethink kingship, driving him to advocate negative Confucianism, without denying the institutional authority of kingship as the organ to fulfill the Mandate of Heaven? Absent Mencius’s own explanation,13 there is no way to know exactly what he had in mind when he reconstructed Confucian virtue politics as predominantly oriented toward negative Confucianism. However, taking a cue from Mencius’s acute realization of the dangers internal to kingship as the institutional engine of pure power and also from his unarticulated attempt to derive political liberty from moral freedom (trusting de Bary’s seminal insight), I  believe we can get close to Mencius’s philosophical reasoning behind negative Confucianism. As noted earlier, my strategy here is to make a considerable but necessary detour, first by investigating the psychological origin and political characteristics of Realpolitik, the specter of which, as Mencius appears to have judged, is deeply implicated with kingship, as reconfigured during the Warring States period, and against which he offered Confucian virtue politics as an alternative political paradigm with strong emphasis on its negative constitutionalism. I then make sense of Mencius’s understanding of kingship from the perspective of the psychology of Realpolitik. In other words, I present Mencius’s negative Confucianism and moral claim to political liberty as the antithesis of Realpolitik. That being said, I now turn to Nietzsche to philosophically reconstruct the psychological origin of Realpolitik.

It is important to focus especially on sage-​kingship, not just any ordinary forms of kingship, because only the break of this universal moral paradigm could entail and empower a new universally popularized claim to moral and political liberty as a critical individual entitlement in Confucianism. 13 It is worth noting that no classical Confucian ever engaged in philosophical justification of kingship as a mode of government, as if there were no other alternative forms of government from which they could make a choice. For them, the moral legitimacy of kingship was largely out of the question. 12

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The Higher Man and the Will to Power As is widely understood, Nietzsche, radically departing from the mainstream Western political tradition, disparages man’s communal life as manifesting collective mediocrity. Nietzsche captures the essence of the human condition in terms of absolute “solitude” when he writes in a somewhat ironic tone that “insofar as we are born, sworn, jealous friends of solitude, of our own most profound, most midnightly, most middaily solitude:  that is the type of man we are, we free spirits!”14 In Nietzsche’s view, the only truth for a man of solitude is the fact that life is saturated with pain, and therefore ceaseless and inevitable suffering defines the human condition. Yet, in this otherwise nihilistic and frustrating situation, Nietzsche finds an exuberant source of spontaneity and power. Indeed, he even exclaims, “The discipline of suffering, of great suffering  –​do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of men so far?”15 Notwithstanding the apparent similarity with Hobbes’s natural man, whose life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” Nietzsche’s solitary man, instead of being preoccupied with self-​preservation by dominating others, utilizes violence solely for the purpose of an aesthetic construction of his own artistic life. That is, for Nietzsche, power refers primarily to a psychological force emanating from the unconscious whose expenditure, not preservation, is central because, as he believes, a living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength.16 Life is nothing but a will to power. From this perspective, asserts Nietzsche, “self-​preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.”17 Precisely because of his explosive aesthetic spirit, however, Nietzsche’s narcissist is a tragic “hero” who succumbs neither to the divine revelation of history nor to the instrumental calculation of profit. Because of the original act of hubris, his life is led to a plethora of sufferings as seen, for example, in the terrible triad of Oedipean fates:  “[T]‌he same man who solved the riddle of nature (the ambiguous Sphinx) must also, as murderer of his father and husband of his mother, break the consecrated tables of the natural order.”18 The greatness of this tragic soul lies in its never being daunted by agonizing pain or frustrated by the fundamental chaos of life or the injustice in the universe or of the gods. The Nietzschean tragic hero rather embraces nature as it is and overcomes himself in the face of pain and suffering. He is a free spirit in that he 14 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), § 44 (hereafter BGE). 15 BGE, § 225. 16 Keith Ansell-​Pearson, An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Actor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 46–​49. 17 BGE, § 13 (emphasis in original). 18 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy in The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Francis Golffing (New York: Anchor Books, 1956), p. 61. See also C. Fred Alford, The Psychoanalysis of Greek Tragedy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 41–​43.

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is always prepared to squander his life in the pursuit of great deeds. To be great is to stand willingly beyond good and evil.19 In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche characterizes such a “terrible yet creative” tragic hero in terms of the “higher man” (Übermensch). Exactly who Nietzsche means by the higher man is not so clear, however. In the prologue to the work, Nietzsche portrays Zarathustra as the contemporary incarnation of the higher man, but elsewhere primarily as a prophet heralding the advent of the future higher man who in Zarathustra’s (or perhaps in Nietzsche’s own) view will be “the true meaning of the earth” after the world-​historical event of “the death of God.”20 In this second sense, the higher man is not merely a proclaimer of a new age21 but a lawgiver or legislator, the archetype of the political hero and the symbol of greatness in ancient Greek thought.22 The higher man thus interpreted is far from a philosopher attempting to consolidate the former positings of values as “truths” that are safe for a civilized society composed of a herd of the mediocre. Unlike the Enlightenment philosophers such as Kant and Hegel, the genuine “philosophers” are, according to Nietzsche, commanders and legislators whose “knowing is creating, whose creating is a legislation, and whose will to truth is will to power.”23 Centering on the higher man’s inexhaustible creativity, Nietzsche draws a compelling analogy between the higher man and the child in the famous metaphor of the three metamorphoses of human development, wherein the child –​ “innocent and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-​propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred ‘Yes’ ”24  –​is depicted as the final destination of man who is, in his judgment, suspended on a rope, tied between beast and the higher man over an abyss.25 What is important in this analogy is that the child manifests man’s free spirit and untrammeled power; it represents the profound appreciations of a life force  –​a spontaneous yet violent effusion of primitive impulse resting on man’s inner psyche or unconsciousness where “cruelty

Ansell-​Pearson, Introduction to Nietzsche, p. 106. 20 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), pp. 124–​125 (hereafter TSZ). 21 In Machiavelli’s language, therefore, the higher man is not so much an unarmed prophet but an armed prophet like Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus. See Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), chap. VI. 22 Ansell-​Pearson, Introduction to Nietzsche, p. 103. This is not to claim, however, that this is the only way to interpret Nietzsche’s enigmatic idea of the higher man. For instance, some scholars do not associate the higher man directly with political leaders, paying more attention to the greatness of the higher man’s soul, which goes beyond the mediocrity often affiliated with liberalism (as commonly practiced in the form of “rights discourse”) and democracy. For this alternative interpretation, see Paul Franco, “Tocqueville and Nietzsche on the Problem of Human Greatness in Democracy,” Review of Politics 76:3 (2014), pp. 439–​467. 23 BGE, § 211. 24 TSZ, p. 139. 25 TSZ, pp. 126–​127. 19

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precedes pity.”26 Thus Nietzsche urges us to reconsider cruelty in a positive and life-​affirming sense: “Almost everything we call ‘higher culture’ is based on the spiritualization of cruelty, on its becoming more profound: this is my proposition.”27 For Nietzsche, the pity that various religions preach is nothing but “a hoarse, groaning, genuine sound of self-​contempt.”28 Being a total stranger to pity, therefore, Nietzsche’s higher man turns out to be a narcissistic psychic whose absolute solitude could be perceived by others as mysterious and potentially dangerous. But unlike Plato’s legislator of an ideal city or philosopher-​king, for Nietzsche, the higher man is not merely a hypothetical possibility, but real men in flesh and blood who have existed historically.29 Famous examples include cruel yet heroic political rulers such as Napoleon and Caesar Borgia. The Psychological Origin of Realpolitik Being a profound narcissist, Nietzsche’s higher man is a free spirit in the sense that he does not develop the civilizing psychological tension between the real ego and the ego ideal.30 In other words, Nietzsche’s higher man resists what Freud calls the “process of identification”31 in which the real ego resists succumbing to the object that is put in the place of the ego ideal. According to Freud, identification occurs only within the “group” –​a concept that Nietzsche never approaches positively  –​where the group members (or the “horde,” according to Freud) develop a libidinal relationship with the group leader. And because the group leader does not belong to the group which he stands for, argues Freud, he symbolizes an authentic individuality. Thus, for Freud, a true individual is the father, chief, or ruler. Freud’s psychoanalysis helps suggest that Nietzsche’s higher man can be best understood as a group leader. Consider the following statement by Freud.

26 For this insight see Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, trans. James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 59 as well as Chapter XVII of Machiavelli’s The Prince. For a nuanced examination of Nietzsche’s understanding of pity or compassion in relation to the higher man, see Michael L. Frazer, “The Compassion of Zarathustra: Nietzsche on Sympathy and Strength,” Review of Politics 68:1 (2006), pp. 49–​78. 27 BGE, § 229. 28 BGE, § 222. Also see Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Gunzelin S. Noerr and Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp.  78–​90. 29 Paul F. Glenn, “Nietzsche’s Napoleon: The Higher Man as Political Actor,” Review of Politics 63:1 (2001), pp. 129–​158, at pp. 129–​130. 30 Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, trans. James Strachey (New York: Bantam Books, 1960), p. 52. Also see his Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961), pp. 55, 76–​82. 31 Freud, Group Psychology, p. 57.

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He, at the very beginning of the history of mankind, was the “superman” [or the higher man] whom Nietzsche only expected [to emerge in] the future. Even today the members of a group stand in need of the illusion that they are equally and justly loved by their leader; but the leader himself need love no one else, he may be of a masterful nature, absolutely narcissistic, self-​confident and independent.32

Though Freud’s idea that the higher man is only expected to emerge in the future cannot be justified, as will be seen shortly, his interpretation of the higher man as a group leader, especially a political leader, hits the mark. This is evidenced by the fact that Nietzsche actually includes historical political figures like Napoleon in his list of “the most profound and comprehensive men” of his century.33 It is not that Nietzsche cared about the glorification of France, or nationalism for that matter. In fact, he was a vehement critic of European nationalism of the nineteenth century, regarding it as a sign of weakness and decay.34 Nor was he fascinated by “public utility” to which the European states of his time were singularly devoted, because for him, morality of utility was deemed essentially a “slave morality.”35 Instead, Nietzsche characterizes Napoleon as a higher man for who he was, not for what he did.36 The extraordinary character of the man, not his accomplishments, makes him elevated. The greatness of the higher man’s soul lies in the fact that it is a unified persona that emerges out of the intense inner conflicts waged by formidable drives and powerful instincts. In Nietzsche’s judgment, a higher man like Napoleon shapes and molds his internal chaos into a coherent whole, thus accomplishing totality of the self as the healthiest and highest of activities.37 In other words, Napoleon represents a man of the higher culture of dominance and hence an antithesis to the herd instinct of obedience.38 As Nietzsche sees it, Napoleon was the higher man who declared a “war on the masses.”39 Absolutely independent, self-​confident, and narcissistic, a higher man, just like a playing child absorbed in her own game, is also a “monological artist” who discharges exuberant energy from his intense drive through his sole game, the government. It is for this reason that Nietzsche lists Napoleon, along with Confucius, the Roman emperors, and the late-​medieval popes deeply involved in politics,40 as one of the “great artists of government.”41 Ibid., p. 71. 33 BGE, § 225. 34 BGE, §§ 241, 251, 256. 35 BGE, § 260. 36 Glenn, “Nietzsche’s Napoleon,” p. 133. 37 Ibid., p. 135. Also see Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), § 1017 (hereafter WP). 38 See BGE, § 199. 39 WP, § 861. 40 WP, § 129. However, Nietzsche does not seem to have realized that unlike other higher men who he acknowledges have historically existed, Confucius never held a position of political rulership. 41 Most notably, Machiavelli, the modern founder of Realpolitik, takes pains in The Prince to teach an art of government to a new prince. 32

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What is troubling, however, is that in the higher man’s fantasy, government is not only envisaged but, all the more problematic, identified as his own “body.” Put differently, the totality of his body is represented in terms of “the body politic.”42 Understandably, the political manifestation of this fantasy –​ namely, Realpolitik –​is pathological, because a higher man creates his “body” by at once constructing and destroying it: his hammer is power and his chisel is violence. Thus, Nietzsche repeatedly states that one misunderstands the great person if one judges him from the viewpoint of public utility: the monological artist does not care about the audience, and thus does not work for the general welfare.43 Seen in this way, the higher man’s aesthetic construction of his fantasized body (i.e., the body politic) –​which is in effect driven by the immense desire for his own growth and elevation –​may bring serious harm to the people. But why would the ruler hurt his own body? How can we make sense of the ruler’s self-​mutilation? Recent psychoanalytical findings powerfully reveal a counterintuitive fact that a self-​destructive action sometimes exerts a remarkable healing effect from the perspective of the actor. Consider the following observation by Armando Favazza: Self-​mutilation … by a mentally ill person is a dramatically awesome act reminiscent of a sacrificial rite. The bodies of some mentally ill self-​mutilators can be thought of as a stage upon which is enacted a personal drama that reflects, in varying proportions, personal psychopathology, social stresses, and cultural myths, especially those of a religious nature. The themes of these myths are suffering, dismemberment, blood sacrifice, resurrection, rebirth, and the establishment (or reestablishment) of a new, prosperous, healthy, and amicable order. Although an audience might regard the self-​mutilative act as the tension-​heightening conclusion of a tragedy, the actors –​at least at the moment of their self-​mutilation –​might regard it as a tension-​reducing, cathartic moment, or a moment of clarification, or a moment that harbingers a new, more joyous conclusion to the drama. For some, pain and blood are associated with death, but for others they are associated with birth.44

For some, self-​mutilation is a morbid form of self-​help.45 For rulers in particular, political pathologies including purges, persecutions, and massacres can be rationalized as an artistic endeavor to enable the rebirth of the body politic, Recall the famous cover illustration of Hobbes’s Leviathan in which the king’s body is made up of countless people. Hence, Michael Walzer states that “the political unity of the state has no palpable shape or substance. The state is invisible; it must be personified before it can be seen, symbolized before it can be loved, imagined before it can be conceived” (“On the Role of Symbolism in Political Thought,” Political Science Quarterly 82:2 [1967], pp.  191–​204, p. 194). In Chapter 2, though, I noted how Xunzi reconceived the Confucian body politic in institutional-​constitutional  terms. 43 Glenn, “Nietzsche’s Napoleon,” p. 143. 44 Armando R. Favazza, Bodies under Siege:  Self-​Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 45–​46. 45 Ibid., p. xix. 42

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their own fantasized body. From the intellectuals’ viewpoint, however, the ruler’s self-​mutilation or violent self-​help is nothing more than an irrational and lunatic action, inevitably resulting in tyranny. To them, the ruler’s hammer and chisel only signal a pathological use of violence and an arbitrary exertion of political power.46 Admittedly, the Warring States period, during which Mencius and Xunzi were active, was the political approximation in Chinese history of the seventeenth-​ and eighteenth-​century Europe when ambitious rulers violently competed for supremacy and singularly pursued their personal glories.47 Put differently, it was the moment of Realpolitik as vindicated by the final victory of Legalism (especially of the version advanced by adept politicians like Li Si, if not Han Fei, who developed a more principled form of Legalism equipped with its own “moral” standard), with the reunification of “all under Heaven” by Qin, over the Hundred Schools including (pre-​Qin) classical Confucianism advanced by Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi.48 And it was during the late Warring States period that “amongst the shepherds of men there [was] not one who [was] not fond of killing.”49 Toward the prevailing Realpolitik, Confucians at large took a critical stance, although some Confucians, including most notably Xunzi, wrestled with creating a new mode of Confucianism (i.e., ritual constitutionalism) with increased attention to social and political institutions through which the spirit of Confucian virtue politics can be more effectively realized than other alternative Confucian suggestions. But it was Mencius who leveled the most poignant criticism at Realpolitik of the time and offered a thoughtful, but hardly systematic, virtue-​based corrective to it. In the remainder of this chapter, I  reconstruct Mencius’s reasoning against Realpolitik and his advocacy of negative Confucianism and political liberty by paying special attention to his complex view of kingship. Between Badao and Tyranny Though the Mengzi records several anecdotes in which Mencius boldly challenges the rulers, preoccupied with “enrichment of (his) state and the Compare this observation –​the pathological use of violence rationalized in Realpolitik –​ with Mencius’s and Xunzi’s endorsement of the legitimate use of military force from the perspective of Confucian virtue politics in Chapter 6. 47 For this historical comparison, see Benjamin I. Schwartz, “The Chinese Perception of World Order, Past and Present,” in The Chinese World Order: Traditional Chinas Foreign Relations, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 278–​ 279; Victoria Tin-​bor Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 48 But as noted in Chapter 2, the reunification of the world also enabled a rise of a new mode of Confucianism, one adapted to the Legalistic institutional skeletons of the empire –​namely, Legalistic Confucianism. 49 Mencius 1A6. 46

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strengthening of (his) military (fu guo qiang bing),” he never criticizes kingship itself as a form of government. Not only does he pay special attention to the incumbent king’s final choice of a royal successor in his ultimate endorsement of the first hereditary transmission of kingship, as we have seen in Chapter 2, but he also acknowledges that ancient sages such as Yao and Shun brought civilization to humankind by virtue of their political role as king.50 A literal reading of the text may even tempt us to believe that Mencius was a champion of absolute monarchy, even when he occasionally chastised individual kings of his time.51 In the end, it may be concluded that Mencius’s political arguments revolve around kingship: teaching, illuminating, and restoring the bygone sage-​kingship. This said, however, Mencius neither expresses regret about the fact that Confucius was not a political ruler nor is persuaded by the special connection between kingship and sagehood, the paradigm Confucius appears to have fully subscribed to. Moreover, notwithstanding his strong conviction that Heaven has chosen him for the supreme role of awakening the people toward morality and the ruler(s) toward the Kingly Way,52 Mencius at no point complains about his own failure to become a political ruler or about Heaven not bestowing such an opportunity on him. For him, kingship is something that is already there, established by Heaven, something irrevocable and irreplaceable. At the same time, for Mencius, kingship is no longer sacred as it is, especially during his time when it is being claimed by the rulers of former feudal states, though it originally belonged exclusively to the universal ruler of the Zhou dynasty. What is worth noting is Mencius’s response to kingship that has undergone radical reconceptualization during the Warring States period, from the office of Heaven to the vehicle for Realpolitik –​namely his normative exaltation of the (virtuous) minister as the force countervailing the ruler’s arbitrary use of power. Mencius’s normative position is best presented in the following statement, in which he admonishes King Xuan of Qi in an exceptionally strong tone: If a prince treats his [ministers] as his hands and feet, they will treat him as their belly and heart. If he treats them as his horses and hounds, they will treat him as a stranger. If he treats them as mud and weeds, they will treat him as an enemy.53

What is striking in this statement is the critical normative distance between the king and the Confucian ministers. For some, the vehemence with which Mencius 3A4. 51 Concluding his examination of Mencius’s account of abdication, Yuri Pines notes that “it is solely the acting ruler’s prerogative to decide to whom to transfer power, and the idea of yielding the throne is not supposed to undermine the absolute power of the sovereign” (Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era [Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2009], p. 76). 52 Mencius 2B13. 53 Mencius 4B3. 50

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Mencius contrasts the morally upright ministers to the ruler wielding his power whimsically and tyrannizing his subjects may be rather surprising because the Confucianism (that is, negative Confucianism) he presents here is not at all consistent with its conventional image, popularized by Max Weber as a religion of “an adjustment to the world, to its orders and conventions.”54 Though Mencius may seemingly be warning that a tyrannical ruler will and ought to be disobeyed and further challenged by his (virtuous Confucian) ministers, underlying his normative contrast between the king, now decoupled from sagacity, and the ministers, seems to be the deeper assumption that the king, as the carrier of Realpolitik, and the Confucian scholar-​ministers, whose political position is open in principle to any virtuous (male) person, are completely different kinds of beings. It may be objected that the contrast Mencius has in mind is not necessarily between any ruler and any minister or between kingship and ministership as such, but rather a contrast between a tyrannical ruler and a virtuous minister and therefore that his critical stance toward tyranny should not be extended to kingship as such. But my argument about Mencius’s underlying assumption finds an interpretative, albeit implicit, support in the later Confucian tradition. More specifically, I submit that a political reading of Zhu Xi’s famous preface to the commentary of Zhongyong 中庸 (The Doctrine of the Mean), where Zhu Xi reconstructs a Confucian genealogy of the lineage of the Way or the Sagely-​Line, lends strong support to my interpretation.55 Stated briefly, Zhu Xi’s account of the Sagely-​Line goes as follows: The Way, once possessed, albeit intermittently, by the sage-​kings, was resumed by Confucius, though he did not attain a position of political authority. And the Way, lost after the demise of Mencius, who had himself reclaimed it a hundred years after Confucius, was mysteriously redeemed by the Neo-​Confucian moral heroes of the Song dynasty after one millennium.56 In the Preface, Zhu Xi implies that the derailment of the Princely-​Line from the Sagely-​Line upon the beginning of the hereditary kingship has brought about a fundamental change to the conception of kingship. One of the key assumptions in (Neo-​ )Confucian humanism is that the Way repossessed through self-​cultivation transforms one’s self.57 Zhu Xi only reverses the reasoning –​that is, the loss of the Way equally transforms the self in the complete opposite way. The two most notorious tyrants in Chinese history, Jie and Zhòu, are the cases in point. King Xuan of Qi asks Mencius whether it is true that

54 Max Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, ed. and trans. Hans H. Gerth (New York: The Free Press, 1951), p. 152. 55 It is important to note that Zhu Xi’s Neo-​Confucian lineage of the Way is indeed drawn from Mencius’s seminal construction of the lineage of the Confucian Way. See Mencius 3B9. 56 For the full text, see de Bary, Liberal Tradition, p. 13. 57 Mencius 7A13.

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sage-​king Tang, the founder of the Shang dynasty, banished Jie and whether another sage-​king Wu, the co-​founder of the Zhou Dynasty, marched against Zhòu. Mencius replies, “One who mutilates ren should be called a ‘mutilator.’ One who mutilates yi should be called a ‘crippler.’ A  crippler and mutilator is called a mere ‘fellow’ (yi fu 一夫). I  have indeed heard of the execution of this one fellow Zhòu, but I  have not heard of it as the assassination of one’s ruler.”58 Mencius’s point is strikingly Freudian: “They were worshipped as a god one day but killed as a criminal the next.”59 The only difference is that for Mencius, the loss of the Way is of pivotal significance in these reverse self-​transformations. Seen in this way, we can derive from (our interpretation of) Mencius’s account two diametrically opposed human kinds: kings, the practitioners of Realpolitik who are highly susceptible to tyranny, on the one side, and ministers, as carriers of the Confucian Way, on the other. Jie and Zhòu are the two extreme cases of the former, hence Mencius’s reference to them as mere “fellows.” But what makes them “tyrants” in the Confucian sense? While Mencius offers no satisfactory explanation, Zhu Xi’s commentary can help, when he notes that “if all within the four seas turn toward someone, then he becomes the Son of Heaven. If the world turns against him, then he becomes ‘a mere fellow.’ ”60 But that Jie and Zhòu became mere fellows because the world turned against them still does not explain why they lost the Mandate of Heaven, thereby causing them to lose moral charisma as the king in its proper sense and the people to turn against them. Precisely what did they do, causing them to be disfavored by Heaven? Here some historical accounts may be useful. The chapter entitled “Yin ben ji 殷本紀” of Shiji 史記 contains the following account of Zhòu: Ti Zhòu [Emperor Zhòu] had a quick intelligence and discriminating powers, and was fast in his hearing and eyesight, and had unusual physical strength, [and was known] to have fought with strong beasts with his bare hands. He was intelligent enough to resist criticism and had enough verbal faculty to cover up his wrongdoings. Dazzling his subordinates with his ability and towering over all under Heaven with his talk, he believed that all were beneath himself. He enjoyed wine and music and was fond of women … He was negligent to ghosts and deities. He presided over orgies at Sand Dunes, pouring wine into a pond and hanging meats like trees in a forest. He had men and women undressed and chasing one another among them, drinking into the night.61

Admittedly, Zhòu’s character is in direct opposition to Shun’s, Mencius’s moral hero, who is alleged to have simply “[held] himself in a respectful posture and 58 Mencius 1B8. The English translation here is adapted from Mengzi:  With Selections from Traditional Commentaries, trans. Bryan W. Van Norden (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2008). 59 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1950), p. 44. 60 Van Norden, Mengzi, p. 26. 61 Reprinted from Kwang-​chih Chang, Shang Civilization (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 13–​14.

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[faced] due south” while ruling62 and who, according to Mencius’s narrative, was concerned with being a filial son more than anything else.63 From the Menciain Confucian perspective, Zhòu is nothing but a moral defunct. Quite interestingly, however, from the Niezschean viewpoint, the above passage reveals Zhòu’s extraordinary character:  in this renewed perspective, Zhòu is seen as a matchlessly powerful man whose action is solely driven by his intense instinct and impulse. Zhòu’s enormous physical strength and remarkable intelligence fits him more with such tragic heroes like Achilles than Yao or Shun as narrated by the Confucians. In Shiji’s un-​Confucian account, Zhòu presents himself as a Nietzschean narcissist who puts himself out of the reach of criticism and acts as if there were no one but himself under Heaven.64 Even ghosts and deities, to which he is to offer regular sacrifices because his power is believed to rely on their blessing, are lowered to subservient positions. In short, his narcissistic real ego refuses to succumb to the ego ideal or its substitutions like ghosts and deities. Instead, in him the two egos are completely fused. Seen in this way, the “mere fellow” Zhòu turns out to be a Nietzschean higher man. It should now be clear that when evaluating Jie and Zhòu (or any immoral ruler, for that matter) from the Confucian moral standpoint, Mencius’s concern is not merely limited to assailing tyranny and protecting the people. A more profound political project in which he is engaged is to turn the Nietzschean amoral paradigm of ethics upside-​down. In Mencius, what Nietzsche takes to be “natural” stands on its head. That is, Mencius reverses the Nietzschean order of distance between the higher man and the common man, thereby transvaluating the moral values between the two. The higher man’s self-​glorification is now devalued to egotism and his strong impulse to sensuality; more importantly, his fantasized game with his own “body” is recast in terms of tyranny. Corresponding to this process of transvaluation of the Nietzschean natural order is the reinvention of nature itself –​that is, the (re)discovery of Heaven as the depository of morals and guarantor of cosmic harmony and sociopolitical order.65 Nature, a totality of self-​contradiction permeated with pains and 62 The Analects 15.5. 63 Mencius  5A2–​4. 64 Note that Confucius singles out the following attitude of a ruler as being close to the way to ruin the state: “I take no joy in being a ruler, except that no one dares to oppose what I say” (The Analects 13.15). Also see Xunzi 32.3. 65 Modern Chinese archaeology attests that Heaven was rediscovered by the Zhou people when they conquered the Shang dynasty and replaced the Shang people’s personified, allegedly inhumane, ancestor-​god called Shang-​di by Heaven, impersonal universal moral god. Philosophically speaking, though, it is Mencius who came up with a theory that coherently relates human nature to Heaven. Thus, Julia Ching says, “[W]‌e [should] remember that with Mencius, the term tian or Heaven has come to represent much more of a transcendent moral force, rather than the supreme personal deity that it appeared to have been with Confucius” (Ching, Mysticism and Kingship, p.  99). As discussed in Chapter  1, the distinctive nature of Xunzi’s Confucian political theory can be attributed to the fact that he does not share this Mencian moral conception of Heaven, although this does not make Xunzi’s political theory close to Nietzschean

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sufferings in the Nietzschean system, thus turns into the cosmic and rational hierarchy of moral order.66 In Mencius’s ethical thought, this process of moral transvaluation of nature and the self culminates in his account of human nature as good and his subsequent theory of self-​cultivation, the final goal of which is to attain oneness with Heaven, thus becoming a sage.67 Mencius describes this Confucian rational moral self-​transformation as follows: “For a man to give full realization to his mind or heart is for him to understand his own nature, and a man who knows his own nature will know Heaven. By retaining his mind or heart and nurturing his nature he is serving Heaven.”68 Mencius’s transvaluation of the natural order, however, is not only against tyranny. If that were the case, it would remain a great puzzle why he assails badao with equal vigor and enmity, which is mainly consequentialist and more “rational” (and apparently more ethical) than tyranny, starkly and normatively contrasting it to the Kingly Way.69 Indeed, Mencius’s normative position allows in principle no third way between (sage-​)kingship and tyranny; for him, quoting Confucius, “there are two ways and two only: benevolence (ren) and cruelty (bu ren 不仁).”70 Other than the Kingly Way are various ways to cruelty and insomuch as they do not wholeheartedly subscribe to the Kingly Way, they are all against it or bu ren, leading to cruelty.71 From the standpoint of this rigorous normative dichotomy, badao, to the extent that it does not comply with the Kingly Way, falls under the way of cruelty. At this point, one may raise a question as to whether or not it is adequate to translate bu ren as cruelty because bu ren can mean the simple negation of ren, rather than an active opposition to it, for which expressions such as fan ren 反仁 or fei ren 非仁 might be more suitable. My view, however, is that bu ren as cruelty, which is D. C. Lau’s suggestion, best captures what Mencius, now anti-​moralism either, given his simultaneous rejection of Realpolitik. For a detailed discussion on the nature of Xunzi’s political realism, see Chapter 5. 66 By “rational” I mean “in accordance with moral order,” not in the sense of Western-​style rationalism, old and new. On Mencian rationalism, see Youngsun Back, “Confucian Heaven (天 Tian):  Moral Economy and Contingency,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8:1 (2016), pp. 51–​77. 67 On the moral and cosmic ideal of oneness in the Chinese (especially Confucian) philosophical tradition, see Philip J. Ivanhoe, Oneness:  East Asian Conceptions of Virtue, Happiness, and How We Are All Connected (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 68 Mencius 7A1. 69 Among contemporary Chinese scholars Hui Jixing holds the view that for Mencius the true king and the hegemon are diametrically opposed. See his Xunziyu zhongguowenhua 荀子與中國文化 [Xunzi and Chinese Culture] (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 1996). 70 Mencius 4A2. 71 I return to Mencius’s normative dichotomy between ren and bu ren and/​or between the Kingly Way and badao in Chapter 5, where I fully investigate his theoretical and practical accounts of badao and reveal Xunzi’s distinct position in comparison. Readers should be reminded that in Chapter 1 I engaged in the distinction between ren and bu ren from a different angle, that is, with a view to morality of interest and positive Confucianism in Mencius’s (and Xunzi’s) political theory.

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enlisting the authority of Confucius, intends to convey, especially given the context in which he clearly subscribes to the dualism of ren and bu ren when he says ren yu bu ren er yi 仁與不仁而已. The context is unequivocally political. First, the passage at hand in Mencius 4A2 follows an earlier discussion about the Way of the former kings (xianwang zhi dao 先王之道) in 4A1, beginning with the claim that similar to how “the compasses and the carpenter’s square are the culmination of squares and circles, the sage[-​king] is the culmination of humanity.” Second, Mencius relates the Way established by the sage-​kings to the proper mode of rulership and subjectship, emphasizing that both the ruler and the subject must model themselves after sage-​kings such as Yao and Shun. Then, finally, Mencius claims that “[n]‌ot to serve one’s prince in the way Shun served Yao is not to respect one’s prince; not to govern the people in the way Yao governed his is to harm (zei 賊) one’s people,” leading to the statement quoted here. The interpretation I support is that in Mencius’s political thought any form of government or any mode of rulership that deviates from the Way of the former kings or the Kingly Way is “simply bu ren” (bu ren er yi), which inevitably harms (zei) the people, regardless of whether the actual instantiation of bu ren is the extreme ill-​use (bao 暴) of the people or a lesser degree of ill-​use, the payment for which is still politically expensive, not only for the ruler but also for the people.72 I call this dualism in Mencius’s political theory normative political dualism (i.e., normative dualism in relation to politics). The fact that Mencius makes a practical, but not normative, distinction between two instantiations of ill-​use of the people does not seem to support the view that Mencius acknowledges a lesser degree of ill-​use as a viable political alternative between the Kingly Way and tyranny, because for him all cases of ill-​use of the people, that is, all forms of deviation from the Kingly Way, are simply bu ren or harmful to the people, as clearly evidenced in Confucius’s statement. As will be shown in Chapter 5, Mencius does acknowledge, though implicitly, the practical distinction between different instantiations of ill-​use of the people and this indeed reveals his sense of reality. But, as will be detailed in the same chapter, it is Xunzi who turns this seminal insight into a normative distinction on which to justify badao as a morally acceptable middle way between the Kingly Way and tyranny. In this regard, I think Bryan Van Norden’s translation of bu ren as “nonbenevolence,” though conveying the term’s literal meaning, does not seem to consider the political context of Mencius’s utterance sufficiently.73 In contrast, Bloom, like Lau, pays close attention to Mencius’s political intent when she translates bu ren as “inhumane.”74 72 Readers are reminded that in Mencius 1B8, Mencius calls Jie and Zhòu, notorious tyrants, ones who “mutilate benevolence (zei ren zi 賊仁者).” Here again Mencius clearly associates the term zei 賊 (which Lau translates in 4A2 as “harm”) with tyranny, intending that “harming the people” is the way of bu ren, which goes against ren, not its mere deprivation. 73 Van Norden, Mengzi, p. 90. 74 Mencius, trans. Irene Bloom (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 75. For the critical importance of the context of utterance and its relation to meaning-​formation, see James

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Having sorted out this important philological question in relation to Mencius’s normative political dualism, let us revisit the conversation between Mencius and King Xuan of Qi, which we discussed in Chapter  1. When the king confesses to Mencius that his fondness for money is his greatest weakness, Mencius replies, “In antiquity Gong Liu [the alleged founder of the predynastic Zhou 周 clan] was fond of material goods too … You may be fond of material goods, but so long as you share this fondness with the people, how can it interfere with your becoming a true king?”75 What is important in the present context is that Mencius’s normative dichotomy between ren and bu ren and/​or between the Kingly Way (or sage-​kingship) and the way of cruelty (or tyranny) allows us to construct another parallel dyad of normative contrast –​between Gong Liu as a practitioner of the Kingly Way and King Xuan as a subscriber to the way of cruelty. In Mencius’s normative framework, whether or not King Xuan’s (or King Hui of Liang’s) government is factually analogous to that of Jie or Zhòu is less important. The point to be gleaned here is that Mencius never attempts to draw a vivid line between tyranny and badao, which was driving the governments of the ambitious rulers of his time such as King Xuan and King Hui. In Mencius’s normative view, their practical difference is nearly negligible if they are contrasted to sage-​kingship and the moral perfection it represents. But how does Mencius justify his normative framework? Is it not far-​fetched to directly identify badao as a form of tyranny? Interestingly, another conversation between Mencius and King Xuan of Qi reveals a deeper psychological connection between the two morally problematic ruling types. Upon King Xuan’s confession that he has fondness for valor (as well as for money), Mencius advises him not to be fond of “small valor” by contrasting the king’s valor with that of ancient sage-​king Wu who allegedly brought peace to the people with “one outburst of rage.” Mencius says “To look fierce, putting your hand on your sword and say, ‘How dare he oppose me!’ is to show the valor of a common fellow which is of use only against a single adversary. You should make it something great.”76 Here, the king’s psychotic intolerance of and use of violence against anyone who opposes him, be it his subject or the ruler of a competing state, is defined as “small valor” or “the valor of a common fellow.” Yet, in Mencius’s moral viewpoint, “small valor” is not limited to pursuit of a mere personal vendetta. It includes the king’s political ambition concerned predominantly with his psychological satisfaction such as personal glorification. In this regard, another conversation between Mencius (M) and King Xuan (X) is further revealing: M: Perhaps, you find satisfaction only in starting a war, imperiling your subjects and incurring the enmity of other feudal lords? Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for pressing me with this important interpretative question. 75 Mencius 1B5. 76 Mencius 1B3.

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X: No. Why should I find satisfaction in such acts? I only wish to realize my supreme ambition. M: Is it because your food is not good enough to gratify your palate, and your clothes not good enough to gratify your body? Or perhaps the sights and sounds are not good enough to gratify your eyes and ears and your close servants not good enough to serve you? Any of your various officials surely could make good these deficiencies. It cannot be because of these things. X:  No. It is not because of these things. M: In that case one can guess what your supreme ambition is. You wish to extend your territory, to enjoy the homage of [equally big and powerful states such as] Qin and Chu, to rule over the Central Kingdoms and to bring peace to the barbarian tribes on the four borders. Seeking the fulfillment of such an ambition by such means as you employ is like looking for fish by climbing a tree.77 King Xuan’s key claim is that his most immediate concern is not to exploit the people, thereby satisfying his trivial material and sensual desires; nor, as the argument goes, is it to overcome other kings. In the conversation, King Xuan is repeatedly frustrated by Mencius’s utter lack of understanding that the king, like himself, in his political action, simply forgets the world. What compels the king, implies King Xuan, is something within himself, that is, his profound ambition to preside over all under Heaven.78 Whether his action would harm the people, incur the enmity of other kings, or bring good (utilitarian) results to his people is of secondary importance. The political consequences of his action are merely contingent upon the circumstances. Thus understood, “the unification of the Central Kingdoms,” the greatest concern for all warring kings, is not so much a reasoned political project as a psychological fantasy. In this fantasy, whatever stands in the way of realizing the ruler’s ambition must be removed –​both from within and without. It is this great ambition that Mencius belittles by calling it “small valor.”79 It is then concluded that Mencius’s criticism (and by implication his negative Confucianism) 77 Mencius 1A7. 78 So I disagree with Van Norden, who claims that what the king wants here is “moral esteem,” revealing his innate moral sentiment, which for Mencius works as the ground for his moral self-​cultivation. See Bryan W. Van Norden, “Mengzi and Xunzi: Two Views of Human Agency,” in Virtue, Nature, and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, eds. T. C. Kline III and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), pp. 103–​134, at p. 114. 79 For the Nietzschean conception of greatness, see Ansell-​Pearson, Introduction to Nietzsche, pp. 148–​150. In fact, the theme of greatness is consistently found in Western political theory from classical political philosophy to modern liberalism and the radical absence of this theme marks the distinctive characteristic of Confucian political theory, especially of the Mencian strand. See Robert Faulkner, The Case for Greatness: Honorable Ambition and Its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Sharon R. Krause, Liberalism with Honor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

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is directed toward the ruler’s narcissistic pursuit of fulfilling his inner needs, to which any ruler, derailed from the Sagely-​Line, is highly susceptible. In the end, for Mencius, King Xuan’s small valor can hardly be differentiated from Zhòu’s fanatic narcissism. For him, both tyranny and badao only signify the way of cruelty. Between Sage-​King and Tyrant In the Confucian tradition, sagehood and kingship were originally in congruence –​or so the Confucians believed. It should be recalled that even Confucius strenuously resisted allowing himself the credit of sagehood because in his view sagehood was the sage-​king’s essential ethical quality with his Heaven-​ given mandate to rule.80 It was Mencius who boldly set out to break the congruence between sagehood and kingship and exalted Confucius as a sage by crediting him with the title of “uncrowned king” (su wang 素王). Furthermore, having witnessed that actual kings of his time were far from virtuous, Mencius judiciously attempted to redefine the concept, and, accordingly, the scope of sagehood, by decoupling it from kingship and extending its accessibility to virtually everyone.81 What is often glossed over, however, is that redefining sagehood inevitably requires the redefining of kingship as well. As noted, in Mencius’s moral perspective, kingship, originally sage-​ kingship, had pejoratively deteriorated during the Warring States period into a tool of the vainglorious psychic’s Realpolitik. Put differently, Mencius sees the Nietzschean higher man’s great soul as posing an imminent threat to the people’s welfare and the constitutional order of the Confucian polity. And yet, his political conservatism in relation to kingship, as noted in Chapter 2, does not allow him to actively explore an alternative political arrangement. In order to make sense of Mencius’s complex approach to kingship (that is, his profound respect for it as a Heaven-​ established institution accompanied by his desire to limit it), therefore, it is of crucial importance to examine the ideal picture of kingship that he, following Confucius, holds onto, and to see what vulnerabilities Mencius thinks are present in the ideal kingship. Since we have already extensively discussed the first question in the context of his defense of abdication in Chapter 2, let us only briefly recapitulate Mencius’s take on ideal kingship and pay more attention to the second question. One of the key points of Chapter  2 was that Mencius, in principle, was persuaded by the abdication doctrine implicated in the abdication legend recorded both in the Canon of Yao (Yaodian 堯典) of the Shujing 書經 (The Book of Documents), which must have been available to Mencius, and in The

See The Analects 6.30; 7.34. 81 Ching, Mysticism and Kingship, p. 101. 80

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Analects.82 At the heart of the abdication doctrine are two stipulations: (1) the sole qualification for one to become the Son of Heaven is possession of brilliant moral virtue and (2) the throne must be transmitted from one virtuous person to another equally virtuous person through abdication. The political implication of the abdication doctrine is, as noted by de Bary, the complete absence of a power struggle or political antagonism around the throne,83 which signifies not political power but virtue, as only one truly virtuous person at a time is assumed be the deserving candidate, whose appointment is made, in theory, by Heaven. In this picture, the king is the paragon of moral virtue and is totally insulated from blood-​shedding violence, perhaps except for cases of punitive expedition. Even in such a case, Mencius argues that the sage-​king’s punishment cannot be violent, refuting the Shujing’s description of King Wu’s punitive expedition of Zhòu: “If one believed everything in the Book of History, it would have been better for the Book not to have existed at all. In the Wu Cheng 武成 chapter I accept only two or three strips. A benevolent man has no match in the world. How could it be that ‘the blood spilled was enough to carry staves along with it,’ when the most benevolent waged war against the most cruel?”84 According to Julia Ching, throughout Chinese history the sage-​king paradigm had exerted a persistent impact on Chinese spiritual and political life across philosophical and religious traditions, and Confucianism, Mencian Confucianism in particular, is no exception. If Ching is right, it can be assumed that the sage-​king paradigm decisively shaped Mencius’s moral and political ideal, driving him to struggle with this ideal under drastically altered political circumstances created by the warring states that showed no signs of its realization. In the face of a violence-​ridden political reality but refusing to forfeit his avowed political ideal, the path Mencius opted for was, as we saw in Chapter 2, a “constitutionalist” one –​to focus on the king’s political constraint and moral rectification by means of the ministers’ virtue countervailing his political power. Therefore, in Mencius’s negative Confucianism, the (virtuous) ministers’ ritually sanctioned right to remonstrance as a form of moral education is recast as an expression of their “love for the ruler” with a view to making him a sage-​king.85 But here arise thorny questions. What if the kings preempt the sage-​king paradigm for their political advantage? What if they utilize certain selective,

Although it is doubtful that the final chapter of The Analects, which contains the legendary cases of abdication between Yao and Shun and between Shun and Yu, was available in its extant form in Mencius’s life time, it is quite likely that Confucius’s own subscription to the abdication legend was widely acknowledged by the Warring States Confucians, including Mencius. 83 De Bary, Trouble with Confucianism, p. 2. 84 Mencius 7B3. 85 Mencius 1B4. 82

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though “problematic” in light of Confucian ethics and moral ideals, qualities of the ancient sage-​kings found in the extant “Confucian” canons, particularly their military prowess and cruelty, for their immoral political purposes?86 We have already noted earlier that Shujing, one of the oldest Chinese classics, does hold a striking record of sage-​king Wu’s blood-​shedding battle with the people of Shang in his punitive expedition of Zhòu. Mencius questions the credibility of that particular part of the text by emphasizing the improbability of the involvement of cruelty when “the most benevolent waged war against the most cruel.” But can we not imagine a case where ambitious kings take full advantage of this violent image of a sage-​king to pursue their personal ambitions and promote their private interests? What if a self-​claimed “sage-​king” turns to violence for realizing his political ambition, justifying its use based on his putative sagacity? In this way, sage-​kingship, the ideal moral rulership, can potentially be the source of the problem. In this regard, the conflicting descriptions of sage-​ king Tang across the Confucian classics are worth special attention. First, The Analects presents a scene in which Tang makes an oath to Shang-​di before embarking upon a punitive expedition against Jie, a tyrant: I, Lű [Tang’s name], the little one, dare to offer a black bull and to make this declaration before the great Lord (Shang-​di). I dare not pardon those who have transgressed. I shall present thy servants as they are so that the choice rests with Thee alone. If I transgress, let not the ten thousand states suffer because of me; but if the ten thousand states transgress, the guilt is mine alone.87

Here, in The Analects, Tang is portrayed as the paragon of impeccable moral virtue. However, in the Shujing, Tang presents a strikingly different image. Consider the following passage featuring Tang’s oration stirring the people to attack Jie: Now I  must go punish him. I  pray you, assist me, the One Man [read:  the Son of Heaven], to carry out the punishment appointed by Heaven. I will greatly reward you. On no account disbelieve me; I will not eat my words. If you do not obey the words

Note that classical texts such as the Shujing and the Shijing 詩經 (The Book of Poetry), two of the most important texts in our context, precede Confucius and therefore Confucianism. It is by Confucius and his later followers that these texts, which were widely revered as a bonum commune by many different schools of thought in the pre-​Qin period, were re-​appropriated as “Confucian classics” with extensive editing. As John Henderson puts it, “The Chinese classics, in other words, became classics, were transformed from collections of ancient records on matters related to politics and ritual into a set of canonical texts by a process of excision or expurgation.” See John B. Henderson, Scripture, Canon, and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 27. The remaining problem for Mencius was the practical challenges posed by the still “problematic” components in the extant (i.e., edited) “Confucian” classics to his ideal of kingship and Confucian virtue politics more broadly. 87 The Analects 20.1. 86

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I  have spoken to you I  will put your children to death with you. You will find no forgiveness.88

To be sure, he also promises, by implication, that he will not commit the crimes he was accusing Jie of: “[He] in every way exhausts the strength of his people and exercises oppression in the cities.”89 Nevertheless, Tang’s menace is in shocking contrast to Yao’s politics of inaction (wuwei) and Mencius’s idea of the benevolent ruler’s matchless charisma. For a sage-​king, what is the need for such an enormous action (youwei), especially in the form of military expedition? Why such anxiety over non-​compliance? Above all, why such a severe threat? This difficulty indeed led Gongsun Chou, one of Mencius’s students, to raise a similar question about a different king, King Wen, King Wu’s father and the co-​founder of the Zhou dynasty. Gongsun Chou’s question can be recapitulated as follows: why did King Wen, virtuous as he was, fail to extend his influence over the whole world, leaving the unfulfilled task of punitive expedition to his son? If it is an easy matter for a virtuous man to become a true king and garner the people’s voluntary compliance without the use of coercion all over the world, as Mencius insists, does King Wen’s case not prove that he lacked true virtue or that his virtue was not perfect, making him unworthy of the title of “sage”?90 In response, Mencius draws attention to the traditionalized charisma of the Shang dynasty, whose legitimizing effect was enjoyed even by an outcast like Zhòu.91 But if the charismatic tradition does matter, what is wrong with that of the Xia dynasty established by sage-​king Yu? Why was Tang’s punitive expedition against Jie so easy, to the extent that “when he marched on the east, the western barbarians complained, and when he marched on the south, the northern barbarians complained, all saying, ‘Why does he not come to us first?’ and the people longed for his coming as they longed for a rainbow in time of severe drought?”92 What is the justification for Mencius taking Shujing’s record of Tang at face value, while attempting philosophical reinterpretations on the bloody and prolonged expedition of Wen and Wu? Despite his defense of the legendary sage-​ kings as moral paragons, for Mencius, the sage-​kings’ violence, cruelty and, more fundamentally, moral imperfections remain unresolved problems. Not only do various historical accounts of the ancient sage-​kings contradict the paradigmatic image of James Legge (trans.), Shu Ching:  Book of History, ed. Clae Waltham (Chicago, IL:  Henry Regnery Company, 1971), p. 68. 89 Chang, Shang Civilization, p. 200. 90 Mencius 2A1. 91 However, Mencius does so without explicitly acknowledging that moral charisma, essentially an individual characteristic, can be routinized and eventually transformed into tradition. I discussed this issue in Chapter 2 (n35). 92 Mencius 1B11. 88

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the ideal sage-​king who governs the people without the use of coercion for their compliance, not to mention the use of violence, but they are further at extreme odds with Mencius’s own understanding of the Confucian sage who “transforms where he passes, and works wonders where he abides. He is in the same stream as Heaven above and Earth below.”93 Wrestling with the sage-​kings’ violence and cruelty, Mencius seems to have come to the conclusion that even sage-​kings are not completely free from narcissism and violence, the defining characteristics of the Nietzschean higher man. Moreover, as will be discussed in Chapter 6, during Mencius’s time the rhetoric of sage-​kingship and abdication by virtue, predicated on the theory of the Mandate of Heaven, turned out to be highly susceptible to the ambitious ruler’s political manipulation.94 Mencius himself observed how the image of the sage-​king could be selectively taken for the rulers’ political advantages and for the realization of their dangerous narcissistic fantasies.95 When it became clear that sage-​kingship was not completely insulated from the temptation of Realpolitik and its rhetoric was always exposed to political manipulation, Mencius’s prescription was to turn to negative Confucianism. Inventing Confucian Political Liberty: Toward Negative Confucianism Once realizing the politico-​psychological problems attached to kingship and their real threats to the people’s well-​being and the Confucian constitutional order in general, Mencius finally redirects his political theoretical focus to contriving an antithetical power to the Realpolitik that is latent in the very institution of kingship, now decoupled from sagehood with the firm establishment of hereditary succession, yet without giving up the ideal of sage-​king. Practically, his eminent concern was to limit monarchical power without rejecting its symbolic authority and to do so in a way consistent with his ideal of Confucian virtue politics. In order to do so, Mencius takes advantage of the de facto severance of sagehood and kingship to positively reformulate the Confucian theory of

93 Mencius 7A13. Mencius does not even believe that the sages would get their “hands dirty” when making tough political decisions. See Sungmoon Kim, “Achieving the Way: Confucian Virtue Politics and the Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy East and West 66:1 (2016), pp. 152–​176. 94 For the later historical cases of manipulation of the theory of the Mandate of Heaven by the rulers drawn to Realpolitik, see Tze-​Ki Hon, “Military Governance versus Civil Governance: A Comparison of the Old History and the New History of the Five Dynasties,” in Imagining Boundaries:  Changing Confucian Doctrines, Texts, and Hermeneutics, eds. Kai-​wing Chow, On-​cho Ng, and John B. Henderson (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999), pp. 85–​105. 95 See Arthur Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1939), pp. 137–​143 for the manipulation of the sage-​king paradigm, the abdication doctrine in particular, by rulers of Qi and Chu in their endeavors to conquer and divide Song, a small state, between them. I return to this case in Chapter 6 (n55).

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sagehood. That is, by positing that every human being possesses the sprouts of the cardinal moral virtues such as ren, yi, li, and zhi as Heaven-​endowed human qualities,96 he opens the door of sagehood to everyone. Otherwise stated, Mencius redefines (or popularizes) what used to be the source of the sage-​ king’s (or the higher man’s) exclusive inner psychological power or charisma –​ in this case “moral charisma” –​into a universal moral quality available to all.97 We have already seen that Mencius transvaluated the Nietzschean higher man into a moral outcast, or, in the case of political leader, a tyrant. Now he brings this transvaluating project into completion by allowing everyone the possibility of becoming a sage. According to Mencius, anyone, as the possessor of Heaven-​endowed good human nature, is entitled to say, “What sort of a man was Shun? And what sort of a man am I? Anyone who can make anything of himself will be like [Shun].”98 One’s moral perfectibility, argues Mencius, essentially hangs on his effort at moral self-​cultivation. The “great man,” which, as noted earlier, de Bary presents as the Mencian-​Confucian ideal of the moral hero, is what one becomes after rigorous moral development. For Mencius, the great man is one who “lives in the spacious dwelling, occupies the proper position, and goes along the highway of the Empire. When he achieves his ambition he shares these with the people; when he fails to do so he practices the Way alone. He cannot be led into excesses when wealthy and honored or deflected from his purpose when poor and obscure, nor can he be made to bow before superior force.”99 Seen in this way, the Mandate of Heaven is no longer the king’s exclusive moral entitlement. The idea of power held in public trust is still there, insomuch as the kingship exists as a political institution and the king’s symbolic authority is revered, but Heaven’s decree is hereafter redeemed as an individual mission and personal commitment to the service of the people’s material and moral well-​being.100 Between two kinds of honor, one bestowed by Heaven and the other by man,101 the great man relentlessly pursues the former instead of the mundane satisfaction bestowed by man, presumably the ruler. De Bary captures this special sense of this-​worldly transcendental mission in terms of the Confucian prophetic voice and attributes it to, among others, Confucius and Mencius.102 Mencius presents Yi Yin, who later became King Tang’s prime minister, as one of the best examples of the great man. Though I already quoted the following passage in Chapter  2, let me revisit it here in order to clearly 96 Mencius 2A6; 6A6; 7A21. 97 For a theoretical discussion of the psychological connection between man’s inner psyche and charisma, see Donald McIntosh, “Weber and Freud: On the Nature and Sources of Authority,” American Sociological Review 35:5 (1970), pp. 901–​911. 98 Mencius 3A1. 99 Mencius 3B2. 100 De Bary, Trouble with Confucianism, p. 4. 101 Mencius 4A6. 102 De Bary, Trouble with Confucianism, pp. 9–​17.

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understand how Mencius develops negative Confucianism from his idealization of Yi Yin: Yi Yin worked in the fields in the outskirts of You Xin, and delighted in the Way of Yao and Shun … When Tang sent a messenger with presents to invite him to court, he calmly said, “What do I want Tang’s presents for? I much prefer working in the fields, delighting in the way of Yao and Shun.” Only after Tang sent a messenger for the third time did he change his mind and say, “Is it not better for me to make this prince a Yao or Shun than to remain in the fields, delighting in the way of Yao and Shun? … Heaven, in producing the people, has given to those who first attain understanding the duty of awakening those who are slow to understand; and to those who are the first to awaken the duty of awakening those who are slow to awaken. I am among the first of Heaven’s people to awaken. I shall awaken this people by means of this Way. If I do not awaken them, who will do so?”103

This story powerfully conveys Mencius’s thesis of “moral aristocracy of everyone”104 as it highlights Yi Yin’s remarkable moral ascension from farmer to sage. That said, the story has far-​reaching political implications:  with the popularization of sagehood, not only can a man achieve moral perfection culminating in sagehood, but he can also be politically empowered.105 The case of Yi Yin clearly demonstrates Mencius’s political conviction that a morally enlightened man, regardless of his social origin, is politically capable and well-​ prepared for public office, even able to become a prime minister. What is more, Mencius implies that the actual government must be entrusted to a man of moral excellence (like Yi Yin or Mencius himself) even when under the rule of a sage-​king, given the ever-​existing temptation of Realpolitik lurking in the very institution of kingship. The best government, in Mencius’ view, is one that “honor[s]‌the good and wise and employ[s] the able so that outstanding men are in high position” for only then “other men of virtue throughout the world will be only too pleased to serve at [the king’s] court.”106 As such, in Mencius’s fully developed political theory of Confucian virtue politics, charismatic moral virtue is deeply connected to political empowerment. Thus interpreted, in Mencius’s political theory, virtuous Confucians who entertain their own special moral blessing and political mandate by Heaven (i.e., responsibility for the people’s material and moral well-​being) cannot be regarded merely as the ruler’s docile subjects. Though originally powerless, their charismatic moral virtue is transformed, when in government, into a powerful

Mencius 5A7. 104 This expression is indebted to the title of Benjamin R. Barber’s book, An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 105 For a more detailed discussion on this point, see Sungmoon Kim, Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (New  York:  Cambridge University Press, 2016), chap. 6. 106 Mencius 2A5. 103

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political weapon, into a political claim to political liberty as the ritually sanctioned right to constrain the ruler. Mencius illuminates the moral foundation of Confucian political liberty by enlisting the authority of ancient sages, [T]‌he sages of antiquity delighted in the Way, forgetting the exalted position of others. That is why kings and dukes could not get to see them often except by showing them due respect and observing due courtesy. If just to see them often was so difficult, how much more so to induce them to take office?107

Quite surprisingly, according to Mencius, it is on the ruler’s demand (or request) that a sage (or a virtuous Confucian scholar) takes office. Though the conventional political hierarchy between the ruler and the subject remains intact, their moral hierarchy has critically turned upside-​down when the minister positions are taken by virtuous Confucian scholars:  the virtuous minister is elevated above the king in this moral hierarchy, thereby creating an important moral space in which he can freely, that is, without fear, engage in political criticism. I interpret such a moral space as a space of public freedom and the minister’s ritually sanctioned right to political criticism as political liberty.108 In a different place in the Mengzi, Mencius offers a more revealing case to show how the Confucian’s moral charisma turns into political power in the political context. When asked why he is not eager to meet the kings, Mencius explains the reason by alluding to the conversation that allegedly took place between Zi Si, Confucius’s grandson (one who Mencius believes had succeeded the Way after Confucius), and Duke Mu of Lu: Duke Mu frequently went to see Zi Si. “How did kings of states with a thousand chariots in antiquity make friends with virtuous Confucian scholars?” he asked. Zi Si was displeased. “What the ancients talked about,” said he, “was serving them, not making friends with them.” The reason for Zi Si’s displeasure was surely this. “In point of position, you are the prince and I am your subject. How dare I be friends with you? In point of virtue, it is you who ought to serve me. How can you presume to be friends with me?”109

In this way, Mencius crystallizes –​or in a Freudian terminology sublimates –​ what initially began as moral anger toward Realpolitik into a moral claim to political liberty, which, like moral virtue, is available to everyone capable of Mencius 7A8. 108 Thus conceived, the Mencian notion of political liberty is meaningfully differentiated both from the traditional republican ideal of political liberty, the essence of which lies in freedom as nondomination, and from the liberal idea of public freedom, which is concerned mainly with rule of law and the right to political participation. For the republican ideal, see Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Maurizio Viroli, Republicanism (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002) and for the liberal account of political liberty, see Richard Dagger, Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1997); James E. Fleming and Linda C. McClain, Ordered Liberty: Rights, Responsibilities, and Virtues (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 109 Mencius 5B7. 107

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moral self-​cultivation in the same way in which his account of political meritocracy enables everyone who is morally cultivated (in varying degrees) to take a public office, as high up as the position of prime minister. Famously, in The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche characterizes the priest caste’s transvaluation of the warrior caste’s master morality in terms of “an act of spiritual vengeance,” although with reference to the Jew: “with frightening consistency, [they] dared to invert the aristocratic value equations good/​noble/​ powerful/​beautiful/​happy/​favored-​of-​the-​gods and maintain, with the furious hatred of the underprivileged and impotent, that only the poor, the powerless, are good; only the suffering, sick, and ugly, truly blessed.”110 Aside from salient differences between Confucianism and Christianity as religious or philosophical doctrines, given there is no institutional equivalent to the Church in the Confucian moral-​political tradition, the Confucian scholar-​minister can hardly be identified in terms of priesthood –​hence de Bary’s “prophet” analogy. Yet, Nietzsche’s profound insight into the transvaluation between the two castes bears greatly on the transvaluation between the kings of political power and the Confucian scholar-​ministers of moral charisma or between the Realpolitik of kingship derailed from the Sagely-​Line and negative Confucianism. Conclusion Tu Wei-​ming once argued that the Confucian intellectual’s practical reasoning “urged him to confront the world of Realpolitik and to transform it from within.”111 In this chapter, I have attempted to show that there is something more than “practical reasoning” in the Confucian intellectual, especially in Mencius as he confronts Realpolitik, culminating in his invention of Confucian political liberty and negative Confucianism more generally. From the perspective of Western modern constitutionalism, Mencius’s negative Confucianism might appear to lack the robust institutional mechanism to constrain or enable the ruler, in a politically effective way. Even from the standpoint of Xunzi’s more sophisticated vision of Confucian constitutionalism, predicated on ritual institutions, Mencius’s negative Confucianism would be deemed to depend too much for its constitutional viability on the political power of the minister’s moral virtue, on the assumption that ministers are all selected based on their virtue (unlike the king, whose selection is based on hereditary right).112 In fact, one of my core arguments in Chapter 2 was that it was precisely because of the critical institutional deficit in Mencius’s political theory of Confucian virtue politics that Xunzi, in his endeavor to defend the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics against other competing schools of Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Francis Golffing (New  York:  Anchor Books, 1956), p. 167. 111 Tu, Way, Learning, and Politics, p. 10. 112 Most notably, see Mencius 6B13. 110

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thought during the late Warring States period, was led to grapple with developing a more institutionally formidable form of Confucian constitutionalism. My point, however, is not to claim that Mencius’s negative Confucianism is a fully developed constitutional theory, even within the Confucian political tradition. Later Korean and Chinese Confucians such as Chŏng Tojŏn 鄭道傳 (1342–​ 1398) and Huang Zhongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–​1695), who were also avid followers of Mencius, indeed developed much more sophisticated Confucian constitutional theories, equipped with detailed accounts of philosophical justifications for and institutional mechanisms of constraining the ruler,113 although some modern Western scholars cast skepticism on the constitutionalist character of their (and other later Confucians’) more advanced Confucian political theories.114 Nor is it my argument that Mencius advanced a philosophically refined conception of political liberty, which in itself can be embraced by modern East Asians as an alternative to various Western conceptions of political liberty. What is important here is that Mencius was the first Confucian theorist who paid close attention to the political danger internal to (the Warring States conception of) kingship, decoupled from the Sagely-​Line, as well as to the problem of the sage-​king’s violence and the vulnerability of the very Confucian ideal of sage-​kingship (especially the abdication doctrine) to the ambitious ruler’s political manipulations, driving him to find a way to limit the ruler within the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics. And, as we have seen, his solution was to fully utilize Confucian virtue ethics, instead of going beyond it in search of “rule of law,” for moral and political empowerment of the Confucian scholar-​ministers in order to constrain the ruler’s arbitrary use of power and, ultimately, enhance the people’s material and moral well-​being. Put differently, we can acknowledge and appreciate the important contribution of Mencius’s political theory to Confucian constitutionalism only against the backdrop of Confucius’s original political thought, which does not fully address Confucianism’s constitutional potential. And by acknowledging Mencius’s originality in the Confucian political tradition, we can make proper sense of Xunzi’s profound intellectual debt to Mencius (despite many disagreements with him) as much as his remarkable philosophical innovations, still within the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics. 113 For Chŏng Tojŏn’s and Huang Zhongxi’s Confucian constitutionalism, see Chai-​ sik Chung, “Chŏng Tojŏn:  ‘Architect’ of Yi Dynasty Government and Ideology,” in The Rise of Neo-​ Confucianism in Korea, eds. Wm. Theodore de Bary and JaHyun K. Haboush (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 59–​ 88 and Wm. Theodore de Bary, “Introduction,” in Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince –​Huang Tsung-​Hsi’s Ming-​i tai-​fang lu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 1–​85, respectively. 114 For strong skepticism, see Hwa Yol Jung, “On Confucian Constitutionalism in Korea:  A Metacommentary,” in Confucianism, Law, and Democracy in Contemporary Korea, ed. Sungmoon Kim (London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2015), pp. 191–​207. For mild and sympathetic skepticism, see Tom Ginsburg, “Constitutionalism: East Asian Antecedents,” Chicago-​Kent Law Review 88 (2012), pp. 11–​33.

5 Hegemonic Rule: Between Good and Evil

In the Confucian political tradition, badao (the Way of the hegemon) is commonly identified as the mode of statecraft that is squarely opposed to the Kingly Way, the ideal statecraft that relies on virtue and ritual, allegedly practiced by the ancient sage-​kings.1 Both Mencius and Xunzi understand badao as intimately associated with Realpolitik, though the most enthusiastic practitioners of badao during the Warring States period frequently rationalized it as motivated by ren or care for the people. Mencius offers perhaps the most authoritative definition of badao as “statecraft relying on force” when he says, “One who uses force (li 力) while borrowing from ren will become ‘leader of the feudal lords’ (ba) … [whereas] one who puts ren into effect through the transforming influence of moral virtue will become a true king.”2 However, this definition of badao is hardly exhaustive as it is solely focused on the means it employs. Fortunately, as we have seen in Chapter 1, Mencius clarifies, albeit indirectly, the end of badao in his famous conversation with King Hui of Liang, where he puts morality (ren and yi), the end of the Kingly Way, in stark opposition to the desire for profit (li*).3 Taken together, the most comprehensive The most casually adopted English translation of badao is “hegemonic rule.” I do not think this is an infelicitous translation, as during the Warring States period the bazhe 覇者 (the hegemonic ruler) referred to the hegemonic force in the interstate world. Nevertheless, and in part to be consistent with other chapters, I employ the original Chinese term badao to illuminate its statecraft dimension. 2 Mencius 2A3. 3 Mencius 1A1. As we saw in Chapter  2, however, a close reading of the Mengzi reveals that Mencius does not subscribe to a stark dichotomy between morality and material interest, despite his dualistic political rhetoric, which brings us to the reasonable conclusion that he also would not uphold a stark opposition between badao and the Kingly Way insomuch as his practical political thinking is concerned. What is interesting about Mencius is that he nonetheless presents himself as a normative political dualist, pitting the Kingly Way against all forms of government deviating from it, including badao. As shown in Chapter 4, there is (or at least seems to be) a deeper reason that Mencius is drawn to normative dualism in relation to politics, which 1

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definition of badao can be a mode of statecraft that relies on the use of force in order to maximize the state’s wealth and power.4 However, once the concept of badao was reconceptualized by Mencius as opposition to the Kingly Way, it was rarely given further serious philosophical scrutiny with regard to how it is conceptually and practically distinct from tyranny (or, as Xunzi calls it, “the way to ruin the state”) and exactly how it is opposed to the Kingly Way. In traditional Chinese political settings, what was more important than the concept of badao was the rhetorical use of it in vilifying those who attempted institutional reforms that seemed to drift from the Kingly Way, mostly due to its utilitarian goals such as wealth and military strength of the state.5 Since the time of Mencius, badao tended to be perceived negatively, that is, as the essential characteristic of Realpolitik, or, sometimes, of Legalism rather than of Confucianism. The tendency to view it as anti-​Confucian further intensified during the Song and Ming periods, as Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​Confucianism, which was strongly influenced by Mencian Confucianism, established itself as the ideological orthodoxy.6 Under this Mencian orthodoxy, badao was rarely given serious Xunzi does not seem to share, leading the latter to overcome the tension between normative dualism and sense of reality in Mencius’s political theory. Whereas in Chapter 4 I investigated the psychological origin of Mencius’s normative political dualism (and negative Confucianism), this chapter illuminates his practical political thinking, on which Xunzi’s more elaborate and coherent Confucian political theory is built. 4 In the Mengzi, Mencius never uses the term badao. However, it is indisputable that when Mencius contrasts ba and wang, it is precisely ba as a particular mode of statecraft (i.e., badao) that concerns him. 5 For example, Wang An-​shi, the famous reformer of Northern Song, was vehemently criticized by Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​Confucians as a “treacherous subject” whose utilitarian policies, in their judgment, only precipitated the fall of the Northern Song dynasty. Due to his utilitarian concerns, Wang was often called a “badaoist.” For Wang’s reform and its Neo-​Confucian critiques, see James T. Liu, Reform in Sung China: Wang An-​shih (1021–​1086) and His New Policies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959); Peter K. Bol, This Culture of Ours: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 212–​253. 6 See Hoyt C. Tillman, Utilitarian Confucianism: Ch’en Liang’s Challenge to Chu Hsi (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). Seung-​Hwan Lee understands the debate during the Song dynasty between Chen Liang, an advocate of badao, and Zhu Xi, an unwavering champion of the Kingly Way, in terms of the conflict between consequentialism and moral motivism in the Confucian tradition and traces the origin of this conflict back to Mencius and Xunzi, attributing to the former moral motivism and to the latter consequentialism. See Seung-​Hwan Lee, “Chujawa chinnyangŭi wangp’aenonjaeng” [The Wang-​Ba Debate between Zhu Xi and Chen Liang], in Yugasasangŭi sahoech’ŏrakchŏk chaejomyŏng [A Social Philosophical Reexamination of Confucian Thought] (Seoul:  Korea University Press, 1998), pp. 286–​321. As will be clear later, I  do not agree with Lee’s understanding of Mencius and Xunzi as it fails to appreciate the former’s practical political thinking while dismissing the latter’s absolute commitment to the Confucian Way. Nevertheless, I  agree with Lee’s observation that many Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​ Confucians including Zhu Xi himself held a moralistic attitude toward badao, regarding it as starkly opposed to the Kingly Way, and this tendency in part results from Mencius’s normative political dualism, which frequently shadows the practical aspect of his political thought.

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philosophical investigation, whether it has a morally acceptable normative standard of its own or whether it is at all practically conducive to actualizing the Kingly Way. Even today, the moral and political importance of badao is largely neglected, and therefore its practical meaning and value, particularly in the Confucian context, remains obscure.7 Does this mean that there is no “Confucian” value in the idea and practice of badao? Interestingly, Xunzi believed there is an important Confucian value in badao. But does that matter, given Xunzi’s reputation as Mencius’s archrival in the Confucian tradition? Since, one may argue, Xunzi, contrary to Mencius, held a pessimistic view of human nature, flatly rejected the abdication doctrine,8 and most importantly, was the teacher to several key founders of Legalism such as Li Si and Han Fei, isn’t it to be naturally expected that he as a harbinger of Legalism would find a certain political value in badao? What is interesting about Xunzi is that while he, like Mencius, was uncompromisingly committed to the Kingly Way (and the morality of ren and yi), he, unlike Mencius, believed that the operating principle of badao was pivoted around xin (trust or trustworthiness), one of the core moral virtues that Confucius identified as essential to both good character9 and good government.10 Moreover, as I shall argue, Xunzi believed that although badao is not necessarily directed toward moral edification of the people through Confucian rituals, which is the supreme goal of the Kingly Way, it can provide a critical moral-​political bulwark against the anarchic (pre-​li) state of nature and help achieve a certain feature of the Kingly Way. While disagreeing with the means (force or other non-​ritualistic measures such as reward and punishment) that badao occasionally relies on, Xunzi was able to appreciate the Confucian moral-​political effect it generally produces. In short, rather than seeing badao as starkly opposed to the Kingly Way, Xunzi understood it as falling short of, yet approximating, the Kingly Way. My primary aim in this chapter is to investigate Xunzi’s political theory of badao. I begin with Mencius, though, who, as investigated in Chapter 4, considered badao to be the antithesis of the Kingly Way in principle, but nevertheless recognized its practical value under non-​ideal political circumstances. 7 A few important exceptions include Wei Zhentong, Xunziyu gudaizhexue 荀子與古代哲 學 [Xunzi and Ancient Philosophy] (Taibei:  Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1992); Hyŏn-​kŭn Chang, Sunja:  Yeŭiro sesangŭl parojamnŭnda [Xunzi:  To Correct the World by Ritual and Yi] (Seoul:  Hangilsa, 2015), chap.  6; Eirik L. Harris, “Xunzi’s Political Philosophy,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, ed. Eric L. Hutton (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 95–​ 138; Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 51–​61. 8 See Chapter 2. 9 The Analects 7.25; 12.10; 15.6; 15.18. 10 Most notably, while mentioning sufficient food, sufficient arms (for defense) and people’s trust in the government (or the ruler) as the three essential components of good government, Confucius singles out people’s trust as the most critical element (The Analects 12.7).

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I argue that Xunzi’s practical philosophy of badao was developed, consciously I believe, in the course of resolving the tension between theory (i.e., normative political dualism) and practice (i.e., tacit acknowledgement of practical utility) latent in Mencius’s account of badao, thereby enriching the scope of Confucian political philosophy. My central claim is that contrary to Mencius, who left the aforementioned tension unresolved and therefore offered no deep political philosophical reflection on badao, Xunzi creatively re-​appropriated badao as a “morally decent” statecraft, within the overall parameter of Confucian virtue politics. After examining Xunzi’s political philosophical articulation of the moral and political value of badao in both domestic and interstate governance during the Warring States period, I conclude by arguing that Xunzi’s defense of badao should be understood in the context of what I call positive Confucianism in Chapter 1, which speaks for the enabling and more politically prudential aspect of Confucian virtue politics than negative Confucianism, which is concentrated on the moral-​political critique and constraint of the ruler’s private interest and political power. Mencius on Badao: Between Theory and Practice As discussed in Chapters 1 and especially 4, one of the distinctive features of Mencius’s political theory is his stark contrast between what is the Kingly Way and what is not.11 As we examined in Chapter 4 with special focus on Mencius 4A2, for Mencius the Kingly Way established by the ancient sage-​kings such as Yao and Shun represents the immutable moral standard, which must be followed faithfully by all social classes, especially by the ruler who possesses the power to go against it, a point with which Xunzi fully agrees.12 In Mencius, the observation that the Kingly Way is starkly opposed to anything that deviates from it establishes a normative stance, which stipulates that, in principle, any mode of government that falls into the category of the latter is bu ren and the Way of bu ren is worthless, whatever limited practical good it may produce. Implicit in Mencius’s normative political dualism is the conviction that a bu ren government will not only fail to make the people virtuous, the long-​term goal of good government, but will inevitably harm them. Put differently, in

It is worth reemphasizing that this logical/​theoretical contrast between the Kingly Way and whatever deviates from the Kingly Way does not mean that they are polar opposites in practice. My point is that despite tacit acknowledgment of the practical utility of badao, Mencius never attempted to integrate this acknowledgment into his normative political theory. As I argue in this chapter, it is Xunzi who resolved the tension between normative political dualism and political reality in Mencius’s political theory by giving up the former and deriving a new normative standard from the latter with a view to badao. 12 Xunzi 8.3; 19.2d; 20.2; 21.9; 23.1b; 23.2a; 24.5; 30.1. 11

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Mencius’s view, whatever is deviant from the Kingly Way proactively militates against it –​hence only two ways and nothing in between.13 Throughout the Mengzi, Mencius’s description of the Way of bu ren is quite grotesque, when he criticizes the governments of King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi, two most ardent followers of badao in Mencius’s time. No statement could be harsher than the following offered by Mencius with regard to badao. Confucius rejected those who enriched rulers not given to the practice of benevolent government. How much more would he reject those who do their best to wage war on their behalf? In wars to gain land, the dead fill the plains; in wars to gain cities, the dead fill the cities. This is known as showing the land the way to devour human flesh. Death is too light a punishment for such men. Hence those skilled in war should suffer the most severe punishment; those who secure alliances with other feudal lords come next, and then come those who open up waste lands and increase the yield of the soil.14

Here Mencius does not present the content explicitly in terms of badao, but only as a rulership “not given to the practice of benevolent government.” That said, even though the passage’s eminent focus is on the immorality of (aggressive) war, Mencius’s real concern seems to be not so much the condemnation of war as such but the bad consequences that the Way of bu ren ineluctably brings to the people, including unjust wars.15 Since badao is surely not given to the practice of benevolent government, and given Mencius’s stark normative dichotomy between ren and bu ren, it would not be far-​fetched to read Mencius’s statement above as a critique of badao. In fact, history attests that the gist of the government exercised by the five hegemons during the Spring and Autumn period –​most famously by Duke Huan of Qi16 –​can be summed up as “securing alliances with other feudal lords” and “opening up waste lands and increasing the yield of the soil.”17 13 More precisely, if the extreme ill-​use of the people represents the way of cruelty, a lesser ill-​use of the people points to the way toward cruelty. In Mencius’s normative political dualism, however, this otherwise significant practical distinction is given no philosophical attention. See Chapter 4. 14 Mencius 4A14. Though by “benevolent government” Mencius means to be in practice a good government that serves the people’s moral and material well-​being, it can be formally defined as a mode of government that follows the Kingly Way. 15 I discuss Mencius’s idea of just and unjust wars in Chapter 6. In the present context, it seems to suffice to say that Mencius thought that only defensive wars and punitive expeditions are morally justified, or, in his own words, righteous (yi). 16 The other four, according to Xunzi, include Duke Wen of Jin, King Zhuang of Chu, King Helű of Wu, and King Goujian of Yue (Xunzi 11.1c). 17 See Sydney Rosen, “In Search of the Historical Kuan Chung,” Journal of Asian Studies 35:3 (1976), pp. 431–​440. It is worth noting that Mencius 4A14 begins with Mencius’s explanation of why Confucius criticized Ranqiu, his own student, who assisted the bu ren rule by the family of Ji who usurped the political power of the state of Lu, Confucius’s home country, and relentlessly pursued the footsteps of the previous practitioners of badao.

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What is important here is that Mencius condemns the practice of badao as inherently predisposed to be cruel, regarding it as no better than, almost equivalent to, tyranny. As we have seen in Mencius 4A2, a ruler practicing badao not only creates hardship for his people, but he himself is always in danger and is doomed to have his state reduced. Mencius is persuaded that even a man hailed by the world as the greatest statesman should be the object of moral contempt if that state is not in accordance with the Kingly Way. The following conversation between Mencius (M) and Gongsun Chou (G) about Guan Zhong, the legendary prime minister of Qi who allegedly helped Duke Huan to become the first and arguably the most powerful hegemon,18 best illustrates Mencius’s attitude toward badao. G: If you, Master, were to hold the reins of government of Qi, could a repetition of the success of Guan Zhong and Yanzi [the legendary Prime Minister of Lu] be predicted? M: You are very much a native of Qi. You know only of Guan Zhong and Yanzi. Someone once asked Zengxi … “How do you compare with Guan Zhong?” Zengxi looked offended. “Why do you compare me with such a man as Guan Zhong? … Guan Zhong enjoyed the confidence of his prince so exclusively and managed all his affairs for so long, and yet his achievements were so insignificant. Why do you compare me with such a man?” If it was beneath even Zengxi to become a Guan Zhong, are you saying that I would be willing? G: Guan Zhong made his prince leader of the feudal lords, and Yanzi made his illustrious. Are they not good enough for you to emulate? M: To make the King of Qi a true king is as easy as turning over one’s hand … Even at the height of their power, the Xia, Yin [Shang] and Zhou never exceeded a thousand li square in territory, yet Qi has the requisite territory. The sound of cocks crowing and dogs barking can be heard all the way to the four borders. Thus Qi has the requisite population. For Qi no further extension of its territory or increase of its population is necessary. The King of Qi can become a true king just by practicing benevolent government, and no one will be able to stop him … [A]‌nd the people have never suffered more under tyrannical government (nue zheng 虐政) than today. It is easy to provide food for the hungry and drink for the thirsty.19

Ancient records (such as Zuo Zhuan 左傳 and Guoyu 國語) have different accounts about when and precisely how Guan Zhong assisted Duke Huan of Qi. On this, see Rosen, “In Search of the Historical Kuan Chung.” What is important in the present context, though, is not so much the historical Guan Zhong but rather a unique normative personality reconstructed by Mencius and Xunzi for their philosophical purposes. 19 Mencius 2A1. While Bloom, like Lau, translates nue zheng as “tyrannical government” (Mencius, trans. Irene Bloom [New York: Columbia University Press, 2009]), Van Norden translates it as “ferocious government,” highlighting the government’s extreme ill-​use of the people (Mengzi, trans. Bryan W. Van Norden [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2008]). 18

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It appears that Gongsun Chou thinks highly of Guan Zhong for his great political achievement, leading him to compare Guan Zhong with his own teacher. Mencius’s attitude toward Guan Zhong is clearly negative, even contemptuous, when he, obviously placing himself above Zengxi, the younger son of Zengshen (better known as Zengzi, one of Confucius’s most beloved students), dismisses the comparison, citing the anecdote that features Zengxi taking offense from a similar comparison. The conversation itself does not clearly tell us on what basis Mencius finds Guan Zhong unworthy of comparison, except that he deems Guan Zhong’s achievements insignificant. But given Mencius’s normative political dichotomy between the Kingly Way and badao, it is not difficult to infer from his (indirect) remark on Guan Zhong’s “insignificant achievement” that, in his view, whatever one could have “achieved” by means of badao, which is nothing more than the Way of bu ren (say, extension of territory and increase in population) is not a real achievement, as it does not concern the people’s moral and, arguably, material well-​being and thereby stands in the way of realizing a benevolent government. Not surprisingly, Mencius then quickly turns to what he deems to be a tyrannical government under the incumbent ruler (King Xuan) of Qi and starts to discuss how easily the situation could be changed, were the king to practice benevolent government. On a different occasion where King Xuan of Qi himself asks Mencius about the hegemons such as Duke Huan of Qi and Duke Wen of Jin, he likewise dismisses the question and initiates his lengthy lecture on the Kingly Way.20 The conversation quoted above is revealing from a different angle as well. Though Mencius describes King Xuan’s government as a “tyrannical government,” it is quite doubtful that King Xuan was as brutal a tyrant as Jie or Zhòu, the two most notorious tyrants in Chinese history. As discussed in detail in Chapter 4, the king confessed to Mencius that he never found satisfaction in starting a war, imperiling his subjects, or incurring the enmity of other feudal lords; nor was it his ultimate objective to eat delicious foods or wear beautiful clothes. Rather, his supreme ambition was “to extend [his] territory, to enjoy the homage of Jin and Chu, to rule over the Middle Kingdom and to bring peace to the barbarian tribes on the four borders.”21 In other words, he Mencius 1A7. Based on Mencius 2A1 and 5A9, El Amine claims that “Mencius is more ambivalent about Guan Zhong than is generally recognized” (Classical Confucian Political Thought, p.  55). Her textual evidence is that in such passages, Guan Zhong is described by Mencius as an accomplished statesman along with other worthy statesmen including Shun, Jiao Ge, and Boli Xi. However, in 2A1 Guan Zhong is not listed “along with” the statesmen Mencius speaks highly of. It is only after Gongsun Chou asks him about the sagely governments under Kings Wen and Wu and Duke of Zhou that Mencius begins to talk about “the [ancient] worthy men” (xianren 賢人) such as Shun, Jiao Ge, and several others, and in mentioning them in this subsequent conversation, he clearly highlights how remote Guan Zhong is from these ancient worthies. All the more puzzling, Guan Zhong is not even mentioned in 5A9, which is wholly devoted to the illumination of Boli Xi’s moral character. 21 Mencius 1A7. 20

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seems to have desired only to emulate Duke Huan, his ancestor, and realize once again the splendor of a hegemon. What is important is that King Xuan’s moral potential22 and his non-​tyrannical political motives notwithstanding, Mencius calls his government “tyrannical,” thereby denying any qualitative moral difference between him and the ancient tyrants.23 Thus far, I have shown that Mencius deliberately equated badao with tyranny by holding a sharp normative distinction between ren and bu ren and, by implication, between the Kingly Way and anything that deviates from it. In actuality, however, Mencius’s understanding of badao is far more complicated than what this theoretical and rhetorical account conveys. Despite his disparagement of it from a normative viewpoint, in several other places in the Mengzi, not only does Mencius distinguish badao from tyranny in terms of political consequences, but he also recognizes, albeit tacitly, its (limited) practical utility. In the remainder of this section, I probe into Mencius’s positive evaluation of badao, which is in deep tension with his normative political dualism, and discuss how it surprisingly anticipates Xunzi’s renewed Confucian political theory of badao. On one occasion Mencius says: “The people under a leader (ba) of the feudal lords are happy (huan yu ru 驩虞如); those under a true king are expansive and content (hao hao ru 皞皞如). They bear no ill-​will when put to death, neither do they feel any gratitude when profited. They move daily towards goodness without realizing who it is that brings this about.”24 The primary purpose of this passage is undoubtedly to extol the brilliant power of the Kingly Way that achieves everything effortlessly (wuwei). However, it is debatable whether Mencius here understands badao in contradistinction to the Kingly Way as he often does. “Hao hao ru 皞皞如” describes an air of deep contentment, which is a more profound mental and moral state than that which the expression “huan yu ru 驩虞如” conveys, which is simply a state of joy.25 In this regard, Mencius still cherishes the Kingly Way over badao. However, badao here is given a positive connotation and does not seem to be starkly opposed to the Kingly Way. Quite surprisingly (in light of his normative political dualism), Mencius thought that King Xuan possessed the moral potential to become a benevolent king especially when he witnessed that King Xuan felt pain while watching a sacrificial ox proceeding innocently to death (Mencius 1A7). On King Xuan’s moral potential and Mencius’s desire to introduce him to the training of moral self-​cultivation, see Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Confucian Self Cultivation and Mengzi’s Notion of Extension,” in Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi, eds. Xiusheng Liu and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett, 2002), pp. 221–​241, at pp. 226–​234. 23 When Mencius vilifies the rulers of his time for being “fond of killing” (Mencius 1A6), he seems to point out what practicing badao practically brings about rather than to claim that rulers are motivated to kill the people. 24 Mencius 7A13. 25 According to Zhu Xi, this expression describes “the appearance of enlargement and self-​ possession.” See James Legge (trans.), The Chinese Classic, vol. 2 (Hong Kong:  Hong Kong University Press, 1970), pp. 454–​455. 22

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Mencius seems to appreciate an important practical distinction between badao and tyranny, under which people can in no way be happy. Mencius’s implicit acknowledgment that badao can contribute to a morally decent form of government is most unequivocally presented in the following (lengthy) statement. The Five Leaders of the feudal lords [read: five hegemons] were offenders against the Three [ancient sage-​]Kings; the feudal lords of today are offenders against the Five Leaders of the feudal lords; the Counselors of today are offenders against the feudal lords of today … [T]‌he Emperor punishes (tao 討) [the ill-​governed feudal states] but does not attack (fa 伐), while a feudal lord attacks (fa) but does not punish (tao). The Five Leaders of the feudal lords intimidated feudal lords into joining them in their attacks (fa) on other feudal lords. That is why I said, “The Five Leaders of the feudal lords were offenders against the Three Kings.” Of the Five Leaders, Duke Huan of Qi was the most illustrious. In the meeting of Kui Qiu … [t]‌he first item of the pledge was, “Sons who are not dutiful are to be punished; heirs should not be put aside; concubines should not be elevated to the status of wives.” The second was, “Honor good and wise men and train the talented so as to make known the virtuous.” The third was, “Respect the aged and be kind to the young; do not forget the guest and the traveler.” The fourth was, “Gentlemen should not hold office by heredity; different offices should not be held concurrently by the same man; the selection of Gentlemen (shi 士) should be appropriate; a feudal lord should not exercise sole authority in the execution of a Counselor.” The fifth was, “Dykes should not be diverted; the sale of rice to other states should not be prohibited; any fief given should be reported” … The feudal lords of today all violate these five injunctions.26

Here Mencius’s argument is twofold. On the one hand, as a mode of interstate governance, badao is morally inferior to and further violates the Kingly Way, which is a typical Mencian argument. Accordingly, only the ruler of Zhou, the son of Heaven, has the authority to punish (tao) a feudal lord, his subject, who went astray from or critically violated the model of good government by mobilizing the armies of the other feudal states.27 In this Zhou ideal of a just war, to which Mencius subscribes wholeheartedly, an attack (fa) on a feudal state by another feudal lord is illegitimate, morally as well as politically, given their equal status in light of Zhou political ritualism. Therefore, for Mencius, the hegemons are culpable because they, being merely feudal lords, did (or attempted to do) what the Son of Heaven alone is morally entitled to do by the Mandate of Heaven for the sake of interstate order and the cultural integrity of the Zhou civilization. And what is worse, the hegemons did so not by the influence of moral excellence but by means of their power. Mencius 6B7. 27 Also see Mencius 7B2, in which Mencius submits that “[a]‌punitive expedition (zheng 征) is a war waged by one in authority against his subordinates [i.e., the feudal lords].” I  discuss Mencius’s political theory of just war in Chapter 6. 26

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On the other hand, though, and more importantly in the present context, badao undergirds a certain moral (domestic and interstate) governance that, though it may fall short of the benevolent government predicated on the Kingly Way, is nevertheless significantly superior to the tyrannical governments of the kind that prevailed during Mencius’s time. The statement that “[t]‌he feudal lords of today are offenders against the Five Leaders of the feudal lords” illustrates, albeit implicitly, that badao has a moral standard of its own and that Mencius’s equation of badao with tyranny is tenable only when applied to the badao-​inspired rulers who fail to live up to its moral standard (not to mention the ideal of the Kingly Way), thereby failing to realize the political potential latent in it. Interpreted in this way, Mencius’s understanding of badao is tension-​ridden. In theory, it is almost equivalent to tyranny. Yet, in reality, it contains its own moral standard, which distinguishes it from tyranny that holds no moral standard at all, and when that moral standard is met, the state is made politically strong, economically sufficient, and socially viable. If Mencius were pressed to respond to this charge of inconsistency, he may say that I have read too much into his simple discussion of badao. (It would only produce an immoral government! Or so he may say.) As noted earlier, Mencius’s normative political dualism of “badao versus wangdao” offered the Confucians of later generations a powerful political rhetoric against any mode of government that deviates from the Kingly Way, but Mencius’s recognition of the moral value of badao was never taken seriously by his most ardent followers, due to their preoccupation with the orthodox “Mencian” political dichotomy. It is partly because Mencius himself, being the strongest advocate of the ideal of the Kingly Way, never gave a serious philosophical reflection on the moral value and political utility of badao, which he only tacitly acknowledged. However, the recognition of the moral and political value of badao raises a number of important political-​philosophical questions that any thoughtful political theorist cannot afford to ignore: what is the moral standard of badao, and is that standard a Confucian one? Is the moral standard of badao practically attainable under the most horrible political conditions wherein rulers are permanently engaged in war? Does badao, when its moral ideal has been realized, really make the state morally better, as well as politically ordered and stable? Finally, is it politically important that badao is qualitatively different from, and indeed morally superior to, tyranny? In the next section, I argue that Xunzi answers all of these questions positively. This, however, does not mean that Xunzi objects to Mencius’s judgment that badao is morally inferior to the Kingly Way. What he takes issue with instead is Mencius’s guiding philosophical framework of normative political dualism, which cannot accommodate Mencius’s own insight into practical utility and (qualified) moral value of badao. Xunzi resolves the tension latent in Mencius’s political theory by articulating the normative value of badao in Confucian terms, thereby revamping Mencius’s normative political dualism.

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Duke Huan of Qi and His Virtue Before delving into Xunzi’s discussion of badao, it is important to resist the common tendency to simply view Mencius as an “idealist” and Xunzi as a “realist.”28 After all, Xunzi never advocates badao as the Confucian moral ideal; he only defends it as a reasonable mode of moral statecraft in a way philosophically coherent with his xing-​e thesis, with a penetrating eye on “warring states,” political circumstances that defined his own time, and, admittedly, by which his account of human nature was profoundly inspired. Given Xunzi’s wholehearted commitment to the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics, his key argument, as I shall present below, must be understood to mean that badao, with all its deficiencies in relation to the Kingly Way, should not be placed in direct opposition to it –​the fallacy, in Xunzi’s view, that Mencius seems to have committed.29 Then, how was Xunzi able to appreciate certain moral-​ political values of badao more proactively while still regarding it as morally inferior to the Kingly Way? To answer this question, it is necessary to begin with Xunzi’s most straightforward assessment of the nature of badao. Consider the following statement by Xunzi on Duke Huan of Qi and the badao he allegedly exercised: Among the disciples of Confucius, even the young lads considered it shameful to speak in praise of the five hegemons. How can this be the case? … Duke of Huan of Qi was the most successful of the five hegemons, but among his early deeds he killed his elder brother and seized the state. In conducting internal family matters, there were seven of his sisters and aunts whom he did not marry off. Within his private chambers he indulged in extravagant entertainments and music. He was presented with the whole state of Qi as his portion, but he did not consider it sufficient. In foreign affairs, he deceived Zhu and ambushed Ju, and he annexed thirty-​five states. Such was the impetuousness, corruption, perversion, and extravagance of his affairs and conduct. Simply how could he be worthy of praise in the school of the great gentleman! Even though he was like that, how is it that he did not perish but on the contrary became a hegemon? … Duke Huan of Qi adopted the greatest measures (dajie 大節) in the world … At a glance, he saw that Guan Zhong’s ability was sufficient to entrust him with the state –​this was the greatest wisdom (dajie 大知) in the world. The Duke let rest and forgot his anger at Guan Zhong, and he cast out and forgot their enmity. He thereupon established him as “Uncle”  –​this was the greatest decision (dajue 大 決) in the world … The noble and the lowly, elders and the youth alike, all with due order followed Duke Huan in honoring and respecting him. These were the greatest measures (dajie) in the world. If a feudal lord were to take just one such measure, then no one could make him perish. Duke Huan combined all these measures and had 28 In part, based on Mencius’s “more purist attitude toward the hegemonic system” of Guan Zhong, Benjamin Schwartz describes Mencius’s political theory in terms of the “soaring and defiant idealism.” See Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1985), p. 286. 29 Also see Wei, Xunziyu gudaizhexue, pp. 126–​130.

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them complete. How, indeed, could he have perished! It was fitting that he become a hegemon! That was not because of luck. Rather, that was due to the number of things (shu 數) that he did right.30

Given Mencius’s appreciation of certain practical utility and limited moral value of badao, there is ambiguity as to why Mencius believes that badao is inherently immoral (bu ren), hence analogous to tyranny, and roundly rejects it as an improper mode of statecraft. Interestingly, Xunzi’s account of Duke Huan offers an important insight as to why Mencius does so. Admittedly, for Mencius, who does not make an analytical distinction between the government and the ruler, the most important criterion by which to make a moral judgment on the quality of government is whether or not the ruler possesses excellent moral virtue. Only if the ruler recognizes the importance of morality and makes it part of his policies, Mencius believes, would he be able to devote himself to the moral and material well-​being of the people. For Mencius, an alternative road is logically closed as both material and moral ends of the Confucian benevolent government cannot be realized unless the ruler is virtuous.31 This would not be allowed by Heaven, which Mencius understands as the cosmological repository of morals. It is for this reason, as discussed in Chapter 4, that Mencius engages primarily in the project of negative Confucianism, at the core of which lies moral rectification of the ruler absorbed in the pursuit of Realpolitik by means of badao, the way of or toward tyranny.32 In short, Mencius is firmly convinced that the benevolent government, toward which the Kingly Way is directed, is a Heavenly bliss that only a virtuous ruler and his felicitous people could enjoy. Duke Huan of Qi in Xunzi’s depiction diametrically counters this Mencian ideal of the virtuous ruler and, by implication, that of benevolent government. From Mencius’s perspective, Duke Huan, who is “impetuous, corrupted, perverse, and extravagant,” is nothing more than a tyrant and, accordingly, his government is doomed to fail (or so goes the reasoning). Given that for Mencius the seamless continuum from personal morality to government can never be broken or modified, if he were to read the paragraphs quoted above, he would stop at the end of the first paragraph (the depiction of the person of Duke Huan) and not even bother to read the rest, where Xunzi discusses the Duke’s political success.33 30 Xunzi 7.1. 31 On both material and moral ends of the Confucian benevolent government, see Mencius 3A4. For Mencius, material sufficiency is only a prerequisite for the good life and, accordingly, in Mencius’s political theory of Confucian virtue politics, moral enhancement of the people is conditional on the improvement of their socioeconomic conditions. See Sungmoon Kim, “The Secret of Confucian Wuwei Statecraft:  Mencius’s Political Theory of Responsibility,” Asian Philosophy 20:1 (2010), pp. 27–​42. 32 Mencius 4A20; 4B8; 5B9; 6B8. 33 Sumner Twiss and Jonathan Chan argue that there appears to be an inconsistency between Xunzi’s view here of Duke Huan of Qi and his later position regarding the hegemon, by believing that Xunzi’s evaluation of Duke Huan here is wholly negative. See Sumner B. Twiss

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As a committed Confucian, Xunzi, while refusing to embrace the moral cosmology of Heaven on which Mencius’s ethico-​political system is predicated, still fully agrees with Mencius’s judgment that Duke Huan is morally deficient. For him, however, this is not the end of story, hence the second paragraph. Unlike Mencius, Xunzi pays extra attention to the historical fact that not only was Duke Huan (and his state) not destroyed, but he actually became the most successful hegemon.34 The reason, according to Xunzi, is that Duke Huan adopted the “greatest measures” (dajie) in the world. It is not clear exactly what Xunzi meant by “dajie 大節,” because the term is highly abstract in comparison with dazhi 大知 and dajue 大決. But I believe that we can identify the term’s specific meaning here with reference to the political context in which it is being used. Following Hutton, I understand dajie as the combination of several “(greatest) measures” that Xunzi presents as the key to the success of the Duke’s government  –​namely, the greatest wisdom (dazhi) which he exercised in recognizing Guan Zhong’s ability and the greatest decision (dajue) that he made in employing Guan Zhong, honoring him, and exalting his status.35 And it is in this context that Hutton translates the term shu 數 at the end of Xunzi’s statement above as “the number of things he did right,” implying that shu literally refers to the “number” of the right measures that the Duke employed, enabling him to become a successful hegemon.36 In my view, dajie refers to the totality of the Duke’s “actions” (as Hutton interprets) or, as I will submit shortly, his “virtue,” which encompasses all the specific “measures” he took that Xunzi presents. Though compatible with Hutton’s interpretation, my interpretation of dajie as an all-​ encompassing virtue pays extra attention to the political context narrated by Xunzi in the second paragraph in which Duke Huan is shown to have employed dajie for political purposes. The key point of the paragraph is that Duke Huan, despite and Jonathan Chan, “The Classical Confucian Position on the Legitimate Use of Military Force,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 40:3 (2012), pp. 447–​472, at p. 453n7. The second paragraph in the quote, however, clearly shows that Xunzi is quite positive toward Duke Huan’s remarkable political achievements, when he sets out to account for the reason of the Duke’s success despite his personal moral deficiencies. 34 More than once in the Xunzi, Xunzi says that if the ruler follows what he prescribes, “At his greatest, he can become a true king (wang), and at the least he can become a hegemon (ba)” (Xunzi 11.9b and 12.1). Here, ba is given a very positive rendition. 35 Knoblock translates dajie as the “greatest opportunities” and renders the whole sentence at issue as “Duke Huan of Qi had the talent to take advantage of the world’s greatest opportunities.” Although this way of rendering Duke Huan’s talent would be perfectly consistent with the conventional (Neo-​Confucian) image of him as an amoral political realist, it does not seem to do justice to Xunzi’s own understanding of him, which, as will be shown shortly, is importantly moral in light of the virtue of xin (trust or trustworthiness). 36 Specifically, Hutton presents the following as the “four distinct elements” of the Duke’s behavior that Xunzi approves:  (1) recognizing a person as having talent (the “greatest wisdom”), (2) employing that person as a minister (the “greatest decision”), (3) showing respect for that person, and (4) giving that person material rewards (Xunzi: The Complete Text, p. 48n7).

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personal enmity toward Guan Zhong,37 recognized his ability, showed respect and honored him, and, most importantly, entrusted all state affairs to him, thereby enabling Qi to become the most illustrious state during the Spring and Autumn period. Here we learn that dajie, which Xunzi singles out as the greatest thing Duke Huan was capable of, is the ruler’s political virtue indispensable to “the Way” (dao 道) that helps make the state strong, at the heart of which is the restraint of private, especially negative, emotions such as anger, enmity, and/​or resentment that stand in the way of attaining the Way.38 What is important is that “the Way” here is not so much the Kingly Way, which, as conceived by Mencius, aims for achieving moral congruence between the Way of Heaven and the Way of humans, but rather a political principle necessary for ensuring the survival and further prosperity of the state, which thereby undergirds a particular mode of statesmanship that has no obvious or direct internal connection with personal moral virtue (such as ren and yi). This is exactly what badao implies  –​the “Way” (dao) that makes the state strong but has no straightforward connection with the ruler’s personal moral virtue. While the Kingly Way is animated by the ruler’s inner moral virtue like ren and yi,39 badao, which is a more politically attuned “statecraft,” is heavily dependent on the ruler’s ability to take a number (shu) of right measures for good political consequences.40

37 Duke Xiang of Qi had two sons, Prince Xiao Bai (later Duke Huan) and Prince Jiu. After the assassination of Duke Xiang by one of his subjects, Prince Xiao Bai and Prince Jiu (helped by Guan Zhong) fought in a bloody struggle for the throne, which ended with Prince Xiao Bai’s victory. Upon the enthronement, Duke Huan killed his elder brother and put Guan Zhong into prison. 38 Legalists would assert that in the political arena, private emotion, be it negative or positive, is completely irrelevant and thus must be concealed from it. For them, at issue is not so much whether emotion is negative or positive but whether private emotion can be well hidden under the agent’s public persona. See Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Hanfeizi and Moral Self-​Cultivation,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38:1 (2011), pp. 31–​45. 39 For Xunzi, such inner qualities are not inherently present in human nature, but rather acquired through ritual practice and moral education. 40 Notice that Knoblock translates the term shu as “method and calculation.” Although this rendering à la Legalism seems to better capture Duke Huan’s amoral political realism, it, like the translation of dajie as “greatest opportunities,” tends to obscure an important moral basis of Xunzi’s positive appraisal of his badao. It is interesting to note that, among Korean scholars, while Hak-​chu Kim generally agrees with Knoblock by approaching shu in terms of “tactics and stratagems” (shu 術), the trademark of the famous Legalist Shen Buhai’s (395?–​337 bce) political theory, Wun-​ku Yi interprets it in terms of ding ming 定命 (literally, the determination of fate). See Hak-​chu Kim (trans.), Sunja [Xunzi] (Seoul:  Ŭlyumunhwasa, 2001), p.  161 and Wun-​ku Yi (trans.), Sunja [Xunzi], vol. 1 (Seoul: Han’gilsa, 2006), p. 158, respectively. Given Xunzi’s explicit refutation of the superstitious belief in fate (Xunzi 8.8), I think Yi’s interpretation is mistaken. On Shen Buhai’s political theory of shu, see Herrlee G. Creel, Shen Pu-​Hai, A  Chinese Political Philosopher of the Fourth Century b.c. (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 1974).

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Then, what constitutes the content of political virtue of dajie that Xunzi believes is indispensable to the statecraft of badao? Does badao have any substantial content that is functionally (or even morally?) equivalent to ren and yi of the Kingly Way? To be sure, staunch champions of Realpolitik would refuse to presuppose any moral content in the principles of governing, which could ultimately result in the destruction of the state. For them, the only thing that matters is the ruler’s personal security (including the survival of the state deemed as the ruler’s private possession), and, insomuch as this goal can be attained, anything goes.41 Xunzi, however, believes badao does have content, in fact a moral content, thereby differentiating it from the content-​less, hence amoral, methods to govern the state, of the kinds his contemporary (proto-​)Legalists such as Shen Dao and Shen Buhai propagated, such as shi 勢 (often translated as “power”) and/​or shu 術 (tactics and stratagems).42 For Xunzi, the political virtue that Duke Huan exercised is his extraordinary ability to “moderate” (jie 節) his personal enmity toward Guan Zhong and turn it into “trust” (xin).43 Given the philological connection between By staunch champions of Realpolitik, I mean the most politically ambitious rulers and ministers during the Warring States period, perennially engrossed in power struggle and warfare, not necessarily some principled Legalists, Han Fei in particular. Navigating the complex middle ground between staunch Realpolitik, which rejects whatever constraint on the exercise of power, be it moral or political, and Confucian virtue politics, which grounds politics on virtue, Han Fei’s Legalism embraces a principled, though amoral, constraint on the way the ruler conducts himself and governs the state as long as it is conducive to the order and stability of the state. For this line of interpretation of Han Fei, see Eirik L. Harris, “Han Fei on the Problem of Morality,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Han Fei, ed. Paul R. Goldin (Dordrecht:  Springer, 2013), pp. 107–​131. I am not sure though if this aspect of Han Fei would make him either a republican or a constitutionalist. For arguments in favor of this new and highly controversial interpretation of Han Fei’s political philosophy, see David Elstein, “Han Feizi’s Thought and Republicanism,” Dao 10 (2011), pp. 167–​185 and Henrique Schneider, “Legalism:  Chinese-​ Style Constitutionalism?” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38:1 (2011), pp. 46–​63, respectively. 42 Shen Dao (circa 350 bce) is known as the most famous advocate of shi 勢 (power) during the Warring States period. On Shen Dao’s political philosophy, see Eirik L. Harris, “Aspects of Shen Dao’s Political Philosophy,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 32:3 (2015), pp. 217–​ 234. For ancient Chinese Legalism more generally, see Zhenyuan Fu, Chinese Legalists:  The Earliest Totalitarians and Their Art of Ruling (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996); Ch’un-sik Yi, Ch’unch’uchŏn’guksidae-​ŭi pŏpch’isasang-​kwa se · sul [A Study on Legalism of the Chunqiu and Zhanguo Periods] (Seoul: Akanet, 2002). Xunzi’s criticisms of Shen Dao and Shen Buhai can be found in Xunzi 6.5 and 21.4. 43 A textual support for this interpretation is found in Xunzi 22.5a, where Xunzi says “凡語治 而待寡欲者 無以節欲 而困於多欲者也,” which Hutton translates as “All those who say good order must await the lessening of desires are people who lack the means to restrain desire and cannot handle abundance of desires” (emphasis added). Here jie (in jie yu 節欲) is translated as “restrain” and I think that the same rendition of jie can apply to the present case of dajie. In the note explicating Xunzi’s usage of the concept of jie, Knoblock says, “Xunzi’s point is that Duke Huan, whatever else he may have been, had the ability to recognize and take advantage of an opportunity. This passage is understood quite differently by Yang Liang, who takes jie 節 [as] ‘opportunity’ in the sense of ‘modesty’ ” (vol. 2, p. 277n8). Knoblock’s translation, however, does not flow smoothly in the context in which Xunzi praises Duke Huan’s extraordinary ability 41

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jie and xin,44 I suggest that dajie can be understood as the world’s “greatest moderation,” the virtue  –​a political virtue  –​which enables a ruler to overcome his personal enmity for the sake of his supreme political concerns. Thus interpreted, Duke Huan’s virtue of trust, one of the core Confucian virtues, derives from the political virtue of moderation.45 This politically motivated moral virtue of trust –​hence political virtue –​or the trust devoted primarily to “political goods” such as wealth and military strength of the state, rather than the moral elevation of the people, constitutes the core of the principle of governing, or badao, that Duke Huan was able to keep. But can this interpretation be justified on philosophical grounds as well? Precisely in what sense is moderation a virtue that leads to trust?46 One way to make sense of the connection between moderation and trust is by noting that moderation measures things out by putting proper bounds on and regulating them in a principled way and that a principled regulation of oneself can not only foster the virtue of trustworthiness but it can further elicit trust from others.47 So understood, what is central to moderation is not so much camouflaging anger or enmity for personal advantage, which even those coached by Legalism may be capable of, but rather the complex internal process that involves moral self-​cultivation in which one reflects upon the relationship between him and the one toward whom he otherwise holds negative emotions, examines the political circumstances that require him to form a proper judgment (zhi) and make a proper decision (jue) for the sake of the order and wealth of the state, and finally overcomes his negative emotions so as to arrive at the proper judgment and the proper decision. Whereas the goal of “overcoming one’s self and returning to ritual propriety” (ke ji fu li 克己復禮) is to become a good (ren) person,48 moral self-​cultivation involved in badao

to entrust the state with Guan Zhong, his former enemy. I find Yang’s rendition of jie (which is more harmonious with the word’s original meaning, namely, the segment of the bamboo) more appealing, especially if the meaning of modesty can be understood to encompass “moderation.” 44 Note that, albeit rarely, in some ancient Chinese classics, the word jie connotes xin. See Tetsuji Morohashi, Dai kan-​wa jiten 大漢和辭典 [The Great Chinese-​Japanese Dictionary], vol. 9 (Tokyo: Taishukan shoten, 1968), p. 8953. 45 As will be discussed shortly, the virtue of moderation does not simply imply one’s ability to “lessen” one’s boisterous passions that would otherwise drive one to form bad judgment and make reckless decisions. At the heart of this virtue is precisely one’s ability to form good judgment and make good decisions by (1) carefully assessing the (political) circumstances in which one finds oneself, (2) regulating one’s passions in a way apposite for the given circumstances, and (3) re-​channeling them into a productive moral quality (i.e., judgment, decision, or action) that can bring about good (political) outcomes. Largely consequentialist in character, the virtue of moderation is qualitatively different from typical Confucian moral virtues such as ren and yi that Xunzi, like Mencius, valorizes and, in my view, it is in drawing attention to this sort of political virtue that the distinctive nature of Xunzi’s political theory lies. 46 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me with this question. 47 I am grateful to P. J. Ivanhoe for discussing this issue with me. 48 See The Analects 12.1.

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is aimed at political goods that a ruler is required to promote, making him an effective political leader. The virtue that results from this politically motivated moral self-​cultivation is trust and trustworthiness, both an ability to trust even one’s former enemies for the sake of the political good and an ability to make oneself trustworthy not only to the people, the ruled, but even to his (former and potential) enemies. In Xunzi’s political theory, therefore, badao is not only appreciated as an efficacious statecraft, but is given a fresh moral significance. Xunzi shows that the success of badao hangs critically on the ruler’s political virtue of moderation and the moderation-​induced moral virtue of trust, specifically his ability to render himself trustworthy to the ruled, including former enemies, employ any capable person in his government (again, even enemies), and appoint the most capable one as the prime minister.49 Seen in this way, Xunzi’s political realism, clearly evidenced in his recognition of badao, is not only distinguished from Han Fei’s Legalism, which acknowledges no ethical standard for government and is primarily concerned with political order itself, but also, contrary to El Amine’s provocative claim, from various forms of political realism that are currently captivating many political theorists in Western political theory, at the center of which are the related ideas of “the independent realm of the political” and the normative standard of politics that is internal to its institutions and practices without any connection with ethics.50 The Moral Principle of Badao For Xunzi, the ruler’s ability to trust a capable subject, whoever he may be, does not exhaust the moral content of the government of badao. While understanding trust as political morality (morality that is politically motivated, not morality that is purely “political”) that a ruler in the practice of badao must 49 According to Xunzi, the successful government governed by the Kingly Way or badao depends on the ruler’s ability to choose the “right” prime minister (ideally morally excellent but at the very least politically competent) and to entrust the administrative details of government to him (see Xunzi 11.2c; 11.5a–​b; 11.9b; 11.11). 50 See El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought, pp. 194–​195. For the recent trend of political realism in political theory, see Bernard Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, ed. Geoffrey Hawthorn (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2008); Raymond Geuss, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); William A. Galston, “Realism in Political Theory,” European Journal of Political Theory 9 (2010), pp. 385–​411; Mark Philip, “What Is To Be Done? Political Theory and Political Realism,” European Journal of Political Theory 9 (2010), pp. 466–​484. Influenced by (neo-​)Roman republicanism (Machiavelli in particular), Philip pays special attention to the categorical difference between moral virtue and political virtue. It is important to note that the notion of political virtue that I attribute to Xunzi is qualitatively different from this sort of political virtue that has no internal (direct or indirect) connection with moral virtue. Xunzi, not to mention Mencius, cannot be called a “political realist” if political realism is understood to be premised on the assumption of the categorical separation between ethics and politics.

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possess, Xunzi ascertains simultaneously that for a state to be firmly established in badao, understood as a less-​than-​ideal but still successful mode of government, it should be able to garner the people’s trust. Put differently, Xunzi makes trust the quintessential political virtue for a ruler practicing badao, while also extending its political value to a moral relationship between the ruler and the people. According to Xunzi, There are some who, even though virtue is not yet completed in them and yi is not yet perfected in them, nevertheless order and control for all under Heaven advances under them. Their punishments and rewards and their promises to allow or not to allow things are trusted by all under Heaven. Their ministers and subordinates all clearly know that one can make pacts with them. When governmental orders have been put forth, then even though they see opportunities for gain or loss, they will not cheat their people. When covenants have been settled upon, then even though they see opportunities for gain or loss, they will not cheat their allies. When it is like this, then their soldiers will be energetic and their city walls solidly defended, and rival states will fear them. Their own state will be united and its fundamental standards clear, and their allied states will trust them. Then, even though they may reside in a remote and backward state, their power to inspire awe will shake the whole world. Such was the case with the five hegemons. They did not base themselves on government through education. They did not strive to become exalted and lofty. They did not pursue the extremes of culture and good order. They did not make people’s hearts submit willingly. They inclined to tactics and stratagems, paid attention to fatigue and rest for troops, were careful to store up provisions, and prepared the equipment necessary for war. Those above and those below had mutual trust as tight as the way one’s upper and lower teeth come together, and no one under Heaven dared stand up to them … This is what I mean by saying, “If trustworthiness is established as your foundation, then you will be a hegemon (xin li er ba 信立而覇).”51

As the passage clearly shows, for Xunzi, a government animated by the ruler’s moral virtue and guided by the moral principle of yi is the most authentic Confucian government. It is the government of the Kingly Way, or what Mencius calls benevolent government, which rests on moral education rather than punishments and rewards.52 As Xunzi puts it, yi, the operating moral principle of the Kingly Way, is “something that, inside, brings proper regulation to the person, and outside, brings proper regulation to the myriad of things [and i]t is something that, above, brings security to the ruler, and below, brings concord to the common people.”53 When yi is firmly established as the governing principle and superiors conduct themselves as teachers to their subordinates, argues Xunzi, “[t]‌he way that subordinates harmonize with their superiors is Xunzi 11.1c. 52 This, however, does not mean that the Kingly Way never involves coercive measures in relation to penal code, prohibition, and punishment. According to Xunzi, even legendary sage-​kings such as Tang, Wen, and Wu used such measures, albeit very rarely. See Xunzi 7.1; 18.4; 23.3a; 27.64. Also see The Analects 13.3 for Confucius’s position on this issue. 53 Xunzi 16.8. 51

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comparable to the way an echo responds to one’s sound or the way a shadow resembles one’s form.”54 Compared with this highest and most noble government, which leads the people largely by means of non-​coercive measures and promotes harmony between the ruler and the ruled, Xunzi admits that the government of badao is less than ideal (as he says, “of all the things that are crucial for presiding over the world, yi is most fundamental, and trustworthiness comes next”),55 because, among other things, it frequently resorts to punishments and rewards, which Han Fei famously argues are the two most important tools by which the Legalist ruler controls the people.56 What differentiates badao from Legalism is that while in the latter the measures of punishment and reward are employed singularly for the purpose of controlling the people, thus making them docile subjects, in the former, punishment and reward are implemented not only consistently, something that Legalists also stress, but, more importantly, faithfully in a way that enhances mutual trust between the ruler and the ruled, which Legalists do not prioritize. Precisely because of its reliance on the virtue of trust, Xunzi is convinced, the government of badao, though falling short of being the Kingly Way that operates on yi, can nonetheless produce a decently moral state.57 By “decently moral state” I mean a state that is politically ordered, socially peaceful, militarily secure, and materially sufficient. What is instrumental in bringing about these political goods is trust between the ruler and the ruled, which, as we have seen, originates from the ruler’s moral self-​cultivation for the sake of political goods and in the service of the material (but not necessarily moral) well-​being of the people, which makes him trustworthy. In a decently moral state, the ruler (1) employs punishment and reward in a way that is principled, transparent, and impartial, (2) recruits, promotes, and demotes public officials and soldiers on the basis of merit and contribution, and (3) devotes himself first to the protection of the territory and second to its reasonable expansion if it is deemed to be the best way to protect the material well-​being of both his people and the people to be annexed. Simply put, the decently moral state is a state governed by badao. Since badao is morally inferior to the Kingly Way, which undergirds a benevolent government, predicated on ritual institutions and moral education, a decently moral state is not fully moral. But to the extent that a decently moral state maintains its own moral standard and

54 Ibid. Also see Xunzi 12.4; 18.1 for similar imagery. 55 Xunzi 16.8. 56 Hanfeizi 6. 57 The idea of “the decent state” here is inspired by John Rawls’s celebrated idea of “decent society.” See John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). But as will be detailed shortly, the specific conditions that make the state decent in Xunzi’s political theory are qualitatively different from the decency criteria that Rawls stipulates.

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thereby clearly distances itself from tyranny or the Way of bu ren, it can hardly be called immoral, even if it fails to live up to the Confucian moral ideal.58 As such, Xunzi resists Mencius’s stark normative political dichotomy between the Way of ren and the Way of bu ren that accordingly (and mistakenly, in Xunzi’s view) renders the Kingly Way and badao as polar opposites. Xunzi advances a more sophisticated account of virtue politics than Mencius by associating yi, which he believes is the critical method, along with ritual, by which to carry out ren,59 with the Kingly Way and trustworthiness (xin) with badao, respectively.60 Again, Xunzi’s point is that although badao is short of the Kingly Way, it still has moral and political value and this moral dimension of badao should never be obscured as it is significantly different from the immoral mode of government that endangers and eventually destroys the state. From Xunzi’s political standpoint, Mencius’s normative political dualism, whatever rhetorical value it may have in chastising the practitioners of Realpolitik, fails to do justice to what lies in between morality and cruelty or between the Kingly Way and tyranny –​a middle ground where the state can be considerably well-​ ordered and morally decent. Achieving Decent Morality in Domestic and Interstate Governance In Book 9 of the Xunzi, titled “The Rule of a True King (wangzhi 王制),” Xunzi discusses extensively the different grades of rulers (or of their rulership) –​the rulers who possess instruments of policy by which they can become (1)  a true king or (2)  a hegemon; (3)  a ruler who barely survives securely; (4)  a ruler who will be endangered; and (5)  a ruler who will be destroyed. Conceptually and practically, however, these five modes of rulers (or of rulership) are not clearly distinguishable from one another –​particularly between One way to explain the social origin of the decently moral state is in terms of acquisition of disposition. A  well-​regulated fiduciary society inculcates a habit and expectation of behavior according to shared norms. Over time this gives rise to a sense of social trust and this is the beginning of a decent society. The Legalist does not believe in such habituation and hence must always rely on reward and punishment. I am grateful to P. J. Ivanhoe for drawing my attention to this important point. 59 Xunzi 8.3. For a philosophical analysis of Xunzi’s unique juxtaposition of ritual and yi (together liyi), see Winnie Sung, “Ritual in the Xunzi: A Change of the Heart/​Mind,” Sophia 51 (2012), pp. 211–​226. 60 For Xunzi, while the essence of the Kingly Way lies in the moral transformation of the disorderly or bad human nature into ordered and, ultimately, virtuous character, the moral essence of badao lies in the moral legitimacy of political relationship, which, however, does not necessarily involve personal moral growth of the kind both Mencius and Xunzi valorize. Badao, however, is qualitatively different from Legalism à la Han Fei, in which “trust” is emphasized not as a matter of the ruler’s moral legitimacy but as the instrument by which the ruler can secure his political position. In Han Fei’s political theory, for instance, trust is nothing more than the people’s confidence in the impersonal implementation of the law, the primary concern of which is the political security of the ruler and the order of his state. 58

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(2) and (3) and between (4) and (5). In fact, in Book 11, Xunzi simplifies these five modes into three, presumably by combining (2)  with (3), and (4)  with (5): “[i]‌f yi is established as your foundation, then you will be a true king. If trustworthiness is established as our foundation, then you will be a hegemon. If intrigues and schemes are established as your foundation, then you will perish (wang 亡).”61 Since we have already examined the difference between the Kingly Way and badao, we now turn to how badao is distinguished from the Way of destroying the state or wangdao 亡道, which is pronounced in the exact same way as the Kingly Way (wangdao). Xunzi describes this second meaning of wangdao, now as the Way of destroying the state, as the following: There are some who take hold of the state so as to call forth personal accomplishments and profit. They do not work at developing yi or getting trustworthiness (xin) in order –​ they seek only profit. Within the state, they are not afraid to deceive their people and obtain meager profits thereby. Outside the state, they are not afraid to deceive their allies and obtain great profits thereby. Within the state, they do not cultivate and set straight what they already hold, but they frequently desire the holdings of others. When it is like this, the ministers, subordinates, and common people will all use deceptive hearts in dealing with their superiors. When superiors deceive their subordinates and subordinates deceive their superiors, then this is a case where superiors and subordinates are divided. When it is like this, then rival states will look down on them, and allied states will be suspicious of them. Their intrigues and schemes may advance daily, but the state cannot avoid being endangered or having its territory diminished, and at the most extreme it will be destroyed.62

For Xunzi, a ruler who employs the Way of destroying the state is not only morally deficient as a person, but, as a ruler, he is incapable of extending the moral principle of yi or xin to politics, thus achieving neither the Kingly Way nor badao.63 Absorbed in securing private interest with no concern for morality or moral statesmanship, a bad ruler relies solely on deception and other treacherous schemes, only to make him estranged from his subjects. After all, this is exactly what Jie and Zhòu did, who, in Xunzi’s description, were corrupt, arrogant, grasping, contentious, greedy, and profit-​minded.64

61 Xunzi 11.1a. 62 Xunzi 11.1d. 63 Xunzi describes the immoral character of a ruler who destroys his state, or simply a tyrant, as follows:  “[I]‌n establishing one’s character, one may be arrogant and violent. In carrying out affairs, one will engage in overthrows. In promoting and demoting people, ennobling and debasing them, one will elevate dark and dangerous men, men who are deceitful and act for ulterior motives. The way such a person interacts with the common people below is to be fond of using their dying efforts, but to be slow in recognizing their labors and merit. He is fond of using their tax revenues, but forgets about their fundamental works. Such a one will be destroyed” (Xunzi 9.19c). 64 Xunzi 16.4.

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As for Jie and Zhòu, their understanding and deliberations about things were shaky to an ultimate degree, the things to which they directed their thoughts were benighted to an ultimate degree, and their practice of these resulted in chaos to an ultimate degree. Those who were originally close grew distant from them, those who were worthy looked down on them, and all the common people living then detested them. Even though they were the successors to Yu and Tang, they did not get even a single person to stand with them. With acts like the evisceration of Bi Gan and the imprisonment of Jizi, they came to die and their states perished. They became the greatest disgraces in the world, and discussions by subsequent generations about those who are bad are sure to mention them. Theirs is a way of arranging things that will not keep even a wife or child by one’s side.65

As I  noted in the preceding chapters, Xunzi was no less committed to the Kingly Way than Mencius was. He shared Mencius’s scorn toward Jie and Zhòu66 and even endorsed his trademark statement that punishing such tyrants by death would not be considered regicide; it would essentially be the killing of private individuals (pi fu).67 What Xunzi did not quite understand, I surmise, was why badao, which underpins a decently moral state, should be understood as directly analogous to the tyrannical rule exemplified by that cruel rulers like Jie and Zhòu. In Xunzi’s judgment, badao, which makes the state politically viable and also contributes to world peace, is normatively as well as practically distinguished from a flately bad rule (including tyranny), which precipitates the estrangement between the ruler and his subjects and invites invasion from other states. First, let us look into the value of badao as a mode of domestic governance. [O]‌n the day when one has things aright, accordingly one will still one’s military and rest one’s subjects, and take loving care of the common people. One will open up fields and grasslands, fill up the granaries, and make ready supplies. Accordingly, one will carefully recruit and select by review men of talent and skill. Thereafter, one will advance honors and rewards in order to encourage them, and make strict penalties and punishments in order to prevent them from doing wrong. One will select men who understand affairs and cause them to lead and control each other. Then one will engage in ample storing up and repairing, and goods and supplies will become sufficient … When things are thus, then the others will daily accumulate faults, and I will daily accumulate perfections. The others will daily accumulate poverty, and I will daily accumulate wealth. The others will daily accumulate toils, and I will daily accumulate ease. While through harshness the relation between lord and ministers, superiors and subordinates will daily become more estranged and hateful among the others, through kindness it will become more close and loving on my side … Accordingly, one who uses his state to do these things will become a hegemon.68

Xunzi 18.2. 66 Cf. Mencius 1B8. 67 Xunzi 15.1c. See Chapter 2 for fuller discussion on this. 68 Xunzi 9.19b. 65

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As has been shown in the case of Duke Huan of Qi, a badao-​practicing ruler should be capable of the virtue of jie (moderation or self-​restraint), thereby being able to trust another, even a former enemy, if he is talented and able, as well as to render himself trustworthy to his subjects. If the person in question proves to have an exceptional ability to run the government, the ruler must overcome his desire to control all state affairs himself, which is the surest road to ruin the state, and entrust it to the qualified person, because it is the best way to attain the public good of the state, including material sufficiency of the people. Although, as Xunzi admits, this politically motivated virtue of trust is far short of being able to transform the hearts of the people and to make them good, which is the supreme goal of the Kingly Way, he is convinced that it would still be able to garner the people’s trust in the ruler and his government, an important value recognized in Confucian political theory.69 In the paragraph just quoted, Xunzi further explains how badao actually elicits trust from the people. First, badao’s otherwise utilitarian public policies, such as “opening up the fields and grasslands” and “filling up the granaries and storehouses,” which Mencius criticizes as essential elements of the government that make the lives of the people miserable,70 in effect contribute to the welfare of the people. To be sure, badao is not so much concerned with the moral re-​formation of the originally self-​interested (thus conflict-​prone) people, but is rather devoted to their material security, which makes it morally inferior to the Kingly Way. Nevertheless, Xunzi seems to claim that without decent socioeconomic conditions and basic political order as prerequisites, the moral ideal at which the Kingly Way aims would be unattainable. In Xunzi’s more expanded vision of Confucianism, badao is not necessarily contradictory to the Kingly Way; it highlights the material precondition that is necessary in actualizing the Kingly Way and strives to secure it, although we must note that this –​using badao as a pragmatic vehicle toward the Kingly Way –​was probably not what the historical hegemons had in mind. In Xunzi’s Confucian reinterpretation of badao, the problems often associated with badao such as cruelty and violence do not inhere in badao as a mode of statecraft as such; many of its problems result from the deliberate exploitation of it by the rulers allegedly subscribed to it, as they, almost without exception, pursue it to satisfy their private interests, either

69 In this regard, Joseph Chan’s following statement is worth noting: “According to the Confucian conception of political relationship, however, ‘trust’ refers to the confidence and faith people have in their rulers, and trustworthiness is a virtue by which rulers gain the trust of the people” (Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014], p. 43). Interestingly, Chan does not seem to notice that the virtue of trust is equally cherished by the practitioners of badao as much as ones committed to the Kingly Way and thus does not grapple with how badao should be understood in or as Confucian political theory. 70 Mencius 4A14.

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material or psychological, or both.71 Put differently, for Xunzi badao is a new normative concept justified on the Confucian moral ground. Second, badao values the ability and talent of scholars and makes it a principle to appoint the people in government according to this standard only. Mencius would have taken issue with Xunzi’s extolment of ability and talent because for him a scholar’s moral excellence was the most important criterion in selecting officials (and perhaps the only meaningful one).72 However, it is doubtful that Xunzi cherishes ability and talent while not cherishing moral virtue as he, like Mencius, makes it a general rule that prior to entering the government, a would-​be public official must be morally cultivated, though of course in varying degrees.73 In my view, Xunzi makes the modest claim that for a state to be internally viable and externally strong the bureaucrats who practically run the government should be recruited and governmental posts distributed according to transparent and socially useful criteria such as ability and talent. Only with such objective criteria, Xunzi suggests, can a ruler implement punishment and reward in a non-​discretionary manner and thereby gain trust from his subjects, including those within the government. Again, even though badao falls short of making the state morally good, it is still far from bad rule, which neither respects scholars nor cherishes their ability and talent. Under the Way of destroying the state, punishment and reward are executed whimsically, and because of the ruler’s hubris and the bad moral climate that it is certain to generate the state is doomed to be ruined. The value of badao is not limited to its contributions to domestic governance, however. Its political value is equally significant in maintaining peace and order in the interstate arena. As shown by its common English translation “hegemonic rule,” badao is usually understood as the Realpolitik statecraft to make a state the hegemonic power in the world74 –​hence Mencius’s famous condemnation that the hegemonic ruler relies on force, notwithstanding his ostensible interest in Confucian moral virtues, particularly ren. Xunzi, however, describes the implications of badao in the interstate context quite differently. Consider his following statement: [The hegemon] protects the weak and suppresses the violent. If he does this all without a heart bent on taking over others, then the feudal lords will have affection for him. If he cultivates a way of befriending his rivals, he treats the feudal lords with reverence,

71 Seen in this way, the five hegemons –​the only hegemons recognized by Xunzi to have existed during the Spring and Autumn period –​are remarkable exceptions to this general tendency. 72 See Mencius 4B13 for Mencius’s heavily moralistic stance with regard to qualification for employment in government. 73 See Books 1 and 2 of the Xunzi. For to what extent this rule is defeasible in classical Confucian political reality, see El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought, pp. 143–​175. 74 For a classic “realist” account of the hegemon in international relations and international political economy in particular, see Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).

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then the feudal lords will delight in him … If there should be any appearance of making them subjects, then the feudal lords will abandon him. Hence, he makes clear to them that his conduct really does not aim at taking over others, and he gets them to trust that his way really is to befriend his rivals. If there is no true king or hegemonic ruler in the world, then he will always be victorious.75

Central to Xunzi’s argument is that badao in his Confucian reinterpretation does not aim to promote Realpolitik in interstate relations, as was believed by many of its advocates of his time, as well as its critics such as Mencius. In his new normative account of badao, the practitioner of badao, if he wishes to maintain political leadership among the rulers of now only nominally “feudal” but de facto independent states, he ought to present himself as equal to other feudal lords and be able to establish mutually reciprocal relationships with them by cultivating trustworthiness and friendship, instead of resorting to brute force.76 How is the virtue of trust or trustworthiness, which is to assure reciprocal interstate relations, connected with the political virtue of dajie, the greatest moderation? Even though Xunzi’s narrative on the Duke Huan of Qi does not extend to discuss how the Duke’s ability of dajie enabled him to become the hegemon among the feudal states, it is not difficult to glean from it a philosophical implication that supports the intrinsic connection between jie (moderation) and trust among states. As we examined in Chapter 4 and as amply attested by the cases of King Hui of Liang and King Xuan of Qi, Mencius’s famous interlocutors, the ruler, standing at the pinnacle of an unchecked monarchical system and perennially engrossed in warfare in pursuit of becoming a universal king, tends to see the world solely through the solipsistic lens of his own ambition, regarding other rulers, whose political status is actually equal to him, not as competitors equally vying for universal kingship but as critical obstacles to be eliminated. For him, other states are objects to conquer, rather than politically organized homes of all people under Heaven, to whom his care ought to be extended. In other words, what drives the warring king is not loving care or compassion but various sorts of boisterous passions such as pride, vainglory, envy, jealousy, and resentment. Now recall the process of moral self-​cultivation required by the political virtue of jie, which results in trust. Earlier, we examined this process in the domestic context with special focus on the formation of trust between the ruler and the ruled (including the ruler’s former enemy). The same reasoning can apply to the relationship between the rulers who are all vying for supremacy. What Xunzi seems to have in mind is that when a ruler who ardently practices 75 Xunzi 9.8. 76 In this regard, Xunzi’s idealized badao system seems closer to Keohane’s cooperative international system during and after hegemony than what Gilpin’s realist version describes. For Keohane’s account of hegemony, see Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony:  Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).

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badao (rightly understood) “moderates” (jie) his most supreme passion for universal kingship by acknowledging other rulers’ equal political standing and more importantly by extending his care to all under Heaven, he can present himself to his competitors (and to the whole people of the world) as trustworthy, and as someone to whom the role of the hegemon can be entrusted on reciprocal grounds as a leader among equals. The virtue of jie is still politically motivated, for the sake of the interstate public good and the well-​being of all under Heaven, but trust secured in this way has significant Confucian moral implications, even if it falls short of turning the hegemon into a true king. Only against this backdrop, I argue, can we clearly understand what Xunzi means by the terms sheng 勝, literally “victorious,” which according to him the ruler who employs badao will eventually be able to attain. In short, it does not refer to domination of one powerful state over others. Nor, it appears, does Xunzi think of something equivalent to the system of balance of power in which interstate morality is radically absent. In my view, the interstate world Xunzi envisions seems to be much closer to the international society proposed by eighteenth-​century Western philosophers like Christian Wolff and Emerich de Vattel, a society in which all self-​determining states are politically equal and morally reciprocal, like civil society in the nation-​state but on a worldly scale.77 Of course, there is an important difference between Xunzi and modern Western advocates of the “morality of states.” Xunzi believes that a state “well-​ ordered” by badao will become the leader of the interstate society, and the existence (and importance) of the hegemon is not an integral part of international political theory that Wolff or Vattel envisioned.78 Strictly speaking, however, this leadership (or “being victorious”) is in essence more of a “moral” authority than a political domination. As in the case of domestic governance, at the heart of a moral-​political leadership, which the hegemonic state ought to exercise in the interstate arena, is its prominent virtue of trustworthiness, that is, a moral capacity to elicit trust from other states. Therefore, in Xunzi’s See Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 50–​66 for the eighteenth-​century Western modern ideal of international society. In this respect, I disagree with Harris, who believes that the kernel of the difference between the hegemon and the true king lies in the scope of political influence, assuming that the hegemon’s influence does not extend to all people under Heaven. See Harris, “Xunzi’s Political Philosophy,” pp. 128–​130. 78 In a sense, it is a bit of a stretch to directly compare Xunzi to the eighteenth-​century Western advocates of the morality of states who treated sovereign nation-​states as moral equals by likening them to morally autonomous persons. For one, Xunzi is a complete stranger to such Western-​modern international political concepts such as sovereignty, moral equality before natural law, and the state of nature (as a pre-​law state). Furthermore, Xunzi never specifies the “rights” and “obligations” of each state in the interstate system. Nevertheless, especially in comparison with Mencius, who rationalizes a moral hierarchy between strong/​large states and weak/​small states in the Warring States context, Xunzi’s understanding of the interstate system appears to be much more egalitarian. I elaborate on Mencius’s idea of interstate moral hierarchy in Chapter 6. 77

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view, even though badao would not be able to bring the world now divided into many independent and mutually competing states under the universal rule of a sage-​kingship as the Kingly Way is believed to be able to, it can still make the world well-​ordered and peaceful. Tempered Virtue Monism A question then naturally arises:  what is Confucius’s own attitude toward badao? Given Xunzi’s effort to reinterpret badao as a decent Confucian statecraft toward the Kingly Way, how does it square with Confucius’s original construction of the tradition? Throughout The Analects, Confucius is never seen alluding to the term ba or badao directly, but he does mention several times Duke Huan of Qi and Guan Zhong, the paragons of badao. For instance, in his appraisal of Duke Wen of Jin and Duke Huan of Qi, two iconic hegemons whose rulership was generally revered and eagerly pursued by many of his contemporaries (largely in misguided ways according to Xunzi’s new normative standard), Confucius says that while Duke Wen of Jin “being devious (jue 譎) in his conduct was not proper (bu zheng 不正), [Duke Huan of Qi,] being proper (zheng 正) in his conduct[,]‌was not devious (bu jue 不鷸).”79 Clearly, Confucius’s attitude toward Duke Huan is positive, but from this isolated remark alone it is difficult to infer whether what Confucius refers to here are the two hegemons’ contrasting personal characters or the different ways they ruled.80 Even if the latter turns out to be the case, it is still unknown precisely what aspect of Duke Huan’s governing style Confucius finds “proper” (zheng 正), in terms of which he famously defines a good government (zheng 政).81 A more telling evidence for Confucius’s positive attitude toward badao can be gleaned from his subsequent conversations with Zilu (ZL) and Zigong (ZG) regarding Guan Zhong. ZL: When Duke Huan had his elder brother Prince Qiu killed, the tutor Shao Hu died with him, but Guan Zhong did not. In this instance, did Guang Zhong fall short of ren? Confucius: Many times did Duke Huan assemble the various feudal lords, and it was always through Guan Zhong’s influence rather than a resort to arms. Such was his ren, such was his ren.

The Analects 14.15. This and the subsequent English translations of the Lunyu 論語 in this chapter are adapted from The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont. Jr (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998). 80 According to Edward Slingerland, the traditional explanation of Confucius’s positive appraisal of Duke Huan, based on the Han commentators such as Zheng Xuan and Ma Rong, points to the fact that he “dedicated himself to public duty at the expense of his own interests” (The Analects, trans. Edward Slingerland [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003], p. 160). 81 The Analects 12.7; 13.6; 13.13. 79

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ZG: Was it that Guan Zhong really was not a man of ren? When Duke Huan had his elder brother Prince Qiu killed, not only did Guan Zhong not die with him, he became the prime minister for Duke Huan! C: When Guan Zhong served as prime minister for Duke Huan, he enabled the duke to become leader of the various feudal lords, uniting and bringing order to the world. Even today the people still benefit from his largesse. If there were no Guan Zhong, we would likely be wearing our hair loose and folding our robes to the left [which is the custom of the Di barbarians82]. Should we expect that he would have the earnestness of some country yokel, managing to strangle himself in an irrigation ditch with no one the wiser?83 Confucius’s attitude toward Guan Zhong is not always positive, notwithstanding his praise of Guan Zhong as a practitioner of ren. In one instance, Confucius, just as Mencius is shown to do in Mencius 2A1, bluntly comments that “Guan Zhong’s vessel was of small capacity” (to become the statesman of the Kingly Way) and (or because) he failed to understand ritual propriety.84 How, then, can we make sense of the apparent tension between Confucius’s positive appraisal of Guan Zhong’s great statesmanship of badao85 and his limited (moral) ability as a person?86 As we discussed earlier, though Mencius acknowledges that there is an appreciable difference between badao and tyranny, albeit implicitly, he never explicitly embraces Confucius’s positive appraisal of Guan Zhong. In fact, there is immense difficulty in coming to terms with the tension under investigation from the perspective of Mencius’s monistic method of extension, which derives moral statecraft and/​or benevolent government directly from the ruler’s moral sentiment (or his moral character more broadly). The tension in question arises from Confucius’s implicit acknowledgment of the possible incongruence For this reference, see Ames and Rosemont, Jr., The Analects, p. 260. 83 The Analects 14.16–​17 (translation slightly modified). 84 The Analects 3.22. Here I  follow Slingerland’s translation, which pays close attention to Confucius’s judicious usage of the word “vessel” (qi 器), by the analogy of which he famously defines the petty man, the polar opposite of the Confucian moral gentleman (The Analects 2.12). For Confucius’s emphasis on the centrality of ritual propriety in making a person virtuous (ren), see The Analects 12.1. 85 Also see The Analects 14.9, where Confucius gives a positive account on Guan Zhong by highlighting that even those who were punished by him found his actions appropriate and reasonable. For this interpretation, see Slingerland (trans.), The Analects, p. 157. 86 In his seminal discussion on this issue, Tillman submits that “Confucius did not see [Guan Zhong] as a symbol of pragmatic politics independent of morality but as an example of the harmonious balance between inner virtue and social accomplishments.” See Hoyt C. Tillman, “The Development of Tension between Virtue and Achievement in Early Confucianism:  Attitudes toward Kuan Chung and Hegemon (pa) as Conceptual Symbols,” Philosophy East and West 31:1 (1981), pp. 17–​28, at pp. 19–​20. As will be discussed shortly, even though I agree with the first part of Tillman’s statement, I disagree with the second part, which stresses the “harmony” between inner virtue and political accomplishments. 82

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between one’s personal moral character and one’s great and benevolent political achievements, a problem with which Mencius never struggled. Admittedly, Confucius’s focus in the conversations above is not so much on whether Guan Zhong possesses the moral virtue of ren or directs his political goal toward moral cultivation of the people. Rather, what seems to be important to Confucius is the far-​reaching moral-​political implications of Guan Zhong’s practice of badao for the cultural and political integrity of the Zhou kingdom under the leadership of Duke Huan –​the fact that by unifying the Middle Kingdom by means of badao, Guan Zhong was able to protect it from the infiltration by barbarian tribes who posed a critical threat to the Zhou civilization, which Confucius was always eager to revive by proudly calling it “this culture of ours” (si wen 斯文).87 Put differently, in Confucius’s view, badao, “rightly exercised,” offered a moral-​political and cultural bulwark against barbarianism. Even though Guan Zhong lacked ren and ritual propriety as a person, he was able to exert the political efficacy of ren. Confucius’s view of the moral-​political efficacy of badao strongly resonates with Xunzi’s position, which does not subscribe to a strong form of virtue monism as Mencius advocates. Recall Xunzi’s un-​Mencian statement on the hegemon that “[t]‌here are some who, even though virtue is not yet completed in them and yi is not yet perfected in them, nevertheless order and control for all under Heaven advances under them.”88 Neither Confucius nor Xunzi denies the foundational importance of the ruler’s moral virtue for a good government, which is the kernel of Confucian virtue politics, and to this extent all three giants of classical Confucianism are virtue monists.89 By acknowledging the practical chasm between the ruler’s personal moral virtue and his efficacious statesmanship in the service of the broadest sense of ren, however, both Confucius and Xunzi present themselves as the defenders of what can be called tempered virtue monism, a mode of virtue monism that weaves personal moral virtue and good political consequences –​“good” from the perspective of the broadest sense of ren –​in a non-​straightforward way.90 Distinguishing himself 87 The Analects 9.5. Also see 3.14 and 7.5 for Confucius’s cultural commitment to the Zhou civilization. For an illumination of the Zhou culture (wen 文) and its influence on Confucius, see Vitaly A. Rubin, Individual and State in Ancient China: Essays on Four Chinese Philosophers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), pp. 9–​15; Kung-​chuan Hsiao, History of Chinese Political Thought, vol.1, trans. Frederick W. Mote (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 93–​101. 88 Xunzi 11.1c. 89 See, for instance, Xunzi 12.1. 90 For more on tempered virtue monism, see Sungmoon Kim, Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (New  York:  Cambridge University Press, 2016), chap. 5. However, this is not to claim that there is no element of tempered virtue monism in Mencius’s political theory. For instance, Mencius’s notice of the potential tension between moral principles and situational demands leads him to embrace the practice of “expedient measure” (quan 權), thereby tempering his strong virtue monism of extension. I  discuss this kind of tempered virtue monism in greater detail (though without employing this concept)

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from Mencius in this way, therefore, Xunzi reconstructs Confucius’s political realism with sophistication and philosophical rigor. Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined Xunzi’s renewed Confucian attention to the moral and political value of badao, often associated with the Realpolitik of Legalism and thus believed to be in stark opposition to the Kingly Way, especially in comparison with Mencius, the first political theorist who grappled with badao as a particular mode of statecraft and government in his political thought. Special attention has been paid to how, in Xunzi’s view, badao can make both the state and the interstate society well-​ordered and morally decent. In this concluding section, I discuss the broader Confucian political theoretical implications of Xunzi’s normative account of badao. Due to the staggering influence of the “Mencian orthodoxy” in later Confucianism (especially orthodox Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​Confucianism) and because of Mencian Confucianism’s ethico-​religious aspiration toward sagehood, by which, as discussed in Chapter 4, Mencius’s negative Confucianism was propelled, we tend to forget that Confucius never dismissed the moral-​political and cultural significance of the equally important Confucian commitment, which is to protect and maintain Confucian cultural and moral-​political (or “constitutional”) order from disintegrating or “barbarianism.” In Chapter 1, I called this enabling aspect of Confucian virtue politics positive Confucianism, which stipulates that the ruler, irrespective of whether or not he is fully virtuous as a person, exercises political power authoritatively and with substantive popular support. Finding himself in the most violent moment in Chinese history and struggling to espouse the Confucian ideal of virtue politics in such a hostile environment, Xunzi rediscovered the immense moral-​political value of Confucius’s great insight into tempered virtue monism and its profound political implications for positive Confucianism, encompassing badao “rightly practiced.” Xunzi’s insight, gained in the course of his critical engagement with Mencius and creative revisit to Confucius’s original thought, was that barbarianism does not merely come from the outside (from “the barbarians,” for instance); it is always latent within us, within our uncultivated human nature. Seen in this way, the social chaos that Xunzi attempted to overcome by means of ritual and yi is nothing more than the sociopolitical expression of such disorderly human nature.91 Yet, the Way of destroying the state was another political in Sungmoon Kim, “Achieving the Way:  Confucian Virtue Politics and the Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy East and West 66:1 (2016), pp. 151–​176. 91 Precisely for this reason, Xunzi thinks that power or force, an important tool for badao, is necessary for not only making right disorderly human nature but also creating sociopolitical order. Put differently, Xunzi’s attention to power/​force is closely related to his moral psychology and virtue ethics focused on the transformation of the self.

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expression of disorderly human nature, though its evil stems largely from the ruler’s internal disorder. For Xunzi, badao held an important value insofar as it helped create a moral and political space in which people can develop certain dispositions –​ the virtues (i.e., civic virtues) which prevent the Confucian polity from disintegration –​and the ruler and the ruled can be interdependent with each other by means of mutual trust. Though not good enough to achieve the ideal of Confucian virtue politics, Xunzi believed, badao can serve the critical purpose of positive Confucianism.

6 Responsibility for All under Heaven

In the previous chapter, I  argued that while Mencius’s staunch normative dichotomy between the Kingly Way and badao is propelled by his unswerving commitment to strong virtue monism, Xunzi’s (and Confucius’s) far more nuanced attitude toward badao is attributable to his embrace of tempered virtue monism, which recognizes the potential tension between personal moral virtue and good political consequences. Despite this important difference, I stress once again that Mencius and Xunzi both subscribe to the foundational assumption that ideal Confucian politics is a form of virtue politics. Or, more accurately, they are both committed to the normative belief that a good government ought to be predicated on moral virtue. This otherwise simple statement, however, encompasses two important moral stipulations. First, it is primarily the ruler’s moral virtue, which he acquires from Heaven through strenuous moral self-​cultivation, that animates Confucian politics and makes it a form of virtue politics.1 In the classical Confucian moral-​political imagination, strongly influenced by Zhou political theology, the ruler was conceived as the Son of Heaven, presiding over all under 1 It is important to note that etymologically, 德 (virtue) is closely connected with 得 (to acquire), which enables the interpretation, especially in the post-​Zhou context, that virtue, particularly, the ruler’s virtue, is Heaven’s beneficence that he has acquired in himself through moral self-​ cultivation. See The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), p. 57. Compare this interpretation with Arthur Waley’s argument that “[de] never (except by some accident of context) has in early Chinese the meaning of virtue as opposed to vice,” attributing to it “the specific quality or ‘virtue’ latent in anything [like the Latin virtus].” See The Analects of Confucius, trans. Arthur Waley (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. 33. Although I agree with Waley that the meaning of de in the Shang dynasty is indeed close to potency or “power,” his claim, denying its association with one’s inner moral character, seems to be exaggerated, failing to note that the concept of de –​ like that of ren from “manliness” into moral virtue –​underwent a significant, though slow, process of transvaluation during the subsequent Zhou dynasty, and certainly in Confucius’s ethical thought.

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Heaven.2 It was believed, most notably by Mencius, that this universal ruler was granted Heaven’s beneficence and his mission is to pass it on to the people who he governs by means of his moral virtue, the channel through which he mediates between Heaven and the people, attracting the latter to become “the subjects of Heaven” (tianmin 天民).3 Though, according to Confucian political theory, virtuous Confucian politics involves benevolent public policies that create and sustain socioeconomic conditions under which the people can enjoy economic sufficiency and live a flourishing moral life,4 the source of such public benevolence is always the ruler’s moral virtue as Heaven’s gift (tian yu 天與). However, Confucian virtue politics is not solely about the ruler’s vertical relationship with Heaven  –​hence the second stipulation. While the classical Confucians struggled to turn at least one of their contemporary rulers into a sage-​ king, they also emphasized that the central purpose of Confucian virtue politics is to make the people morally elevated by educating them by means of rituals instituted by the former sage-​kings.5 The classical Confucians were strongly convinced that good government is only possible if politics is predicated on moral virtue of both the ruler and the ruled: while the ruler’s stellar moral character (or moral charisma) inspires the people toward moral goodness, the morally elevated people support the government that is run by the virtuous ruler not merely on prudential and instrumental grounds but sincerely from their hearts, finding its good form (wen 文) enjoyable, morally edifying, and thus intrinsically valuable, as we discussed in Chapter 1. As such, the two stipulations of Confucian virtue politics speak for the ruler’s moral authority on the one side and moral legitimacy on the other, which combine to make a government, which is in principle of a global scale stretching to all under Heaven, a good government. Ironically, though, the classical Confucians developed this global vision of virtue politics in the midst of perhaps the most turbulent period in Chinese history. During the late Warring States period the Zhou dynasty, whose founders For a more detailed discussion on Zhou political theology, in which early Confucian political theory is deeply embedded, see Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA:  Belknap, 1985), pp. 46–​55. On the origin and the changing notions of the idea of “all under Heaven” in ancient China, see Yuri Pines, “Changing Views of Tianxia in Pre-​ Imperial Discourse,” Oriens Extremus 43 (2002), pp. 101–​116. 3 Mencius 7A19. According to Edward Machle, Xunzi also embraces this political theology of Heaven: “In Xun[zi]’s view of administration, the sage-​king attracts the people into orderliness by his DE, the winsome power of his moral perfection … But the sage has been attracted into his orderliness by the DE of Tian, and, in the administration of the cosmic hierarchy, is put by Xun into the role of the minister of Tian’s order, ‘completing Tian’s work’ ” (Nature and Heaven in the Xunzi: A Study of the Tian Lun [Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993], p. 176). Machle’s view, however, dismisses the prudential motivation behind the common people’s political compliance before moral transformation as well as the ruler’s voluntary subscription to ritual, as discussed in Chapter 1. 4 Mencius 1A7; 1B5; 2A5; 3A3; 3B8; 7B27 and Xunzi 9.4; 9.13; 10.2–​3b; 11.12; 27.52. 5 The Analects 2.3. 2

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Wen and Wu had justified their conquest of the previous Shang dynasty and the foundation of a new dynasty based on the Mandate of Heaven, collapsed completely (256 bce), and the feudal states formerly under the authority of the Zhou king began a life-​and-​death struggle for supremacy, only to end with Qin’s reunification, a state armed with Legalism. After the Qin Empire’s sudden collapse, Han Confucians re-​ appropriated the classical Confucians’ global theory of virtue politics in the service of the empire’s everlasting stability and order by (among other things) calling the emperor the Son of Heaven. How Han Confucians re-​appropriated classical Confucianism in the service of the empire, undergirded by Legalistic-​Confucian political institutions and laws, is itself an interesting question.6 But my main interest in this chapter is how Mencius and Xunzi accommodated their global vision of virtue politics to the drastically altered political circumstances created by ceaseless warfare, annexation, and the emergence of new “sovereign” states, making neither virtue politics nor a global political philosophy seemingly plausible for all under Heaven. How did they attempt to reinvent the global vision of Confucian virtue politics in a way plausible to their contemporary rulers who were preoccupied with Realpolitik? How did they make their global political theory relevant for the former feudal but now formidably independent rulers, singularly engrossed in the political project of “enriching (one’s own) state and strengthening (one’s own) military,” rather than benefitting all under Heaven? In short, how did the classical Confucians make their political theory of virtue politics relevant in the new interstate context without compromising the theory’s global vision? In this chapter, I  argue that Mencius and Xunzi, despite their many differences, were able to successfully meet both the political and philosophical challenges arising from the collapse of Zhou’s universal moral-​political authority with regard to the morality of war and legitimate interstate relations on the one hand and their global vision of virtue politics on the other, by justifying a virtuous ruler’s punitive expedition (even annexation) of a tyrannical state. Both Mencius and Xunzi reformulated Confucian politics by creatively re-​appropriating the core stipulations of Confucian virtue politics, centered around the ruler’s care and moral-​ political responsibility for the people, in a way relevant to the new interstate context in which there is no visible political institution representing the Mandate of Heaven, which previously undergirded Zhou’s universal kingship. I show that finding themselves in the most violent period in Chinese history, Mencius and Xunzi offered a principled way in which military force could be used legitimately as a critical instrument to extend the ruler’s care and responsibility for the well-​being of all under Heaven. 6 For the evolution of Confucianism during the Han period, see generally Toshikuni Hihara, Kandai shisō no kenkyū 漢代思想の硏究 [A Study on the Thoughts of the Han Dynasty] (Tokyo: Kenbunshuppan, 1986).

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New Interstate Moral Hierarchy When Confucius was alive, the house of Zhou, though having significantly lost its political power, still existed and wielded moral authority (albeit very limited) as the Son of Heaven over the feudal lords. Therefore, even the most powerful feudal lord, such as Duke Huan of Qi (assisted by Guan Zhong), was only able to assume the role of primus inter pares among the feudal states as the hegemon whose primary task was to “uphold the royal house of Zhou” (zun wang) and “protect it from external threats, especially from the ‘barbarians,’ the people outside the Zhou kingdom” (rang yi). And, as we saw in Chapter 5, it is precisely because of Guan Zhong’s remarkable success in this task that Confucius, though raising serious questions about his personal moral character, praised him as the protector of Zhou’s civilizational integrity. Though Confucius was deeply worried about the emerging new world order marked by unruly intrastate and interstate relations that seriously violated Zhou political ritualism, his most eminent concern was how to restore the Zhou civilization that he admired the most among the three dynasties of Chinese antiquity7 by keeping the feudal lords in their right (i.e., ritually ordered) places.8 Most tellingly, when Chen Chengzi, a minister, assassinated Duke Jian of Qi, a serious moral and political violation of the Zhou ritual order, Confucius, having cleansed himself ceremonially, went to court and asked Duke Ai, the incumbent ruler of his own state Lu, to send an army on behalf of the Zhou king to “punish” (tao 討) Chen.9 For Confucius, the emerging sovereign authority of the states still subjected, albeit nominally, to the Zhou ritual order did not in itself create an independent philosophical question as long as Zhou’s traditional moral and cultural authority could be reinvigorated. Mencius and Xunzi belonged to quite a different world, however. Zhou’s moral authority as the universal king was no longer respected by the feudal states, now de facto independent and sovereign, and several powerful rulers sought to become the “king,” which originally meant the ruler of the whole world,10 while most of the rulers of small states were struggling for mere survival.11 Although both Mencius and Xunzi never departed from Confucius’s global vision of virtue politics and held an unflagging belief that the world could be reunified only if a ruler (any ruler) were to become truly virtuous and exercise the Kingly Way, they were keenly aware that restoration of Zhou’s 7 Confucius once said, “The Zhou dynasty looked back to the Xia and Shang dynasties. Such a wealth of culture! I follow the Zhou” (The Analects 3.14; Ames and Rosemont Jr.’s translation). 8 See, for instance, The Analects 3.1. 9 The Analects 14.21. 10 See Chapter 2 (n51). 11 One example is Duke Wen of Teng, who asked Mencius the following question: “Teng is a small state. If it tries with all its might to please the large states, it will only bleed itself white in the end. What is the best thing for me to do?” (Mencius 1B15).

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ritual-​based universal political order was no longer possible given the radically changed political circumstances. In the face of this unprecedented political challenge, they had no choice but to admit that Confucian political theory must embrace a new world of multiple sovereign independent states. The immediate challenge posed to them, then, was how to accommodate Confucius’s original political vision, focused on a general and global theory of virtue politics, to the contemporary interstate reality marked by the absence of any higher moral-​ political authority. One of Mencius’s distinct contributions to Confucian political theory is that he reaffirmed the moral hierarchy among the states without positing the institutional authority of a universal kingship entertained by the Zhou king. Mencius’s idea of interstate moral hierarchy departs significantly from the previous Zhou version, because he grounded the hierarchical interstate order on the reciprocal relationships between the now independent states of various size and power. Of the “Way” (dao) to promote good relations between such states,12 Mencius says, [O]‌nly one who is ren is able to serve (shi 事) a small state with a large one, as was the case when Tang served Ge and King Wen served the Kun tribes. Only the wise (zhi) are able to serve a large state with a small one, as was the case when Tai Wang served the Xunyu and Goujian served Wu. One who with a large state serves a small one delights in Heaven, while one who with a small state serves a large one is in awe of Heaven. Through delighting in Heaven one preserves all under Heaven, and through being in awe of Heaven one preserves his state.13

The recognition of the discrepancy in size and power among the states reveals the realistic dimension of Mencius’s political theory. But the key to maintaining interstate hierarchy, otherwise based on political realism, nevertheless lies in the rulers’ moral virtues such as ren and zhi and the reciprocal relationship among states that such virtues help generate. Here, Mencius makes two moral and politically practical suggestions: (1) that it is both moral (ren, hence delighting in Heaven) and advantageous (in terms of realizing the goal of preserving all under Heaven) for a large state to serve (or, I interpret, to “take care of”) a small state and (2) that it is both moral (or zhi, hence being in awe of Heaven) and practically advantageous (in terms of preserving one’s state) for a small state to serve a large state. Thus, Mencius subjects each state’s otherwise

As will be clear in my subsequent arguments, the “Way” here is not so much the ideal Kingly Way but a realistic method by which to promote a good relationship among the independent sovereign states, although even here Mencius seems to be looking forward to the eventual realization of the Kingly Way. 13 Mencius 1B3. The English translation of this passage is adapted from Mencius, trans. Irene Bloom (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). Note that while Lau translates shi 事 as “submit to,” Bloom translates it as “serve,” which in my view renders Mencius’s moral vision more explicit. 12

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narrow political interest to the morality of ren and zhi, with a view to generating interstate moral harmony and public good.14 What is worth special attention here is that Mencius seems to understand self-​determination of the state as a core prerequisite for the well-​being of the people, when he claims that it is the small states’ concern with self-​determination that motivates them to serve the large states. Admittedly, in the modern Western political discourse, self-​determination of the state is understood in the context of the morality of the states. Opposing the Hobbesian view of international relations as the global version of the state of nature and therefore the absolute skepticism of morality in international relations, the eighteenth-​century European moral philosophers such as Christian Wolff and Emerich de Vattel advanced the analogy of states and (moral) persons and the resulting analogy of nonintervention and self-​autonomy. This view holds that just as the liberty to govern oneself must be absolutely respected in terms of self-​autonomy or self-​government in the liberal civil society of moral individuals (here domestic justice is predicated on the so-​called morality of individuals), in the international society of sovereign states individual states’ self-​determining autonomies must be acknowledged (here international justice being based on the morality of the states). Put differently, the world should be envisioned not so much as an anarchic state but as an international “community” of largely self-​sufficient states that interact only in marginal ways.15 In Chapter 5, I noted an interesting parallel between the modern Western international political theorists and Xunzi, especially in the latter’s normative justification of badao as a mode of interstate governance. Like Xunzi, Mencius also advocates a moral community among politically independent and self-​ governing states. The critical difference between the two is that while Xunzi emphasizes that a hegemon can play a significant moral and political role in sustaining such a community, Mencius is completely silent about a hegemon’s potential contribution to that effect. Moreover, despite his espousal of interstate community among self-​governing states, the vision largely shared by Xunzi, Mencius clearly parts company with the modern European advocates of the morality of states, when he submits that a small state’s voluntary submission to a large state for the sake of territorial integrity and the people’s well-​being does not necessarily compromise its political self-​determination. For Mencius, the mutual serving of the large state (in terms of care) and the small state (in terms of deference) does not imply a relationship of domination and subjugation; rather, it creates a moral hierarchy that is mutually beneficial to

14 Notice an interesting parallel between the transformation of (narrow) political interest by means of ren and zhi into the interstate public good here and the transformation of private interest into public interest by means of ren and yi, discussed in Chapter 1. 15 Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 65.

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both parties.16 That said, it appears that in Mencius’s judgment, the success of interstate moral hierarchy hangs primarily on the moral character of the rulers of the large and strong states. Consider the following statement: When the Way prevails in the world men of small virtue serve men of great virtue, men of small ability serve men of great ability. But when the Way is in disuse, the small serve the big, the weak serve the strong. Both are due to Heaven. Those who are obedient to Heaven are preserved; those who go against Heaven are annihilated … Now the small states emulate the big states yet feel ashamed of being dictated to by them. This is like disciples feeling ashamed of obeying their masters. If one is ashamed, the best thing is to take King Wen as one’s model. He who models himself on King Wen will prevail over the whole world, in five years if he starts with a big state, and in seven if he starts with a small state.17

Here Mencius makes the Way a moral prerequisite of interstate moral hierarchy –​that is, only if the Way prevails can there be an interstate moral hierarchy. But in reality, in order for the Way to prevail in the interstate world under the political circumstances of the Warring States period, interstate moral hierarchy between large/​strong and small/​weak states must be established and securely maintained in the first place. In other words, rulers of small virtue must serve those of great virtue while rulers of small ability must serve those of great ability. However, when moral hierarchy between large/​strong states and small/​weak states deteriorates into a power-​based hierarchy (i.e., the pathological relationship of domination and subjugation), not only does it signal the disappearance of the Way but it also gives justification to the small/​weak states to refuse commands from the large/​strong states that are now power-​seeking and thereby disrupting the interstate moral hierarchy. At first glance, Mencius does not seem to encourage the small states to actively resist or remonstrate against the large power-​seeking states, but merely exhorts them to turn to the Kingly Way. Nonetheless, it should not be overlooked that turning to the Kingly Way also implies refusing to submit to aggressive powers of large and strong states and in this regard this action can be considered a political form of resistance, which is likely to invite a serious military threat or even an invasion. In fact, it was exactly this kind situation that Duke Wen of Teng, an ardent pursuant of the Kingly Way,18 found himself in between the two strong states of Qi and Chu. Mencius advises Duke Wen as follows: In antiquity, when [T]‌ai Wang was in Bin, the Di tribes invaded the place. He tried to buy them off with skins and silks; he tried to buy them off with horses and hounds …

16 If we bracket Mencius’s explicit refutation of badao as a mode of interstate governance, his insight here is remarkably consistent with Xunzi’s vision of interstate order based on mutual trust under the leadership of the hegemon. 17 Mencius 4A7 (slightly modified). 18 Mencius 3A2.

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but all to no avail. Then he assembled the elders and announced to them, “What the Di tribes want is our land. I have heard that a man in authority never turns what is meant for the benefit of men into a source of harm to them. It will not be difficult for you, my friends, to find another lord. I am leaving.” And he left Bin, crossed the Liang Mountains and built a city at the foot of Mount Qi and settled there. The men of Bin said, “This is a benevolent man. We must not lose him.” They flocked after him as if to market. Others expressed the view, “This is the land of our forebears. It is not a matter for us to decide. Let us defend it to the death.” You will have to choose between these two courses.19

According to Mencius, when a small state like Teng is surrounded and threatened by large and powerful states that are single-​mindedly driven by badao in their attempts to expand their territories, thereby critically violating the norms of interstate moral hierarchy, the only moral option is the continuous practice of the Kingly Way, which leaves two realistic political strategies: either fighting the intruders to the death,20 or giving up the land of their forebears (which is as equally painful as death in the Confucian culture of ancestral worship) and continuing the Kingly Way in a new place. These options available to a small state, however, should not be seen as simply a matter of rational choice for the ruler because the criterion for political decision here is the moral relationship between the ruler and his people and it is having such a moral relationship in mind that Mencius encourages Duke Wen to “try his best to do good.”21 Put differently, in either case (fighting to death or giving up the land), the ruler’s course of action depends on his relationship with the people, and, in a deep sense, it is the people who will inform his decision.22 Two important points can be gleaned from the discussion thus far. On the one hand, Mencius is deeply concerned with the political autonomy of small states in the face of the pathological Realpolitik of war and aggression  –​a political self-​determination, which he believes is attainable only under the well-​ordered interstate moral hierarchy between large/​strong and small/​weak states.23 For Mencius, a (small) state’s political autonomy is an important good Mencius 1B15. 20 In a different place, Mencius says to Duke Wen of Teng, “There is only one course of action I can suggest. Dig deeper moats and build higher walls and defend them shoulder to shoulder with the people. If they would rather die than desert you, then all is not lost” (Mencius 1B13), implying that self-​defense is a type of war that is morally justified. 21 Mencius 1B14. 22 This point should remind us of the essential moral-​political significance of intrastate relations in Mencius’s interstate political theory. 23 In his critique of Michael Walzer’s valorization of membership in a particular community from the Mencian perspective, Bell argues that for Mencius “there is no moral force attached to valuing one’s particular culture or language or religion or distinctive form of political association, and he would certainly reject the idea that valuing particular ties or exclusive forms of common life can justify the resort to armed force in the international arena” (Daniel A. Bell, “Just War and Confucianism:  Implications for the Contemporary World,” in Beyond Liberal Democracy: Political Thinking for an East Asian Context [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006], pp. 23–​51, at p.  45). Bell is right that in Mencian interstate Confucian virtue 19

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that is critically instrumental to the people’s well-​being, a more fundamental Confucian good to which the Kingly Way is committed. Yet, on the other hand, he clearly understands that despite mutual reciprocity involved in interstate moral hierarchy, interstate order and peace would be practically impossible without heavier moral commitment and responsibility from the large/​strong states. Therefore, in order to create an interstate political environment in which the states’ (especially small states’) political autonomy can be firmly secured, Mencius reasons, they all should subscribe to the shared understanding and practice of morality in relation to, among other things, the five cardinal moral relationships (wulun).24 In other words, Mencius espouses the states’ political autonomy without simultaneously making it a cultural autonomy.25 A  small state’s political autonomy would be respected only if it abides by the moral and cultural norms of the wulun while a large state’s non-​oppressive political authority over small states must be derived from its respectful observance of the wulun. In this section, we have examined how Mencius successfully met the theoretical challenge of reestablishing interstate moral hierarchy in the face of a (near-​)complete breakdown of the moral-​political institution of universal kingship held previously by the Zhou king from the perspective of Confucian virtue politics. One may be puzzled over Mencius’s complete silence as to how to establish and secure a similar moral relationship among the large and strong states who were vying violently with one another for the ultimate domination of the world. One explanation, of course, is that Mencius hoped that at least one of them would earnestly exercise the Kingly Way and become a true king –​ hence his efforts to convince powerful rulers of his time such as King Xuan of Qi and King Hui of Liang of the value of the Kingly Way. Nevertheless, given Mencius’s sense of reality shown in his embrace of the new interstate order, politics, a state’s political autonomy does not hold an intrinsic moral and political value independent of the good it aims to serve, namely, the people’s moral and material well-​being. That said, I think Bell’s statement is more relevant to Mohism (than Confucianism), which gives less attention to differential attachment and special moral obligation. Moreover, Bell dismisses the fact that Mencius attaches to home and neighboring countries differing degrees of moral significance by citing Confucius’s markedly different modes between leaving his home country Lu and leaving the state of Qi (i.e., “the way to leave the state of one’s father and mother” and “the way to leave a foreign state”). See Mencius 7B17. Contrary to Bell’s expectation, Mencius seems to hold that Confucian universalism is a form of partial cosmopolitanism that does not dismiss the particular moral ties and obligations including one’s special affection and obligations to his home country. 24 For the centrality of the wulun in Mencius’s universal ideal of Confucian civilization (established by former sage-​kings reigning over all under Heaven), see Mencius 3A4. Also see Xunzi 27.31. 25 This clearly distinguishes Mencius’s idea of political self-​ determination from the modern Western notion of national self-​determination. On the cultural pluralist assumptions behind the notion of national self-​determination, see David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 53–​58,  87–​91.

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it is indeed puzzling that he does not discuss relations among the large and powerful states. Apparently, Xunzi’s affirmation of the ba system as a morally acceptable (but not ideal) mode of interstate governance was to attempt to address this important caveat in Mencius’s interstate political theory, his ultimate political optimism in particular. This completes the brief summary of the political backdrop against which the classical Confucians struggled to advance their global vision of Confucian virtue politics during the Warring States period. The question posed to them was: how can Heaven’s beneficence, which in principle can only be passed to all under Heaven in mediation of the universal king’s brilliant moral virtue as the Son of Heaven, reach all people of the world, when the world is divided into independent sovereign states and the modus vivendi of interstate moral hierarchy is frequently violated by ambitious rulers? I  begin to investigate Mencius’s and Xunzi’s (shared) response to this challenge by, first, revisiting Mencius’s famous conversation with King Hui of Liang.26 Extended Responsibility In his conversation with King Hui in the opening pages of the Mengzi, Mencius offers a powerful answer to the question I just raised by saying that the ruler must devote himself to the virtues of ren and yi, instead of preoccupying himself with how to profit his own state. Mencius says, “If Your Majesty says, ‘How can I profit my state?’ and the Counsellors say, ‘How can I profit my family?’ and the Gentlemen and Commoners say, ‘How can I profit my person?’ then those above and those below will be trying to profit at the expense of one another and the state will be imperiled.”27 Notwithstanding his seemingly moralistic stance, as we saw in Chapter 1, Mencius’s real intent here is not to put ren and yi in stark opposition to interest. In fact, in this conversation with one of the most powerful and war-​mongering rulers of his time, Mencius intends to convey a deeper political message than to simply espouse morality over profit. Consider the subsequent conversation between him (M) and King Hui of Liang (H). H: I have done my best for my state. When crops failed in Ho Nei I moved the population to Ho Tung and the grain to Ho Nei, and reversed the action when crops failed in Ho Tung. I  have not noticed any of my neighbors taking as much pains over his government. Yet how is it [that] the population of the neighboring states has not decreased and mine has not increased? 26 Several paragraphs in this section have been drawn, with significant modifications, from Sungmoon Kim, “Mencius on International Relations and the Morality of War:  From the Perspective of Confucian Moralpolitik,” History of Political Thought 31:1 (2010), pp. 33–​56 with permission from Imprint Academic. 27 Mencius 1A1.

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M: … If you can see that, you will not expect your own state to be more populous than the neighboring states. If you do not interfere with the busy seasons in the fields, then there will be more grain than the people can eat; if you do not allow nets with too fine a mesh to be used in large ponds, then there will be more fish and turtles than they can eat; if hatchets and axes are permitted in the forests on the hills only in the proper seasons, then there will be more timber than they can use. When the people have more grain, more fish and turtles than they can eat, and more timber than they can use, then in the support of their parents when alive and in the mourning of them when dead, they will be able to have no regrets over anything left undone. This is the first step along the Kingly Way.28 According to conventional (largely Western-​modern) political sensibility, King Hui’s action appears to be reasonable, even admirable. It is commonly believed that a ruler should be concerned with the well-​being of his people and when the people are put into a dire situation (due to a natural disaster, for instance), he must rescue them and find a way for them to continue their lives. This is exactly what King Hui did and, he claims, other rulers failed to do. King Hui thinks that he benefited his people and he now wants Mencius to tell him how to profit his state. Surprisingly, however, Mencius finds that the king’s self-​pride is misguided and his concern for his people is insincere. In fact, in Mencius’s view, the king is almost delusional because he did nothing when people were dying of starvation in the streets and blamed the poor harvest instead of distributing food when his own dogs and pigs ate food intended for people.29 It is difficult to know whether Mencius’s accusation is accurate or whether King Hui was indeed a terrible ruler (or a tyrant), as described by Mencius.30 What is interesting is that Mencius’s advice to King Hui is focused not merely on how to profit his state, or his people, but how to benefit the people of the world. In other words, by encouraging the king to exercise the Kingly Way, a universal moral statecraft intended for all under Heaven, Mencius shifts the king’s attention from his own state to the people in general. With the collapse of Zhou’s universal moral-​political authority, the “feudal” lords, including King Hui of Liang, rapidly turned to Realpolitik, making their own states’ strength and global dominance their supreme concern. In this political milieu, Mencius, neither yearning to restore the bygone golden age nor Mencius 1A3 (emphasis added). 29 Ibid. 30 But consider a contemporary historian’s following statement on King Hui: “He also assumed the use of royal regalia and chariots patterned on those ascribed to the Xia dynasty, whose supposed capital had been his own. This act of hubris was followed by a disastrous military defeat in 341 b.c.” (Mark E. Lewis, “Warring States Political History,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 b.c., eds. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999], p. 603). 28

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resigning to the Realpolitik of the time, seems to have nevertheless seen a possibility of a middle way: while adhering to Confucius’s global vision of virtue politics, at the core of which is universal sage-​kingship, Mencius, as discussed in the previous section, is realistic enough not to dismiss as completely illegitimate the new reality of interstate relations simply because of its deviance from Zhou’s ritual-​based global political order. For Mencius, it seems, the most practically effective way to achieve this middle way was to make the incumbent rulers feel responsible for the well-​being of the people of other state(s) (and ultimately all under Heaven) and to care for them, without encouraging them to actively pursue the position (or the title) of universal kingship by means of a strong army or economic power. Seen in this way, Mencius’s blunt response to King Hui of Liang’s inquiry about how to profit his state is not only due to the king’s failing government but also because of his single-​minded pursuit of his own state’s interest at the expense of the well-​being of the people of other states. In Mencius’s judgment, the king is “inhumane” (bu ren) because he has failed to “extend his love from those he loves [e.g., his family members] to those he does not [necessarily] love.”31 Though by “those he does not love” Mencius primarily means the people under the ruler’s direct rule, there is no reason to limit the scope of the people domestically. In this regard, Mencius’s following description of King Wu’s punitive expedition of the Yin people of the Shang dynasty is quite revealing: When King Wu marched on Yin, he had [only] three hundred war chariots and three thousand brave warriors. He said, “Do not be afraid. I come to bring you peace, not to wage war on the people.” And the sound of the people knocking their heads on the ground was like the toppling of a mountain. To wage a punitive war (zheng 征) is to rectify (zheng 正) [a bad ruler].32

In Mencius’s narrative, King Wu initiated war against Zhòu, the last ruler of the Shang dynasty, because of his extended sense of responsibility for the well-​being of the Yin people who had long suffered from Zhòu’s tyranny (and it is this sort of moral responsibility that King Hui, or any other warring rulers during Mencius’s time, seems to have lacked). Mencius captures punitive expeditions against a bad ruler in terms of “rectification” (zheng), by which Confucius earlier famously defined a good government (zheng 政).33 In so doing, Mencius implies that one of the critical aims of government is to bring order to society by putting every member of the society in his or her proper place, which in Confucius’s view begins with the ruler being a ruler in the proper sense.34 By identifying punitive war in terms of rectification, then, Mencius shows the 31 Mencius 7B1 (my translation). 32 Mencius 7B4. 33 The Analects 12.17. 34 Confucius says, “Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, the father a father, the son a son” (The Analects 12.11) and calls this method of ordering “rectification of names” (zhengming 正名)

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inextricable intertwinement between domestic politics (政) and interstate politics (征) within the overall framework of Confucian virtue politics. Put differently, in Mencius’s political vision, in the absence of a universal rulership, the task of government does not end with securing the well-​being of the people within the territorial boundaries of a state but extends to the well-​being of those belonging to other states, starting with neighboring states. Interestingly, despite his many criticisms of Mencius, Xunzi’s (X) following conversation with Chen Xiao (C), his student, offers a revealing explanation as to how the classical Confucians justified the punitive expedition launched by a virtuous ruler against a tyrant. C: When debating military affairs, you, sir, always take ren and yi as what is fundamental. One who is ren cares for others, and one who is yi follows good order. If this is so, then what use does one have for military forces? The reason why one has military forces is for struggle and contention. X: Things are not as you understand them. The person of ren indeed cares for others, but it is because he cares for others that he hates for people to harm them. The person of yi indeed follows good order, but it is because he follows good order that he hates for people to throw it into chaos. Indeed, military forces are that by which one prohibits violence and does away with what is harmful. They are not for struggle and contention. Thus, wherever the military forces of a person of ren reside, that place enjoys a spirit-​like state [a state that is extremely good]. Wherever he passes by, that place is transformed, like the falling of a timely rain, and all are pleased with them.   Thus, Yao attacked the Huan Dou. Shun attacked those who controlled the Miao. Yu attacked the Gong Gong. Tang attacked the one who controlled the Xia [i.e., Zie]. King Wen attached Chong. King Wu attacked the tyrant Zhòu. These four emperors and two kings all employed a military approach based on ren and yi in conducting their campaigns throughout the world. And so, those nearby drew close to their goodness, and far away regions admired their virtue. The blades of their weapons were not stained with blood, but people far and near came and submitted to them. Such was the abundance of their virtue, and its effects reached to the limits of all four directions.35 At the heart of Chen Xiao’s question is how virtues such as ren and yi, the backbone of Confucian virtue politics, can be compatible with military forces. Chen Xiao’s question touches upon one of the most troubling aspects of (The Analects 13.3). In various places of The Analects, Confucius says that “rectification” begins with the ruler’s effort to correct himself and thus become good (The Analects 12.17; 13.6; 13.13). Also see Xunzi 9.15. 35 Xunzi 15.2.

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Confucianism as a political theory, namely, the use of violence by a sage-​king: if a ruler is virtuous, then what is the need for the use of violence?36 Indeed, in describing Shun’s “effortless” (wuwei) government by likening it to the North Star to which the multitude of stars pay tribute, Confucius never made the use of violence an integral part of Confucian statecraft.37 Rather, as noted earlier, Confucius seemed strongly convinced that in attaining a good government, all a virtuous ruler has to do is to put everyone, including himself, in a proper (i.e., ritually ordered) place, and this is an important step toward “caring” (ai 愛) for others.38 Xunzi does not deny that a virtuous ruler cares for the people. Xunzi might even believe that if a ruler is truly virtuous and cares for his own people, perhaps the use of violence would not be necessary except in cases of foreign invasion. But, it is important to note that what is at stake in the conversation between Xunzi and Chen Xiao is not so much the use of military force for defensive purposes. Rather, Chen Xiao’s question points to the ruler’s proactive military engagement with other states, which, in his view, would inevitably result in struggle and contention. In dealing with this important challenge to the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics, Xunzi shifts the focus from a virtuous ruler’s care for the people to the ruler’s hatred of those who harm them. Or, more accurately, Xunzi draws our attention to how a virtuous ruler’s care for the people motivates his righteous anger toward those who harm them, which further motivates as well as justifies the use of military force against them.39 The reasoning is that because a virtuous ruler loves all people under Heaven, he would not tolerate the rulers who are actively harming their own people. Here the key is the virtuous ruler’s extended sense of moral responsibility, motivated by his general care, toward the people of foreign states under tyrannical rule.40

36 For an insightful discussion on this question, see Sangjun Kim, Mengja-​ŭi ttam sŏngwang-​ŭi p’i:  Chungch’ŭnggŭndae-​wa tongasia yugyomunmyŏng [Sweat of Mencius and Blood of the Sacred Kings: Confucian Civilization and Universal Human Values] (Seoul: Akanet, 2011), pp. 123–​171. 37 The Analects 2.1. 38 Though Confucius explains ren in various ways, at one point, he defines it as “caring for the people” (ai ren 愛人) (The Analects 12.22; my translation). 39 On Xunzi’s (and Mencius’s) concern with moral legitimacy in conducting punitive expedition, see Sumner B. Twiss and Jonathan Chan, “The Classical Confucian Position on the Legitimate Use of Military Force,” Journal of Religious Ethics 40:3 (2012), pp. 447–​472. 40 Thus, Glanville presents the ancient Confucian conception of sovereignty, represented by Mencius’s (and, I add, Xunzi’s) political theory of punitive expedition, as one powerful instantiation of the idea of sovereignty as “responsibility to protect.” See Luke Glanville, “Retaining the Mandate of Heaven: Sovereign Accountability in Ancient China,” Millennium 39:2 (2010), pp. 323–​343. For a similar observation, see Sumner B. Twiss and Jonathan Chan, “Classical Confucianism, Punitive Expeditions, and Humanitarian Intervention,” Journal of Military Ethics 11:2 (2012), pp. 81–​96.

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Although Mencius does not directly refer to the benevolent ruler’s hatred of those who are cruel and violent toward their people, the gist of his moral justification of Tang’s punitive expeditions, first against the state of Ge, which had been suffering under serious misrule by the local ruler, then ultimately against the Xia dynasty, lies precisely in the sage-​king’s hatred of the politics of cruelty, which stems from his care for the people. In Mencius’s narrative, Tang, then one of Xia’s feudal lords, is shown to have been deeply concerned with the local ruler’s negligence in failing to conduct sacrificial duties, prompting him to send the ruler of Ge gifts of sacrificial animals and food as well as the people who can help Ge’s agriculture. But Tang’s benevolent action is met by the local ruler’s brutal killing of the innocent people, including a boy bearing millet and meat. Mencius says that it was “for killing the boy” and “[in order to] aveng[e]‌ common men and common women” that Tang waged a war against Ge, which turned out to be the first of many similar punitive expeditions, resulting in the overthrow of the Xia dynasty.41 What is worth noting here is Mencius’s normative belief that punitive expedition is (or ought to be) a war to punish a tyrant for the purpose of avenging the common people. No doubt, the profound moral sentiment underlying the intervening ruler’s action is his care (ren) toward all under Heaven, but, apparently, the proximate motivation of his use of violence is anger toward a bad ruler, one who subscribes to the Way of cruelty (bu ren).42 If there were a universal king (i.e., the Zhou king), bad “feudal” rulers, who were ranked below him according to Zhou’s ritual order, would have been rightly punished by him in the capacity of the Son of Heaven or by his delegate(s) as the Heaven-​appointed officer, and this is the true meaning of a punitive expedition. Put differently, without positing the moral-​political hierarchy between the universal king and his feudal subjects, there could be no punitive expedition, as far as Zhou political ritualism is concerned. And it is for this reason that Mencius asserts that “[i]‌n the Spring and Autumn Annals there were no just wars. There were only cases of one war not being quite as bad as another. A punitive expedition (zheng 征) is a war (fa 伐) waged by one in authority against his subordinates. It is not for peers to punish (zheng) one another by war.”43 In fact, punitive expedition, as practiced during the Eastern Zhou period (otherwise known as the Spring and Autumn period), was the war of punishment 41 Mencius 3B5. 42 See Chapters 1 and especially 4 for Mencius’s attitude toward the Way of bu ren. For a philosophical investigation on the contribution of emotions –​both positive such as caring and compassion and negative such as resentment and outrage –​to the sense of justice, see Robert C. Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the Social Contract (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995). 43 Mencius 7B2. Also see 6B7. In Xunzi 15.1f, Xunzi makes a similar normative distinction between punitive punishment (zhu 誅) and a mere aggressive war (zhan 戰). I will come back to this distinction in Xunzi’s political theory shortly.

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by the Heaven-​appointed officer –​the Zhou king himself or his delegate who vicariously fulfills the Son of Heaven’s moral-​political mission –​against those who threaten the house of Zhou and the political order and civilization that it represents. And such “threats” could come either internally (by ambitious feudal lords, among others) or externally (by the so-​called “barbarians”) of the Zhou kingdom. The ba system, which Xunzi reconstructed as a morally acceptable new moral interstate order as discussed in Chapter  5, had been initially formed under the significantly weakened Zhou authority to allow the most powerful feudal lord to play the role of the Heaven-​appointed officer, with the title of the “senior one” (which is the literal meaning of ba) among the equals.44 With the complete breakdown of Zhou’s universal moral-​political authority during the late Warring States period, however, Zhou’s former feudal states became politically independent and morally equal, which made the practice of “punitive expedition” (by the superior to the inferior) impossible in principle. And it was against this background that Mencius and Xunzi struggled to find a new yet still morally justifiable way to “punish” bad rulers by making the intervening ruler’s care the central, and arguably the only, criterion to justify his use of violence. In the end, for both Mencius and Xunzi, two conditions must be met for a state to justifiably punish a tyrannical state:  (1) the agent delivering the Heavenly punishment must care for the people suffering from tyranny and (2) there must be sufficient and active harm done by the tyrant, against whom the punitive expedition is to be launched. But far more important than these conditions is the ruler’s extended sense of moral responsibility. While the two conditions render his punitive expedition morally justified, it is his extended sense of responsibility that motivates his punitive expedition in the first place. From Heaven to People There is one important caveat in the discussion thus far. The examples both Mencius and Xunzi draw from in their justifications of punitive expedition After Duke Huan of Qi was elected in a conference attended by rulers of Lu, Song, Chen, and Zheng in 667 bce, King Hui of Zhou (r. 676–​652 bce) conferred on him the title of ba with the privilege of undertaking military actions on behalf of the royal court, and subsequently Duke Huan embarked upon a series of punitive expeditions against those who threatened the Zhou king’s authority as well as those engaged in external aggressions, thereby presenting him as the guardian of the Zhou kingdom. See Cho-​yun Hsu, “The Spring and Autumn Period,” in Loewe and Shaughnessy (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to History of Ancient China, pp. 545–​586, at p. 555. Also see Feng Li, Early China: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 163–​167 for formation and development of the ba system. Lastly, for the centrality of the hegemon’s de understood as “virtuous potency” in securing the mutual trust that guaranteed adherence to the league that he is to lead, see Mark E. Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), p. 68. 44

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in the new interstate world composed of morally equal, independent states all involve former sage-​kings who are dynasty founders. And we should not forget that the dynasties they founded are all universal kingdoms in Mencius’s and Xunzi’s Confucian narratives.45 The obvious question is, can these cases be emulated in a world divided by independent sovereign states engaged in mutual struggle? The ancient cases involve the transfer of the Mandate of Heaven from tyrannical suzerains to virtuous feudal rulers who have launched a Heaven-​authorized punitive expedition on their political superiors, the nominal possessors of the Mandate of Heaven. In these ancient cases, the people in the world are seen to enthusiastically welcome the sagacious feudal lord’s punitive expedition against the universal ruler who has lost the Mandate of Heaven and thus has become no different than a commoner (pifu or yifu),46 and their enthusiastic welcoming brings this moral hero to the world, making him the next universal ruler. The following offers the standard Confucian narrative, extracted from the Shujing, on the collapse of the preceding universal kingdom resulting from a virtuous feudal lord’s punitive expedition. Once again, I cite Mencius’s narrative on Tang’s first punitive expedition. In his punitive expeditions Tang began with Ge. With this he gained the trust of the whole world, and when he marched on the east, the western barbarians complained, and when he marched on the south, the northern barbarians complained. They all said, “Why does he not come to us first?” The people longed for his coming as they longed for a rainbow in time of severe drought … He punished the rulers and comforted the people, like a fall of timely rain, and the people greatly rejoiced.47

Xunzi’s earlier remark that “[t]‌he blades of their weapons were not stained with blood, but people far and near came and submitted to them. Such was the abundance of their virtue, and its effects reached to the limits of all four directions” makes perfect sense in the context of the transfer of the Mandate of Heaven. If the feudal lord delivering Heavenly punishment on the bad universal ruler is indeed a new possessor of the mandate to rule all under Heaven, then, in principle (and as Mencius complains), the following description of King Wu’s punitive expedition against Zhòu in the Shujing (i.e., the case of the most ren man attacking the most bu ren man) cannot be true: “[T]he blood spilled was enough to carry staves along with it.”48 In the Warring States context, however, what is at stake is not so much the transfer of the Mandate of Heaven from one universal king to another, typically Note that all former sage-​kings who Mencius and Xunzi freely cite precede the formation of Confucianism and accordingly they cannot be properly called “Confucian.” It is through the Confucian moral re-​telling of the stories about them that the early Confucians were able to reinvent the “Confucian” moral (and political) heroes. 46 Mencius 1B7 and Xunzi 15.1d; 18.2. 47 Mencius 1B11 (modified). For similar and related narratives, see also Mencius 7B4 and Xunzi 9.19a; 15.3; 15.6b; 16.4. 48 Mencius 7B3. 45

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a former feudal lord, namely the foundation of a new universal kingdom, but the obligation and entitlement of an independent, de facto sovereign, state to interfere with another state that is morally equal (according to Zhou political ritualism), in order to rescue the people from tyrannical rule.49 The trouble is that no ruler can claim the Mandate of Heaven to rule the whole world and no state is entitled to “punish” others, however bad they are, because the traditional moral hierarchy between superiors and inferiors is now obsolete. The dissolution of the universal kingship means collapse of the Zhou theory of the Mandate of Heaven and in the absence of Heaven’s Mandate or its visible institutional agent there is no standard upon which to call a particular military engagement righteous or just (yi). Ultimately, then, the challenge for the Warring States Confucians such as Mencius and Xunzi can be recapitulated as this –​how can a state, presumably governed by a virtuous ruler, justifiably invade a tyrannical state, which is in principle of equal moral status, in the virtual absence of an institutional body representative of the Mandate of Heaven and without necessarily aiming at universal kingship (i.e., the title of the Son of Heaven)? This is the problem Mencius struggled with, when Shen Tong, a minister of Qi, asked him whether it would be justifiable for Qi to attack (fa 伐) Yan, a state of almost equal size and strength. Mencius replied, “It may,” which Qi took as an approval, and subsequently attacked and annexed Yan. When asked if Mencius indeed encouraged Qi to attack Yan, however, he replied as follows: No. Shen Tong asked whether Yan might be chastised (fa); I  replied that it might (ke 可). They went ahead and attacked it. Had he asked, “Who may chastise it?” I would have replied that a minister appointed by Heaven might chastise it. Now suppose there were a murderer. If some asked, “May he be put to death?” I would reply that he might. If he asked, “Who may put him to death?” I would reply that the chief judge might put him to death. How would I have advised that one Yan should chastise another Yan?”50

In Mencius’s view, Shen Tong’s misunderstanding has resulted from two confusions –​first, between the punitive expedition (zheng) that Yan deserves and mere military aggression (fa) that is simply unjust, and second, between the fact that Yan deserves a punitive expedition and who is entitled to carry out the punishment.51 Does Mencius himself offer a convincing way to avoid these 49 For the central importance of the Mandate of Heaven in the Confucian theory of righteous war (yizhan 義戰), see Julia Ching, “Confucianism and Weapons of Mass Destruction” and Philip J. Ivanhoe, “‘Heaven’s Mandate’ and the Concept of War in Early Confucianism,” both in Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, eds. Sohail H. Hashmi and Steven P. Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 246–​269 and pp. 270–​ 276, respectively. Also see Glanville, “Retaining the Mandate of Heaven.” 50 Mencius 2B8 (Bloom’s translation). 51 Unfortunately, Mencius does not clarify why he thinks Yan deserves a punitive expedition. Two explanations, though related, are possible. The first points to the recent illegitimate transmission of the throne in Yan between the incumbent ruler (Lord Zikuai) and his prime minister (Zizhi). The story is as follows: Pan Shou, one of Zizhi’s stalwarts, coaxed Zhkuai to yield the throne to

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confusions? The problem is that Mencius does not seem to be sure who should assume the role of Heaven-​appointed officer in the dramatically altered world where there is no institution that presumably, even vicariously, represents the Mandate of Heaven. Qi (or any other “feudal” state for that matter) may be permitted (ke) to punish Yan, a tyrannical state, as it certainly deserves Heavenly punishment. But who can authorize Qi’s war of punishment and on what basis can Qi’s action be justified? From the perspective of Zhou political ritualism pivoted around universal kingship, to which Mencius frequently appeals, Qi (or, again, any other “feudal” state) has no authority to punish Yan, however well-​intended its punitive expedition may be, because the two states are equal in their moral standing vis-​à-​vis the house of Zhou, which has yet to formally collapse when Mencius is wrestling with this problem.52 What is interesting is that while seemingly subscribing to Zhou’s global political ritualism, Mencius creates a new source of justification for interstate intervention, when he says, “How would I have advised that one Yan should chastise another Yan?” Here Mencius’s message is clear: Qi is not qualified to intervene in the internal affairs of Yan not only because of their equal moral Zizhi by manipulating the well-​known legend of sage-​king Yao having abdicated his position to his virtuous minister Shun. Stressing the absence of royal sanction from the Zhou king, Mencius asserts that “Zikuai had no right to give Yan to another; neither had Zizhi any right to accept it from Zikuai” (Mencius 2B8). As such, the first explanation focuses on the illegitimacy of the handover of the throne in the light of Zhou political ritualism. For a story about Zikuai’s abdication, see Hanfeizi 35. Also see Eric L. Hutton, “Han Feizi’s Criticism of Confucianism and its Implications for Virtue Ethics,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 5 (2008), pp. 423–​453. According to the second explanation, though, the reason that Yan deserves punitive expedition is that since Zikuai’s reign, the people of Yan had suffered under tyrannical rule, which only became worse with Zizhi’s takeover of the throne. As will be discussed shortly, Mencius’s position shifts from the first, centered on Zhou political ritualism, to the second, focused on the people’s well-​being as well as the ruler’s virtue. 52 In his interpretation of Mencius’s puzzling position (i.e., his seeming approval of Qi’s attack on Yan and his later revocation of it), Glanville writes, “Mencius may not have believed that King Xuan, the ruler of Qi, had the moral authority to wage war, yet he arguably did still lend his tacit support to the punishment of Yan” (“Retaining the Mandate of Heaven,” p. 336). I find this view mistaken in that it fails to give due attention to Mencius’s struggle to reconcile his philosophical commitment to Confucian virtue politics with his cultural allegiance to Zhou political ritualism, undergirded by the discourse of the Mandate of Heaven, the result of which was, as we have noted earlier, his new vision of interstate moral hierarchy. Specifically, Glanville glosses over the theoretical conundrum surrounding the Heaven-​appointed officer in Mencius’s statement. In this regard, I find Waley’s seminal interpretation of “the Yan episode” (as he calls it) equally problematic, when he concludes that “[t]‌his [i.e., Mencius’s remark on the Heaven-​ appointed officer as the only legitimate carrier of punitive expedition] however would have been tantamount to saying that [Yan] ought not to be chastised. For there was no State at the time which Mencius could have regarded as ‘worthy to act as a ministrant of Heaven.’ Mencius must have known very well that his actual answer could only be interpreted as a recommendation that [Qi] should ‘chastise’ [Yan].” See Arthur Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1939), pp. 153–​154.

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status as “vessel states,” but, perhaps more importantly, because its internal situation is just as bad as Yan, which makes it “another Yan.” This reasoning, however, does not follow straightforwardly from his earlier remark on the Heaven-​appointed officer and, by implication, his appeal to the Mandate of Heaven. While the first part in Mencius’s statement singles out Heaven or its delegate as the source of authorization for the punishment of Yan, the second part (i.e., Mencius’s conclusion) highlights the fact that Qi is unqualified to assume the role of Heaven-​appointed officer on the basis of the equally inhumane (bu ren) nature of its government. This shift from Heaven (and its institutional representative) to ren (or virtue) in Mencius’s political theory is of crucial importance because he is now opening a new way, consistent with his new idea of interstate moral hierarchy, in which interstate intervention, motivated by “humane” purposes,53 can be morally justified without relying on the existence of an institutional representative of Heaven. Mencius creates this remarkable innovation in Confucian political theory by reinterpreting virtue, originally Heavenly grace that can reach the people in mediation of the (universal) king’s good government, as any ruler’s developed inner disposition or moral character. The following conversation between Mencius (M) and King Xuan of Qi (X) clearly illuminates this Mencian innovation, which renders the Confucian ideal of virtue politics directly relevant in interstate relations among the warring states. X: Some advise me against annexing Yan while others urge me to do so. The occupation of a state of ten thousand chariots by another of equal strength in a matter of fifty days is a feat which could not have been brought about by human agency alone. If I do not annex Yan, I am afraid Heaven will send down disasters. What would you think if I decided on annexation? M: If in annexing Yan you please its people, then annex it. There are examples of men in antiquity following such a course of action. King Wu was one. If in annexing Yan you antagonize its people, then do not annex it. There are also examples of men in antiquity following such a course. King Wen was one. When it is a state of ten thousand chariots attacking another of equal strength and your army is met by the people bringing baskets of rice and bottles of drink, what other reason can there be than that the people are fleeing from water and fire? Should the water become deeper and the fire hotter, they would have no alternative but to turn elsewhere for succor.54

See Sungmoon Kim, “Confucian Humanitarian Intervention? Toward Democratic Theory,” Review of Politics 79:2 (2017), pp. 187–​213. Note that several passages in this section are drawn, with substantive modifications, from this paper with permission from Cambridge University Press. 54 Mencius 1B10. 53

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Interestingly, it is King Xuan who, clearly demonstrating his awareness of the old rule that renders interstate intervention as morally legitimate, appeals to Heaven in justifying his further annexation of Yan after defeating it. The king’s argument is that defeating and occupying a state as large as Yan is not possible without Heaven’s authorization and annexing Yan (and thereby expanding the territory of Qi) is a natural course of action in order for him to further carry out Heaven’s authorization. Implicit in King Xuan’s argument is that his successful occupation (and annexation) of Yan is a sign of Heaven’s blessing for him to become a universal ruler. Completely sidelining the question of Heaven, however, Mencius’s response is exclusively focused on whether by annexing Yan Qi can please its people. Whether or not Qi is a Heaven-​appointed officer in the light of Zhou political ritualism is not an issue anymore, as Mencius clearly sees that the discourse of Heaven can easily be manipulated by a politically ambitious ruler like King Xuan, in the absence of a formal institution of the Son of Heaven to which Zhou rulers had privileged access.55 Therefore, without denying the foundational importance of the Mandate of Heaven in the legitimation of interstate warfare as well as territorial expansion via annexation, Mencius declares that the well-​being of the people of the annexed state is the only visible criterion by which to judge whether or not the annexation is morally justified.56 Thus understood, both Mencius and Xunzi, who otherwise had deep disagreement about human nature and the proper way to cultivate the self, were creating a new Confucian virtue political theory specifically tailored for the world of the warring states. At the core of this new theory are two mutually interrelated stipulations:  (1) the enhancement of the well-​being of the people under serious misrule is the only justification for military intervention of another state, particularly for the removal of a tyrant (or a usurper) and restoration of the political order and (2) the ruler’s extended sense of moral responsibility toward the people suffering from tyranny, usurpation, or foreign aggression is the only legitimate motivation for punitive expedition.

For example, Song, another small state, was a victim of its powerful neighbors’ manipulation of the discourse of the Mandate of Heaven. The rulers of Qi and Chu, in their scheme to divide Song, engaged in anti-​Song propaganda that the ruler of Song –​who according to Wan Zhang, Mencius’s student, was “on the point of practicing Kingly government (wang zheng 王政)” (Mencius 3B5) –​is unprincipled and oppressive and thus deserves Heavenly punishment. For the story of Song, see Waley, Three Ways of Thought, pp. 137–​143. Also see Glanville, “Retaining the Mandate of Heaven,” pp. 338–​339. 56 Like Mencius, Xunzi does not oppose the annexation of a tyrannical state by a virtuous ruler, although it is obvious that he never witnessed any case of annexation by virtue in his lifetime (Xunzi 15.16a–​b). Unlike Mencius, however, Xunzi does not find the hegemon’s punishment of an aggressive (or tyrannical) state completely illegitimate (Xunzi 9.8). For Xunzi, a hegemon, rightly understood, can play a limited role of the Heaven-​appointed officer in interstate relations and military affairs. See Twiss and Chan, “The Classical Confucian Position,” pp. 457–​458. 55

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The Interstate Politics of Virtue In the previous section, we noted that by decoupling virtue from the universal political institution representative of Heaven57 and by redefining it as a person’s (hence any ruler’s) developed inner disposition or moral character, achievable now without the mediation of the formal agent of Heaven, Mencius has found a way to justify what looks like a “humanitarian intervention” –​still couched in the traditional Zhou discourse of “punishment” –​by a virtuous ruler in a world where there is no longer a visible institutional political agent of Heaven. Despite significant philosophical disagreement with Mencius, Xunzi seems to have embraced this aspect of Mencius’s political thought focused on the ruler’s extended sense of moral responsibility for the people of another state and, ultimately, all people under Heaven. Two important questions remain. Why should, or how can, a ruler feel responsible for the suffering of the people of another state that he did not cause? And what is the proper way for him to take care of the people of other states in his military intervention? Let us begin with the first question. As noted, Xunzi generally agrees with Mencius’s interstate theory of Confucian virtue politics by drawing attention to a virtuous ruler’s righteous anger toward those who (actively) harm their own people, such as Jie and Zhòu. But righteous anger alone does not fully explain why a ruler, who in principle has no causal responsibility for the misery of the people of another state, should extend his care and moral responsibility to them. Moreover, even though righteous anger could be a powerful motivational force in removing a tyrant, the direct target of anger, it falls short of carrying out the more important task of extending the ruler’s benevolent heart to the people. This time, Mencius relieves Xunzi of this difficulty by challenging our conventional understanding of political responsibility. To see this, let us go back to Mencius’s conversation with King Hui of Liang in Mencius 1A3. The remainder of the passage is as follows: Now, when food meant for human beings is so plentiful as to be thrown to dogs and pigs, you fail to realize that it is time for garnering, and when men drop dead from starvation by the wayside, you fail to realize that it is time for distribution. When people die, you simply say, “It is none of my doing. It is the fault of the harvest.” In what way is that different from killing a man by running him through, while saying all the time, “It is none of my doing. It is the fault of the weapon.” Stop putting the blame on the harvest and the people of the whole world will come to you.

Here Mencius refuses to apply the logic of causality mechanically to moral, and by extension political, responsibility. Indeed, King Hui’s argument is not totally

This does not mean that Mencius has completely decoupled virtue from Heaven itself. For him, virtue is still originated in Heaven’s decree. But, following Confucius, he denies the exclusive connection between Heaven’s decree and universal kingship, as originally stipulated in the Zhou account of the Mandate of Heaven. 57

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unreasonable when he says that it was mainly because of a bad year that people are dying of starvation (and as noted earlier he indeed took actions to rescue the people suffering from natural disasters). However, Mencius finds the king’s argument unacceptable because in his view, whatever is the actual cause of the people’s suffering, it is the ruler who bears responsibility for them.58 One way to understand this non-​causal responsibility is to attribute it to the ruler’s unique political standing itself –​that is, it is an integral part of the political standing of the (sovereign) ruler to take political, not moral, responsibility for whatever situation his people are in and however “irrational” the world turns out to be.59 The difficulty with this interpretation is that it does not adequately capture the salient moral-​sentimental dimension of Mencius’s notion of responsibility. Notice that Mencius’s argument is not so much that the ruler’s political status requires him to take full responsibility for the political realm under his control, regardless of how he feels for the people, but that a benevolent ruler cannot bear to see his people suffering from misery, regardless of its cause. The following conversation between Mencius (M) and King Xuan of Qi (X) powerfully illuminates the internal process in which a ruler’s rudimentary feeling of commiseration develops into a sense of moral-​cum-​political responsibility for the people. X: How virtuous must a man be before he can become a true king? M: He becomes a true king by bringing peace to the people. This is something no one can stop. X:  Can someone like myself bring peace to the people? M: Yes, I heard the following from Hu He [that] the king was sitting in the upper part of the hall and someone led an ox through the lower part. The king noticed this and said, “Where is the ox going?” “The blood of the ox is to be used for consecrating a new bell.” “Spare it. I cannot bear to see it shrinking with fear, like an innocent man going to the place of execution.” “In that case, should the ceremony be abandoned?” “That is out of the question. Use a lamb instead.” … The heart behind your action is sufficient to enable you to become a true king.60 According to Mencius, protection of the people is the supreme responsibility of the ruler, and a true king is one who is able to protect the well-​being of all people 58 For a fuller discussion of Mencius’s non-​causal conception of moral responsibility, see Sungmoon Kim, “The Secret of Confucian Wuwei Statecraft: Mencius’s Political Theory of Responsibility,” Asian Philosophy 20:1 (2010), pp. 27–​42 and, especially, “Contingency and Responsibility in Confucian Political Theory,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 44:6 (2018), pp. 615–​636, where I present the non-​causal conception of responsibility as the gist of the Mencian (constitutional) project of reverse moral economy. 59 This is Max Weber’s view in his idea of ethic of responsibility. See his “Politics as Vocation,” in From Max Weber:  Essays in Sociology, eds. and trans. H.  H. Gerth and C.  Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 77–​128. 60 Mencius 1A7. For an illuminating analysis of this conversation from a moral psychological perspective, see David B.  Wong, “Reasons and Analogical Reasoning in Mengzi” and Philip

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under Heaven –​hence no one can stop him!61 Mencius’s point is that a ruler’s ability to carry out his supreme political responsibility stems from his feeling of commiseration for all living beings. Though the feeling itself, which Mencius calls the sprout of ren,62 has no political component in it, its empathetic extension can motivate the ruler to take active responsibility for the people both within and outside his state. Only one who is indeed capable of extending his care to all people of the world and turn it into political responsibility for their well-​being, especially the well-​being of the worst-​off, can become a true king, a true carrier of the Kingly Way.63 For Mencius, therefore, it is by virtue of the feeling of commiseration (or care, more broadly) that a benevolent ruler is kept from applying the logic of causality to his political responsibility.64 As such, a true king defies the logic of causality in his exercise of benevolent government. Furthermore, he transcends state borders in extending his benevolent government to all under Heaven. In this way, he unifies the world. The implication of this global vision of sentimentalist Confucian virtue politics for Mencius’s contemporary rulers is obvious: any follower of the Kingly Way should strive to extend his care and political responsibility to the people of other states, and under the current interstate circumstances the most practical way to exercise this Confucian ethic of responsibility is to intervene in the states under tyrannical rule, rescue the people, and restore the socioeconomic conditions under which they can live flourishing moral and economic lives. This brings us to our second question:  what is the proper way for an intervening ruler to take care of the well-​being of the people of the intervened state? Xunzi offers perhaps the most illuminating statement of what can be called the Confucian criteria of jus in bello.65

J. Ivanhoe, “Confucian Self Cultivation and Mengzi’s Notion of Extension,” both in Essays on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi, eds. Xiusheng Liu and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), pp. 187–​220 (esp. pp. 189–​199) and pp. 221–​241, respectively. 61 Also see Mencius 4A9; 4B16; 7B4. 62 Mencius 2A6. 63 Depicting King Wen’s virtuous government, Mencius says, “Old men without wives, old women without husbands, old people without children, young children without fathers  –​these four types of people are the most destitute and have no one to turn to for help. Whenever King Wen put benevolent (ren) measures into effect, he always gave them first consideration” (Mencius 1B5). Also see Xunzi 9.4. 64 Compare this Confucian position with Han Fei’s 韓非, a famous Legalist and Xunzi’s former student, which strictly adheres to the logic of causality, when he says, “The lazy and extravagant grow poor; the diligent and frugal get rich. Now if the ruler levies money from the rich in order to give alms to the poor, he is robbing the diligent and frugal and indulging the lazy and extravagant” (Henfeizi 50). The English translation of the Hanfeizi 韓非子 is adopted from Han Fei Tzu: Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 121. 65 At this point, one may wonder whether Xunzi also subscribes to sentimentalist Confucian virtue politics. It is indeed true that since Xunzi believes that original human nature is bad, lacking moral sentiments, and thus needs external measures for moral transformation (such as rituals

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Do not kill the old and the feeble. Do not trample down people’s crops. Those who surrender are not to be treated as captives … In all cases of executions, one is not to execute the common people. Rather, one is to execute those who bring disorder to the common people … A true king may carry out execution (zhu 誅), but will not have to do battle (zhan 戰). He will not assault cities that are heavily fortified. He will not attack military forces that are boxed in. If, among enemies, superiors and inferiors delight in one another, then he congratulates them. He does not slaughter cities. He does not lay his armies in wait for ambushes. He does not station mass occupations. His campaigns do not exceed a single season. And so, the people of chaotic states take joy when he launches war, because they are not at ease with their own superiors, and instead desire his arrival.66

Drawing from this passage (and related passages in the Mengzi), some scholars argue that the classical Confucian idea(s) of limiting the legitimate use of military force is not merely a matter of prudence in designing an effective military strategy but has a strong deontological moral element given its connection with “the normative ideal of initiating true humaneness and peace for all people” or the “moral principle as defined by the Confucian Way.”67 It is true that the classical Confucian political theory of righteous interstate relations and legitimate military engagement cannot be understood adequately without considering the background normative ideal within which the whole Confucian interstate theory is nested. The question is whether or not the normative ideal of Confucianism or the Kingly Way can be understood in deontological terms. Our discussion thus far, however, offers no philosophical evidence to support the deontological interpretation. Rather, the early Confucian theory of interstate relations and righteous war works consistently within the global vision of Confucian (sentimentalist) virtue politics, accommodated to the world of the Warring States period, where there is no visible institutional authority representative of the Mandate of Heaven. In the statement above, Xunzi does not stipulate the limits on the use of military force during “humanitarian” intervention or annexation in terms of moral and teachers), he cannot endorse Mencius’s sentimentalist virtue ethics, central to which is the assumption that moral sentiments are innate. However, Xunzi’s rejection of the innateness of moral sentiments does not necessarily prevent him from supporting sentimentalist virtue politics because a morally educated ruler can develop care toward (his own and other) people, and, as we have seen, Xunzi justifies a benevolent ruler’s military intervention in another state precisely on the basis of his care for the people suffering from tyranny. In this regard, it is revealing that Han Fei’s criticism of Confucianism is concentrated on the sentimentalist dimension of Confucian virtue politics (Hanfeizi 49, p. 101 in Watson’s translation). Also see Sungmoon Kim, “Virtue Politics and Political Leadership: A Confucian Rejoinder to Hanfeizi,” Asian Philosophy 22:2 (2012), pp. 177–​197. For a revealing argument for the critical importance of caring in Xunzi’s overall ethical system, see Eric L. Hutton, “Ethics in the Xunzi,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, ed. Eric L.  Hutton (Dordrecht:  Springer, 2016), pp. 67–​93, esp. pp. 86–​90. 66 Xunzi 15.1f. 67 Twiss and Chan, “The Classical Confucian Position,” pp. 462–​463.

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maxim  –​that the intervening ruler ought to (or ought to not) do some thing because it is the right (or wrong) thing to do (according to some universal principles), regardless of his care and responsibility for the people in question. As we have seen, Xunzi justifies a virtuous ruler’s military intervention or annexation on the basis of the ruler’s care for the people and his righteous anger toward the tyrant. Now, Xunzi emphasizes this point once again in the above passage, when he says that “in all cases of executions, [the intervening/​annexing ruler] is not to execute the common people [but rather] to execute those who bring disorder to the common people.” Thus understood, for Xunzi, as for Mencius, while the ruler’s motivation to intervene with another state originates in his (developed) moral sentiments such as ren and yi, his self-​imposed yet principled (hence not merely prudential) limits on the use of military force in his punitive expedition come from his moral character. What is important is that Xunzi’s (and Mencius’s) turn to the ruler’s moral character as the sole criterion for moral legitimacy of the purpose as well as the conduct of war was necessitated by the radical absence of universal moral authority and the collapse of Zhou-​centered feudal order of interstate moral hierarchy. Like Mencius, who employs the term zheng to describe and justify punitive expedition of a tyrant by a virtuous ruler under his newly conceived interstate moral hierarchy, Xunzi justifies the execution of a bad ruler by a virtuous ruler –​ of equal moral standing according to Zhou political ritualism –​in terms of the traditional, hierarchical, concept of zhu, insinuating that what determines moral hierarchy among the states in new interstate relations is the quality of the individual ruler’s moral character, which includes his ability to extend his care and political responsibility to the people of another state. Not surprisingly, it is precisely because of the violation of the Confucian morality of war (both in purpose and in conduct) that Mencius says Qi’s already illegitimate annexation of Yan (given King Xuan’s lack of virtue and questionable intention of launching the “punitive” war) is now facing not only vehement resistance from the people of Yan, but also imminent attack from the alliance of other states. Mencius admonishes King Xuan as follows: Now when you went to punish Yan which practiced tyranny over its people, the people thought you were going to rescue them from water and fire, and they came to meet your army, bringing baskets of rice and bottles of drink. How can it be right for you to kill the old and bind the young, destroy the ancestral temples and appropriate the valuable vessels? Even before this, the whole world was afraid of the power of Qi. Now you double your territory without practicing benevolent government. This is to provoke the armies of the whole world. If you hasten to order the release of the captives, old and young, leave the valuable vessels where they are, and take your army out after setting up a ruler in consultation with the men of Yan, it is still not too late to halt the armies of the world.68

68 Mencius 1B11 (slightly modified).

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Apparently, what King Xuan did in Yan was the exact opposite of what Xunzi describes as the way of the benevolent ruler: instead of delivering the people from tyranny, he tyrannized them by “kill[ing] the old and bind[ing] the young” as well as by “destroy[ing] the ancestral temples and appropriat[ing] the valuable vessels.” Again, what has been violated is not so much a maxim derived deontologically from universal moral principles but the core stipulations of Confucian virtue politics –​simply put, King Xuan’s utter failure to care for the people of Yan and extend his political responsibility to them. What is worth noting is Mencius’s reasoning that by expanding the territory without practicing benevolent government, King Xuan has made himself a target of punitive expedition by the alliance of other states. It is unclear whether Mencius requires that this type of punishment (i.e., the punishment of an aggressor) should always be conducted multilaterally or can be carried out unilaterally by another powerful and virtuous state, if one were to exist. Nevertheless, the point is that Mencius finds such a punishment morally justified, which in principle (i.e., according to Zhou political ritualism) is the exclusive right and obligation of the universal king, who is directly accountable to Heaven for the well-​being of all people under Heaven. In this case, Mencius stipulates, the purpose of the military campaign is restoration of the occupied state’s constitutional order, at the heart of which is setting up a ruler,69 and this must be done in consultation with the people of Yan.70 Ultimately, what is expected is restoration of the interstate status quo with a notable improvement of the occupied state’s domestic situation. Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to show how Mencius and Xunzi –​despite their important differences, especially with regard to the role of the hegemon under the new interstate circumstances  –​were able to accommodate Confucius’s global vision of virtue politics, centered on the ruler’s (sentimentalist) moral virtues of ren and yi, to their contemporary political context in which the world, previously under Zhou’s universal kingship representing the Mandate of Heaven, was divided into a multitude of independent, de facto sovereign states. My central argument has been that notwithstanding the total collapse of Zhou’s moral authority as the suzerain of all under Heaven and

Xunzi describes the pivotal importance of the ruler (jun) as follows: “The lord is sundial. [The common people are shadow.] If the sundial is straight, then the shadow will be straight. The lord is a basin. [The common people are water.] If the basin is round, then the water will be round. The lord is a bowl. If the bowl is square, the water will be square” (Xunzi 12.4). Also see Yuri Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), pp. 44–​53. 70 As noted in Chapter  2, by “people” (zhong 衆) here Mencius seems to have in mind Yan’s “trusted ministers of noble families” (shichen 世臣) rather than the multitude of commoners. 69

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the accompanying disintegration of Zhou-​centered hierarchical ritual order among the feudal states, Mencius and Xunzi were nevertheless able to uphold the morality of war, first by conceiving of a new virtue-​based interstate moral hierarchy among the now independent sovereign states, then by justifying the virtuous ruler’s use of military force against a tyrannical state in terms of “punishment” (zheng 征) or “execution” (zhu 誅), a ritually sanctioned right that had been held exclusively by the Zhou king (as the Son of Heaven) or his agent against immoral feudal rulers –​tyrants, aggressors, and usurpers. Both Mencius and Xunzi were strongly convinced that in the absence of a visible institution representative of the Mandate of Heaven, any virtuous ruler can intervene in a tyrannical state militarily in order to protect the well-​being of the tyrannized people by extending his care as well as his care-​motivated moral-​political responsibility to them (in principle all people under Heaven). The shift in attention from the bygone universal institution of Heaven to the people’s well-​being implies a fundamental innovation in Confucian political theory because the new theory endorses what we now call “humanitarian intervention,” a military intervention whose sole purpose is to protect the people suffering from tyrannical rule or external aggression, rather than simply to punish the tyrant or the external aggressor.71 Equally important, in this new Confucian political theory, it is not so much an external moral standard or a universal moral maxim but the intervening ruler’s moral character that sets the limits on his military conduct in the course of the punitive expedition.

In contrast, in Zhou political ritualism, the primary purpose of military intervention is to punish one who has violated his Heavenly mission of assisting the Son of Heaven. Of course, the Heavenly mission in question is to serve the moral and material well-​being of the people but here the point of justification lies in the Zhou king’s authority (or the Mandate of Heaven) rather than in the well-​being of the people as such. In this regard, Lewis’s following statement is worth close attention: “The key point to note about the Chinese theory of the ‘just war’ or yi bing was that it was primarily a justification of the role of the ruler within a centralized state, and thus a defense of the power of the emperor” (Mark E. Lewis, “The Just War in Early China,” in The Ethics of War in Asian Civilizations:  A Comparative Perspective, ed. Torkel Brekke [New York: Routledge, 2006], pp. 185–​200, at p. 197). 71

Conclusion: Between Old and New

In this book, I  have examined how Mencius and Xunzi developed two different, though related, versions of Confucian virtue politics under new political circumstances ushered in by the rise of independent and sovereign states during the Warring States period. That is, I argued, in their struggle to adapt the Confucian paradigm of virtue politics to the political context of the warring states, which I have reconstructed as consisting of four key propositions –​the virtue proposition, the virtue politics proposition, the moral education proposition, and the material condition proposition –​they radically innovated the content of Confucian virtue politics while expanding its scope by developing political theories from their foundational assumptions of human nature (good or bad) and thus in a way very consistent with their contrasting accounts of moral self-​ cultivation (developmental or re-​ formational). My central argument has been that, despite notable differences, Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political theories can be best understood as “realistic” responses to the challenge of Realpolitik that in the post-​Zhou context drove the states into perpetual struggle and disorder. I  captured the classical Confucians’ political realism in terms of “Confucian constitutionalism” by drawing attention to both its power-​constraining and liberty-​creating dimension (negative Confucianism) and its authority-​ enabling and interest-​ coordinating dimension (positive Confucianism). I also distinguished virtue constitutionalism from ritual constitutionalism based on the primary (but not exclusive) resource, between virtue and ritual, on which the ruler’s political authority is predicated and by which his otherwise arbitrary power and self-​interest can be checked or re-​channeled toward the public interest, at the core of which lies the people’s well-​being. Recasting the realistic side of Confucian virtue politics from a constitutional standpoint has also provided us with a fresh perspective by which to understand some of the elements of Confucian political theory that appear to sit uncomfortably with the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics. First, this approach 206

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enables us to understand badao as a specific mode of positive Confucianism, though unconstrained by the logic of negative Confucianism. Traditionally, mainly because of the Neo-​Confucian influence, badao has been thought to be diametrically opposed to Confucian virtue politics, and it is arguably because of Xunzi’s acknowledgment of badao as a morally acceptable mode of statecraft that the Confucians in the mainstream Mencian strand, Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​ Confucians in particular, regarded him as an unorthodox Confucian, at times even as a borderline heretic.1 From the perspective of our new framework, however, badao, as interpreted by Xunzi, refers to positive Confucianism, which is predominantly concerned with the establishment of political authority, coordination of competing desires and socioeconomic transactions, and creation of the public good. What makes badao inadequate to be a model of good government, namely the Kingly Way, is threefold: first, it is not effectively constrained by the logic of negative Confucianism; second, it does not aim at moral elevation of the people; and, third, therefore, it does not rely on ritual and yi, even when, like the Kingly Way, it employs social divisions and allotments (fen) as its key coordination mechanism.2 Sor-​hoon Tan once claimed that “Mencius’s distinction between hegemony and true kingship does not preclude the possibility of a developmental process connecting the two.”3 In my interpretation, it is Xunzi who offers a substantive philosophical account for this possibility, unexplored by Mencius due to his normative political dualism as discussed in Chapter 4, by understanding badao as a statecraft that has yet to develop into the Kingly Way, instead of one that is starkly opposed to it, its clear normative inferiority notwithstanding. The second advantage of employing the constitutional framework in understanding the realistic side of Confucian virtue politics is that it helps us to understand the place of “civic virtue” in Confucian virtue politics, even though its foundational virtue ethics does not, in principle, allow a normative space for civic or political virtue that holds moral value of its own, independent of moral virtue that is concerned with human excellence and flourishing, or, as the Confucians call it, sagehood. In my framework, character traits or qualities that directly buttress the scaffolding of negative and positive Confucianism are glossed as civic virtues and they are conceptually distinguished from moral virtues, the strenuous cultivation of which are believed to ultimately lead one to sagehood. For instance, political liberty, which I reconstructed in Chapter 4 from This negative view toward Xunzi was the strongest among Korean Neo-​Confucians during the Chosōn dynasty (1392–​1910). See Jaesang Jung, “Xunzi and Pre-​Modern Korean Thinkers,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, ed. Eric L. Hutton (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016), pp. 503–​534. 2 For this point, see Eirik L. Harris, “Xunzi’s Political Philosophy,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi, pp. 95–​138. 3 Sor-​hoon Tan, Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), p. 197. 1

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the Confucian scholar’s (or Confucian scholar-​minister’s) moral power (or moral character) to counterbalance the ruler’s sheer political power is an example of a civic virtue that is critical for the effective operation of negative Confucianism. That said, since civic virtue is generally concerned with effective socioeconomic coordination, acknowledgment and support of political authority (trust between the ruler and the ruled, in other words), creation of the public interest, and, above all, the sustenance of political order and system, its connection with positive Confucianism is more obvious. Here, too, it is confirmed that badao, operating on the principle of trust (xin), is predicated on what I call civic virtues, but not further buttressed by, nor aimed to cultivate, moral virtues, whose ethical concern goes far beyond institutional stability and political order. In contrast, as an ideal constitutional order of Confucian virtue politics, the Kingly Way encompasses both civic virtue and moral virtue, understanding the former as instrumental to the socioeconomic conditions in which moral virtue can be steadily cultivated. In the end, then, what differentiates the Kingly Way from badao from a constitutional standpoint is that the constitutional order of the Kingly Way is more firmly grounded in human excellence and flourishing both of the ruler and, to a lesser degree, the people, who the Confucians argue should voluntarily subject themselves to the ruler’s moral leadership. I discussed this complex connection between moral virtue and civic virtue especially in Xunzi’s political thought with reference to his dual accounts of ritual as moral virtue in terms of ritual propriety on the one hand and civic virtue on the other, as a constellation of “preservative virtues” that make people ordered, correct, peaceful, and controlled, character traits that have only an indirect connection with one’s moral self-​cultivation toward sagehood. Seen in this way, and despite my critique of El Amine in the Introduction and other parts of this book, my central concern does not seem to be so distanced from hers when she declares the gist of her “new interpretation” of classical Confucianism as consisting in the belief that “the approach to politics offered in the Classical Confucian texts does not follow from Confucian ethics in any straightforward manner.”4 Precisely what El Amine means by the “un-​straightforward” relationship between ethics and politics in Confucianism has been subject to debate between El Amine and her critics and still remains a matter of controversy. However, when she identifies “qualities pertaining to orderliness” in terms of “civic-​like qualities” and distinguishes them from “full-​ fledged Confucian virtues” such as ren and yi,5 it is obvious that she has in mind what I call “civic virtue” as a special kind of virtue that is directly serviceable to the institutions of Confucian politics and political order.6 4 Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought:  A New Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 9. 5 Ibid., pp. 15, 30–​34, 60, 82. 6 In fact, this similarity between El Amine and myself is hardly surprising because she occasionally draws on my previous writings where I introduced the notion of “Confucian civility”

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That being said, it must be noted that the agreement between El Amine and me is significantly qualified. After all, she does not investigate, in the manner I did in Chapter 3, how the practical distinction between moral virtue and civic virtue, acknowledged by Xunzi, is intimately related to his foundational account of the state of nature as well as his broader political (or constitutional) theory and how this distinction bears on his complex idea of ritual both as a trait of human excellence and as a constellation of “preservative virtues.” Nor does she extend this finding to Xunzi’s far more civic interpretation of the Confucian gentleman in comparison with Mencius. Finally, she does not seem to pay close attention to the fact that acknowledging the practical distinction between moral virtue and civic virtue can be compatible with recognizing “a certain tension” between the two within the overall monistic structure of Confucian virtue ethics. In this book, I understood this potential tension in terms of the tension between strong virtue monism and tempered virtue monism, thus without making the much stronger and problematic claim that “political virtues are not a diluted version of ethical ones, but form a distinct category.”7 Despite these limitations, I think that there is much to commend in El Amine’s timely intervention in the philosophical study on classical Confucianism from a political perspective, the importance of which has been generally ignored or misunderstood by her critics in philosophy and sinology. I  believe that clarifying our disagreement with due attention to her most important contribution to the study of Confucian political theory would not only help illuminate the distinctively political side of Confucian virtue politics that I  attribute to Mencius and, especially, Xunzi, but it could further guide us toward the more fruitful ways in which other classical Confucians and later (Neo-​)Confucians can be studied as political thinkers. I believe that this is the best way to conclude this book. Now, let us begin with the kernel of El Amine’s new “political” interpretation of classical Confucian political thought. As discussed earlier, El Amine’s central claim in her new interpretation consists of a series of stipulations. (1) Confucianism is deeply and primarily concerned with political order (zhi) and “Confucian political philosophy is motivated by the same problem that Sheldon Wolin identifies as central to Western political philosophy, the problem of how ‘to render politics compatible with the requirements of order,’ that is, ‘how to reconcile the conflict created by competition under conditions of scarcity with the demands of public tranquility.’ ”8 (or “civic virtue”). See ibid., 59n135 and p67n24. In addition to works cited by El Amine, see the following articles for my additional endeavors to derive Confucian civilities from The Analects:  Sungmoon Kim, “Self-​Transformation and Civil Society:  Lockean vs. Confucian,” Dao 8:4 (2009), pp. 383–​ 401 and “Confucian Citizenship? Against Two Greek Models,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37:3 (2010), pp. 438–​456. 7 El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought, p. 59n135. 8 Ibid., p. 10.

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(2) “[T]‌he success of political rule in Confucianism is judged by its own standard, distinct from the standards the Confucians use for the assessment of individual life. The standard in politics is therefore not virtue (the moral edification of the people), but rather the establishment and maintenance of political order.”9 (3) “[P]‌olitical order [for the classical Confucians] is not a means to an end; it is an end in itself.”10 (4) “[T]‌he Confucian standard of order is distinct from the Confucian ethical standard of virtue. To the extent that the political standard is a normative standard, it is difficult to insist that it has nothing to do with morality.”11 Let us call this the political paradigm of classical Confucianism. Since the political paradigm as stipulated by El Amine is sharply contrasted with the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics, I  will have to reject it in the end. Before doing so, however, it is important to understand why El Amine begins with this provocative premise, apart from Wolin’s and other Western political theorists’ influence on her, who struggle to reinstate the sense of reality in political theory currently dominated by the Kantian-​Rawlisan paradigm.12 In all fairness, I  do not think that El Amine is merely or mechanically imposing the Western methodological insight drawn from the revival of political realism on the classical Confucians; after a careful examination of both the Confucian texts and pre-​Qin Chinese political history, she reconstructs the “sociological facts” about early Confucianism and investigates how the classical Confucians responded to “specific political circumstances” arising from such facts. Unlike other interpreters of Confucianism, including myself, El Amine is therefore less interested in what the Confucians had to say about virtue, moral character, or moral edification of the people, however crucial they may turn out to be for the high-​level social coordination in view of harmony; her primary concern is what kinds of political arguments (and tools and methods) were advanced by the classical Confucians in relation to the sociological facts of the warring states and whether a logical consistency can be established across them. Her central claim is that at a basic-​level coordination the most relevant political questions should be how to secure compliance from

9 Ibid., pp. 10–​11. 10 Ibid., p. 14. 11 Ibid., p. 15. 12 For El Amine’s deep methodological debt to Bernard Williams, especially his idea of the “Basic Legitimation Demand,” see ibid., p. 44. Most tellingly, El Amine states that “[m]‌y interpretation of early Confucianism meshes with the recent trend in the discipline of political theory critiquing the post-​Kantian approach to political theorizing that takes ethics as a basis” (p. 194). It is an interesting and important question how much she is influenced by this “recent trend” in the discipline of political theory and whether this approach is justified in the classical Confucian context.

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ordinary people, how to regulate their socioeconomic transactions effectively, and, ultimately, how to overcome chaos and bring about political order, and she is strongly convinced that these are precisely what the classical Confucians wrestled with.13 As El Amine puts it, in her interpretation, “Confucian political theory does not follow upon Confucian ethics in the way recent interpreters propose because it is attuned to the material world in a particular way.”14 Thus understood, it is imperative to examine how El Amine understands the sociological facts surrounding classical Confucianism. The following is a snapshot of her core stipulations of the Warring States political circumstances. (1) In the post-​Zhou context, the world was “populated by many a contender to supreme position of ruler over the expansive territory [and accordingly] new standards had to be devised to decide who was a legitimate ruler and who was not.”15 (2) As the Warring States period progressed and the states were competing for manpower for both military and economic purposes, facilitating cross-​border mobility of the commoners, the relationship between the ruler and the common people become “much more direct, and also reciprocal. The ruler now needed his people [as] they formed the bulwark of his army and the producers of his realm.”16 (3) At the core of political legitimacy, therefore, lay the ruler’s ability to secure and maintain political order, or his ability to create the material conditions (or “basic structure”) in which common people can have effective and sustained socioeconomic transactions under proper governmental regulations.17 (4) This “bottom-​up” coordination “rests on the development of the ‘civic’ qualities” on the part of the people who are not required or expected to develop full-​fledged virtues or become sages. “[N]‌or does government rest on the transformative power of an exemplary ruler [as it] operates through a set of institutional mechanisms, primarily rituals.”18 (5) “[T]‌he qualities acquired by the common people through ritual practice (for example, self-​restraint) are not necessarily stepping stones toward virtue, and rituals’ success does not hinge on the continual presence of virtuous men on top.”19 Insomuch as El Amine’s goal is to disclose a pattern “underlying Confucian political thought that differs from the conclusions drawn by the ethics-​first

13 Ibid., pp. 13–​14. 14 Ibid., p. 13 (emphasis added). 15 Ibid., p. 26. 16 Ibid., p. 25. 17 Ibid., p. 73. 18 Ibid., pp. 82–​83. 19 Ibid., p. 95n53.

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approach,”20 I  must admit that it is a cogent interpretation, very consistent with her sociological/​material premise, though I think her claim that classical Confucianism ascribes no normative significance to the common people is exaggerated.21 I  even find it deeply regrettable that many of her critics have largely dismissed what implications this “pattern” may have for classical Confucian political theory, especially in Xunzi’s political thought. For instance, in Chapter 2 of her book, El Amine brilliantly shows how Xunzi reconceives “social divisions” as a method of socioeconomic coordination of the people stuck in perpetual conflict in the state of nature, desiring the same but scarce material goods. In this regard, El Amine’s discussion on social divisions both as a method of coordination and as a vehicle to political order and productive economy is important and deserves much more attention among Confucian political theorists and political theorists in general, because it provides an important insight into an alternative mode of social regulation (hierarchical regulation) to those that have been experimented in contemporary politics including free market (no or minimal regulation), the communist state (total regulation), or democratic governance (equal self-​regulation). The trouble arises when El Amine makes the further claim that this basic, bottom-​up level of coordination, aimed at securing political order, was an end in itself for the classical Confucians. This move renders the “perfectionist” dimension of classical Confucianism superfluous, something that is not necessary, only desirable. Though El Amine discusses extensively “harmonious society” and “virtuous leadership” in Chapter  3 of her book, one should wonder why these topics should enjoy such special treatment in her otherwise political interpretation, according to which virtue (i.e., moral virtue) is given no salient political place, except for its supererogatory and instrumental contribution to “a more durable political order.”22 If it is true that virtuous leadership is a merely desirable element of Confucian politics on prudential grounds, however, El Amine is hard-​pressed to explain the normative distinction held by the classical Confucians between badao and the Kingly Way and their unequivocal preference to the latter over the former. In fact, not only are all four stipulations of El Amine’s political paradigm sufficiently met by the politics of badao, but furthermore, badao is consistent with the “pattern” that she has reconstructed as the essence of the Confucian conception of the political with a view to the sociological facts about classical Confucianism.

Ibid., p. 10. 21 See ibid., pp. 43–​51. 22 Ibid., p. 140 (emphasis added). Here is El Amine’s full statement: “Yet no one deny that the Confucians also express a preference, even longing, for a sage ruler like Yao and Shun. I have attempted in this section to show why this longing is not incompatible with my insistence on the centrality of order in their political vision: while political order is an end in itself, and not a means toward virtue, a more durable order, as described in the previous chapter, is more likely to obtain with the rule of virtuous men.” 20

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Despite my strong disagreement with El Amine’s interpretation of Mencius with regard to badao (as she fails to note the colossal difference between his implicit acknowledgment of the practical utility of badao and his explicit normative criticism of it as borderline tyranny), I  do agree with her that Xunzi reinterpreted badao as “provid[ing] the conditions necessary for the emergence of a society in which morality flourishes.”23 However, it is one thing that Xunzi reinterprets badao as an acceptable mode of statecraft from the Confucian moral standpoint (hence, not only from the viewpoint of political reality) and it is another to present badao as representing the model of Confucian statecraft based on its perfect suitability for the sociological facts reconstructed by a modern interpreter, as is clearly evidenced in El Amine’s concluding assertion that “[w]‌elfare, peace, and order are goods in themselves and need not be justified through the fulfillment of ‘ethical’ standards.”24 Yet, quite ironically, El Amine admits that for Xunzi badao lies in the space between “ethical politics” and “crass politics,” making one wonder what has happened to Xunzi’s extensive discussion and extolment of “ethical politics” where “morality flourishes.”25 This ambiguity regarding the moral place of badao in classical Confucian political theory ultimately forces El Amine to make an argument that is directly contrary to Xunzi’s own judgment on badao: while Xunzi makes a clear distinction between the Kingly Way and badao by attributing ren and yi only to the former, El Amine makes the following circular and self-​referenced claim without any compelling textual evidence. Thus, to the extent that hegemons do promote political order (rather than because we expect the Confucians to favor moral government as such), one would expect them to partake of benevolent government. Based on the view I will offer in Chapter 4 on the relationship between ren and ren government (renzheng 仁政), however, I contend that hegemonic government, insofar as it promotes order, partakes of ren government, without hegemons necessarily partaking of ren.26

In my view, the fundamental problem with El Amine’s new political interpretation of classical Confucian political thought lies in the lack of intelligibility of 23 Ibid., p. 58. 24 Ibid., p. 59. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., p. 60. In Chapter 4 of her book, El Amine argues that “[w]‌hile on the personal level it is not defined in relationship to the idea of giving to others, ren government is defined precisely as one that provides for the people in the way described in Chapter 2. Indeed, Mencius himself says that one could have a ren heart but still fail in benefiting the people, suggesting that what is ren about ren government is not so much that the ruler has a ren heart but he provides for the people” (ibid., pp. 136–​137). I think that El Amine’s conclusion is overdrawn. As El Amine rightly notes, none of the classical Confucians under investigation argue that a ren heart naturally and sufficiently gives rise to a ren government. All they support is the belief that ren is (and should be) a motivational engine for government in order for it to be good and Mencius in particular is convinced that ren can and should be extended to public governance (Mencius 1A7).

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the Confucian political theory she is reconstructing as reliably “Confucian” as the tradition understands the term rujia 儒家, which we translate in English as Confucianism.27 If the Confucian conception of the political is fully and perfectly identified in terms of political order, how can classical Confucianism as a political theory be meaningfully distinguished from Legalism, which clearly declares that political order is an end in itself? How can we make sense of Han Fei’s vehement critique of Confucianism (and Mohism) for its valorization of virtuous rulership as well as the classical Confucians’ criticism of amoral champions of political order?28 El Amine seems to be aware of this difficulty when she says, Crucially, these are all policies that rely on the regulation of institutions (the taxation system, the appointment system, tariffs, punishments, etc.), not on the exercise of virtue by the ruler per se. In other words, this aspect of Confucian political thought is largely independent of the Confucian concern with virtue and self-​cultivation, and might indeed make Confucianism appear as much more similar to the hard-​headed political realism of Legalism than is usually thought.29

But what new insight do we gain by making Confucianism “appear as much more similar to” Legalism? If, as Harris shows, Legalism (at least the version Han Fei presents) has its own normative standard that is internal to its profound concern with political order, security, and stability,30 which is precisely how El Amine understands the gist of politics and Confucian politics in particular with reference to Bernard Williams and other Western political realists, does the distinctiveness of classical Confucian political theory lie merely in the way in which specific arguments for political order are aligned and different regulative tools are employed? Moreover, this massive blurring between Confucianism and (principled) Legalism makes it extremely difficult to differentiate classical Confucian political theory from the so-​called “Legalistic In my recent book in which I  have constructed a normative Confucian democratic theory called “public reason Confucianism,” I  claim that for any contemporary Confucian political theory to enjoy its credential as a Confucian political theory, it should meet at a minimum what I called the intelligibility condition, according to which otherwise discrete values form a cultural or philosophical connection among themselves so that each value becomes an inseparable part of a constellation of internally entwined values that is intelligibly Confucian as a whole. I  believe that the requirement is also true of any attempt to reconstruct Confucian political theory including classical Confucian political theory. See Sungmoon Kim, Public Reason Confucianism:  Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 15. 28 See Sungmoon Kim, “Virtue Politics and Political Leadership:  A Confucian Rejoinder to Han Feizi,” Asian Philosophy 22:2 (2012), pp. 177–​197; Eirik L. Harris, “Constraining the Ruler: On Escaping Han Fei’s Criticism of Confucian Virtue Politics,” Asian Philosophy 23:1 (2013), pp. 43–​61. 29 El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought, pp. 80–​81. 30 Eirik L. Harris, “Han Fei on the Problem of Morality,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Han Fei, ed. Paul R. Goldin (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), pp. 107–​131. Also see Chapter 5 of this book (n41). 27

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Confucianism,” a politicized Confucianism, as Tu Wei-​ming calls it,31 which emerged during the Han dynasty with a strong emphasis on the “three bonds” (sanjiang 三綱), at the core of which is the rigid hierarchical relationships between ruler and ruled, father and son, and husband and wife, over the “five cardinal human relationships” (wulun) established by Mencius and endorsed by Xunzi. Admittedly, the central purpose of Legalistic Confucianism was to pacify the newly formed empire reunified under the Han rulership and the Legalistic transformation of classical Confucianism was precisely to achieve the supreme goal of political order, ending a centuries-​long political turmoil in the Middle Kingdom.32 El Amine claims that her methodology is inspired by an “external or sociological standpoint.”33 Her external approach, however, risks rendering the distinctive character of classical Confucianism less intelligible as a Confucian political theory than the rival internal approaches do, all of which begin with some version of what I called the virtue proposition. For an external approach is likely to downplay what holds together a certain philosophical tradition as one dynamic yet coherent tradition, distinct from other philosophical traditions, by focusing on what most, if not all, pre-​Qin (and imperial) traditions of Chinese political realism are commonly concerned with in the face of the “sociological facts” of the time –​ political order and absolute monarchism, among others.34 Similarly, an external approach is likely to relegate the variety of political theories into one generic mode of political theory, disentangled from all moral or ethical theories, on the ground that when a political theory is entwined with certain moral and philosophical doctrines, thereby forming a “comprehensive doctrine,” the political is sidelined by other “non-​political” concerns such as salvation, revelation, faith, virtue, rationality, and so on. Yet, is it not the case that our interest in classical Confucian political theory is motivated by our desire to investigate the way in which it is constructed as a comprehensive philosophical doctrine? Is it not the version of Confucianism as a specific advocacy of the Way as an alternative to other Chinese (and Western) philosophical doctrines that is interesting and inspiring to us? Is it not the Confucian conception of the political, not the concept of the political as such, that may provide us with a new insight into politics and public life? Tu Wei-​ming, “Probing the ‘Three Bonds’ and ‘Five Relationships’ in Confucian Humanism,” in Confucianism and the Family, eds. Walter H. Slote and George A. DeVos (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 121–​136. 32 On the formation and development of Legalistic Confucianism, see Chaibong Hahm and Wooyeal Paik, “Legalistic Confucianism and Economic Development in East Asia,” Journal of East Asian Studies 3:3 (2003), pp. 461–​491. 33 El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought, p. 35. 34 Some historians such as Yuri Pines, therefore, refuse to gloss the warring states thinkers into traditional categories based on scholarly lineages (jia 家) and instead approach them as independent “Chinese” thinkers grappling with the political challenges of the time, unencumbered by their scholarly traditions. See his Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2009). 31

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In this regard, it is important to pay attention to a classical Confucian’s own view as to why other rival schools of thought, their advocacy of the Way notwithstanding, are far from grasping the true Way: Mozi was fixated on the useful and did not understand the value of good form. Song Xing was fixated on having few desires and did not understand the value of achieving their objects. Shen Dao was fixated on laws and did not understand the value of having worthy people. Shen Buhai was fixated on power and did not understand the value of having wise people. Huizi was fixated on wording and did not understand the value of what is substantial. Zhuangzi was fixated on the Heavenly and did not understand the value of human. Thus, if one speaks of it in terms of usefulness, then the Way will consist completely in seeking what is profitable. If one speaks of it in terms of desires, then the Way will consist completely in learning to be satisfied. If one speaks of it in terms of laws, then the Way will consist completely in making arrangements. If one speaks of it in terms of power, then the Way will consist completely in finding what is expedient. If one speaks of it in terms of working, then the Way will consist completely in discoursing on matters. If one speaks of it in terms of the Heavenly, then the Way will consist completely in following along with things. These various approaches are all merely one corner of the Way. As for the Way itself, its substance is constant, yet it covers all changes. No one corner is sufficient to exhibit it fully.35

Here Xunzi has yet to see the rise of Han Fei as another prominent thinker, advocating the Way of political order. But it is not difficult to imagine that Xunzi would have leveled the same criticism at his own student by saying that he only understands one corner of the Way, however important it may be, and neither its whole nor its good form (wen 文). To be sure, El Amine’s interpretation is focused on classical Confucian political theory, not the Confucian Way. However, as Harris rightly notes in his commentary on El Amine’s book, “In order to make progress, we need to understand the relationship between virtue and political order [among other things] and how each of these relates to the broader idea of the Way.”36 In other words, it is only by taking the Confucian Way seriously or only by approaching (classical) Confucianism as a coherent comprehensive philosophical doctrine that we can have a more holistic and convincing understanding of Confucian political theory. It is open for debate whether this book has succeeded in presenting such a holistic and convincing picture of the classical Confucian political theory advanced by Mencius and Xunzi. But when I  was reconstructing Mencius’s and Xunzi’s political theories of Confucian virtue politics, I tried hard to show how each thinker struggled to strike a balance, albeit with different emphasis by each, between virtue and political order, between virtue and ritual, between morality and interest, between moral virtue and civic virtue, between virtue 35 Xunzi 21.4. 36 Eirik L. Harris, “Relating the Political to the Ethical:  Thoughts on Early Confucian Political Theory,” Dao 18:2 (2019), pp. 277–​283.

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monism and value pluralism, and between negative Confucianism and positive Confucianism. I  see this book as mediating between the traditional “ethics-​ first” approach and El Amine’s new political approach and hope that it can help motivate political theorists to develop a more active interest in Confucian political theory, classical or otherwise.

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Index

abdication doctrine, 63, 64–​65, 68–​69, 70–​71, 78, 137–​138 Mencius, 38, 62, 63, 65–​66, 67, 68–​69, 70–​71, 75, 77, 85, 137 Xunzi, 38, 62, 63, 75–​76, 78, 82, 84 Ames, Roger T., 5n10 Angle, Stephen, 27n4, 79n62 Aristotle, 16 badao (the Way of the hegemon), 13, 19, 22, 147–​150, 156, 160, 168–​169, 207 Mencius, 22–​23, 32, 37, 38, 118, 147, 151, 152, 154–​156, 169, 174 Xunzi, 19, 23, 38, 118, 147, 149–​150, 156, 157–​158, 161, 163–​166, 168, 169–​171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 207, 213 Bai, Tongdong, 13n33 Basic Legitimation Demand, 9 Bell, Daniel A., 10n26, 34n23, 185n23 benevolent government (renzheng), 28, 30 Mencius, 28, 30, 33–​34, 38, 45, 53, 158 Xunzi, 38, 50 Bloom, Irene, 34n24, 134 Bui, Ngoc Son, 17n42 Chan, Jonathan, 158n33 Chan, Joseph, 2n4, 169n69 Chang, Hyŏn-​kŭn, 67n25 Chen Xiao, 190–​191 Cheng-​Zhu Neo-​Confucians, 27, 27n4, 28, 55n108, 57, 148 Chinese Empire, 59–​60 Ching, Julia, 73n46, 121, 138 civic virtue, 18, 19, 91–​92, 207–​208, 209

Mencius, 98–​99, 100, 101, 105 Xunzi, 22, 103, 104, 106–​107, 112, 209 civil order, 21, 22, 49 civil polity, 13, 17, 28, 36 civility, 49, 52, 110, 113 Xunzi, 101, 106–​111, 112, 113 classical Confucianism, 3–​5, 10n26, 19, 24, 28, 111, 122, 122n13, 179, 180, 187, 208, 213–​214, 215–​217 civic virtue, 18 moral virtue, 18 punitive expedition, 23–​24 Cline, Erin, 41, 43n68 Confucian constitutionalism, 11, 13, 17–​18, 21–​22, 62, 145–​146, 206 Mencius, 13, 21 Xunzi, 13, 21, 145, 146 Confucian political theory, 1–​4, 20, 121–​122, 204–​205 Confucian state, 6, 15 Confucian virtue ethics, see virtue ethics Confucian virtue politics, see virtue politics Confucianism, 1–​3, 12, 14, 19, 27, 57, 59–​61, 145, 176 Confucius, 4, 7–​8, 9–​10, 11–​12, 31n12, 34, 61, 94n16, 107n47, 109n56, 132n64, 181, 191 badao, 173, 174–​175 good government, 6, 8, 10 Guan Zhong, 173–​174, 175, 181 Huan (Duke of Qi), 173 tempered virtue monism, 175–​176 virtuous ruler, 12, 191

233

Index

234 Confucius (cont.) Wen (Duke of Jin), 173 Yuansi, 113 consanguinitism, 77 constitutionalism, 15–​18 cruelty, 32, 33, 133–​134 de Bary, Wm. Theodore, 62–​63, 64, 119–​121, 138, 142, 145 Decree of Heaven, 7 El Amine, Loubna, 3, 9n22, 24, 65n23, 98n30, 153n20, 163, 208–​215, 216, 217 Eno, Robert, 69n33 extension, Mencius theory of, 35, 36 feudal lords, 67, 68, 71 Fingarette, Herbert, 61n8 Freud, Sigmund, 125–​126 Galston, William A., 91 Ginsburg, Tom, 121n9 Glanville, Luke, 191n40, 196n52 Gongsun Chou, 140, 152–​153 good government, 6, 8, 34 Confucius, 6, 8, 10 good treatment argument, 44, 45 Guan Zhong, 152–​153, 159, 160, 173–​174, 175, 181 Hagen, Kurtis, 48n83, 81n67 Hahm, Chaihark, 16, 28n5, 60 Han Fei, 60n1, 83, 83n72, 99, 128, 161n41, 165, 166n60, 201n64, 202n65, 214 Harris, Eirik L., 172n77 Heaven-​appointed officers, 23, 71–​72, 73, 192, 193, 197 Mencius, 71–​72, 73, 74–​75, 78, 86 hegemons, 151, 170 Mencius, 23, 72–​73, 155, 183 Xunzi, 23, 175, 183 hereditary transmission, 62–​63, 70, 73, 74 Hobbes, Thomas, 29n6, 45, 94, 98, 123, 183 Holmes, Stephen, 29n6 Hu Hong, 79n62 Huan (Duke of Qi), 72n44, 157–​160, 161–​162, 169, 171, 173, 181 Hui (King of Liang), 27, 33, 74n51, 171, 187–​188, 189, 199–​200 human nature, 3, 4, 5, 11, 94–​97 Mencius, 11, 22, 38, 39–​40, 43, 73, 93–​94, 95, 96, 99, 101, 103, 112

Xunzi, 11, 22, 38–​41, 45, 75, 79–​80, 92–​93, 94, 101–​102, 103, 112 Hutton, Eric L., 38n43, 43–​44, 45, 56, 81n68, 90, 159, 161n43 interest, 14, 21 interstate governance, 12–​13, 23–​24, 172–​173, 180, 189–​190, 201–​202 Mencius, 23–​24, 183–​184, 185–​187, 193–​194, 196–​198 Xunzi, 23–​24, 187, 193–​194, 198 Ivanhoe, Philip J., 51n96 Jie, 86, 88, 131, 167–​168 Kim, Sangjun, 95n21 Kingly Way (wangdao), 11, 22, 23, 30, 54, 150–​151, 160, 164–​165, 173, 176, 207–​208 kingship, 137 Mencius, 65, 69, 117, 122, 128–​130, 137, 141–​142, 146 universal, 12, 23, 171–​172, 173, 180, 192 Xunzi, 78, 79, 80–​81, 83, 84, 85, 117, 166–​167 Knoblock, John, 38n43, 159n35, 160n40, 161n43 Lau, D. C., 32, 36n31, 104, 133 laypeople, 67, 68, 71, 74 Legalism, 59, 60, 60n1, 160n38, 161n41, 162, 163, 165, 214–​215 Legalistic Confucianism, 60, 128n48, 214–​215 li (ritual/​ritual propriety), 7, 8–​9, 18, 60–​61, 89–​91, 92 Mencius, 18, 22, 90, 97–​98 Xunzi, 18, 22, 90, 102–​103 Li, Chenyang, 54n106 Liu, Qingping, 77, 94n15 Machle, Edward, 47n81, 179n3 Mandate of Heaven, 8, 24, 65–​66, 69, 70–​71, 131, 142, 180, 194–​195, 204 material interest, 27–​28, 34, 36 material well-​being, 6, 10, 34, 36–​37 Mencian Confucianism, 27–​28, 120 Mencius, 3–​5, 9, 11, 12, 14, 19, 57, 170, 181–​182 abdication doctrine, 38, 62, 63, 65–​66, 67, 68–​69, 70–​71, 75, 77, 85, 137 badao, 22–​23, 32, 37, 38, 118, 147, 151, 152, 154–​156, 169, 174

Index benevolent government, 28, 30, 33–​34, 38, 45, 53, 158 civic virtue, 98–​99, 100, 101, 105 Confucian constitutionalism, 13, 21 feudal lords, 67, 68 Gongsun Chou, 140, 152–​153 Heaven-​appointed officers, 71–​72, 73, 74–​75, 78, 86 hegemons, 23, 72–​73, 155, 183 Hui (King of Liang), 27, 33, 171, 187–​188, 189, 199–​200 human nature, 11, 22, 38, 39–​40, 43, 73, 93–​94, 95, 96, 99, 101, 103, 112 interstate governance, 23–​24, 183–​184, 185–​187, 193–​194, 196–​198 kingship, 31n13, 65, 69, 117, 122, 128–​130, 137, 141–​142, 146 laypeople, 67, 68 li, 18, 22, 90, 97–​98 material interest, 29–​30, 31–​34 material well-​being,  36–​37 moral virtue, 22, 98–​99, 101, 103, 105–​106, 113, 158, 178 morality, 41, 46, 96–​97 negative Confucianism, 15, 22, 23, 29, 30, 37, 40, 53, 74, 117–​119, 122, 145–​146, 158, 176 normative political dualism, 19, 22–​23, 156 political theory, 13, 14, 20, 46, 63–​64, 88, 113, 143–​144, 182–​183, 199, 204–​205, 206 political thought, 14, 28–​29, 99–​101 positive Confucianism, 21, 37, 46, 53–​54, 57, 59 public interest, 35–​36, 57–​58 punitive expedition, 24, 67, 87, 138, 180, 189–​190, 192, 193–​194, 195–​197, 203–​204 realpolitik, 128, 141, 188–​189 ritual institutions, 22, 40, 94, 97, 100, 102 sage-​kings, 31n13, 63, 73, 74, 78–​79, 83–​ 84, 99, 100–​101, 104–​105, 140–​141 sage-​ministers, 73, 74, 77, 78 self-​transformation, 52, 102, 132–​133 strong virtue monism, 15, 19, 22, 178 Tang (sage-​king), 67, 192, 194 tyrannicide, 86, 87 tyranny, 23, 32, 129–​130, 133, 136–​137, 153–​154, 156 virtue constitutionalism, 18, 21, 100 virtue ethics, 5, 19, 22, 111–​112 virtue politics, 12–​13, 15, 19, 20–​21, 37, 62, 180

235 virtuous ruler, 24, 158, 180, 205 Wan Zhang, 64–​65, 66, 67, 69–​70 Wen (Duke of Teng), 184–​185 Wu (sage-​king), 138, 139, 189, 194 Xuan (King of Qi), 35–​36, 67–​68, 129, 130–​131, 135–​136, 153–​154, 200, 203–​204 Yi Yin, 72, 76–​77, 142–​143 Yi Zhi, 93–​94, 97 Mohists, 36, 55, 94n15 moral education, 6, 9–​10 moral self-​cultivation, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 105, 120, 122, 142, 162, 165, 171 moral state, 19, 165–​166 moral virtue, 18, 54, 91–​92, 178–​179, 207–​208, 209 Mencius, 22, 98–​99, 101, 103, 105–​106, 113, 158, 178 Xunzi, 104, 106–​110, 178, 209 morality, 21, 27, 28, 31–​32, 34, 36, 41–​42, 54 motivation, 21 Mozi, 56n116 Napoleon, 126 negative Confucianism, 14–​15, 16, 22, 29, 53, 59, 150, 207 Neo-​Confucianism, 27n4, 28, 29, 57 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 119, 123–​125, 126, 127, 132–​133, 145 normative political dualism, 19, 133–​134, 156, 166 Nylan, Michael, 84–​85 Philip, Mark, 163n50 Pines, Yuri, 70n36, 83n71, 129n51, 215n34 political compliance, 43–​44, 45 political liberty, 118–​120, 121–​122, 144, 145, 146 political power, 12–​13, 14, 17, 59 political responsibility, 199–​201 political theory, 2, 13–​14 Mencius, 13, 14, 20, 46, 63–​64, 88, 113, 143–​144, 182–​183, 199, 204–​205, 206 Xunzi, 13, 14, 20, 45–​48, 63–​64, 81–​82, 85, 88, 92–​93, 114, 199, 204–​205, 206 political thought, 2, 13 Mencius, 14, 28–​29, 99–​101 Xunzi, 14, 28–​29 political virtue, 19, 161–​163 positive Confucianism, 14–​15, 16, 21, 29, 59, 150, 176, 207 public interest, 14, 17, 21, 35–​36

236 public order, 21 punitive expedition, 13, 24, 192–​195, 202–​204, 205 Mencius, 24, 67, 87, 138, 189–​190, 192, 194, 195–​197, 203–​204 Xunzi, 24, 180, 190, 193–​194, 195, 202–​203 Rawls, John, 165n57 realpolitik, 12, 21, 62, 118, 119, 122, 127, 128, 144–​145, 161 ren (benevolence/​human-​heartedness), 7, 8, 51 rightful regicide, 71, see also tyrannicide ritual constitutionalism, 17–​18, 206 Xunzi, 18, 21–​22 ritual institutions, 17, 97, 105 Mencius, 22, 40, 94, 97, 100, 102 Xunzi, 12, 21, 22, 40, 48, 50–​51, 56–​57, 81, 102, 106, 111, 113 ritual order, 18 Xunzi, 49–​51, 53, 55, 56–​57, 58, 101–​102 ritual politics, 61–​62 Rosemont, Henry, 5n10 Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques,  95n20 sage-​kings, 14, 30, 31, 39, 40, 41, 43–​44, 45, 62–​63, 73, 74, 77, 122n12, 137, 146 Mencius, 53n105, 63, 73, 74, 78–​79, 83–​84, 99, 100–​101, 104–​105, 140–​141 Tang, 67, 71, 76–​77, 139–​140 Wen, 140 Wu, 138, 139, 189, 194 Xunzi, 63, 79, 80 sage-​ministers,  73, 74 Mencius, 73, 74, 77, 78 sages, 5, 7, 10, 42, 141–​142, 144 Schaberg, David, 16 Schofer, Jonathan W., 103n38 Schwartz, Benjamin I., 2n2, 39n50, 46n78, 157n28 self-​mutilation, 127–​128 self-​transformation Mencius, 52, 102, 132–​133 Xunzi, 51–​53, 102 Slingerland, Edward, 173n80, 174n84 socioeconomic conditions, 6, 10 Song Keng, 30–​31 Song, Jaeyoon, 28n5 strong virtue monism, 19 Mencius, 15, 19, 22, 178 Tan, Sor-​hoon, 89, 90, 91, 207 Tang (sage-​king), 67, 71, 76–​77, 139–​140

Index tempered virtue monism, 19, 175–​176 Confucius, 175–​176 Xunzi, 19, 175–​177, 178 Tillman, Hoyt C., 174n86 Tiwald, Justin, 71, 72n43, 79n62 Tu Wei-​ming, 60n2, 145, 215 Twiss, Sumner B., 158n33 tyrannicide, 71, 86–​88 Mencius, 86, 87 Xunzi, 86–​88 tyranny, 128 Mencius, 23, 32, 129–​130, 133, 136–​137, 153–​154, 156 Xunzi, 23 universal kingship, 12, 23, 171–​172, 173, 180, 192 Van Norden, Bryan, 37n35, 48n83, 109n58 virtue constitutionalism, 17–​18, 206 Mencius, 18, 21, 100 virtue ethics, 5, 11, 19–​20, 22, 89, 90n3 Mencius, 5, 19, 22, 111–​112 Xunzi, 5, 22, 111–​112 virtue monism, 91, 113 virtue politics, 5–​9, 10–​11, 12–​13, 16–​17, 19, 20–​22, 61, 62, 178–​179, 207–​208 Mencius, 12–​13, 15, 19, 20–​21, 37, 62, 180 Xunzi, 12–​13, 15, 19, 20–​21, 62, 180 virtuous ruler, 179 Confucius, 12, 191 Mencius, 24, 158, 180, 205 Xunzi, 24, 85, 180, 191, 199, 205 Waley, Arthur, 178n1, 196n52 Walker, Craham, 17n43 Walzer, Michael, 127n42 Wan Zhang, 64–​65, 66, 67, 69–​70 Warring States period (475–221 bce), 9, 12, 14, 29, 33, 128, 179–​180 Weithman, Paul, 91 Wen (Duke of Jin), 173 Wen (Duke of Teng), 184–​185 Wen (sage-​king), 140, 201n63 Western political theory, 3, 20, 91, 163, 183 Williams, Bernard, 9, 214 Wong, David, 48n83, 52n101 Wu (sage-​king), 138, 139, 189, 194 wuwei statecraft, 31n13, 46n79, 53n103

Xuan (King of Qi), 171, 200, 203–​204 Mencius, 35–​36, 67–​68, 129, 130–​131, 135–​136, 153–​154

Index Xunzi, 3–​5, 9, 11, 12, 14, 19, 37–​38, 57, 181–​182 abdication doctrine, 38, 62, 63, 75–​76, 78, 82, 84 badao, 19, 23, 38, 118, 147, 149–​150, 156, 157–​158, 161, 163–​166, 168, 169–​171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 207, 213 benevolent government, 38, 50 Chen Xiao, 190–​191 civic virtue, 22, 103, 104, 106–​107, 112, 209 civil order, 21 civility, 101, 106–​111, 112, 113 Confucian constitutionalism, 13, 21, 145, 146 Confucian ethics, 19 hegemons, 23, 175, 183 hereditary transmission, 63 Huan (Duke of Qi), 157–​160 human nature, 11, 22, 38–​41, 45, 75, 79–​80, 92–​93, 94, 101–​102, 103, 112 interest, 48, 56 interstate governance, 23–​24, 187, 193–​194, 198 Kingly Way, 167, 169 kingship, 78, 79, 80–​81, 83, 84, 85, 117, 166–​167 li, 18, 22, 90, 102–​103 material interest, 29–​30, 38, 40–​41, 54–​57 moral interest, 49

237 moral virtue, 104, 106–​110, 178, 209 morality, 38, 41, 42–​43, 47–​48 political theory, 13, 14, 20, 45–​48, 63–​64, 81–​82, 85, 88, 92–​93, 114, 199, 204–​205, 206 political thought, 14, 28–​29 positive Confucianism, 15, 57, 59, 177 punitive expedition, 24, 180, 190, 193–​194, 195, 202–​203 ritual constitutionalism, 18, 21–​22 ritual institutions, 12, 21, 22, 40, 48, 50–​51, 56–​57, 81, 102, 106, 111, 113 ritual order, 49–​51, 53, 55, 56–​57, 58, 101–​102 sage-​kings, 63, 79, 80 self-​transformation, 51–​53, 102 tempered virtue monism, 19, 175–​177, 178 tyrannicide, 86–​88 tyranny, 23 virtue ethics, 5, 22, 111–​112 virtue politics, 12–​13, 15, 19, 20–​21, 62, 180 virtuous ruler, 24, 85, 180, 191, 199, 205 Xunzi problem, 41–​43 Yi Yin, 72, 76–​77, 142–​143 Yi Zhi, 93–​94, 97 Yuansi, 113 Zhòu, 11–​12, 86, 88, 131–​132, 167–​168 Zhu Xi, 130, 131, 154n25