: Puritanism and Confucianism have little in common in terms of their substantive teachings, but they do share an emphasis on bounded, authoritative, localized human arrangements, and this profoundly challenges the dominant presumptions of contemporary globalization. It is not enough to say that these worldviews are ‘‘communitarian’’ alternatives to globalism, for that defines away what needs to be explained. This article compares the ontology of certain elements of the Puritan and Confucian worldviews, and, by focusing on the role of both (...) authority and activity in these systems, assesses (with the assistance of Max Weber) the theories of harmony that each invoke. It concludes by identifying the distinct options that these two modes of human existence suggest for those who wish to defend the relevance of boundedness and authority, and thus the very possibility of a human-scaled politics, in today’s world. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Simple (or Hard) Decisions Simplicity and Complexity Globalization, Coffee, and Sweden Simple (or Hard) Gifts Notes.

This dissertation considers two thinkers who share the conviction that a basis for communal action can be realized immanently through the natural and historical elements of the human condition. The idea of a meaningful community arising from sources immanent to the activity of individuals is a provocative one, which challenges the often dualistic ontology at work in modernity. Charles Taylor presents this challenge by articulating an ontological ideal of communal progress towards "authenticity." He supports his ideal by developing arguments based (...) on a model of language which depicts human intercourse as a process which expresses transcendent---though subjectively realized---meanings. This model is borrowed from the German romantic Johann Gottfried Herder, who asserted that human languages reflect aesthetic impressions of history and nature which convey divine truths. Herder believed these truths could be inculcated into the moral and political reasoning which a people were capable of, assuming an awareness of their roots in the language of the Volk. Hence Herder saw all human communities as potentially working out reflections of divine purpose; reflected in both the immanent holism and the real particularism of the human condition. But while Taylor's "expressivism" is indeed indebted to Herder's hermeneutic vision, Taylor also alters Herder's vision in light of what he accepts as necessary aspects of the modern liberal order. The results make the romantic ideal of immanent communal expression much more applicable to moral and political concerns than Herder's philosophy ever did, but are also, to a degree, shorn of the religious metaphysics which made this ontological vision believable in the first place. (shrink)