Abstract

It is a great honor to have colleagues engaging in a meaningful discussion of my book. I appreciate my critics’ thoughtful and constructive criticisms as well as exceedingly generous praises. Due to space limitations, I will confine my response to some key issues raised here. I will begin with Yao Xinzhong’s criticism of my claim and argument on the centrality of harmony in Confucian philosophy. Yao reads my view as being that harmony is the central concept or ideal in Confucian philosophy, which I take to mean that harmony has been the central concept or ideal in Confucian philosophy up to this point. Understood this way, that is not my argument in the book. My claims in the book are more...