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A Mencian Version of Limited Democracy

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Abstract

The compatibility between Western democracy and other cultures, and the desirability of democracy, are two important problems in democratic theory. Following an insight from John Rawls’s later philosophy, and using some key passages in Mencius, I will show the compatibility between a ‘thin’ version of liberal democracy and Confucianism. Moreover, elaborating on Mencius’s ideas of the responsibility of government for the physical and moral well-being of the people, the respectability of the government and the ruling elite, and the competence-based limited political participation, I shall explore the Mencian criticisms of some ‘thick’ democratic ideas. Through the discussion in this paper, I hope to show the relevance of Confucianism to contemporary political philosophy and society.

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Notes

  1. In fact, the economist Milton Friedman even argues that economic freedom, achievable only in a market economy, ‘is simply a requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction it reduces the area over which political power is exercised’ (Friedman and Friedman 1980, pp. 2–3).

  2. The East Asian countries have experienced great economic and political upheavals in recent history: the introduction of capitalism, the influence of Western—especially American—cultures, the Cultural Revolution in China, as well as similar kinds of radical breaks in other East Asian countries, etc. Given this fact, how influential Confucianism has really been in contemporary East Asian countries, especially in today’s China, is a very difficult question that demands careful empirical studies.

  3. One may argue that, since China under Confucianism never developed democracy, democracy and Confucianism can never be made compatible. He or she fails to see that the theoretical issue of compatibility is separable from the practical issue of whether a doctrine promotes a regime in a historical context. Besides, even on the promotion issue, Juntao Wang, for example, shows that many pro-democracy activists throughout modern Chinese history are Confucians, and that their work is actually partly inspired by their Confucian ideas (Wang 2003, pp. 68–89), including such elitist ideas as the duty of the educated elite to participate in the governing of the state. Weiming Tu made the latter point in a discussion at Harvard.

  4. For some examples, see Kaplan (1997) and Zakaria (1997).

  5. There are other thinkers who also argue for a pluralistic understanding of liberal democracy and can thus be used to address the questions that have been raised. However, I choose Rawls for the following reasons, which will be discussed in detail in this paper: first, I think that the later Rawls offers a powerful theoretical—rather than merely practical—challenge to any universalistic understanding of liberal democracy; second, I will show that there is a resonance between Rawls and a Mencian in their concerns with today’s democracy and their understanding of the conditions necessary to a good democracy; third, Rawls has been a leading liberal thinker. So, to show his challenge to the universalistic understanding of liberal democracy, and the resonance between him and a Mencian, may have the practical benefit of persuading liberal thinkers, both Western and Chinese.

  6. Rawls in PL quite consistently uses ‘conception’ or ‘concept’ to refer to the political, free from metaphysics, and uses ‘doctrine’ or ‘comprehensive doctrines’ to refer to the metaphysical. ‘Reasonable’ also has a special meaning in Rawls’s later philosophy (Rawls 1996, xliv and 49; Rawls 1997, p. 770). A simple point relevant to this paper is that a reasonable doctrine is one that can endorse the political concept of liberal democracy.

  7. The quotations from Mencius in this paper are based upon corresponding passages in Mencius (2003), often with my revisions. The numbers and letters (for example, 3A4) are used almost universally to quote Mencius, playing a role similar to the Stephanus Numbers in quoting Plato, so are the numbers given to passages from the Analects.

  8. Clearly, relationships with a wife and children are unavailable to an unmarried and childless man.

  9. Many traditional societies and classical philosophers (for example, Aristotle) also adopt the idea that ‘human being’ is not only a biological, but also a socio-political concept; but what is distinctively Mencian is the special emphasis on the role of government in the moral inculcation of its people.

  10. One important difference between Rawls and Mencius regards what is meant by the worst-off group. For Mencius, the government should give consideration to both the people who are materially deprived and the people who are deprived of key social relations, like widows, orphans, and so on (Mencius 2003, 1B5). Rawls doesn’t worry as much about the latter group. Put in contemporary American political terms (c.f. David Brooks’s discussion of the American middle-class anxiety caused by both the (staggering) wages and by the threat to the traditional two-parent family structure (Brooks 2008)), Mencius’s considerations are a combination of the concerns of both progressive liberals and social conservatives, in that he would be concerned with, for example, both sources of middle-class anxiety mentioned in Brooks’s article.

  11. Many thinkers argue that the Confucians believe in the possibility of an infallible elite ruling class and the practicality of a utopian state run by this class. Thomas Metzger dubs this belief ‘epistemological optimism’, and contrasts it to the Western belief in the epistemological (and political) fallibility of human beings (Metzger 2005). However, this characterization fails to consider Confucius’s reservation about the infallibility view.

  12. See Bai (2005) for a more detailed discussion.

  13. Joseph Chan argues for a similar point on the issue of a Confucian endorsement of human rights (Chan 1999).

  14. In 5A5, Mencius offers a similar idea. Here, the ruler first has to recommend a candidate to Heaven and to the people; then, working for a very long time (in the example Mencius offers, the candidate, Sage Shun, assisted Sage Yao for twenty-eight years), and thus giving people a chance to make a sound judgment, the candidate has to be accepted by the common people and lower level ministers. He also has to be supported by Heaven (whose will is closely connected with that of the people). Only then can he become the next ruler.

  15. This commentary is by Zhao Qi (赵岐), which can be found in Xun (焦循) 1986, 85.

  16. In 13.24, Confucius offers a revision of this view, and claims that someone is good only if the best villagers love him and the worst villagers despise him. This revised view seems to be even less ‘democratic’ than Mencius’s. It is beyond the range of this paper to discuss how to understand this view and its implications for a Confucian approach to and critique of democracy.

  17. One example, in the American political context, of how the government can fulfill this responsibility is Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin’s proposal of a new national holiday, Deliberation Day, when ‘registered voters would be called together in neighborhood meeting places … to discuss the central issues raised by the campaign. Each deliberator would be paid $150 for the day’s work of citizenship …’ (Ackerman and Fishkin 2004, p. 34). A reason for this proposal is quite similar to the Mencian concern with democracy: democratic participation presupposes the knowledge and competence of the participants, and the appalling political ignorance of the general public, a well-established fact over ‘the six decades of modern public opinion research’ (ibid.), is a root cause of various political problems in a democracy, especially in the American one. See also Ackerman and Fishkin (2005).

  18. For a Confucian, public interests should not be limited to the immediate material interests of a special group of people.

  19. My proposal is different from what is practiced in today’s China in that, first, village elections should be free from interventions by higher officials who are merely motivated by their own self-interest; second, there is no reason that free and direct elections should not be available at the town and even at the county level; third, certain national issues should be open to referendum; fourth, certain basic liberties should be protected by law. None of these is satisfactorily done in today’s China.

  20. The only place I can find where he alludes to the significance of OPOV is in his discussion of a decent people in LP (Rawls 1999, pp. 71–72).

  21. These problems are also invoked by Bell in showing why we should take Confucian elitism seriously (Bell 2006, pp. 157–160).

  22. Bell (2006, p. 162, n. 35) quotes this passage and uses it to support his Confucian model.

  23. This is a response he gave to a question I asked in a discussion at Tsinghua University, Beijing, May 2005. See also Bell (2006, p. 162, n.35).

  24. A practical challenge to these models is the apparent failure of the Iranian regime that mixes popular election with the rule of a religious elite. One could argue that the Iranian elite are chosen on the basis of their religious expertise, but one has to show that this expertise is not politically relevant and that the Confucian models would not deteriorate into the Iranian one.

  25. For example, a most powerful objection to Samuel Alito’s nomination to the American Supreme Court is a ruling he made that could be interpreted as an indirect challenge to OPOV, ‘a corner stone of American democracy’ (Cohen 2006). See also a claim in a New York Times Editorial: ‘He may not even believe in “one person one vote”’ ([Editorial] 2006). Interestingly, some, if not all, who defend Alito don’t defend him by criticizing the idea of OPOV, but by pointing out that Alito didn’t really challenge this idea in his ruling (Bainbridge 2006).

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Daniel Bell, Jiang Qian, and Yong Huang for reading an earlier draft of this paper and offering numerous and extremely insightful suggestions on how to improve this paper; Thomas Pogge for a few enlightening points on Rawls and other relevant issues; and the late Burton Dreben, whose class on Rawls was a starting point for my thinking about the following issues and whose sharp and profound philosophical insights will always be missed, but will serve as a point of reference for my ongoing philosophical investigations. I wish also to thank Xavier University for its support of my teaching and research. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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Bai, T. A Mencian Version of Limited Democracy. Res Publica 14, 19–34 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-008-9046-2

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