Abstract

Confucianism evolved into an international philosophy in recent years. Two significant positions have emerged from works which ponder the various possibilities of blending Confucianism and democracy: whereas the first position is fashioned by the Confucian meritocrats, who reject, critique, and/or carefully delimit the functions of democracy for their belief in the leadership of the virtuous and the wise, the second position is held by the Confucian participatory democrats, who perceive participation in political decision-making processes as crucial for moral growth, and therefore attempt to include political involvement, equality, and popular sovereignty in their politics. I would like to examine Liang Shuming (1893–1988) as a voice of modern and contemporary thinkers’ collective enterprise of Confucian democracy. As I focus on Liang’s career in the Republican period, I seek to show the following: By imagining possibilities of cross-fertilization between what he perceived as opposite cultures, and by utilizing concepts like intuition (zhijue 直覺) and ethical rationality (lixing 理性), Liang recognized the value of democracy. He believed that democracy would benefit the collective—be it the human race or the world, the West, or China; he assumed democracy’s contributions to the individual in terms of moral development or personal happiness; and he believed in the intrinsic value of democracy. To conclude, I argue that although Liang foreshadowed considerably the Confucian meritocrats’ and Confucian participatory democrats’ writings, he set himself apart from them for his appreciation of the significance of democracy for the individual’s happiness, and for his belief in democracy’s natural correctness.