In this book, Jiwei Ci explores the dual nature of justice, in an attempt to make unitary sense of key features of justice reflected in its close relation to ...

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: The Confucian relational concept of the person has been proposed as an epistemically more cogent and ethically more attractive alternative to that of liberal individualism. Two arguments are raised against this proposal without defending liberal individualism. Ethically, Confucianism is vitiated by certain unattractive features that cannot be removed without reducing the Confucian relational concept of the person to an abstract and not very helpful notion of human relatedness. Epistemically, Confucianism commits the essentialist fallacy of treating its own concept of (...) human relations as reflecting the nature of things. In view of these limitations, the Confucian relational concept of the person does not provide a viable framework for dealing with social issues including bioethics. (shrink)

For quite some time there has been a collective perception of a moral crisis in post- Mao China. This perception is informed by standards held by members of Chinese society rather than by standards outside of it. In this article, the author attempts to lay the groundwork for a philosophical analysis of this moral crisis. He first explains why it is appropriate to speak of a moral crisis and then examines the structure of the crisis. This examination is partly conceptual (...) and partly causal. The conceptual section of the article discusses terms frequently used in connection with the crisis and introduces some terms and distinctions of the author’s own for further clarity. The causal section traces the moral crisis to a crisis of identification with moral authority or exemplars, the latter crisis in turn containing important clues to the structure of self and agency in Chinese moral culture. (shrink)

I am extremely grateful to the three commentators for their instructive and challenging criticisms and for giving me the opportunity to make my position more plausible and, where it is bound to remain controversial, clearer than it is in my book.1 In doing so, I will sometimes be concerned simply to clear up what I consider to be misunderstandings on the part of my commentators, in full awareness that my own lack of clarity or emphasis may well have contributed to (...) them. This I take to be worthwhile in its own right, but especially for the sake of locating more precisely the issues where real disagreement exists and facilitating useful engagement on these issues. As the line between these tasks is seldom sharp... (shrink)

Joseph Chan and Sungmoon Kim take me to task for my understanding and uses of Tocqueville, and because of the resemblance they claim to see between one of my major arguments and modernization theory. I think their charges are mistaken or misplaced. Chan and Kim reject my claims that China is already, in a meaningful sense and to a substantial degree, a democratic society, and that, unless such a society is matched by political democratization, a major legitimation crisis is almost (...) inevitable in the foreseeable future. I try to show that they are wrong in their assessment of the state of Chinese society and in their dismissal of the crisis tendencies that only timely democratization can help avert. Chan and Kim completely misconstrue what my prudential argument for democracy in China means, and what it does not, and I explain why. Finally, I reaffirm, over Chan’s objections, the view that the fundamental choice regarding political legitimacy in China today lies between the Mandate of Heaven and democracy, given the demise of communism, and I restate this view in terms of the concept of sovereignty. (shrink)

The human rights discourse is vitiated by its tendency to reification, a tendency manifest in an ideologically motivated failure to take the reasons for human rights seriously. When a set of rights fall short, in range or strength, of the reasons adduced for them, any claim to the universality and priority of the rights in question is open to the charge of falsification and reification. Such a claim invites immanent critique insofar as a human rights discourse fails to take its (...) own reasons seriously by working out a set of rights commensurate with them. Further critique is necessary if the human rights concept as such can be shown to be incapable of living up to the best reasons for human rights, in the shape, the author argues, of agency-based reasons. These kinds of critique, especially the latter, can serve as an antidote to the reifying tendency of the human rights discourse. (shrink)

Many of the things we do in social and political philosophy, whether normative or critical, presuppose some understanding and evaluation of agency. To have a clear idea of our normative or critical enterprise, the underlying account of agency needs spelling out. This article begins with a descriptive account: human agency consists in power (or causal efficacy) organized as subjectivity (or selfhood), and such organization takes place through attributions of power informed by values. Some such descriptive account is useful for understanding (...) and comparing forms of agency. But as we move beyond it to construct an evaluative account of agency, we face problems that are symptomatic of our social and political condition. While quantitative assessment of agency does not work, qualitative assessment seems out of place in our modern world of pluralism and yet is unavoidable for those who, like Habermas, take issue with such phenomena as colonization of the lifeworld. © 2011 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Idealism and the Reconciliation of the Cheng‐Zhu and Lu‐Wang Schools Substance and Application in the Philosophy of Culture Strengthening Confucianism with Western Philosophy Conversion to Materialism Further Reading.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Legitimacy, Performance, and Political Realism:Response to Ben CrossJiwei Ci (bio)Ben Cross raises important issues in his article and provides a much appreciated occasion for me to join the discussion. He targets his trenchant critique at what he calls Weberian sources of legitimacy, treating my view as a distinctive variation on the Weberian account. I am not sure that the issues on which we differ are most economically framed by (...) drawing Weber so prominently into the debate. Since Cross has already framed the issues in this way, however, I think I can best contribute to the exchange by accepting his terms of reference wherever appropriate and trying to work as fruitfully as possible within them. I will respectfully not take up any of the issues raised in the fourth section of the article, because Cross's use of the notion of civic agency there is so far removed from mine as to leave little room for productive engagement.As Cross notes, Weber identifies three distinct sources of legitimacy (or three types of authority): legality, the traditional, and the charismatic. This, however, is only a typology of specific sources and an incomplete one at that, for it does not cover the two sources that I happen to find most relevant in Democracy in China.1 The teleological legitimacy much discussed in chapter 1 of my book does not come under any of Weber's ideal types and seems to constitute another, distinct ideal type. Nor is the democratic legitimacy based on popular sovereignty that is proposed in chapter 3 as an alternative to teleological legitimacy quite the same as legal authority. It is thus easy to see that—and why—I do not avail myself of what Cross calls the Weberian sources of legitimacy. As a matter of fact, I do not [End Page 149] regard Weber's tripartite classification, regardless of whether it is exhaustive, as the conceptual core of his idea of legitimacy.Cross moves closer to that core when he notes the difference between the type of motive (i.e., non-expedient) that the three Weberian sources of legitimacy are supposed to have in common and the motive of pure expediency. This difference is important because, as Weber puts it in a well-known statement quoted by Cross, "Purely material interests and calculations of advantages as the basis of solidarity between the chief and his administrative staff result, in this as in other connexions, in a relatively unstable situation." Based on Weber's concern with the lack of stability characteristic of relations of pure expediency, Cross is then able to speak of a "Weber-inspired rejection of performance legitimacy." This conclusion, if not exactly mistaken, is nevertheless reached without adequately bringing out the issues involved.Take a close look at the passage in Economy and Society from which the above quote is taken:Purely material interests and calculations of advantages as the basis of solidarity between the chief and his administrative staff result, in this as in other connexions, in a relatively unstable situation. Normally other elements, affectual and ideal, supplement such interests. In certain exceptional cases the former alone may be decisive. In everyday life these relationships, like others, are governed by custom and material calculation of advantage. But custom, personal advantage, and purely affectual or ideal motives of solidarity do not form a sufficiently reliable basis for a given domination. In addition there is normally a further element, the belief in legitimacy.2Here it becomes clear that Weber, even in emphasizing the indispensable role of belief in legitimacy, argues his case much more cautiously and subtly than Cross gives one to understand. To begin with we see Weber take the trouble to stress "purely." We then find three qualifications in a row before Weber allows himself to conclude, as an empirical observation, that "custom, personal advantage, purely affectual or ideal motives of solidarity, do not form a sufficiently reliable basis for a given domination," from which he is apparently compelled to draw the inference that "there is normally a further element, the belief in legitimacy." In an earlier section of Economy and Society Weber makes similar allowances for the empirical proximity of motives... (shrink)

On theoretical aspects in literary writing.

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 25, Issue 2, Page 179-190, June 2011.

In three decades of reform China has become a society that is radically different both from what it used to be in Mao's time and from a liberal society. This new China poses especially interesting questions about freedom - interesting not only in the Chinese context but also more generally. Pivotal for my treatment of these questions is a distinction I draw between de facto freedom and the value of freedom, the latter in turn understood in terms of a larger (...) notion of agency, and divided into such distinct dimensions as moral resource, right, and mode of subjection. This distinction allows me to argue that while China has no shortage of de facto freedom, it lacks the value of freedom, especially freedom as a mode of subjection. The lack of freedom as a value has serious moral and political consequences, as manifested in a prolonged moral crisis in post-Mao China and in a certain fragility of social order caused by the pitting of order against freedom. Such consequences suggest a strong need for China to develop the value of freedom. But it is possible and important to do so in a critical spirit, as I argue through a critical analysis of the place of freedom in a liberal society. © 2011 by Duke University Press. (shrink)