Abstract
Recently, most of the discussions in Confucian political theory have concentrated on whether Confucianism is compatible with local political practices, such as liberal democracy. The question of how Confucians view global distributive justice has not yet received critical attention. This essay aims to fill this gap. I will first describe a contractualist methodology, which aims at deriving substantial political principles from a formal conception of the person. Then I will discuss what conception of the person Confucianism assumes. Finally, I will use the contractualist methodology to derive three principles of global distributive justice. These three principles form a distinctive conception based on ideas that are usually ignored in the current discussions of global justice, such as virtues, community, and rituals.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
Reference
Ames, Roger. 2011. Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
Angle, Stephen. 2002. Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry. New York: Cambridge University Press.
______. 2012. Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy. London: Polity.
Arneson, Richard. 2003. “Liberal Neutrality on the Good: An Autopsy.” In Perfection and Neutrality: Essays in Liberal Theory, edited by George Klosko and Steven Wall. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Beitz, Charles. 1999. Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bell, Daniel A. 2006. Beyond Liberal Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
______. 2010. “Reconciling Socialism and Confucianism?” Dissent 57: 91–99.
Brock, Gillian. 2009. Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Caney, Simon. 2005. Justice Beyond Borders. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chan, Jonathan. 2014. “Common Good and the Ethics of Global Poverty: A Confucian Perspective.” In The Common Good: Chinese and American Perspectives, edited by David Solomon and Ping-Cheung Lo. New York: Springer.
Chan, Joseph. 2000. “Legitimacy, Unanimity and Perfectionism.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 29: 5–42.
______. 2008. “Territorial Boundaries and Confucianism.” In Confucian Political Ethics, edited by Daniel A. Bell. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
______. 2014. Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chen, Xunwu. 2020. “Confucianism and Cosmopolitanism.” Asian Philosophy 30.1: 40–56.
Cheng, Chung-ying. 2004. “A Theory of Confucian Selfhood.” In Confucian Ethics, edited by Kwong-loi Shun and David Wong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ching, Julia. 1983. “Human Rights: A Valid Chinese Concept?” In Confucianism and Human Rights, edited by Weiming Tu and Theodore de Bary. New York: Columbia University Press.
Cohen, Joshua. 2004. “Minimalism about Human Rights.” Journal of Political Philosophy 12.2: 190–213.
Curzer, Howard. 2012. “Contemporary Rituals and the Confucian Tradition.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 39: 293–296.
Darwall, Stephen. 2003. “Introduction.” In Contractarianism/Contractualism, edited by Stephen Darwall. London: Blackwell.
Fingarette, Herbert. 1979. “The Problem of the Self in the Analects.” Philosophy East and West 29: 129–140.
Gauthier, David. 1986. Morals by Agreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Huang, Yong. 2011. “Can Virtue Be Taught and How? Confucius on the Paradox of Moral Education.” Journal of Moral Education 40.2: 141–159.
Ivanhoe, Philip, ed. 2009. Mencius. New York: Columbia University Press.
______. 2013. “Virtue Ethics and the Chinese Confucian Tradition.” In The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics, edited by Daniel Russell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
______. 2014. “Confucian Cosmopolitanism.” Journal of Religious Ethics 42.1: 22–44.
Kim, Sungmoon. 2016. Public Reason Confucianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
______. 2018. Democracy after Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Koehn, Daryl. 2020. “How Would Confucian Virtue Ethics for Business Differ from Aristotelian Virtue Ethics?” Journal of Business Ethics 165: 205–219.
Kupperman, Joel. 2004. “Tradition and Community in the Formation of Character and Self.” In Confucian Ethics, edited by Kwong-loi Shun and David Wong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Li, Chenyang. 2012. “Equality and Inequality in Confucianism.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 11.3: 295–313.
Liu, Xiusheng. 2002. “Mencius, Hume, and Sensibility Theory.” Philosophy East and West 52.1: 75–97.
Mancilla, Alejandra. 2013. “The Bridge of Benevolence: Hutcheson and Mencius.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 12.1: 57–72.
Martin, Rex, and David A. Reidy. 2006. “Reading Rawls’s The Law of Peoples.” In Rawls’s Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia, edited by Rex Martin and David A. Reidy. Oxford: Blackwell.
Metz, Thaddeus. 2014. “Harmonizing Global Ethics in the Future: A Proposal to Add South and East to West.” Journal of Global Ethics 10.2: 146–155.
Miller, David. 2013. Justice for Earthling: Essays in Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Neville, Robert Cummings. 2012. “Dimensions of Contemporary Confucian Cosmopolitanism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 39.4: 594–613.
Nuyen, A. T. 2003. “Confucianism, Globalisation and the Idea of Universalism.” Asian Philosophy 13: 75–86.
Parfit, Derek. 1997. “Equality and Priority.” Ratio 10.3: 202–221.
Pettit, Philip. 2006. “Rawls’s Peoples.” In Rawls’s Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia, edited by Rex Martin and David A. Reidy. Oxford: Blackwell.
Pogge, Thomas. 2007. World Poverty and Human Rights. London: Polity.
Rauhut, Andreas. 2020. “Working Toward Global Justice: Confucian and Christian Ethics in Dialogue.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 19.1: 33–51.
Rawls, John. 1999a. A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
______. 1999b. “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory.” In John Rawls, Collected Papers, edited by Samuel Freeman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
______. 1999c. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
______. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
______. 2005. Political Liberalism, expanded ed. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rosemont, Jr., Henry. 1988. “Why Take Rights Seriously? A Confucian Critique.” In Human Rights and the World’s Religions, edited by Leroy Rouner. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
______. 2015. Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Scanlon, T. M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Shestova, Tatiana. 2021. “Ancient Roots of Contemporary Cosmopolitanism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 48: 201–210.
Shun, Kwong-loi. 1997. Mencius and Early Chinese Thought. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
______. 2004. “The Conception of the Person in Confucian Thought.” In Confucian Ethics, edited by Kwong-loi Shun and David Wong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Singer, Peter. 2002. One World: The Ethics of Globalization. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Slingerland, Edward, ed. 2003. Analects. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Stark, Cynthia. 2000. “Hypothetical Consent and Justification.” Journal of Philosophy 97.6: 313–334.
Tahzib, Collis. 2021. “Perfectionist Duties.” In Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, vol. 7, edited by David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne, and Steven Wall. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tan, Charlene. 2012. “‘Our Shared Values’ in Singapore: A Confucian Perspective.” Education Theory 62.4: 449–463.
______. 2013. “For Group, (F)or Self: Communitarianism, Confucianism and Values Education in Singapore.” The Curriculum Journal 24.4: 478–493.
Tan, Sor-hoon. 2004. Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction. New York: State University of New York Press.
Tu, Weiming. 1998. “Epilogue: Human Rights as Confucian Moral Discourse.” In Confucianism and Human Rights, edited by Weiming Tu and Theodore de Bary. New York: Columbia University Press.
Van Norden, Bryan. 2007. Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wang, Qiong. 2016. “The Relational Self and the Confucian Familial Ethics.” Asian Philosophy 26.3: 193–205.
Wong, Baldwin. 2019. “A Non-Sectarian Comprehensive Confucianism? On Kim’s Public Reason Confucianism.” Journal of Social Philosophy 50.2: 145–162.
______. 2021. “Junzi Living in Liberal Democracy: What Role Could Confucianism Play in Political Liberalism?” Philosophical Forum 52: 17–28.
Acknowledgment
This paper was presented in the panel “Chinese Traditions in International Relation” at the American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting. Thanks to the audience and especially to my commentators in this panel.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Wong, B. Famine, Affluence, and Confucianism: Reconstructing a Confucian Perspective on Global Distributive Justice. Dao 22, 217–235 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-023-09879-7
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-023-09879-7