Introduction: The Rise of Authentic Confucianism

Abstract

Many in the West are so fully embedded in their moral and political understandings that they take for granted that their moral intuitions reflect a global moral and political theoretical common ground. This conceit lies at the basis of the moral and political reflections of such contemporary Western thinkers as Ronald Dworkin, Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, and even Richard Rorty. In different ways such presuppositions sustain the ideologies of such diverse parties as social democrats and neo-conservatives. The universality of these assumptions is radically falsified by China, which constitutes a moral, social and political counter-example. Although Western thinkers attempt to portray China as a country on its way to developing the moral and political commitments of the occident, China is in fact a country on its way to recapturing and rearticulating the Confucian moral and political commitments that lie at the foundations of Chinese culture and have a history reaching back even before Confucius (551–479 BCE) himself.