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Notes
See Ronald Dworkin, Foundations of Liberal Equality: Tanner Lectures of Human Values (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), p. 9; Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 43.
See Dworkin, op. cit., p. 291; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 291; Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 156; and John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 131–132.
Dworkin, op. cit., pp. 75–81; Mill, op. cit., p. 124 and p. 131.
Joseph Chan, “Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 29 (2008), pp. 5–42.
See Chan, op. cit., 2008 and Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); Sor-hoon Tan, Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction of Confucianism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004); and Stephen Angle, Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), ch. 11.
For example, instead of entirely giving up the ground to liberalism on the issue of religious and metaphysical conceptions of the good, I have argued elsewhere that there should be a reflective equilibrium between the political principles of the right and the religious and metaphysical conception of the good (see Yong Huang, Religious Goodness and Political Rightness: Beyond the Liberal-Communitarian Impasse [Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International, 2001], chs. 4 and 5).
John Finnis, “The Legal Enforcement of ‘Duties to Oneself’: Kant vs. Neo-Kantians,” Columbia Law Review, Vol. 87 (1987), pp. 433–456. Thomas Hurka also emphasizes this feature of perfectionism: “on the view now dominant among philosophers, morality concerns only acts that affect other people. It tells us not to frustrate others’ desires or interfere with their freedom but says nothing about what we or they should choose for ourselves. Perfectionism strongly rejects this view…. In my view, its acceptance of self-regarding duties is a great strength in perfectionism” (Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993], p. 5).
Hurka, op.cit., 16; italics original.
Ibid., p. 37.
Ibid., p. 100.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 147.
Ibid., p. 150.
Ibid., p. 148.
Ibid., p. 149.
Ibid., p. 142.
Ibid., p. 155. Steven Wall mentions a related point, originally made by D. Husak: even if a person truly lives an unworthy life, it is still not as bad as living a life in jail; in other words, it is counterproductive to punish a person by jail sentence for living an unworthy life (Steven Wall, Liberalism, Perfection, and Restraint [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998], p. 220).
Hurka, op. cit., p. 154.
Ibid., p. 156.
Wall, op. cit., p. 159.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 499.
George Sher, Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 202.
Ibid., p. 203.
Ibid., p. 204.
Ibid., p. 206.
Ibid., p. 207.
Ibid., pp. 207–208.
Ibid., p. 209. This does not seem to be a good argument, for immoral reasons may also be strong reasons to act, at least for egoists.
Ibid., p. 211.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 245.
George Sher, “Freedom of Expression in the Non-Neutral State,” in Steven Wall and George Klosko, eds., Perfection and Neutrality: Essays in Liberal Theory (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), p. 225.
Ibid., p. 226.
See Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Steven Wall, Liberalism, Perfection, and Restraint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 2.
Ibid., pp. 197–198.
Ibid., p. 206.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 207.
Ibid., p. 198.
Ibid., p. 201.
Ibid., p. 213.
Ibid., p. 219.
Hurka, op. cit., p. 159.
Mill, op. cit., p. 80; Ibid., p. 160.
Wall, op. cit., p. 200.
Ibid., p. 202.
Mill, op. cit., p. 81. In addition to children, John Rawls also mentions those seriously injured or mentally disturbed and therefore unable to make decisions for their good and those with irrational inclinations resulting in foolish actions and imprudent behavior. In all these cases, Rawls agrees that, others, presumably including the state, are authorized and sometimes required to act on behalf of such people. However, Rawls insists that such paternalistic intervention with a person must be justified not only by the fact this person in due course will accept this intervention (as a brainwashed person may indeed accept what the brainwasher wishes him or her to accept) but also by (1) the evident failure or absence of reason and will of the person and (2) the principles of justice and what is known about the person’s more permanent aims and preferences (Rawls, op. cit., pp. 219–220).
Mill does argue against voluntary slavery, but this is because for him even though a person decides to be a slave voluntarily, as soon as he or she becomes a slave, the person foregoes his or her autonomy and thus is unable to quit (Mill, op. cit., pp. 163–164). For Mill, just as the state cannot force a person to live an autonomous life, it should not allow a person to autonomously decide to give up autonomy.
Hurka, op. cit., p. 159.
Raz, op. cit, p. 415.
Ibid., p. 416.
See Mill, op. cit., 81–82.
Hurka, op. cit., p. 15. One of the implausible consequences Hurka mentions is a person whose profile contains ability for killing. However, development of such abilities is already excluded by the harm principle, since it involves other-regarding rather than self-regarding actions.
Mill, op. cit., 127–128.
Mill, op. cit., p. 162.
In this sense, these perfectionist measures should be distinguished from the so-called libertarian paternalist “nudges” that Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein argue for in their influential book thus entitled. Two things are worth noting. First, although also primarily targeting the self-regarding aspect of one’s life, they make a distinction between the reflective system and the automatic system of an individual, and the nudges, including those exerted by the state, are justified only when one’s automatic system comes into conflict with the reflective system, as they can help the person align his or her action in light of the reflective system and not the automatic system. To put it simply, these nudges serve to help people seek what they think they really want despite their temporary irrational desires or habits otherwise. Thus, they argue, “if our proposals help people save more, eat better, invest more wisely, and choose better insurance plans and credit cards—in each case only when they want to—isn’t that a good thing?” (Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions in Wealth, Health, and Happiness [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008], p. 237; emphasis added). Second, aware of the possible mistakes of the nudgers, particularly the state, in discerning what another person’s reflective system and automatic system respectively desire, they emphasize that such nudges should be easily turned off by the nudgees by “one click” (see ibid., pp. 248–249).
In this case, the “democratic perfectionism” that Hurka borrows from Amy Gutmann will not help either. According to “democratic perfectionism,” state action to promote a particular way of life is justified because, but only because, it is approved by a democratic majority (Hurka, op. cit., p. 36), for such a way of life may be good for the majority but not necessarily for the minority.
Raz, op. cit., p. 412.
Mencius 2a6, in Yang, Bojun 楊伯峻, An Annotated Translation of Mencius 孟子譯注 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2005).
Clearly Mencius’s view here is closely related to his view of human nature as good. It is sometimes claimed that, while Mencius’s view is indeed influential, particularly in neo-Confucianism, he only represents one school of Confucianism. Not only his arch-rival, Xunzi, holds an opposite view of human nature; Confucius himself is ambiguous about his view of human nature. However, as I have argued in another place, almost all Confucians, at least Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, agree that the difference between humans and animals lies in their moral qualities (see Yong Huang, Confucius: A Guide for the Perplexed [London: Bloomsbury, 2013], pp. 50–53).
Analects 2.3, in Yang, Bojun 楊伯峻, An Annotated Translation of the Analects 論語譯注 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1980).
For example, Brian Barry states clearly that “the state is an instrument for satisfying the wants that men happen to have rather than a means of making good men (e.g. cultivating desirable wants or dispositions in its citizens)” (Brian Barry, Political Argument [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990], p. 66).
Feminism is instrumental in debunking this liberal divide between the political and personal. However, as I’ve pointed out in a different essay, feminism has only revealed and solved part of the problem by claiming that the personal is political, without realizing that the political is also personal, which is precisely the unique insight of Confucianism (see Yong Huang, “Why the Political is also Personal,” in Lin Jianfu 林建甫, ed., The Kingly Culture in a Global Age: Social Innovation and the Sustaining Development 全球化時代的王道文化:社會創新與永續發展 [Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2013]).
G.A. Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002), ch. 8.
Analects 13.13.
Ibid., 12.17.
Ibid., 12.18.
Ibid., 12.19.
Ibid., 13.6.
Ibid., 2.1.
Christian Keysers, Jon H. Kaas, and Valeria Gazzola, “Somatosensation in Social Perception,” Neuroscience, Vol. 11 (2010), p. 417.
Ibid.
Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigalia, Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. ix.
Douglas Robinson applies such neuroscientific discoveries to his comparative study of Aristotle’s and Mencius’s rhetoric, broadly understood as involving the ways of persuasions, including non-linguistic ones, emphasizing the contagiousness of a virtuous person’s actions (see Douglas Robinson, The Deep Ecology of Rhetoric in Mencius and Aristotle [Albany, NY: SUNY Press, forthcoming]).
Analects 8.8.
Ibid., 17.9.
Ibid., 2.2.
Ibid., 13.5.
Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 180.
Of course, it also requires tax revenues for governments to do such things. However, unlike taxing people and using the money to promote certain types of self-regarding activities as contemporary perfectionists propose, to tax people and spend the money in this way is unproblematic, as unproblematic as taxing people to maintain a police force. The crucial difference is that the types of self-regarding activities that contemporary perfectionists think government should promote are not ones that everyone in the society would willingly pursue without such state promotions, and the type of self-regarding activities that they think government should demote are not ones that everyone in the society considers unworthy; in contrast, the other-regarding activities that Confucian perfectionists think government should promote or suppress are ones that affect everyone, either positively or negatively: everyone benefits from other people’s benevolent behavior, and everyone is harmed by other people’s malevolent behavior. This constitutes a good reason for the state to promote the former and suppress the latter, even if it must tax the people to do so.
Analects 12.1.
Hu Shi, Scholarly Works of Hu Shi: A History of Chinese Philosophy 胡適學術著作集: 中國 哲學史, two vols (Beijing 北京: Zhonghua Shuju 中華書局, 1991), p. 96.
Liji 19.41 (see also 19.27), in Yang Tianyu 楊天宇, An Annotated Translation of the Book of Rites 禮記譯注 (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 2004).
Ibid., 19.45.
Ibid., 19.39.
Analects 12.4.
Mencius 4b19.
Analects 9.18 and 15.13.
See Kongzi Jiayu 孔子家語 (Conversations of Confucius’s Family) (Beijing: Beijing Yanshan Chubanshe, 2009), p. 1.
Analects 19.19.
This is similar to what Laozi says about war. Laozi is generally anti-war. However, when a good ruler finds war unavoidable and fights a victorious war, he does not regard it as praiseworthy but observes the occasion with funeral ceremonies, not only for the people who died for him but also for people from the opposing side who died (Laozi 31, in Zhu Qianzhi 朱謙之, Laozi Jiaoshi 老子校釋 [Annotations of Laozi] [Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1984]).
Kongzi Jiyu 孔子集語 (Collected Sayings of Confucius) (Ha’erbin: Heilongjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 2002), p. 408.
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Huang, Y. Confucianism and the Perfectionist Critique of the Liberal Neutrality: A Neglected Dimension. J Value Inquiry 49, 181–204 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9469-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9469-2