Professor of Philosophy and Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University, U.S.A.; Major research fields: Chinese Philosophy, Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism, and Comparative Philosophy; Selected books: Virtue Ethics and Confucianism (2013), Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy: Toward Progressive Confucianism (2012), Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy (2009).

Speech Abstract

Many famous images of the inspirational, almost magical character of Confucian leadership seem very distant from any idea of democracy. Some modern Confucians celebrate this distance, arguing that modern Confucian polities should be ruled by elites, and perhaps that these elites should be venerated in something like the traditional way. Confucian democrats, in contrast, hold that the roles of Confucian political leaders must be rethought, just as the modern Confucian polity must shift from a monarchy to a constitutional democracy. This does not mean that modern Confucians must turn their backs on traditional Confucian views of leadership: the key traditional insights are still important, although to some degree they take on new significance in the new context of modern democratic Confucianism. In this essay I articulate and defend this democratic vision of Confucianism and of Confucian leadership. I make my case in four steps. First, I outline a traditional Confucian view of the “inspirational” leader. Second, I unpack and then critique Jiwei Ci (慈继伟)’s argument that Confucian leadership rests on an “identification model” of agency that is incompatible with democracy. Third, I build on some of the argument from my book Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy: Toward Progressive Confucianism《当代儒家政治哲学：进步儒学发凡 》to the effect that modern Confucians need to resolve a tension within traditional Confucianism by embracing a person-based democracy instead of mass-based authoritarianism. Finally, I conclude by making explicit why Confucian democracies still need leaders playing roles that are very much in the spirit of traditional leadership.