Self-Transformation and Civil Society: Lockean vs. Confucian |
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Authors: | Kim Sungmoon |
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Institution: | (1) Korean Studies Institute, College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, University of Southern California, Dosan Ahn Chang Ho Family House, 809 West 34th Street (AHN), Los Angeles, CA 90089-0142, USA |
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Abstract: | Although contemporary Confucianists tend to view Western liberalism as pitting the individual against society, recent liberal
scholarship has vigorously claimed that liberal polity is indeed grounded in the self-transformation that produces “liberal
virtues.” To meet this challenge, this essay presents a sophisticated Confucian critique of liberalism by arguing that there
is an appreciable contrast between liberal and Confucian self-transformation and between liberal and Confucian virtues. By
contrasting Locke and Confucius, key representatives of each tradition, this essay shows that both liberalism and Confucianism
aim to reconstruct a society freed from antisocial passions entailing a vicious politics of resentment, and yet come to differing
ethical and political resolutions. My key claim is that what makes Confucian self-cultivation so distinctive is the incorporation
of ritual propriety (li) within it, whereas liberal self-transformation that relies heavily on a method of self-control comes back to the problem
that it originally set out to overcome. |
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Keywords: | |
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