Confucian Liberalism With/out Mou Zongsan: On Roy Tseng’s Confucian Liberalism

In his recent book, Roy Tseng provides one of the most systematic accounts of modern Confucianism that is liberal and moderately perfectionist. Tseng also offers a comprehensive analysis of Mou Zongsan’s political philosophy with special attention to its Hegelian-liberal dimension. This paper critically examines whether Tseng’s constructive and interpretive goals are integrated seamlessly. Its central claim is that while Tseng has succeeded in developing a morally attractive vision of Confucian liberalism through the creative reinterpretation of Confucianism in communication with Hegelian idealism, it is dubious that his extensive investigation of Mou’s political philosophy was necessary for achieving this goal. More specifically, it challenges Tseng’s claim that the idea of Confucian democratic civility is the central component of Mou’s vision of Confucian liberalism by showing that Mou never committed himself to the distinction between moral virtue and civic virtue, the baseline assumption for the possibility of Confucian democratic civility.