“Confucianism, Democracy, and the Virtue of Deference”

By Aaron Stalnaker

Indiana University Dept. of Religious Studies

Sycamore Hall 230 1033 E. 3rd St.

Bloomington, IN 47405

Email: astalnak@indiana.edu

Forthcoming in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy

Abstract: Some democratic theorists have argued that contemporary people should practice only

a civility that recognizes others as equal persons, and eschew any form of deference to authority

as a feudalistic cultural holdover that ought to be abandoned in the modern era. Against such

views, this essay engages early Confucian views of ethics and society, including their analyses of

different sorts of authority and status, in order to argue that, properly understood, deference is

indeed a virtue of considerable importance for contemporary democratic societies and the

citizens who constitute them.

Keywords: deference, civility, Confucianism, democracy, respect

Main text:

The “Asian values” debate involves a number of related arguments. Participants disagree

about whether there is some basic incompatibility between East Asian ethical traditions and

supposedly Western traditions such as human rights, liberalism, and democracy. Admittedly,

such arguments sometimes serve merely to deflect attention from the misbehavior of

authoritarian regimes. But there at least can be serious philosophical and moral issues involved,

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to which judicious observers ought to pay attention. One such issue is the question of whether

deference to others should be considered a vice or a virtue. I argue that, properly understood,

deference is indeed a virtue, both personal and civic. By engaging early Confucian materials on

this question, this paper aims to contribute to ongoing discussions regarding potential relations of

Confucianism with democracy, but in a relatively unusual way. There is a large and growing

body of scholarship assessing the compatibility of democratic ideas or practices with classical,

Neo-Confucian, and contemporary Chinese views of governance, much of which belies any

simple reading of Confucianism as authoritarian, or even as tolerating abuses of political

authority.1 Rather than putting “Confucian culture” to the question in this way, however, I want

to suggest that early Confucians have important things to tell contemporary Western thinkers

about the culture of democracy, which when considered carefully can raise real questions about

our political self-understanding.

This last point might strike some readers as counterintuitive. Has not Confucianism

served for two millennia as the official philosophy of often paternalistic or oppressive Chinese

governments, however reluctant or conflicted such service has been? And is not deference

another name for upholding hierarchical relations of authority at the expense of individual

human dignity? I hope to convince readers that things are not so simple.

Let me articulate these worries more precisely. Contemporary theorists of democracy

tend to view deference as a feudalistic cultural holdover, one that harkens back to a society

ordered by rigidly distinct social classes. As such this supposed virtue is really an anti-

democratic vice, because it is intrinsically antagonistic to equal respect for all citizens, usually

seen as a crucial pillar of democracy. To provide one example, the political theorist Judith

1 Stephen Angle, Daniel Bell, Joseph Chan, Thomas Metzger, and Tan Sor-hoon, among others, have made fine contributions in this area.

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Shklar considers the question of proper democratic manners in the midst of a larger discussion of

snobbery. She writes that the “fine distinctions” made by a “traditional gentleman” when

dealing with different sorts of people “are wholly out of keeping with the democracy of everyday

life, which depends on treating everyone identically and with easy spontaneity…. There is no

place in the United States for either condescension or deference, and to show them is ill-bred

because it is incongruous and jarring” (Shklar 1984: 136). Shklar clearly thinks deference can

only refer to the habits bred in an aristocratic culture defined by class distinctions between

“noble” and “common” that most contemporary people would rightfully reject. But we should

note, looking forward, that she does recommend Benjamin Franklin as a model of democratic

manners, because he listens carefully to others, and through his amiability manages to more

successfully persuade others to follow his political proposals (Shklar 1984: 136).

Even a democratic theorist such as Jeffrey Stout, who wants to allow religious and

traditionalist arguments a full role in public discourse, thinks that there is basically no room in

democratic culture for deference. Stout understands deference as a sort of slavish obedience to

one’s social superiors, and thus classes it as a vice, because he thinks it unjustly demeans some

and exalts others, in accordance with the dubious social hierarchies extant in any particular

society (Stout 2004: 9, 24-5, 30, 37-9). Stout also worries that the habit of deference interferes

with free democratic debate, which should be vigorous to the point of being insulting. Consider

his narration of the modern tradition of democracy, which he regards as a crucial part of his own

moral inheritance: it is “born in suspicion of deference, and which honors as a cardinal virtue…

what William Hazlitt called mastery of one’s own mind and Emerson called self-reliance…” He

goes on: “Many of the great practitioners of democratic criticism have valued independence over

the more deferential forms of piety. Their consciousness of their own tradition tends in

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consequence to be undeveloped. They are too busy slapping one another in the face to dwell for

long on what they owe to whom” (Stout 2004: 7).2 This image of healthy debate as a contest of

mutual slapping would, needless to say, be deeply disturbing to any classical Confucian thinker,

and quite probably to many contemporary people, both Western and Chinese.

In contrast to these advocates of democracy, early Confucians such as Mencius and

Xunzi appear to value deference very highly, and regard lack of deference as a sign of seriously

deficient individual character and communal culture. Generalizing from this and similar

contrasts, Henry Rosemont has argued there is a fundamental conflict between a (liberal) vision

of people as free, autonomous claimers of rights, and a (Confucian) vision of people as deeply

situated in a variety of reciprocal relationships that carry various correlated obligations, which

are themselves part of a ritualized culture of mutual respect and consideration (Rosemont 1998).

In other words, according to Rosemont modern Western society cultivates habits of agonistic

self-assertion that are antithetical to the harmonious and mutually deferential cooperation lauded

by Confucians. At least on the face of it this kind of reading suggests there might be a deep

antagonism between Confucian values and modern democratic values.

Despite the rhetorical gambit of my opening paragraphs, I think it is usually a mistake to

make large generalizations about “Eastern” and “Western” approaches to anything, or even about

the “Confucian view” of any particular topic. Such homogenizing accounts oversimplify

complex traditions that are marked throughout by disagreement about substantive matters, even

if the terms of such disagreement are largely shared. They also tend to muddy distinctions

between different kinds of practical philosophical theories, which are too easily seen as all of a

2 Stout is clearly saying here that such a combative stance leads to an attenuated sense of one’s own intellectual tradition, although this appears to be a forgivable peccadillo by his lights, rather than a deep or particularly revealing problem.

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piece on either side of some supposed cultural divide. In the present case, it is important, first of

all, to disentangle theories of human rights (Rosemont’s original concern) from liberalism as a

political philosophy, and from democracy as a moral and political tradition. My point is not that

liberals do not talk about rights or democracy, for instance, but simply that one need not presume

that theories of rights, liberalism, and democracy are automatically mutually entailing in any

strong sense; put positively, I am asserting that it is possible to consider democracy, for instance,

without presuming a liberal political philosophy as its basis.3

When doing comparative philosophy, rather than generalizing in the service of overly

stark contrasts, we should instead seek analytical precision whenever possible. In this paper, we

can frame this as a specific conceptual problem: what exactly might one mean by “deference?”

The democracy theorists mentioned earlier seem to object to the idea that political leaders or

other social superiors, such as one’s boss, might be immune from legitimate challenge. On this

sort of account, then, deference means refraining from questioning or critiquing those in power

when one believes they deserve censure. As such it is an obvious political vice, whatever its

cultural or material supports. A paradigmatic case for this critique of deference might be Rosa

Parks, rightfully celebrated for her courageous refusal to defer to a bus driver attempting to

uphold unjust traditions of white privilege and, indeed, domination. Might this be the end of the

story?

One of the beauties of comparative analysis that relates ideas from different traditions

and does not presume the perfect adequacy of its own analytical terminology is that it tends

inevitably to raise significant questions of definition, and thus tends to require conceptual

3 For a thought-provoking argument for the separation of liberalism from democracy, in order to develop a conception of Confucian democracy, see Ackerly 2005, especially 547-553 with associated notes. There are obviously many complexities regarding how to conceive of and justify rights, which are beyond the scope of this paper.

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analysis. And getting clear on what particular terms do or might mean can help a great deal to

sort out substantive philosophical issues framed with those terms. So, let us return to the issue of

“deference.” As a way of dealing with the vastness of East Asian cultural traditions generally

and Confucianism specifically, and also staying within my competence as a scholar, I focus on

early Confucianism, especially as present in the very influential texts known as the Analects, the

Mencius, and the Xunzi. The first thing to note is that there is no single classical Chinese

equivalent to the English “deference.” A number of possibilities, such as cí 辭, “to decline

politely;” ràng 讓, “to yield” or “defer” to others; shùn 順, meaning “compliant,” “agreeable,” or

even “obedient;” and above all lǐ 禮, meaning “ritual” or “ritual propriety,” all seem to be

relevant to the issue. Other Confucian ideas that ought to be considered in a fuller treatment

would include filial piety (xiào 孝), brotherly respect (tì 弟 and 悌), and reverent respect (jìng 敬

). It is worth noting that if we were to pick only one of these as our target, we would prematurely

narrow our hermeneutical endeavor. What is needed is to see how the early Confucians used

these words to debate the proper ordering of self and society. Thus the various ideas motivating

their positions must be examined, which takes us beyond word-to-word equivalences, and may

require us to discuss conceptions that seem to be implicit in their views, whether they are given a

single, explicit name or not.4

I have written at length about comparative philosophical interpretation, and the ongoing

need to revise and refine the concepts that are used to bridge gaps between the familiar and the

strange; this ongoing conceptual revision helps one explore and more precisely analyze the

underlying philosophical issues.5 In the present case, the substantive ethical issues that seem

4 On these issues, see Angle 2002: 1-73, and Van Norden 2007: 1-29. 5 See Stalnaker 2005 and 2006, especially chapters one and two of the latter.

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most pressing after initial comparative investigation of “deference” concern four different topics:

(1) different sorts of hierarchy, (2) social positions and relations more generally, (3) ritually

appropriate respect for other people, and for oneself, and (4) proper modes of and contexts for

political debate. I cannot give these topics their full due in this essay; my analysis here is

inevitably preliminary, and will focus most on the interrelations of different sorts of social

hierarchies, and on the complex issue of proper respect for persons.

The general setting for early Confucian advocacy of deference is their much broader

commitment to lǐ 禮, usually translated as “ritual.” The Chinese lǐ includes what we normally

refer to as “ritual,” such as special ceremonies of various sorts, but goes well beyond this to

include all matters of personal appearance and deportment, such as dress, speech, and action, as

well as interpersonal etiquette governing any social interaction.6 As such lǐ is the concrete

embodiment of morality, or yì 義, in the Confucian understanding (e.g., Xunzi 2/5/12-15).7 The

basic character of Confucian ritual propriety might be summarized as being respectful or even

reverential toward others, depending on one’s relation to them; restrained, formal, and generally

but not always serious; alert and self-possessed; caring and solicitous; and, yes, deferential,

depending again on the character of the relationship in question.

Although they disagree about the exact moral psychological basis for ritual deference, the

influential early Confucians Mencius and Xunzi both contend that such deference is essential to a

truly humane life. Mencius thinks that all undamaged human beings possess an innate proto-

6 This broad sense of ritual is most obvious in the Lunyu and the Xunzi. Recent scholarship has articulated an alternate tradition of Confucian ritual theorizing that stresses the uniqueness of particular ceremonies as distinct from everyday life, which is visible in the excavated text Xing Zi Ming Chu and in parts of the Li Ji. For discussion, see Puett 2008 and 2010, Seligman et al. 2008, and Ing 2012. 7 References to the Xunzi will be keyed to D. C. Lau’s Institute of Chinese Studies concordance in the form (chapter/page/line). All translations are my own.

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moral propensity to círàng 辭讓, “defer and yield” to others they regard as superior, such as

parents and older siblings, and that this natural inclination is the root from which the virtue of

true ritual propriety may grow, through attentive but patient self-cultivation (Mencius 2A6).

Xunzi disagrees, finding no such innate inclination to deference within us. Instead he sees

courteous and yielding behavior as an extremely important cultural ideal that we should learn to

appreciate and progressively strive for; over time such striving will restrain, reorder, and

eventually transform our selfish desires for satisfaction and ease (Xunzi 23/113/3-5, 23/114/16-

18). Their much-discussed differences over “human nature” and self-cultivation, however, can

easily obscure the fact that both Mencius and Xunzi think self-cultivation requires restraint and

guidance, although not eradication, of potentially problematic desires for pleasure, wealth, and

position. They also agree that self-cultivation gradually develops our capacities to express our

highest values in beautiful and compelling ritual action (for example, Mencius 6A15, 6B1, 3A5;

Xunzi c. 1-2, 23, 19). Unsurprisingly, they also share very similar ideals for human life as a

whole, both individual and social.

Learning to care for and respect others through deferential modes of self-presentation is

not only a means of personal development and fulfillment, although it is that. For the early

Confucians, ritual is just as much if not more a means of ordering and enriching community life,

so that all social actors take others’ needs and capabilities into account. Ritual trains everyone to

care for and respect others appropriately, and is thus seen by the early Confucians as perhaps the

preeminent art of government, encompassing the interrelated governance of both self and society

(for example, Lunyu 3.11, 12.11, 14.41; Xunzi 15/72/9-12ff.). The Confucian social ideal is to

cultivate a community that is harmonious and thus unified, even though functionally

differentiated in various ways, and indeed hierarchically ordered (for example, Mencius 3A4).

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For these thinkers ritual knits the community together in deep and abiding ways. It orders

interaction more effectively and more humanely than mere regulations, which can only threaten

people with punishment, or buy them off with sufficient salary to keep them in line as long as the

payments keep coming. They think such appeals to fear and greed may seem to work well for a

while, but will never endure, nor will they sustain a society good enough to be worth actively

supporting.

As just mentioned, Confucian ritual propriety is closely related to a vision of society as

harmonious, differentiated, and hierarchically ordered. At times their accounts of society appear

exceedingly vulnerable to ideological co-opting by authoritarian rulers. But early Confucians

were at least somewhat aware of these dangers, and Mencius in particular provides a helpful

analysis of two quite different sorts of social authority. On the one hand, we have wèi 位,

“position,” which refers to governmental offices that were arranged according to an explicit

hierarchy of status, power, and income (5B7, 5B2). On the other, however, we have dé 德,

“virtue,” which refers to the degree of someone’s moral excellence and wisdom. Mencius

regards virtue as being just as unevenly distributed as political power, with an objectively real

moral hierarchy that is clearly divergent from the political hierarchy of position (5B7; note also

6A16, 7A8).8 According to Mencius, ritual strictly regulates the interactions between people

who possess one sort of authority, whether political or moral, but less or none of the other sort.

In either case, it is imperative to show ritually appropriate respect for the other’s authority, and

failure to do so is an affront that should not be tolerated (5B7, 5B passim). Such respect

concerns, for example, the methods for contacting and meeting with the outside authority, the

giving of gifts and assistance, and the character of advice and answers given. 8 See also 2B2, which makes a tripartite division between feudal rank, virtue, and age as appropriate grounds for respect.

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It is clear, however, that for Mencius each sort of authority deserves a different kind of

deference and respect (for example, 5B3). “Honoring the excellent” (zūn xián 尊賢) requires

strict concern for protocol, and attentive and respectful listening to those whose moral authority

and wisdom outstrips one’s own, regardless of one’s social position. “Treating the eminent as

eminent” (guì guì 貴貴), on the other hand, also requires ritualized performances of respect, but

does not entail anything resembling toadying, even when ritual might seem to require it. For

example, Mencius presents one of his heroes, an earlier Confucian named Zǐsī, as refusing to

accept repeated gifts from a duke because properly accepting such gifts required kowtowing to

the duke’s messenger, the repetition of which seemed demeaning to Zǐsī (5B6). Indeed, Mencius

clearly thinks that appropriately honoring those in high social positions not only allows but

requires chastising leaders when they fail to fulfill their obligations (for example, 1B6). It also

requires presenting them with a clear and compelling account of the true Way of benevolence,

justice, and ritual propriety, even though this might seem like too demanding a standard for

particular rulers; anything less is a form of serious disrespect (for example, 2B2).

A succinct way of summarizing Mencius’s position is that while those holding exalted

social positions do deserve respect and a sort of ritualized deference, the moral authority of the

Confucian Dào 道 or “Way” is more exalted than any political position, including that of king.

In fact the Way gives meaning to all such positions by defining their responsibilities and

prerogatives. I think this is the best way to make sense of Mencius’s statement that “treating the

eminent as eminent and honoring the excellent have one and the same yì 義,” which seems in this

case to denote a shared moral basis for both sorts of hierarchical authority in Confucian

conceptions of justice (5B3).

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Early Confucian deference to political authority, then, seems not to be vulnerable to the

central concerns of contemporary critics of deference. On the contrary, by understanding

deference as primarily a means of showing appropriate respect to those in power, precisely

because of the positions of responsibility they occupy, Confucians such as Mencius attempt to

bring the state as a whole under the purview of Confucian social morality. This moral Way

provides both constraint and inspiring guidance to every member of society, in accord with their

respective positions.

This guidance can be very strong. Mencius seems to be banking on the social

effectiveness of public demonstrations of his very specific kind of deference to authority: by

deferring to elders, teachers, and political superiors, to take three major examples, on the grounds

that their positions have special responsibilities and obligations (not just power), we remind

everyone present of those responsibilities, and the rationale for the hierarchy in question. This

deferential “call” to the superior is precisely an effort to characterize them as an ethical agent,

capable of taking up their obligations and acting accordingly, and thereby being worthy of the

deference shown them and the power vested in them. If the authority figure does not then

shoulder his responsibilities, he makes himself out to be a fool or an abuser, not someone worthy

of deference and trust.

A critic might worry that Mencius’s attempted reframing of political authority as

governed and justified by the Way actually opens wide the door to abuse, by adorning extant

political authority, and extant class distinctions, with a halo of sanctity. As a practical matter, of

course, kings and dukes quite frequently failed to put the people’s interests before their own, but

this situation is precisely the one Mencius and other early Confucians were attempting to

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address. Why did they think ritualized modes of self-presentation and political interaction had

any real potential to restrain powerful elites from oppressing and exploiting everyone else?

The first thing to note is that early Confucians think ritual works best if it is widely

observed in society, and they further agree that this state of affairs is most likely to come about if

leaders and ministers are themselves morally and thus ritually cultivated (for example, Mencius

4A20). Early Confucians provide, in other words, a philosophy of politics that highlights the

crucial role of culture in the shaping of politics, and that stresses the role of elites in the

production and propagation of culture.

This general outlook has various consequences. As Mencius and Xunzi both argue, laws

and standards will not implement themselves, nor is a leader’s personal goodness alone sufficient

for governance; what is truly needed are good leaders implementing reasonable laws well

(Mencius 4A1; Xunzi 12/57/3-9). Ritual provides a crucial way of bridging this gap between

procedure and character, and linking the two realms in a systematic way. It does this by

stipulating normatively binding patterns of behavior which are in effect performances of

courteous, solicitous conduct that are governed by broader norms of justice (that is, yi 義). Even

if such performances are at times strained, or even feigned, they will still govern and direct social

and political interactions.

As Hahm Chaihark has argued, ritual in Confucian political thought may be understood

to perform two of the most important functions that constitutionalism performs in Western

theories of government (Hahm 2003). First, it constrains the behavior of rulers and

governmental agents. It does this by disciplining them according to a pervasive code of mutual

expectations that is gradually internalized by political actors; ritual, in other words, can be seen

as a mode of disciplinary power in a Foucauldian sense. Second, ritual also confers legitimacy

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on a regime in a variety of ways; to the extent political actors conform to ritual requirements they

demonstrate their fitness to make political decisions and exercise power justly.9

To see the force of Hahm’s claims, we must remember that ritual governs the powerful as

well as the common people; indeed it is more concerned with regulating the powerful.

Furthermore, the substance of ritual propriety is inconsistent with absolute power in the hands of

a ruler, who must defer in numerous ways to his wise advisors, and even to the will of the

general populace (for example, Mencius 1B7, 5A5; but compare 7B23). And while ritual

governs the behavior of the common people, this “governance” is just as much a form of moral

education and cultivation, so that they will come to understand and expect ritually proper, just

behavior from their leaders (for example, Mencius 1A7, 3A4).

Modern advocates of democracy would probably still worry about the explicit elitism in

early Confucian accounts of politics, which consequently might seem vulnerable to abetting

abuses of power. In response, early Confucians clearly think their accounts of differential human

dignity are compatible with responsibility to all the people in a given state, and to taking each

and every resident’s basic interests seriously. In fact they make stronger arguments, that the

most basic needs and interests of the many cannot be adequately fulfilled without hierarchically

ordered authority in the “positional” sense, as long as this authority is defined and delimited by

an overarching moral concern, as described earlier.10

One aspect of the contemporary interest of this sort of position is that it presses on

democratic commitments to egalitarianism. Against presumptions that democracy should be

9 There are many deep issues raised by Hahm’s interpretation of Confucian ritual in terms of Foucault’s account of disciplinary power, e.g., about consent and self-cultivation, which I cannot explore here. 10 I use the language of “interests” rather than “rights” to stay closer to modern Chinese conceptualities. On these issues, see especially Angle 2002. For a similar general sort of Confucian argument made in the modern context, see Rosemont 1991.

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defined in terms of formal or even functional equality between citizens,11 this sort of

Confucianism highlights the degree to which any large-scale democracy requires elites to

flourish, or even function, and provides a theory of elite restraint and responsibility. Suitably

developed, such an approach could provide a real improvement over facile assertions that all

citizens are politically equal in modern democracies, when they so manifestly are not. (Of

course one must distinguish, at least, between the normative commitment that all persons ought

to be valued equally from any factual claims about their equal political powers.) Mencius, for

example, appears to think that every resident of a state has a basic value and moral potential,

which provides as it were a “moral floor” below which a government should never go.12 But he

seems also to think that the rare morally excellent people are even more valuable than this, and

should be treated accordingly, with both greater privileges and greater responsibilities and

obligations. Such differential valuation of people is a far cry from saying that the common

people are worthless, or merely useful as tools. Indeed it appears that early Confucians have

their own implicit version of a Rawlsian “Difference Principle” that justifies and governs the

construction of human hierarchies (Rawls 1971, especially 75-83). For such Confucians both

positional and moral hierarchies exist because of reasonable expectations concerning the greater

good of the community as a whole, including its most vulnerable members.

Another point of contemporary relevance requires a return to the previous discussion of

standards and virtue. As noted, Confucianism helps explain why legal procedures alone,

especially if divorced from a ritual regime that governs interactions among political actors, can

be vulnerable to manipulation. Put programmatically, early Confucians would say that the rule

11 As for example in Ackerly 2005, 550-51. 12 This interpretation is certainly debatable, especially regarding the status and value of women and girls. For a piquant passage relevant to this issue, see Mencius 4B33.

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of law cannot be just without also being rule by virtuous persons, who like everyone else require

support, cultivation, and discipline. Taking this commitment to moral cultivation seriously

requires not only ritual, but also laws and procedures that support such development, rather than

undercutting it. How this commitment to cultivating character may be implemented in a

pluralistic society is a deep problem, but early Confucians at least provide grounds for concern

that ignoring the issue is a recipe for undercutting human welfare, social justice, and even

democracy.13

More specifically, ritualized deference to others is a crucial part of a political culture of

mutual respect and concern. Without this sort of modulation of conflict, fights between groups

can grow very fierce, thereby endangering any sense of common community and mutual

dependence. Even contemporary theorists such as Shklar and Stout recognize this point to a

certain degree, for example when Stout talks about civility and Shklar advocates listening to

others as a strategy of persuasion, after the manner of Ben Franklin (Stout 2004: 10, 85, 205;

Shklar 1984: 136). Early Confucians, however, provide a way of seeing the intrinsic value of

mutual deference as a cultural style, which contributes to social harmony and communal

flourishing in a way that is essential and substantive, and not merely instrumental to the

achievement of particular individual or factional interests.

Properly understood, then, the early Confucian commitment to deferential ritual forms

does not imply deluded yearning for a utopia of perfect social harmony without any conflict; on

the contrary, it suggests a thoughtful concern to modulate conflict in a way that ensures ongoing

mutual concern and respect among citizens. Nor does their commitment to deference preclude

13 One worthy attempt to think through these issues, drawing primarily on later Confucian thinkers, is Angle 2009, especially 135-227.

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political and moral critique. Early Confucians see ritual deference to extant political and social

authorities as worthwhile, but this deference in no way abrogates the duty to criticize error and

vice among the powerful. On the contrary, as argued previously righteousness requires such

criticism, and ritual forms provide a publicly recognizable and authorized mode of dissent. By

this I mean that if one presents oneself as a dignified and serious moral and political interlocutor,

precisely through one’s compliance with ritual forms, then most will eventually recognize that

one must be taken seriously. Indeed, sometimes proper deference is precisely what is at issue

when authority is challenged; for example, Rosa Parks’s famous confrontation with the bus

driver may be read as a dignified demand for appropriate recognition and deference due to her as

a human being.14

This is I think part of the appeal and power of non-violent resistance as a method of

political protest, which shows that demeanor, moral seriousness, and courage are more

important, ritually speaking, than having the right sort of physical appearance and dress. And

part of this demeanor is a kind of critical deference to those in power, such as police, who must

enforce the law, even when it is wrong. Peaceful civil disobedience frequently aims at arrest,

and even accepts abuse as a way of demonstrating the injustice of oppressive laws and customs.

Beyond more specific questions about Christian and other forms of religious faith in the

American civil rights movement, this deferential but critical posture expresses a faith that others,

including the powerful, can be swayed by peaceful actions that highlight ongoing wrongs and

recall existing elites to their specific responsibilities to order society justly. In East Asian

societies historically this duty to dissent has been for the most part thought to be restricted to

elites working within government bureaucracies. But one can in a contemporary context of

14 I thank Jim Wetzel for discussion of this point.

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widespread education imagine restrained and dignified protest and critique coming from almost

anyone in a modern East Asian society.

In the space remaining I try to deepen and where necessary qualify some of the main

lines of argument I have been developing by responding to some possible objections.

First, one could argue that I have been rather too quick to suggest the superiority of

deference to a more egalitarian conception of civility.15 Stout, for instance, might say that even

if one could imagine forms of deference that aimed to recognize people in positions of

responsible authority, or sought to honor people of admirable moral stature, such habits of

interaction are still too upward facing in regard to social hierarchies, which need no extra support

at all. Instead, he might go on, we should replace deference with a uniform expectation of

civility both grounded in and expressive of egalitarianism, so that no one forgets the intrinsic

dignity of people who are not “senior” in some existing hierarchy. After all, I surely was a bit

unfair to Stout earlier when I suggested that “mutual slapping” was his preferred model of

democratic debate. While he clearly wishes to allow for this sort of conflict when necessary, his

own preference would seem to be dramatized by the respectfully attentive and thoughtful, yet

steadfastly critical way he engages with interlocutors such as Stanley Hauerwas and John

Milbank. Any citizen should address any other citizen in this way, Stout might say, civilly but

never deferentially.

15 Joel Kupperman (2010) provides a fascinating discussion of Confucius’s conception of what he calls “civility,” by which Kupperman means a concern with personal relations in all their facets, including the style of relating (he also briefly notes Confucius’s preference for mutual deference, but does not explore the issue at much length). This conception is much richer than Stout’s. See also the discussion of “Confucian civility” in Angle 2012, which unfortunately appeared too late in the production process of this essay for me to engage its arguments deeply.

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There are a number of issues in play here, which need to be teased apart. Any

responsible person recognizes that in emergency situations authorized representatives of the

government need to be obeyed, as long as they are doing their jobs. I have in mind here

situations like police officers directing traffic after an accident or during a power outage, or fire

fighters ordering on-lookers to stay away from an ongoing house fire. This is surely different

from the effort by tyrannical governments to create the illusion of a “perpetual emergency” so

that civil liberties of either the few or the many can be systematically abrogated. So what is at

issue is the quality and tenor of everyday interactions with leaders, superiors, and governmental

representatives—and perhaps also interactions between any and all people in a modern

democracy.

While civility might seem fairly bloodless and minimal as an ideal, perhaps merely

cloaking the aggression of self-interested agents beneath a costume of sufficient but not generous

concern, I think its motivating intuition is certainly admirable and good: specifically, Stoutian

civility seems to reflect a deep commitment to Kantian-style respect for all persons as ends-in-

themselves, and not merely tools for others to use if they can get away with it. Whether or not

ancient Confucians would have affirmed such an idea is beside the point; surely any new

Confucianism worthy of respect would need to accept the universal dignity of human beings as a

bedrock presupposition.16

So the real point at issue, then, concerns how ostensible equals ought habitually to relate

to each other in public, and also whether genuine or de facto superiors of one sort or another

ought to be accorded any special respect and consideration. Bryan Van Norden has recently

provided a thoroughly worked out and generally convincing reading of Confucius and Mencius

16 There are many issues regarding how to understand human dignity, as well as possible bases for it, that are beyond the scope of this paper to examine, let alone adjudicate.

19

as virtue ethicists of a specific sort: on his account they are highly concerned with what he calls

“agent-relative” obligations, that is, duties which bind people because of their own positions in a

community, and because of the positions of specific others with whom they must interact (Van

Norden 2007). Thus we might say that a contemporary political philosophy that draws on such

figures would need to find ways of thinking about the expression and cultivation of both

generalized respect for all human beings, but also numerous forms of “special” or “particular

respect” that are agent-relative and also recipient-relative. A modern version of Confucian ritual

would need to encompass both general and particular respect, and the effort to express various

sorts of particular respect could be described as deference.

“Respect,” however, is hardly a simple notion, and seems to be a crucial component of

what Mencius is aiming for. Stephen Darwall has written an influential article in which he

distinguishes between “recognition respect” and “appraisal respect.” Recognition respect, on

Darwall’s account, consists in a disposition to appropriately weigh some factor in one’s

deliberations about how to act; he frequently restricts this to a specifically moral respect for

persons as such, as ends in themselves (Darwall 1977: 38, 40). Appraisal respect means some

positive judgment of another’s moral character, or occasionally some more limited excellence

such as specialized skill in some art or sport; it is essentially a matter of esteem (38-40).

However, Darwall thinks that this sort of respect has no intrinsic connection to behavior, and

thus is rather different from recognition respect on this score (39, 41). Darwall develops all of

this within a basically Kantian framework that puts the emphasis on human agency as the

decisive grounds for universal respect for persons, and as the pivotal issue in the evaluation of

character (42-3 and passim).

20

Both the similarities and differences of Darwall’s account and Mencius’s are quite

striking. At first blush, Mencius’s advocacy of “treating the eminent as eminent” seems to be a

clear case of recognition respect (as does respecting the aged), albeit one whose status as “moral”

respect would perhaps be debatable for Darwall. Similarly, Mencius’s “honoring the excellent”

appears to be a form of appraisal respect, based on a proper esteem for the virtuous. However, in

certain respects Mencius’s treatment cuts across Darwall’s distinction, and it visibly conflicts

with some of the basic Kantian presuppositions of Darwall’s treatment.

First, Mencius clearly thinks that respecting office holders (and the aged) based on their

social position and its status is a crucial part of the Way, and thus involves not only recognition

for these forms of status but esteem for the positions themselves as crucial social roles with

distinctive authority and obligations. Darwall briefly considers recognition respect for a judge,

which he thinks could be either a prudential calculation based on the judge’s power to affect

one’s life, or a more serious form of respect “for the position he occupies,” but clearly sees this

sort of case as uninteresting and unimportant, when compared with universal respect for persons

as agents (41). Kantian and other modern conceptions of “the moral” are clearly narrower than

the Confucian Way.17

Second, Mencius thinks that properly “honoring the excellent” requires all sorts of

behavior, and the restraint of inappropriate, “disrespectful” modes of engagement with the

virtuous. This suggests that Mencius thinks “appraisal respect” for virtue ought to issue in a

whole array of actions, contra Darwall’s view (41). It also suggests that Mencius thinks it is not

particularly difficult to discern and recognize the virtuous; in other words, he views moral

17 On this issue, see especially Kupperman 2010.

21

attainment as sufficiently objective that people, especially powerful office holders, should be

able to discern it and act accordingly, as with Darwall’s “recognition respect.”18

The crucial divergence here is that for Mencius and other early Confucians proper respect

for the virtuous requires all sorts of alterations in behavior, revealing a fundamental divergence

in conceptions of what is most morally salient. Although it is perhaps arguable how much

general “recognition respect” for persons as such Mencius would support, he clearly is focused

on the special treatment due to both “the excellent” and “the eminent.”19 And to the extent that

he would promote general respect for universal human dignity, it would likely be on the grounds

of universal human emotional capacities and tendencies, those he describes as the “sprouts” of

virtue, such as fellow feeling and shame, rather than a bare capacity to act on reasons as agents

(compare Darwall 43, who judges the human “capacity for affective sympathy” to be irrelevant

to appraisal respect for virtue). Thus for Mencius the particular respect owed to both the eminent

and the excellent includes aspects of both recognition respect, such as its objective social

instantiation and clear action-guiding character, as well as appraisal respect, such as the properly

high esteem with which both the virtuous and eminent are regarded, even if that esteem is

differently understood and justified in each case. And the character of the action guidance, we

should note, is more thoroughly articulated by the early Confucians in terms of ritual propriety.

Perhaps most importantly, the quality of the respect is stronger and more demanding than merely

acknowledging the bare humanity of one’s interlocutors, although for both Darwall and the early

18 There are some intriguing issues regarding Mencius’s theories of perception and physical aspects of virtue cultivation that I will not address here. On these topics, see especially Csikszentmihalyi 2004. 19 One passage relevant to these questions is Mencius 6A10, which describes abusive treatment as intolerable even for beggars, which suggests that there is a moral “floor” below which the treatment of fellow human beings, however lowly, should never go.

22

Confucians proper respect is in effect a call to other human beings to act righteously (or one

might say morally) and fulfill their responsibilities.

Put strongly, then, a Confucian sympathizer could say that particular respect is not just

tolerable but good, and draws us into more mutually responsible relationships than are possible

when the governing virtue of public interaction is civility. Why is this not a defense of suppliant

toadying and aristocratic hauteur? Because the practice of ritually expressing special respect for

a political authority’s position is also a way of insisting on the correct fulfillment of that person’s

agent-relative obligations—or, as we might say, their role-specific obligations—to discharge

their duties effectively and justly, and indeed benevolently. In other words, the premise of the

deferential respect for superiors is that those superiors have special responsibilities by virtue of

their position; they have downward-facing restraints just as the Confucian democratic citizen has

upward-facing restraints (including restraints against cowardice, selfishness, and slavish

agreement with bad policies).

But the Confucian concern for mutual deference also reflects a commitment to a certain

style of relating, one which values interpersonal harmony more highly than Stout really means to

with his very occasional talk of civility. We follow this impulse in certain areas, for example,

when waiting patiently in lines, or holding open a door for someone else to walk through first.

But the early Confucians intended to highlight and develop this tendency much more pervasively,

by practicing more extensive rituals of mutual recognition involving various sorts of yielding and

deferring behavior (via bowing maneuvers, and various other meaningful gestures, for example).

To the extent that one believes in “culture” as embodied patterns of behavior—I am thinking

here of something like what Pierre Bourdieu means by a group’s “habitus”—these sorts of

habitual rituals of daily life can be enormously powerful in shaping people’s behavior, attitudes,

23

and presuppositions (Bourdieu 1977). Classical Confucian attention to ritual is probably the

earliest systematic attempt to bring this aspect of social life to consciousness, validate it, and use

it to shape human beings and communities to more fully reflect mutual concern.

Perhaps such a dignified, respectful style is too constricting, and would by default protect

the powerful from direct criticism when they deserve it. Or perhaps it would neuter political

debate so that certain sorts of opinions or rhetorical maneuvers were viewed as too impolite to

voice, because they were insufficiently respectful. I have already touched on Mencius’s

insistence that to refrain from criticism when it is warranted should be classed as an offense

against one’s lord, but perhaps the stylistic worry is not fully addressed by this assertion. A

critic might worry that satire or even irony might be considered bad form and thus be viewed as

off-limits in polite company. But humor, even mockery, is notably present in the early

Confucian sources (especially the Analects and the Mencius). Some of this is directed to lazy

followers, but much of it is aimed at holders of distinguished governmental positions, and all of

it trades on the failure of actual human beings to live up to the responsibilities of their position,

which renders expressions of putative respect for their virtue ridiculous. Thus the agent-relative

obligations that undergird a Confucian ritual regime, combined with a rich vocabulary for

expressions of respect, actually increase the possibilities for humor as a mode of political critique.

This should not be that surprising. Early Confucians tend to reserve real reverence for

the Way itself, for virtues like righteousness and benevolence, and for the transcendent power of

tiān 天, or “Heaven.”20 They offer only derivative forms of respect for those “eminent” holders

of governmental power, and even for wise and good people, who are “excellent” because of their

steadfast commitment to the Confucian path. Such respect is never unconditional.

20 For further discussion, see Woodruff 2002 and Ivanhoe 2007.

24

To sum up, the account of deference being developed here thus overlaps, in some

respects critiques, and certainly goes further than these alternative conceptions of civility and

respect. If civility is the ritual propriety that recognizes other human beings as human and thus

worthy of a certain baseline level of respectful treatment, one which rules out domination and

abuse—this seems to capture an essential aspect of Darwall’s view of recognition respect—then

Confucian deference includes this but goes well beyond it. First of all, it specifies a certain style

of relating, one that is compassionate, solicitous, serious, and respectful, and which requires all

sorts of positive actions to honor and care for those one interacts with, not merely refraining

from abuse. The social point of this sort of Confucian civility is to harmonize social life and

ameliorate interpersonal conflicts insofar as that is possible, in order to sustain a society that

justly rewards merit (and punishes crime), protects the unfortunate, and not only allows but

supports a decent, humane life for all.

Confucian deference would also require a dramatic expansion of respectful behavior

toward others, which can be more precisely specified than on Darwall’s account, and goes

beyond Darwall’s relatively undeveloped conception of appraisal respect. Deference is due to

those with true expertise, at least in their specific domains of mastery (e.g., Xunzi 21/104/16–

21/105/3). This honor due to the excellent requires appropriate actions, which include not only

respectful treatment consistent with ritual propriety, but also seeking out their counsel and

following it, because the excellent actually do have greater insight into what to do in their

respective spheres. For the early Confucians, the paradigm case of honoring excellence was

rulers seeking out the advice of wise (Confucian) advisors, whether in office or not.21 This essay

21 There are many fascinating issues here that are beyond the scope of this paper, regarding the existence and character of moral or governmental expertise, as well as other less controversial kinds of skill; how to discern such mastery in others if one does not fully possess it oneself; and

25

does not attempt to justify in any general sense the idea that the wise should be heeded when

making policy in various realms, but this thought has prima facie plausibility, and clearly the

early Confucians, not to mention Plato and many others, thought this was the best course to

follow.

Those occupying important government offices, i.e., those “eminent” people with

authority in the social sense, deserve appropriate ritualized respect that focuses on addressing

them as powerful but also responsible office holders. This ritual treatment obligates people to

remonstrate with office holders when they err, in order to call them toward better fulfillment of

their duties to care for and treat justly those they lead or govern. However, there is conflicting

textual evidence across the early Confucian corpus regarding the degree of obedience due to

social superiors such as fathers and lords.22 While these issues are difficult, I read this ambiguity

as a sign that early Confucians wisely held that some significant degree of deference in the sense

of obedience to office holders doing their job is appropriate in any even moderately well ordered

society—at all times, not just in emergencies. By this I mean that citizens (and workers) should

channel and express their discontents in a ritually appropriate manner and will continue to

cooperate with office holders, at least up to some ill-defined threshold where real malfeasance

begins.23 This seems to be right, in the sense that a functioning government (or business) relies

whether the wise have any sort of right or obligation to rule others. For some recent philosophical analyses of some of these issues, see McGrath 2011 and Estlund 2008. For my own preliminary approach to some of these questions, see Stalnaker 2010. 22 For example, while Confucius (Lunyu 4.18) seems to counsel the filial son “not to disobey” his parents (presumably) when his remonstrations fail to convince, other texts suggest that when one’s lord gives a morally wrong order, “One should follow the Way and not follow the lord” (Xunzi 13/64/8). Adequately addressing this interpretive issue would unfortunately be another paper in its own right. For one recent discussion focused on the Analects, see Tan 2010. 23 Further evidence for this sort of reading comes from the ample early Confucian discussions of when to take office and especially when to resign or refuse an office in a poorly governed state. Clearly such decisions were seen as difficult judgment calls in many circumstances.

26

on cooperation among those working together within it; this cooperation will in turn require a

degree of deference to other people with their distinctive positions and responsibilities, both on

functional grounds to divide the labor effectively, and in order to promote social harmony and

mutual concern within the relevant group. Put another way, Confucians think particular

institutions and society as a whole do not spontaneously revivify themselves, but must be

carefully nurtured and supported over time, which requires virtuous and skillful work, and also

harmonious cooperation in pursuit of larger goals (which might be summed up as “the Way”

people should live)—these, in turn, require the good exercise of social authority or power, which

is supported by the various sorts of deference here discussed.

Just how strong is my claim for the value of deference in a good democratic society? I

am not only suggesting that, to function effectively, contemporary democracies need chains of

command and a division of labor, each of which require certain sorts of deference, including

appropriate obedience to legitimate authorities. I think these claims are true, but I am arguing for

more than a merely functional role for deference in complex democratic states. What I want to

suggest is that contemporary democracies can and should be conceived as containing a variety of

justly hierarchical relationships, and that deference is a substantive, if complex, virtue for the

people in those relationships; in other words, appropriate deference contributes to and is indeed

part of the good of agents and the whole society. As the early Confucians show us, intelligent

deference to one’s teachers, parents, and political superiors help us learn to be good, and

eventually to take our own place as superiors in these same relationships, when we come to have

responsibility for students, children, and perhaps citizens or those under our management. And

for a complex society to be both harmonious and humane, it needs patterns of ritualized respect

and concern to knit people together and encourage both effective and just cooperation.

27

Although these claims for justice cannot possibly be fully defended in this short compass,

I do think the early Confucians have picked good overall justificatory strategies. First, they

suggest that true human excellence exists, and needs to be both appropriately recognized and

brought into socially constructive relation to others, so that we all might enjoy its fruits; in other

words, individual merit deserves to be both rewarded and harnessed for the common good. And

second, they appear to recognize that, to be governed justly and benevolently, large territorial

states need governmental bureaucracies, which need certain sorts of (sometimes critical)

deference from the people they govern, and which are only justified insofar as they actually

promote good order and the general welfare of the people. This may strike some readers as an

overly capacious conception of legitimate government, but it is not incompatible with democracy,

and highlights important concerns about human welfare that can be easily dismissed in

libertarian or even some liberal philosophical frameworks.

A critic might object that this essay so far leaves democratic commitments to the equality

of all citizens in a dangerously murky limbo, in effect shoring up my argument for deference by

ignoring the most salient alternative. To be clear, I want to uphold certain normative

conceptions of equality as extremely valuable, and as compatible with the sort of deference, and

inequalities of status and power, that I am recommending. While I have suggested that early

Confucians did not value equality per se, they do seem to recognize human dignity as something

requiring a certain minimum level of good treatment. And I think this recognition is enough to

be at least roughly compatible with the most crucial senses of equality in liberal democratic

states: (1) that every person is equal before the law, with rights to due process, basic negative

liberties, and rights to own and use property; and (2) that every adult citizen has a basically equal

vote in regular elections that select the holders of government offices (with allowances for

28

various representative voting systems). These forms of equality are simply too important as

practical checks on abusive government to be given up, and precisely for that reason I think any

contemporary Confucian will be at least attracted to democratic governance. In any case, I

assume that these democratic values are now widely shared and admired, perhaps so familiar that

their truth goes without saying, and seems to call for no further reflection.

The point of examining and defending a certain conception of deference is to at least

begin to grapple explicitly with the normative import of the manifest inequalities of status, power,

wealth, capability, skill, and virtue that are evident in contemporary capitalist societies like the

United States. I am arguing here that some aspects of early Confucian thought are helpful in the

project of articulating which sorts of deference are good (and which are bad), by at least

sketching the character of various sorts of social hierarchies. I hope this normative argument

will be thought-provoking to those steeped in the rhetoric of equality, and help generate novel

ways to think about the mutual responsibilities of ordinary citizens, legislators, and other

wielders of power.

Another fundamental objection concerns Hahm Chaihark’s contention that ritual practice

has in East Asian societies performed two crucial functions of Western constitutionalism:

constraining potential misbehavior by rulers and other political elites, and also conferring

legitimacy on a regime. Regardless of the historical question of how well ritual practices and

expectations have in fact performed these functions, whether in Korea or anywhere else in East

Asia, a critic might wonder whether, normatively speaking, too much effectiveness is being

claimed for ritual. Might modern East Asians, or Westerners, give up their constitutions, and

disband their legal systems, in order to rely more on ritual to produce a just and flourishing social

order? Confucius, at least, seems to have been seriously tempted by such a view in his ancient

29

context. Analects 2.3 famously represents him as saying: “If you guide them with regulations

and restrain them with punishments, the common people will be evasive and lack a sense of

shame. But if you guide them with virtue, and restrain them with ritual, they will have a sense of

shame and correct themselves.” This is often interpreted as a condemnation of both law and

punishment as dramatically inferior to virtue and ritual for guiding the people, and thus

governing a state.

I have grave doubts about any sanguine hope for a purely and thoroughly ritualized

society. Ritualized habits of mutual deference and concern will certainly contribute to better

conduct by elites, and can confer a real sort of legitimacy on anyone who abides by ritual

practices, but I do not think they can solve every social problem, nor can they render unnecessary

the various branches of a legal system, including legislation of civil and criminal law, police

enforcement, and judicial review. As noted earlier, Mencius and Xunzi both wisely suggest that

such procedures and rules are essential to any large, well-run polity—and it is perhaps in part the

consolidation of power in the hands of larger territorial states in their later era that prods them to

reject Confucius’s vain hopes on this front.

Where Mencius and Xunzi differ from and challenge us, however, is in their insistence

that public laws, rules, and procedures cannot by themselves insure a just society. While there

has been a fair amount of worry in the English-speaking world about how a “civil society”

requires more than just a good legal system to function well, the early Confucians’ emphasis on

the cultivation and discipline of virtuous elites as an essential element of a flourishing society

provides an interesting counterpoint and complement to more widely discussed Western ways of

addressing some of the issues raised in this essay. For example, while the new “civic republicans”

remain, despite their protestations, very close to traditional liberal assertions of the primacy of

30

formal negative liberty in any good regime, Confucians appear to stress the importance of a

distinctive sort of positive liberty of self-mastery, but with very different philosophical and

political presuppositions than the classic Western theorists ably analyzed by Isaiah Berlin. 24

Similarly, the conception of agent- and recipient-relative obligations and ritual deference that the

early Confucians advocate provides a more fine-grained and variegated account of the politics of

mutual respect than the neo-Hegelian attention to group identification usually discussed in terms

of the “politics of recognition.” Confucian deference is a more precise and also more wide-

ranging conception because it focuses on the qualities and positions of specific individuals in

relation to specific others, rather than on group membership.

At another level, however, the early Confucians remind us of practices we already engage

in, and why they are important to the health of the body politic. To be committed to democratic

government, those voters who supported the losing candidate in any election must acknowledge

that the will of the people as a whole has elected some other candidate, who is now the legitimate

leader of the nation. Deference to that leader as the rightful political authority is essential to

democratic governance. These leaders stand for the democratic process itself, which is the most

defensible modern Way of government, despite its flaws. Only in very rare cases would one be

justified in abandoning this posture of deferential respect for elected leaders—and those cases

would represent extreme dangers of one sort or another. And not only do we defer to our leaders

in significant ways, for good reasons, but we also engage in a “civil religion” of state rituals to

mark transfers of power and authority, as well as the rightful exercise of that authority, for

example in courts of law.

24 I refer here to Isaiah Berlin’s widely discussed distinction between negative and positive freedom in his essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty” (Berlin 1998: 191-242). For recent essays on republicanism, see Laborde and Maynor 2008.

31

More deeply, early Confucian advocacy of deference suggests that proper respect for

persons requires more than simply recognizing that they are persons and acting accordingly—

even if such recognition has been horribly lacking when we commit atrocities against each other.

But merely avoiding atrocities is not a sufficient standard for good government or personal

conduct. Deference to the wise and good reminds us that not everything we at first thought was

right or good actually is, and helps us avoid a kind of ethical solipsism of preference-satisfying

choice.25 And deference to the “powerful,” when properly executed, can reconfigure their power

as rightful authority, beholden to higher standards that justify, constrain, and direct their actions

within a broader ethical outlook.

25 There are many crucial issues here about how the virtuous are supposed to enlighten, or teach, others; about the possibility and character of ethical expertise or mastery; and proper standards for hierarchical relationships centered on teaching of this sort; all of which I hope to take up in future work. On conceiving of virtue in early Confucianism as a kind of mastery, see Stalnaker 2010. See also the works in note 21.

32

Acknowledgements: Many have helped me improve this essay, which has been gestating for

some time. I thank audiences at the 2005 Eastern Division meeting of the American

Philosophical Association, where I presented the original version; at Florida State University’s

Department of Religious Studies, where I gave a much expanded version of this paper as the

Bristol Lecture in Ethics in 2008; and my colleagues and students at Indiana University. I

particularly appreciate the help of Steve Angle, Cheryl Cottine, P.J. Ivanhoe, Rich Miller, Bharat

Ranganathan, and Lisa Sideris, as well as the astute comments of two anonymous reviewers for

Dao.

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