21. Sor-Hoon Tan on Confucian Democracy

Can classical Confucian ideas be adapted to produce a theory of democracy fit for today's world?

• S.-H. Tan, "Democracy in Confucianism," Philosophy Compass 7 (2012), 293-303.

• S.-H. Tan, "The concept of Yi in the Mencius and the problems of distributive justice,"  Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (2014), 489-505.

• S.-H. Tan, "Why equality? Which inequalities?" Philosophy East and West 66 (2016), 488-514.

• S.-H. Tan, "How can a Chinese democracy be pragmatic?," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 47 (2011), 196-225.

• S.-H. Tan, "Confucian democracy as pragmatic experiment: Uniting love of learning and love of antiquity," Asian Philosophy 17 (2007), 141-66.

• S.-H. Tan, Confucian democracy: A Deweyan reconstruction of Confucianism (New York: 2004)

Note: this transcription was produced by automatic voice recognition software. It has been corrected by hand, but may still contain errors. We are very grateful to Tim Wittenborg for his production of the automated transcripts and for the efforts of a team of volunteer listeners who corrected the texts.

PA: We are going to talk about Confucianism and Democracy. And in some of your work, you've argued for at least their kind of compatibility between Confucianism and Democracy, and this is not the way things are always seen. So I thought maybe we could actually start with maybe more traditional opposite assumption that Confucianism is seen as antithetical to democracy. And I think a good example here to start with might be the May 4th Movement. So maybe you could explain what this was, first of all, because we haven't mentioned it; and second of all, why the intellectuals of this movement were so critical of Confucianism.

SHT: Right. The May 4th Movement is sometimes also known as the New Culture Movement. So during the first two decades of the 20th century, many Chinese intellectuals welcomed and borrowed ideas from the West in their quest to modernize China. So they argued that nothing short of a new culture could solve China's problems, both internally and internationally, as they saw China's Confucian culture as antithetical to democracy and science, which represents modernity to them. So in particular, they believe that Confucian teachings inculcate submissiveness in people, first within the family and then in the political sphere. So by Confucianism, what they mean is the state ideology that appropriated the teachings of the Confucian text, and Chinese popular practices that in retrospect (at least in my opinion) may be considered perversions rather than implementations of the Confucian teachings. So as one May 4th writer puts it, this Confucianism was about the tyrannies of fathers over sons, husbands over wives, and ruler over subjects.

PA: So the May 4th thinkers really are thinking about the classical Confucian relationships that were originally identified by Mengzi and thinking, 'Well, these are hierarchical.' And in particular, if the ruler is hierarchically placed over the subject and the subject is just supposed to kind of obey the way that maybe the wife is supposed to obey the husband. Right. So just as we might have feminist worries about that in the political sphere, we might have worries that the people would have no kind of agency or right to say anything to determine the political decisions. That's the basic worry?

SHT: That's right.

PA: Okay. And you have tried to push back against that. And here maybe I should quote something that you actually write in your book on this as a kind of caveat to everything we're about to say. So you write, 'It is a futile anachronism to turn Confucius or Mencius into a democratic theorist.' But then you add that 'there are,' as you put it, 'cultural resources hospitable to democracy, even in Warring States Confucianism.' So the early material that we've been covering on the podcast. So let's start talking about that. Maybe we could start here with the idea of *Min-pen*, which means the people as basis. Maybe you can say more about what that means. (Maybe tell us actually how to pronounce it better than I just did and then explain what's going on with this concept.)

SHT: Yes (you got it right - better than many foreigners). So this idea of *Min-pen* comes from a very ancient Chinese classic and it emphasizes to rulers the importance of the people. So another text, the *Mencius*, also maintains that the people are to be valued above their rulers. Now some scholars take these to mean that there is democracy - or at least the seeds of democracy - in ancient Chinese thought. However, I do not share this opinion. So to me, Confucian political thought considers the people the basis of government because it is the responsibility of governments to take care of the people. So this could give us government *for* the people, which is part of one understanding of democracy. However, it stops short of government *by* the people, which I think is necessary for democracy. The pre-modern Confucians took monarchy for granted. Some of them sometimes questioned whether those who actually rule should rule, but none ever questioned the necessity of a king as ruler with ministers to assist him. So within the context of their time, they also did not believe that people are capable of ruling. I must emphasize that this lack of capacity to rule is a contingent historical fact that they accepted. But there is no idea of incorrigible human nature in Confucian thought, which means even though they believe that during their times the people were incapable of ruling themselves, it does not mean that Confucians of all time have to accept that people can never govern themselves. So I think it opens the door to a modern argument to link up Confucianism with democracy. So some Confucians explicitly acknowledged that the people's responses to government - whether they accept the government and consider it good government - determine the stability, and even the legitimacy of a government. So we have ministers arguing that heaven hears what the people hear and heaven sees what the people see. Since the Chinese rulers' legitimacy rested in the mandate of heaven, this makes the government's impact on the people the basis of political legitimacy. In another Confucian text - the *Xunzi -* actually has a passage that expresses very well the importance of the people in politics: 'The law is like a boat and the common people are like water. The water may support the boat, but the water may also overturn the boat.' So although not equivalent to the idea of democracy, such thinking I think provides resources for a modern argument that democracy could achieve a Confucian good government that is looking after the people better than other alternatives, such as the monarchies of the past or present authoritarian regime.

PA: So your idea here (if I could sort of summarize it), is that given that the warring of states Confucians already had the idea that government should be *for* the people, we could then take a further step and say, well, logically, in that case, government should be *by* the people because the people would be in the best position to help the government be carried out in a way that would be good for them. Is that basically the idea?

SHT: Yes, that's basically how I go about it with some help from John Dewey.

PA: Yeah, right. Actually, that's something we didn't mention, is that actually your book, *Confucian Democracy*, is sort of as much about German Dewey as it is about Confucianism. But I thought maybe we didn't have time to get into that. Maybe we'll have you back someday to talk about John Dewey. Can I ask just one other little question, which is the meaning of this phrase, 'the people' that we've been using, because I think in contemporary political philosophy, that is usually taken to mean something... like, 'everybody who's a citizen' or maybe 'everybody who lives within the geographical realm'. Like so... 'the people in the United States', for example, would be just 'everyone who's in the United States', or maybe 'everyone who's allowed to vote in the United States', or something like that. But I take it that here it's maybe a more class idea, like 'the people' would mean something like 'the lower classes' as opposed to 'the elite'. Is that right? Or do you really mean 'the people' in the sense of... like, 'everyone in China'?

SHT: Well, given that it was an aristocratic society, it would mean farmers, the craftsmen... So it doesn't apply to, for example, ministers, the ruling elite would be on the... that means they would separate the ruling elite from the people who are being governed. But from the perspective... I suppose one could take it that in that case, you could take it to be within the context: it is about the governed, whatever is the set of people. You do not have the idea of, you know, either nation states or citizenship. So the historical context is different, but I think it's not so much of a jump from their use of *Min* to what we today understand as the people. Because after all, in democratic theory, what counts as the *demos* is also a very controversial issue and can affect how you assess democracy, depending on how you draw the boundaries for *demos*. So there is a bit of a stretch there in the concept of the people even within modern democratic theory. So in the same way, for Confucianism - with changing historical context -, one could stretch the idea of *Min* to fit the different historical context, so that in the modern context, we could take it that *Min* means 'the government'. Therefore, in modern nation states, 'the governed' are basically 'all the citizens'.

PA: As you're sort of saying there, the same thing is true with the Greek word *demos*, because *demos* meant 'the people', but not really 'the elite'. It meant more like *hoi polloi* right?

SHT: Right.

PA: Okay. Let's think about something else that's, I think, connected to this idea that government would be *by* the people, namely that they would somehow have the opportunity to express their views. So we might think about voting. Right? But I would assume that a very important component of democracy in the modern conception is freedom of speech or freedom of expression. Are there also resources in Confucianism for supporting that idea?

SHT: Yeah, I have to first qualify by saying that I think one of the flaws of real democracy these days is that there's too much noise. Too many people are too busy talking without ever listening. And not much of what is said very often, not very well listened to, right? Doesn't help to solve problems for one thing. Anyway, to come back to Confucius: Confucius mistrusted what he called 'grid talkers', suggesting that he focused more on the concern that people should be saying the right thing at the right time and in the right way. So we should not be too hasty or eager to speak. Instead, we must be ever watchful that our actions lead up to our words. Not just in the specific instances of making and keeping promises, but more generally making sure that our words and actions are consistent and cohere into an ethical way of life. So this is a very different view about the role of freedom. And there is no explicit discussion of freedom of speech in pre-modern Confucian texts. This is a relatively modern idea. However, one could construct a contemporary Confucian view about freedom of speech based on discussions about speech and action in Confucian texts. So such a view, I think, will combine insistence on freedom of speech with the concern that the speaker pays careful attention to the content, intent, likely consequences of speech to ensure that such freedom is not abused. And there is one type of scenario where I think I could say that Confucians would assert the freedom of speech most vigorously, right? That is when taking an ethical stand on an issue, then one must speak freely and courageously, especially against the powerful. So the textual basis for this is the Confucian idea of *jian* respectful remonstration against erring parents and irresponsible rulers, among others. So I think with that, one could actually... It's like a wedge, right? One could open the door to fighting for freedom of speech, but with a qualifier that, 'look, to value this freedom properly as a Confucian, you should not abuse it. You should use it responsibly yourself.'

PA: I like that a lot because there you're saying not just that Confucianism might give us the resources to sort of conceptualize freedom of speech. Like, so the concept of remonstration gives us, as you said, a wedge into the idea of freedom of expression. But that it wouldn't support the idea of going so far that everybody should just be saying everything that comes into their mind all the time without any thought of what would happen. So you'd have to do it very mindfully.

SHT: And it provides very good resources to exclude hate speech and all these kinds of so-called free speech that basically harm people or undermine social relationships.

PA: Right. So that would already give us the idea that the people who are actually saying something and having some kind of effect on the political context should be passing some kind of test, maybe - namely the test that they're actually being careful, which is obviously a pretty low bar. I mean, not anyone can do that. But someone might object here (I think) that Confucianism is very committed to a much higher bar for political participation. So this would be roughly the idea of meritocracy, right? So the people who should be involved in political life should be learned. They should have mastered the classics, right? So we could even connect this to these later ideas that come in in the Han period, literally passing a test that you've mastered the Confucian classics. And that that would be your kind of ticket of entry for being allowed to participate in governments. So do you think that that is something that we could maybe sort of remove from the Confucian conception? Because that sounds very anti-democratic, right? That sounds meritocratic as opposed to democratic.

SHT: Yes. That I take to be the elitist view of what Confucianism is all about. And of course, for most of China's history, in fact, East Asian's history, Confucianism was in the hands of the elites, right? So of course, the elites interpret the text to their own advantage. But I think in this day and age, we don't have to look at it that way. There is no reason to interpret what Confucius said about responsible speech. To think that one must first pass some kind of qualification test. Rather, the test is in what people actually say: not prejudge whether people are capable of speaking responsibly before they actually speak. So that means that the starting point should be everybody should be free to speak until they prove themselves to be speaking things which are not worth listening to. So in the sense, we are not just universally setting the standard very low, but rather the standard must be set appropriate to context. So, for example, if I were to say in a public space, right? Let's say somebody at a public forum is speaking and I want to ask questions, I'm going to give comments, I want to object, I might even want to... (Well, there's a breach of Confucian etiquette) But I want to write to that speaker and say they are talking nonsense. I don't think this should immediately be excluded. But if you were, for example, at a cabinet meeting, you are a cabinet minister, you should not be behaving the same way. And I think there the standard for what is speech worth listening to should be set a lot higher.

PA: Right.

SHT: But an ordinary citizen in a fairly open kind of public forum, then this standard would not be the same.

PA: And do you think that this ethic of respect and caution: like sort of thinking about critique as polite remonstration rather than, you know, violence, speech, rhetoric... Do you think that that's the core of what would distinguish Confucian democracy from democracy as we're often experiencing it today? Or are there other elements that you think would be distinctive of Confucian democracy?

SHT: I would not take this to be the most important distinction. It's certainly one significant distinction, and I think it would improve existing democracy. They learned this from the Confucians: that manners are important, that manners could be a part of ethical living as well. So, yes, it's just one aspect, but there are other things which I think are more important, because I think the Confucian democracy  - and of course by 'Confucian democracy', I'm talking specifically about my version, right? Because there could be different versions depending on which interpretation of Confucianism and which area of democracy you adopt in constructing your own theory of Confucian democracy. So from my perspective, a Confucian democracy is more concerned about citizens' personal cultivation than, you know, most democratic theories, certainly Western democratic theories. Because it is not just a political arrangement to aggregate individual differences, and certainly not the kind of partisan politics that cater mostly to the interests of elites, even though they may be from different parties, instead of the welfare of ordinary citizens. So the political institutions and policies of a Confucian democracy, in my view, must not only take care of the material needs of all the citizens, they must also support and encourage people to cultivate themselves to become Confucian exemplary persons or *junzi*. So as people cultivate themselves within their relational networks, the Confucian democracy must also sustain flourishing families and civil society organizations. Because without those, a person could not properly cultivate themselves.

PA: And that would go for everybody, right? On your version of 'Confucian democracy'. So we're not obviously talking just about men here. To go back to something that I mentioned at the beginning, right, there's this apparent impression that one can get from the text, the early text, that there's a really objectionable, hierarchical relationship between men and women in these early Confucian texts. But you've actually written on the theme of feminism and Confucianism, and proposed that we could even, for example, find resources in Confucianism for arguing in favor of things like same-sex marriage, right? So a much more kind of egalitarian position with respect both to gender and sexuality.

SHT: Yes, that's why I prefer the translation of 'exemplary person' instead of 'gentleman', or 'nobleman' for *junzi*, to signify that not just women, but any kind of genders, right? Nowadays we talk about inclusive, I mean, not be 'he' or 'she', whatever you want to work out what pronoun you choose, it doesn't prevent you from becoming an exemplary person.

PA: And do you think that the Confucian theory of the family and appropriate relationships in the family would be one of the resources that we could draw on there?

SHT: Draw on for what?

PA: So as I said, there's this kind of traditional way of understanding the family relationships in Confucianism, which is that you have these pairs of people, right? So parent-child, father, or father-son, and you have husband-wife, and you have older brother-younger brother, right? So these are the family relationships, and they all seem to be unequal, right? So you've got someone who's in charge, someone who's obeying (right?) in each case, and that seems antithetical to this more kind of egalitarian approach to gender or family relationships. So I'm wondering how we could push back against that aspect of Confucianism while still remaining somehow within the realm of Confucian thought, if you see what I mean?

SHT: Yeah, I think it is a complete overhaul. Because unfortunately, recently, especially over the same-sex marriage issue, the debate in mainland China was just... Wow... It was very depressing, actually, at least for feminists, to see people still publicly making the kind of statements that those people are making, and worse, defending them in the name of Confucianism. So I think, unfortunately, there are still interpretations of Confucianism that is completely entangled with Chinese patriarchy. And I think this has to be resisted and, basically, overturned, right? Because this patriarchy is basically based on a kind of gender dualism, which I think is a misreading of Confucian classics as well as Chinese cosmology. And this gender dualism unfortunately also entrenched the gender-based male-female role divisions that was very much a characteristic of traditional Chinese society, and that entrenched the domination of women by men in that traditional society. So the kind of Confucianism that's basically nostalgic, wants to bring back that kind of social order, is no more than trying to... I wouldn't say revive patriarchy, because patriarchy has not been destroyed, but rather I would say perpetuate and even strengthen Chinese patriarchy, which I really think... I hope at least the Chinese women will not stand for it, and I hope the enlightened men among them will also not stand for it. But I feel that the whole debate about same-sex marriage actually was (and still is) a good opportunity for those who are thinking about Confucianism and how it needs to be modernized, and in the context of the need to rethink what Confucian family would be like in the modern age. Because LGBTQs basically challenged the gender dualism, and this will also challenge the corresponding dualistic traditional male-female roles. So at the level of practice, legalizing same-sex marriage will publicly recognize the alternative models of marriage that I think might have a better chance of defying the traditional patriarchal marriage norms. This would mean that heterosexual couples could resist such norms and undermine patriarchy in practice. Because all the philosophical reconstructions, and arguing over this, and trying to reinterpret the text... I don't think has had that much impact in practice. So I think something practical has got to be done, that the philosophical reconstruction that could then be combined had to have more impact.

PA: Okay, there's one other thing I wanted to ask you about, which is maybe now broadening out from the family to a much bigger frame, and it's something else that you've written about. Now we talked already about the people and the citizens of a given country. But we might also wonder how one country should relate to other countries. And this is, of course, is being worked on a lot in contemporary political philosophy under the rubric of 'global justice'. And again, at first glance, you might think, 'Oh, well, classical Confucianism would sort of have nothing to say about this, because they're focused so much on the Kingdom of China', as it was then, or even on smaller states within that realm during the Warring States period. But there is also this idea of, as they put it, 'all under heaven', right? Which makes it sound like our political concern should be for absolutely everybody, regardless of where they live. So do you think that we can connect classical Confucian ideas also to concerns of global justice?

SHT: Yes, I think (for one thing), the nation-state is a modern invention. So obviously, boundaries are not new, but boundaries are thought of differently. So the Confucians - I think the Chinese more generally - think of boundaries, for example, between families and larger community at different levels, right? From neighborhood to what you might call a country, or the territories ruled by one single ruler to beyond that, right? Multiple territories under different rulers, each with autonomous government within itself. Those kinds of boundaries for Confucians are actually very flexible and permeable. So the idea of ethics is that you start from the family, you cultivate ethical relations, you learn how to relate to others in a way that's compassionate, humane, appropriate, and you behave to everybody with courtesy, with richer propriety, right? So this kind of ethical relationship can then be extended beyond the family: first to the neighborhood, to the larger extended family and then to people outside the family. On the same model - in the sense that just as you treat the younger people in your family by taking care of them - you treat people who might even be strangers. If they are younger than you, you show them the same kind of caring, right? And if you respect your elders in your family, you should also respect people who are older than you, or in some cases superior to you in some ways, in a logical kind of business. So given this kind of understanding of boundaries between people or between domains of relationships as being flexible and permeable, it's not really a big issue for Confucians to be concerned about global justice. They will say that, 'Of course you should be concerned about global justice, just as you should be concerned about the people in your family. After you take care of the people in your family, you should also take care of people who are outside, right? To the extent of anyone on the globe whom you could help, right?' And here we must emphasize that Confucians are also very practical. We talk about whom you could help because it's not possible to help everyone. So obviously when you actually put into practice any kind of actions to address issues of global justice, practicalities always come. But in terms of how they would consider the justice issue itself, Confucians I think are quite distinctive in that their view - or rather modern Confucian theory of global justice -, I think, would look quite different from most theories of global justice, whether political philosophy or political theory. And that's because most theories of global justice, they tend to extend or modify the author's very influential theory of justice, or use that theory as the opponent to construct something that uses different principles of redistribution, but still it's all about redistribution. So that means these kinds of theories tend to view the problem as one of some having more and others having too little. So the solution always involves transferring some people's or some nation's wealth or resources to others. This distributive approach is individual-oriented. Although distribution is not necessarily among individual persons since the units for the redistribution could be families, groups of nations, right? Distribution viewed from this kind of individualist perspective actually creates winners and losers and arouses resistance from those whose wealth and resources are being transferred to others. So the transfer has to be justified to those who are recognized as having rightful possession of the wealth and resources being transferred. The Confucian perspective is very different. Being relational instead of individualist, it does not assume the indefensible rights of ownership that is central to Western possessive individualism. I interpret Confucianism as a primarily relational ethics that views human individuals as persons constituted by their relational networks. So this has implications for our understanding of agency and ownership of what is gained through a person's actions. So others in constituting one's personhood thereby contribute directly and indirectly - sometimes without even us being conscious of it -, to actions that appear putatively to be one's own. And therefore, what is gained through those actions could not be considered the fruits of only one's own efforts belonging to oneself alone. But as no one person's acquisition of wealth and other goods is without direct and indirect contributions from others, all possessions are to be shared. The question for Confucians is not 'why one should share?', 'what is currently in one's possession?', but with whom and how to share. That one must share is just taken for granted. It doesn't have to be separately justified.

PA: Right, okay. That was a very complicated answer, but very interesting. So basically, if I could sort of summarize what you're saying there. So you're saying that there's this dominant approach in a lot of Western political philosophy, which as you said, is associated with a philosopher named John Rawls (someone else we won't get to for a long time on the podcast). But Rawls is kind of the main thinker in the last decades of political philosophy (at least in English). And he's got this very kind of individualistic approach. So you're supposed to think about, 'Okay, how as an individual do I want society to be organized so that I would have the best chance of having a fulfilling life?' or something like that. And your idea is that Confucianism just starts out from a very different perspective, which is this relational ethics concept. And so you would never be in the situation where the default assumption would be, 'Well, there's what belongs to me as an individual.' And then the question is, 'What should I do with it?' Your idea is that instead, I should always think about myself as being located within this network of relationships. And it's really within that network of relationships that we need to distribute resources. Because, of course, Confucianism would still have to say something about the distribution of resources. That's what any theory of justice has to answer. Right?

SHT: Yes. So basically, whatever one has, one could not have had those things, if not for other people as well, not just one's own effort. So just as one has received help - whether knowingly or unknowingly from others -, one should always help others.

PA: Right. Yeah. Sort of like the Confucian insight that by the time you even are kind of aware of what's going on in your life, you've already been a child who's been raised by parents, right? And you owe your parents something, and you have this loving relationship with respect and mutual care and so on. And-

SHT: Exactly. Even to the extent, like... I mean, the rice that you eat, the farmers have to plant it, right? So you can't say, 'Oh, I pay for the rice, therefore, you know, it's perfectly fine, right? It's mine, right?' No, what you pay is not really enough to cover the effort of the farmers, right? So if you waste the rice, you are, I think, in a very unethical way, no matter whether you pay for it or not.

PA: Right. And if you pay for it, that's not enough to absolve you of the duty to care about how it's going for the farmers, right? You can't say, 'Well, I paid what it costs on the market. So if they're all starving to death, that's not my problem', right? Because you have to think of yourself as being related to them.

SHT: That's right. Yeah. So it challenges possessive individualism and also challenge the kind of global capitalism that we have, right? Where free market reigns and everybody just thinks in terms of individuals and responsibility is also always on individual account, right? So that's not how Confucians would view the problems of the world. The problems of the world is that too many people always only think of themselves as individuals with no responsibility to anyone, unless they choose to take on those responsibilities. That's not the way Confucians see the world.

PA: Let me ask you just one last question before we wrap up - and this might have been a question that listeners have been thinking about as we've been going along. So we've been sort of moving back and forth between talking about what we can find in the classical Confucian texts and what you want to say about democracy now. And so in some sense, it sounds like you're applying Confucian insights to political questions. But on the other hand, in some cases you said, 'Well, here's an aspect of classical Confucianism I would just get rid of'. Something like gender hierarchy, right? And in fact, if I can quote from your book again, this is a 2004 book you wrote about Confucianism and democracy and also John Dewey. In that book you wrote, 'I am concerned with what Confucianism could mean now and in the future, not with what Confucianism is essentially.' So, of course, Confucianism has been developing ever since the time of Kǒngzǐ himself, right? So we've got Neo-Confucianism, which covers a big territory. And we've got the development of Confucianism in the 20th century, now the 21st century. And so obviously we have to admit that Confucianism can evolve and has evolved. But on the other hand, it seems like there should be some constraints here, right? So you can't just say anything you want and say, 'Well, that's what I mean by a Confucian political theory.' So how do you see the relationship between the ideas you're putting forward and the Confucian tradition?

SHT: So I think the core commitments of Confucianism to be personal cultivation, to become an exemplary person who relates to others with the ethical qualities of *Ren-Yi-Li-Zhi-Xin* and other qualities that have come to be known as Confucian virtues - although I think 'excellence' would be a better word. Now this personal cultivation is not an individualistic quest, but a relational process where individual growth is not competent with expansion, deepening and enhancement of a dynamic network of human relationships which constitute personhood. So to me, this is the core of Confucianism. Without this, there is no Confucianism. But obviously how you understand *Ren-Yi-Li-Zhi-Xin* for these excellent qualities and how they should be expressed or manifested in action would depend on the historical context and also any interpretation would be open to context. So basically the test I think is still to do with whether or not one could relate any kind of interpretations of these Confucian ideas that one proposed to the text themselves - to the core text. Because all these ideas are ideas which were found in those texts. Now when it comes to interpreting those texts, I have a fairly liberal type of hermeneutics. I do not see any Confucian text as actually having essential meaning. I think our Confucian text is actually vehicles for perpetuating the tradition. But the way it perpetuates this tradition is not by preserving an essential meaning. Rather the meanings of the text are actually always recreated and co-produced in the process of transmission, interpretation and putting the ideas into practice. So that means the tradition itself is constantly transforming itself in response to changing circumstances. This also means that there could be practices which in the past were considered Confucian and even supported by certain interpretations of Confucian ideas. But in the light of new knowledge and new historical circumstances, they might have become obviously bad practices. Or we could find 101 reasons why we should not continue with them, even if they are Confucian. But we could in fact not just say that they are not Confucian, but rather one could reinterpret the Confucian ideas which were associated with those practices, rescue them in the sense that by reinterpreting them in a way that dissociate them from those practices. So that one could abandon those practices without giving up those ideas themselves. And there are times when some ideas, apart from the ones that I have highlighted about personal cultivation and all those ethical qualities, the importance of relationality, many other beliefs associated with the Confucian school, the idea that failure of piety is all about having descendants for example. I think that is one belief... one thing that I would justify removing from Confucian thought altogether. But obviously you can't do that with everything, right? Not everything can go. So personal cultivation cannot go, the Confucian virtues cannot go, relating to others with those virtues also must remain.

PA: Right, okay. I think that's a very good answer actually. I'm convinced. And I mean clearly already in the Warring States period, Confucianism was already evolving, right? So if you think about the transition from Kongse to Mengzi to Shunse, just the authors we covered in our look at the Classical period, there's already a lot going on there where it's sort of open to question and being debated what the core of Confucianism is, and more importantly what it would imply about our responsibilities to others and about society. So I think that's very...

SMT: Yes, and I think that's what the whole commentary tradition is all about. It's every generation both interpreting the early text to enable them to put their ideas into practice in a way that can solve the problems of their times. But the commentaries then put inviting their own interpretations and also try to justify it to their own audience. They try to convince their own contemporaries that this is the way we should be interpreting the text because, 'it helps us understand our world and solve our problems. So we have to do this, every generation has to do this, right?' So we may not... nowadays we may not have the commentary tradition at all, but we have philosophical discourse. So this is the modern commentary tradition, right? We are trying to debate about how to interpret Confucianism so that we can both continue the tradition, but also solve our own problems.