How Concrete Is Confucian Liberalism?

Abstract

Abstract This commentary evaluates whether Roy Tseng’s Confucian Liberalism provides an attractive normative political philosophy for modern East Asia, compared with existing Confucian political theories. I argue that Tseng’s Confucian-Hegelian theory operates at a highly abstract level, without outlining institutional structures and policy orientations that embody his philosophical ideals. In contrast, leading Confucian political theorists in the past two decades, be they progressive, liberal, or traditionalist, have offered multiple “Confucian-inspired regimes” for modern societies. It is therefore doubtful whether Tseng has advanced a new alternative to existing proposals, and whether the theory of Confucian liberalism is truly sensitive to the “here and now.”