Neo-Confucian Cosmopolitanism and Chinese Perception of World Order: A Study of Wang Yangming's Virtue Politics and Integral Pluralism

Abstract

This paper investigates Chinese cosmopolitanism advocated by Wang Yangming (1472-1529), a famous Confucian philosopher, and its implications for contemporary global governance and China’s soft-power build-up. It aims to provide a more inclusive perception of world order from Confucian tradition, and calls for a less nationalistic and hegemonic understanding of Confucianism in contemporary China’s intellectual or ideological projections. For the political use of the word “harmony” today seems similar to instrumentalization of Confucianism in history. I focus on his ideas of “being one body with the cosmos” and “pure knowing” and their socio-political dimensions of world as one family. I argue that Wang bases his cosmopolitanism upon graded care and common sense of sympathy toward those who are suffering. It is a sort of moral sentiment of embodied oneness and a cosmic psyche in caring for Heaven, earth and the myriad creatures like caring one’s own body. It also accommodates “integral pluralism” which urges one to sincerely and properly construe other’s cultures and traditions without blindly embracing or rejecting them. Such cosmopolitanism is not an abstract love based on human rationality, but sentimental care without borders but still grounded one’s local space and experience.