Before responding to Professors Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li, I begin by reminding the readers of this symposium of the central aim of Democracy After Virtue. After the publication of my first book, Confucian Democracy in East Asia: Theory and Practice, I received two sets of comments from my critics. On the one hand, my Confucian critics wondered how “Confucian” my idea of Confucian democracy is, given my general embrace of liberal rights and democratic institutions. My second book, Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia, was motivated to offer a rejoinder to this pressing question by articulating my normative vision of democratic Confucianism, a Confucianism that has been negotiated with and modified by democratic rights, values, institutions, and practices. On the other hand, my democratic critics raised a question about whether there is any generic mode of democracy in my idea of Confucian democracy, if we bracket the adjective of “Confucian.” Though I believe that democratic Confucianism (or what I call public reason Confucianism) is practically inseparable from its democratic underpinning, Democracy After Virtue aims to present pragmatic democracy (roughly in the Deweyan sense) as a conception of democracy that best describes the nature of Confucian democracy. I offer this conception of democracy as an alternative to both Western-style liberal democracy and the Confucian political meritocracy recently proposed by several prominent Confucian political theorists.1 As democratic theorists and political philosophers, Professors Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li raise many important questions about my idea of pragmatic Confucian democracy, and I am deeply grateful for their criticisms and suggestions, which I believe will be useful in further developing my democratic vision.In comparison with the existing literature of contemporary Confucian political theory, one of the distinctive features of pragmatic Confucian democracy is that it begins as an effective response to what I call “the circumstances of modern politics in East Asia” (hereafter “the circumstances”). In the book, I argue that modern East Asia is defined by the complete collapse of absolute monarchy, displacement of the Mandate of Heaven as the ultimate source of political authority, deconstruction of Confucian virtue politics and its monistic ethical perfectionism, and firm entrenchment of the republican political condition in which people are no longer understood as passive subjects known as min 民 but rather exist as free and equal citizens. These new sociological facts combine to create “the circumstances” marked by value pluralism and moral disagreement increasingly characteristic of contemporary East Asian societies. Professor Dryzek’s comments center around whether my understanding of “the circumstances” has empirical support, how it has affected the way I construct pragmatic Confucian democracy, and whether a more empirically grounded pragmatic Confucian democracy would be more robust in theory and practice.In Professor Dryzek’s view, my pragmatic Confucian democracy is largely underpinned by some undeniable facts (but not necessarily “better facts,” as none of them, as he sees it, are grounded in good political science) and one stylized fact, namely the fact of pluralism. Professor Dryzek argues that the combination of these “facts” renders the three key components of pragmatic Confucian democracy—pragmatism, Confucianism, and democracy—“thin”: pragmatism is not assimilated in a full and demanding Deweyan “Great Community” sense; Confucianism is not assimilated in any full sense; and democracy is assimilated not in Barber’s sense of “strong democracy” but rather in terms set by the fact that largely defines the existing democracies in East Asia. As Professor Dryzek puts it, pragmatic Confucian democracy is “thinly pragmatic, thinly Confucian, and thinly democratic.”Apparently, Professor Dryzek offers this interpretation of pragmatic Confucian democracy as its weakness, though, as I will argue shortly, what he sees as a weakness can actually work to its benefit. Rather than delving into this “weakness,” however, Professor Dryzek is more eager to provide some practical suggestions that can improve the theory and practice of pragmatic Confucian democracy. But before addressing Professor Dryzek’s suggestions, let me clarify the nature of pragmatic Confucian democracy.First, as Professor Dryzek rightly notes, pragmatic Confucian democracy is indeed not fully committed to the Deweyan ideal of communitarian democracy, even though it embraces the Deweyan ideals of democratic citizenship and social equality. This distinguishes it from Confucian communitarian democracy suggested by some recent Confucians who largely dismiss the importance of the institutional (and constitutional) frameworks of democracy.2 Most Deweyan Confucian communitarian democrats subscribe to a simple dichotomy between Western liberal rights-bearing individualism and Confucian role-performing persons. Pragmatic Confucian democracy rejects this dichotomous view, without giving up its moderate communitarian aspirations.Second, while taking on a perfectionist outlook, pragmatic Confucian democracy is not predicated on monistic and fully comprehensive Confucianism of the sort that prevailed in traditional Confucian East Asia as a state religion or political ideology. In fact, the entire project of my second book Public Reason Confucianism, on which this book is built, concentrates on the construction of and justification of a partially comprehensive democratic Confucianism, with strong emphasis on its remarkable capacity of multiple overlapping consensus not only with liberal rights and democratic principles but also with other comprehensive doctrines in civil society.Third, though strongly inspired by Dewey and Barber, pragmatic Confucian democracy aspires to be a constitutional democracy of the kind supported by John Ely, Frank Michelman, and Christopher Eisgruber. As a result, there is no necessary tension between democracy and constitutionalism, citizen participation and political representation, and deliberative democracy and judicial review.3 This last point is not given sufficient attention in the book, though it has been addressed, albeit without much elaboration, in my previous books.Pragmatic Confucian democracy may be thinly pragmatic, thinly Confucian, and thinly democratic, and this may signal a liability from the standpoint of Deweyan communitarianism, traditional Confucian ethical perfectionism, or strong democracy. But it should be noted that each of these “thin” or “moderate” characteristics has been deliberately pursued in order to make pragmatic Confucian democracy robustly democratic in the complex combination of these moderate characteristics manifested throughout the entire political system. In this regard, I do not think that the overarching political ambition of pragmatic Confucian democracy is notably different from what Professor Dryzek’s “deliberative system” aims to achieve.Professor Dryzek questions how pragmatic Confucian democracy can inculcate virtue in both citizens and leaders, or whether “the endogenization of virtue” between citizens and leaders would be a necessary outcome. This is an important question because pragmatic Confucian democracy cherishes civic virtues as indispensable to the formation and sustenance of democratic citizenship while trying to overcome traditional Confucian ethical perfectionism that inspires many Confucian meritocrats. Therefore the book’s title, Democracy After Virtue, not only signifies a democracy that goes beyond the traditional discourse of Confucian virtue politics but also justifies a democracy that promotes civic virtues as the outcomes of the dialectical negotiations between Confucian virtues and democratic values.qqI agree with Professor Dryzek that the endogenization of virtue should be an important component of pragmatic Confucian democracy. The main point I wanted to make in the book, though, was that the process of endogenization is also intertwined with what I call “the mutual accommodation” between Confucianism and democracy. Again, the virtues that result from this process are neither purely Confucian nor Western-liberal. As Professor Dryzek notes, what the resulting civic virtues (or citizenship in general) would look like or what the prospects are for citizenship participation and good political leadership in a pragmatic Confucian democracy are empirical questions. I agree that these are questions that a pragmatic democrat, Confucian or otherwise, should take seriously. The only caveat: we have a very small number of empirical political scientists interested in testing ideas and proposals advanced by normative Confucian political theorists. Even in the rare cases where empirical political scientists engage Confucian political theory, survey-based methodology rarely leads to productive cross-disciplinary interactions, often reinforcing the stereotypical image of Confucianism as being androcentric, hierarchical, and collectivistic.4Professor Dryzek has also suggested several additional research agendas, namely how pragmatic Confucian democracy would respond to some of the most pressing concerns of our time: “expressive overload” in the age of social media, catastrophic climate change, and deep social division across identities, among others. As long as Confucian democracy is pragmatically justified, I believe it must be able to respond effectively to these real-life concerns. The ability to sufficiently address these (and related) questions will certainly improve the practicality of Confucian democracy, making it more appealing to the citizens of East Asia. In this vein, Professor Dryzek’s concern for the role for social movements in a Confucian democracy is well understood, especially ones involving unruly activism. He seems to worry that even though pragmatic Confucian democracy has no problem welcoming civil social movements, it may be reluctant to accommodate unruly activism that challenges the existing structures of political economy from the outside. I’d like to note here, however, that in my first book I justify what I call Confucian incivility, “a set of Confucian social practices [including social criticism, protest, and contestation] that temporarily ‘upset’ the existing social relations and yet which, ironically, help those relations become more enduring and viable.”5 Pragmatic Confucian democracy has ample room to accommodate Confucian-democratic incivility as long as it is motivated by concern for the common good. In fact, in a recent article investigating Korean democratic civil society’s moral discourse that resulted in the impeachment and removal of the South Korean president, I fully endorsed various forms of “counter-publics” couched in Confucian moral language, at the core of which lies the protection and promotion of the people’s well-being.6 After all, without such counter-publics, South Korea’s democratization would have been impossible. I must say that this is one important respect in which pragmatic Confucian democracy differs from Confucian communitarian democracy; the latter pays little attention to political struggle for institutional democracy.While Professor Dryzek finds my commitment to Deweyan pragmatism “thin,” Professor Macedo takes issue with my “strong” (in his view) Deweyan commitment. In my response to Professor Dryzek, I explained my departure from Dewey and Barber, my own mentor, on constitutional grounds and argued that pragmatic Confucian democracy (which is a political form of public reason Confucianism) does not subscribe to an ideal of “strong democracy” that presupposes the inherent tension between democracy and constitutionalism, citizen participation and political representation, and deliberative democracy and judicial review. I made this point, though indirectly, in chapter 3 of Democracy After Virtue (titled “Procedure and Substance”). It seems that Professor Macedo has two main criticisms about pragmatic Confucian democracy: first, its Deweyan commitment and, second, the way it is proposed in opposition to Confucian political meritocracy.Let me begin with the first criticism. Professor Macedo finds “[my] fascination with Dewey inexplicable.” In fact, he finds any fascination with Dewey inexplicable. Since my vision of pragmatic Confucian democracy is roughly grounded in Deweyan pragmatism (especially its anti-foundationalism), Professor Macedo’s discontent with pragmatic Confucian democracy as a specific instantiation of the genus pragmatic democracy is understandable. That being said, I have two responses. First, it is one thing to find Dewey unappealing as a political theorist and it is (and should be) quite another to evaluate a political theory inspired by him, especially when it draws from a Deweyan insight for a completely different cultural and political context. Second, as Professor Macedo acknowledges, my Deweyan commitment has been importantly tempered by my attempt to strike a balance between the Deweyan mode of democracy and the Shumpeterian model of democracy. This allows pragmatic Confucian democracy to give sufficient attention to the institutions of political representation, though I admit not quite as fully in the book—and this is the central theme of my current project on Confucian constitutionalism. Then, Professor Macedo has a more substantive worry: that pragmatic Confucian democracy is “an exercise in ideal theory [that] comes with a vengeance.” But in what sense is pragmatic Confucian democracy an ideal theory?Pragmatic Confucian democracy is certainly not the same kind of ideal theory as Rawls’s political liberalism. It does not maneuver within the moral conception of political justice nor stipulate controversial philosophical apparatuses such as the original position and the veil of ignorance. It does not distinguish the political from the social and the basic structure from the background culture of civil society nor does it build a theory based on normative intuitions about the essential characteristics embedded in the public political culture of a mature liberal democracy. None of these apply to pragmatic Confucian democracy. I must say that what makes pragmatic Confucian democracy seemingly “idealistic” is its very political purpose. Notice that liberal democratic theorists, including Professor Macedo, navigate within an actually existing liberal society with “liberal rights,” “liberal constitutions,” “liberal democratic institutions” (including roughly liberalism-inspired political parties), and, albeit arguably, “liberal public reason.” Most liberal democratic theories of practical import aim to address themselves to “liberal citizens,” however we understand “liberal,” who are embedded in liberal social, political, legal, and economic lives. The primary goal of a political theory like pragmatic Confucian democracy is creating what I call “Confucian democratic citizens” in societies with a deplorable discrepancy between traditional ways of living, which still influences citizens’ moral judgment and public reasoning, often unwittingly, and the democratic institutions and practices of the Western provenance that regulate their formal social, legal, and political lives.It should be recalled that East Asians never had the luxury of making their constitutions in ways that expressed their core public identity because their modern history was constantly interrupted by colonialism, wars, and rapid Western-style modernization. Take China, for example. In the midst of the Western imperialism and the downfall of the Qing dynasty West-educated elites, if not ordinary men and women, identified Confucianism as the single greatest obstacle to China’s modernization. Its deconstruction continued during the madness of the Cultural Revolution. In South Korea and Taiwan, Confucianism was never rejected officially, but it was rapidly displaced by Western modernization despite the fact that political strongmen such as Park Chung-hee and Chiang Kai-shek were eager to take advantage of some of its core values (loyalty and filial piety in particular) in order to solidify their authoritarian regimes. I will come back to this point shortly.If pragmatic Confucian democracy is an ideal political theory, it is so because it aims to invite the citizens of East Asia to revisit their shared Confucian conception of the good life and explore its modern political and constitutional possibilities without embarrassment while in a dialogue with democratic institutions, practices, and rights. It aims to help fellow East Asians to envision a mode of democratic citizenship that they are capable of creating in their own Confucian societal context without suppressing moral values, religious faiths, and comprehensive doctrines to which they often subscribe as private individuals or as members of voluntary associations. In this sense, and different writing styles and political orientations notwithstanding, nearly all contemporary Confucian political theories currently available are ideal theories given the absence of corresponding Confucian political or constitutional reality. Jiang Qing’s political Confucianism is his way of inviting the Chinese people to reinstate Confucianism as state religion and reconstruct China’s constitutional structure based on the transcendental authority of Heaven.7 Joseph Chan’s moderate Confucian perfectionism is his way of inviting the Chinese (or Hong Kong) people to envision a good polity predicated on a combination of some selective liberal and Confucian goods and values without fully committing to political equality and the right to political participation.8 Is the ideal theory of this sort a liability in itself? I do not know. But one thing I can say with certainty is that all of these theories, including pragmatic Confucian democracy, aspire to be a regulative ideal. Thus understood, the real question is not whether a given Confucian political theory is an ideal theory but whether it is a philosophically robust regulative ideal and, more importantly, acceptable to citizens of East Asia. And I believe that this latter judgment cannot be made in light of a perfect ideal theory (if any) but by critically evaluating and comparing existing Confucian political theories.Professor Macedo’s second criticism points to my quick rejection of political meritocracy. It must be clarified that I do not reject political meritocracy as such. I do not believe that any sane person would deny the importance of making good laws and good public policy, if that is goal of political meritocracy. The question is how we create such a theory. In this vein, it is worth noting that I only have a problem with the existing proposals by Confucian meritocrats who either completely reject the values of political equality and the popular right to political participation or attempt to create the meritocratic legislative house without any democratic control. I do admit, though, that my rejection of Confucian political meritocracy mainly from the standpoint of value pluralism was a bit rushed.I regret that I did not flesh out my own Confucian democratic vision of political meritocracy in this book. But I did lay out my general view in chapter 7 of Confucian Democracy in East Asia (titled “Rethinking Political Meritocracy: Selection Plus Two”), where I made the following arguments: “(1) political meritocracy is highly compatible with, even integral to, representative democracy, if the selection model of political representation is preferred to the sanction model (the selection thesis); (2) political meritocracy can be Confucian democratic if representatives elected through the character selection process as well as high public officials (such as ministers, justices, public prosecutor general, and the police chief), whose appointment is recommended by the president (or its equivalent) and then ratified by the parliament, see themselves as public servants (gongpu 公僕), rather than as elitist rulers (the public servant thesis); and finally (3) if representatives exempt themselves from protection from public insult (which is legally permitted for ordinary citizens in a Confucian democratic civil society), thus exposing themselves to open and free criticism when they have failed to meet the standards of good character (what I call ‘democratic civic integrity’), thus breaching public faith (the no insult thesis).”9None of the arguments provided in Democracy After Virtue are inconsistent with what I said in my earlier book, which nests political meritocracy within a representative democracy. So, I wholeheartedly welcome Professor Macedo’s defense of political meritocracy with reference to American constitutional structure. In fact, I drew on the U.S. example to make virtually the same argument in Public Reason Confucianism.10 Professor Macedo may still wonder why I strongly object to Confucian political meritocracy since I admit that it won’t lose its practical relevance simply based on “the abstract fact of value pluralism.” He finds Daniel Bell’s defense of political meritocracy based on China’s remarkable economic performance acceptable.11 There is no denying that effective and meritorious political leadership is indispensable for a viable political community. But Bell’s argument is all too familiar to East Asians who have suffered and survived all sorts of experimentation of “political meritocracy” of the past, be it the Meiji discourse of political meritocracy, Park Chung-hee’s East Asian developmentalism, or Chiang Kai-shek’s Confucian political elitism.12 In the past fifty years, many forms of political meritocracy, advanced in the name of effective bureaucracy, economic prosperity, or nominal democracy, failed in the face of economic crisis, the rise of civil society, and the citizenry’s increasing sensitivity to diversity and multicultural values. Bell and company often attempt to justify the superiority of political meritocracy (or “the China model”) on the grounds of its putative ability to serve the well-being of future generations and the citizens of neighboring countries better than constitutional democracies. But have they ever paid serious attention to what Koreans, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Cambodians, and Hong Kongers have to say about “the China Model,” the latest incarnation of East Asian developmentalism? Even the argument that political meritocracy is the best form of government in China can hardly stand critical scrutiny. After Qin’s unification of the Middle Kingdom in 221 BCE and until the short Republican period following the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Chinese people had experienced only one political system, namely a one-man monarchy assisted by meritocratic Confucian bureaucracy that was rapidly replaced by a one-party rule with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. How do we know that the China model is the only suitable political model for the Chinese given that this model practically forecloses their opportunity to explore alternative regimes and their freedom to form political parties? This is not to say that a search for Confucian political meritocracy itself is misguided. But if the argument for Confucian political meritocracy is mainly grounded in the Chinese culture of respect of political authority and mainly for economic performance, we should pay far more serious attention to why its various semblances are no longer welcomed by most East Asian citizens, at least those living outside China.Last, while appreciating the strong resonance between my argument for enhanced punishment for family crimes (in chapter 4 of the book) and “Eastern filialism,” Professor Macedo also noted that a similar moral and legal reasoning is at work in U.S. jurisprudence, raising the question of what is so special about my argument. This case was not intended to demonstrate the uniqueness of Confucian democracy in contradistinction with liberal democracy; rather, my goal was to develop a new and democratic version of Confucianism by subjecting the traditional, patrilineal Confucianism underpinning the East Asian criminal codes to the principle of public equality, including gender equality. If the American liberal criminal law also treats all three types of family crimes I discussed in the book as “the most heinous crimes” and supports enhanced punishment, this is something both pragmatic Confucian democrats and liberal democrats would agree on.Professor Ackerly’s commentary begins with the term “modern” that I attribute to the circumstances of East Asian politics. Specifically, she asks whether there is a reason that I chose this term over alternatives, such as “contemporary,” given the loaded meaning and troubled history of the term “modern.” Professor Ackerly’s concern is that “modernity” can work either way: it can work to promote pluralism, public reason, and the democratic constitutional institutions of pragmatic Confucian democracy or it can work to oppress those who fight against injustice by promoting illiberal forms of democracy. How would pragmatic Confucian democracy respond to democratically endorsed oppression?Admittedly, South Korea officially became a democratic republic in 1947, at least in terms of its constitutional outlook, after the liberation from Japanese colonial rule and subsequent U.S. military rule. But, as we all know, authentic democracy was attained only in 1987, after four decades of struggle and bloodshed against the authoritarian governments. In the name of “liberal democracy,” which actually meant “anti-Communism,” many liberals, progressives, and democrats who challenged the regime’s antiliberal, antidemocratic, procapital, and heavily gendered and discriminatory laws and public policies were persecuted or sent to jail, often, without due process. Many college students and factory workers critically instrumental to bringing about democracy in Korea had been routinely terrorized, lynched, imprisoned, or killed by the otherwise highly effective and modern(izing) state. The same can be said about Taiwanese “liberal democracy” before democratization under Chiang Kai-shek and his son’s leadership. Despite Professor Macedo’s criticism that my Deweyan pragmatic penchant takes for granted that constitutional democracy “will happen most naturally and successfully when the people are given the central role in selecting among candidates for office,” such a role was never just given to the people in South Korea and Taiwan and constitutional democracy did not come “naturally and successfully” to them. They fought for it and attained it. And their struggle for democracy is still ongoing, with increasing awareness of and sensitivity to women’s and minority rights, in societies where socioeconomic inequalities continue to grow in the name of development and modernization.So, Professor Ackerly’s concern is well taken. In fact, one of the reasons that I, as a pragmatic democrat, am critical of Deweyan communitarian Confucian democrats, despite my sympathy toward them, is precisely because they do not pay enough attention to the problems of power, coercion, manipulation, domination, and discrimination. I am not naïvely optimistic that democratization will painlessly lead to the consolidation of constitutional democracy. The central aim of pragmatic Confucian democracy, though, is to provide a constitutionally protected institutional space where citizens, with their differences and disagreements, can freely exchange their views about law and public policy (in ways that make sense to them via their share cultural language) and, if necessary, contest them without fear. Though the term “modern” is a heavily loaded sociological and political concept, in the book I understood the gist of modernity in terms of value pluralism (the moral disagreement that it necessarily entails). This particular understanding of modernity was motivated by my desire to decouple Confucian democracy from traditional Confucianism’s monistic virtue politics, which does not acknowledge the plurality of values.That being said, I do not think that pragmatic Confucian democracy’s focus on moral disagreement is inconsistent with the concerns Professor Ackerly raises with regard to the two faces of (sociological/political) modernity. Benjamin Barber once said that the greatest strength of democracy lies in its ability to “regret.” Regret allows citizens (and their leaders, I must add) to revisit and revise the collective decisions made by themselves.13 Unfortunately, Confucian political meritocracy seems to allow neither the ability nor the space for collective regret, thus prohibiting minorities and dissidents from rightfully challenging the supposedly “right” or “wise” decisions made by the government. Part of the aim of pragmatic Confucian democracy is to institutionalize the moral capacity of regret by justifying the right of the people to take part in the public decision-making process on equal terms.Professor Ackerly’s second question has to do with the book’s methodology. One problem Professor Ackerly finds is that the dynamics within Confucianism disappear in the course of my “thin” theoretical reconstruction of Confucian virtue ethics as perfectionist. For instance, she argues that while discussing ren, filial piety, righteousness, and ritual property as integral elements of Confucian virtue ethics, I have set aside other important Confucian virtues of significant political import. More importantly, by drawing my Confucian inspirations mainly from Mencius and neglecting other philosophical strands of Confucianism, she wonders whether my version of Confucianism is rather narrow and static. In the same vein, Professor Ackerly finds it regrettable that I have not placed enough emphasis on the pragmatist and political aspect