ON POLITICAL CONFUCIANISM

[confucianjustice]

Wir sind, meine liebe Tochter, nicht dafür geboren, was wir mit kurzsichtigen Augen für unser eigenes, kleines, persönliches Glück halten, denn wir sind nicht lose, unabhängige und für sich bestehende Einzelwesen, sondern wie Glieder in einer Kette, und wir wären, so wie wir sind, nicht denkbar ohne die Reihe derjenigen, die uns vorangingen und uns die Wege wiesen, indem sie ihrerseits mit Strenge und ohne Rechts oder Links zu blicken, einer erprobten und ehrwürdigen Überlieferung folgten […]

Mann, Thomas. Die Buddenbrooks. 160.

[confucianjustice]

Da eine systemische Reduzierung der sozialen Ungleichheit der Verarmung von Teilen der Bevölkerung als illegitim gilt, bleibt zur Regulierung des gesellschaftlichen Lebens nur der Einsatz von Gewalt. Die Freiheiten werden geopfert, um die wichtigste Freiheit zu bewahren: das recht, Eigentum zu besitzen und zu akkumulieren.

Le Monde Diplomatique 01/27, 3

[confucianjustice]

When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no clash of civilizations.

Remarks by the President George W. Bush at the 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy West Point, New York June 1, 2002

[confucianjustice]

Repeatedly, whether crashing along the canals of Tenochtitlan, or settling the estuaries of Massachusetts, or trekking deep into the Transvaal, the confidence that had enabled Europeans to believe themselves superior to those they were displacing was derived from Christianity. Repeatedly, though, in the struggle to hold this arrogance to account, it was Christianity that had provided the colonised and the enlaved with their surest voice. The paradox was profound. No other conquerors , carving out empires for themselves, had done so as the servants of a man tortured to death on the orders of a colonial officer. No other conquerors, dismissing with contempt the gods of other peoples, had installed in their place an emblem of power so deeply ambivalent as to render problematic the very notion of power. No other conquerors, exporting an understanding of the devine peculiar to themselves, had so successfully persuaded peoples around the globe that it possesed a universal import.

Holland, Tom. 2019:487-488

[confucianjustice]

It is doubtful that even a perfect meritocracy would be satisfying, either morally or politically. Morally, it is unclear why the talented deserve the outsize rewards that market-driven societies lavish on the successful. Central to the case for the meritocratic ethic is the idea that we do not deserve to be rewarded, or held back, based on factors beyond our control. But is having (or lacking) certain talents really our doing? If not, it is hard to see why those who rise thanks to their talents deserve greater rewards than those who may be equally hardworking but less endowed with the gifts a market society happens to prize. Those who celebrate the meritocratic ideal and make it the center of their political project overlook this moral question. They also ignore something more politically potent: the morally unattractive arttitudes the meritocartic ethic promotes, among the winners and also among the losers. Among the winners, it generates hubris; among the losers, humiliation and resentment.

Sandel 2020:25

[confucianjustice]

In an unequal society, those who land on top want to believe their success is morally justified.

Sandel 2020:13

[confucianjustice]

Individuelles Verhalten entscheidet über den Erfolg individueller Personen. Doch Politik bestimmt über den Erfolg von Gruppen."

Kendi, Ibram X. 2019:145. How to be an Antiracist.

[confucianjustice]

Civilization is not simply here, it is not self-sustaining. It is artificial, and demands an artist or artisan. If you want to enjoy the advantages of civilization, but are not concerned with sustaining civilization - well, you are done. Just a slip, and when you look around everything has vanished into thin air!

José Ortega y Gasset in MANN 2019:71

[confucianjustice]

[...] Marx makes one acutely aware of the need for social transformation radical enough to seem quite risky, and therefore quite frightening. While I would not want to suggest that Marx provides us with all the intellectual resources we need, it remains true that taking his work seriously enables Leftists to see that one's world - especially if one is among the more fortunate - does not match one's political and moral claims. And the only way to make it do so would be to embrace the kind of change that quite possibly means throwing it all away. That is a very unsettling experience, one that not a few of us prefer to avoid, or at least defer.

Mann 2019:24-25

[confucianjustice]

Although poverty and the poor are as much a product of modern life as technical automation and the capitalist firm, there is nowhere in modern life proper top them, nowhere they belong or are supposed to be. As a result, the economic problem and the social question can never be finally solved. Poverty is always a condition imposed upon thepoor and in this true sense it is not the opposite of abundance or wealth, but the opposite of freedom. This is the radical truth Keynes was unable to see in whnat he offered: that poverty serves no purpose, has no place, and cannot be justified. He knew the traditional bourgeois rationalizations - that poverty is 'natural' or 'good' for the poor because it motivates them; that government requires a core of elites with a disproportionate stake in the maintenance of social order; or that inequality ensures that the wealthy can play their part as savers [...] - were nothing but lies.

MANN, Geoff 2019:12

[confucianjustice]

The people have a right to a vote. The people have a right to good government. The dilemma of democracy was how to get from the first right to the second right."

Grayling 2018: 208

[confucianjustice]

“Most people would rather die than think, and most people do.

Bertrand Russel

[confucianjustice]

The question any putative leader or government has to answer is: 'By what right do you presume to make laws and direct our society? Who has given you the authority, the power, so to do this?' The various answers of the past - this sword in my strong right arm, my charisma, my wealth, my wisdom, the support of my fellow nobles, God - might have echoes today in (say) 'the army' and in some quarters still 'God'; but none of these answers, at least in the 'West', hold much water. The answer 'because the majority of us agree', has come to be where justification stops: it is where the spade is turned as one digs a foundation on which to stand political authority.

Grayling 2018:127

[confucianjustice]

Populism should not be confused with demagoguery, which is a natural tendency in representative democracies, a temptation to seduce voters rather than convince them. Nor is populism about being in touch with the people. Rather, it is the claim to speak in the people's place, in their name, and convey an undeniable shared truth on their behalf. In particular populism claims to express the emotion of a people that feels beleaguered, dimished and lost. Its discourse is nostalgic for past power and wedded to a frantic defence of identity.

Raphael Liogier in Grayling 2018:115

[confucianjustice]

[...] the people (strictly: the enfrenchised section of the populace) are the ultimate source of political and governmental legitimacy because a majority of their votes will endorse a legislature and executive, and by the same token can dismiss them, in term of a structure in which the expression of this endorsement or withdrawal of endorsment is periodic [...], and follows recognized and agreed upon processes. To this location of ultimate legitimization in the endorsment of the enfranchised is added institutions and structures which constrain the endorsed while in office.

Grayling 2018:110

[confucianjustice]

In such a state of society, the master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in word or deed... And above all, and as the result of all, se how sensitive the citizens become; they chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority and at lengths, as you know, they cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them.

Plato in Grayling, A.C. 2018. “Democracy and Its Crisis.”London: Oneworld Publications, 19.

[confucianjustice]

Even when authoritarian, feudal, and imperial, Confucian rule means humane rule.

Ackerly, Brooke A. 2005. ‘Is Liberalism the only Way to Democracy? Confucianism and Democracy.’ Politcial Theory, 33 (4), 547-576, 566