Deparochializing Political Theory 1108480500, 9781108480505

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Deparochializing Political Theory

In a world no longer centered on the West, what should political theory become? Although Western intellectual traditions continue to dominate academic journals and course syllabi in political theory, up-and-coming contributions of “comparative political theory” are rapidly transforming the field. Deparochializing Political Theory creates a space for conversation among leading scholars who differ widely in their approaches to political theory. These scholars converge on the belief that we bear a collective responsibility to engage and support the transformation of political theory. In these exchanges, “deparochializing” political theory emerges as an intellectual, educational, and political practice that cuts across methodological approaches. Because it is also an intergenerational project, this book presses us to reimagine our teaching and curriculum design. Bearing the marks of its beginnings in East Asia, Deparochializing Political Theory seeks to decenter Western thought and explore the evolving tasks of political theory in an age of global modernity. Melissa S. Williams is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and Vice President of the American Political Science Association.

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Deparochializing Political Theory

Edited by

MELISSA S. WILLIAMS University of Toronto

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University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108480505 doi: 10.1017/9781108635042 © Cambridge University Press 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Williams, Melissa S., 1960– editor. title: Deparochializing political theory / edited by Melissa S. Williams. description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lccn 2019051942 (print) | lccn 2019051943 (ebook) | isbn 9781108480505 (hardback) | isbn 9781108635042 (ebook) subjects: lcsh: Political science – Philosophy. | Philosophy, Comparative. | Political science – Study and teaching. classification: lcc ja71 .d4466 2020 (print) | lcc ja71 (ebook) | ddc 320.01–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051942 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019051943 isbn 978-1-108-48050-5 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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To Masato Kimura and Masahide Shibusawa

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Contents

List of Tables

page ix

List of Contributors Preface and Acknowledgments

x xiii

Note on the Text

xx

1 Introduction: The Practice of Deparochializing Political Theory Melissa S. Williams 2 Deparochializing Political Theory and Beyond: A Dialogue Approach to Comparative Political Thought James Tully

25

3 Recentering Political Theory, Revisited: On Mobile Locality, General Applicability, and the Future of Comparative Political Theory Leigh K. Jenco

60

4 A Decentralized Republic of Virtue: True Way Learning in the Southern Song Period and Beyond Youngmin Kim 5 Deparochializing Political Theory from the Far Eastern Province Ken Tsutsumibayashi 6 Is Popular Sovereignty a Useful Myth? Joseph Chan and Franz Mang 7 Authoritarian and Democratic Pathways to Meritocracy in China Baogang He and Mark E. Warren

1

93

120 149

174

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Contents

8 Deparochializing Democratic Theory Melissa S. Williams 9 Teaching Comparative Political Thought: Joys, Pitfalls, Strategies, Significance Stephen Salkever 10 Teaching Philosophy and Political Thought in Southeast Asia Terry Nardin

201

230 254

11 Why Globalize the Curriculum? Duncan Ivison

273

Index

291

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Tables

7.1 Support for merit-based governance by regime type 7.2 Typology of appointment systems

page 179 187

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Contributors

Joseph Chan is Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. Baogang He is Alfred Deakin Professor and Personal Chair in International Relations at Deakin University. Duncan Ivison is Professor of Political Philosophy and Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research at the University of Sydney. Leigh K. Jenco is Professor in Political Theory at the London School of Economics. Youngmin Kim is Professor of Political Science at Seoul National University. Franz Mang is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the City University of Hong Kong. Terry Nardin is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Common Curriculum at Yale-NUS College. Stephen Salkever is Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor Emeritus in Political Science at Bryn Mawr College. Ken Tsutsumibayashi is Professor of Political Thought at Keio University. James Tully is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Law at the University of Victoria.

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List of Contributors

xi

Mark E. Warren is the Harold and Dorrie Merilees Chair for the Study of Democracy at the University of British Columbia. Melissa S. Williams is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

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Preface and Acknowledgments

“The problems with which a philosophy relevant to the present must deal are those growing out of changes going on with ever-increasing rapidity, over an ever-increasing human-geographic range, and with ever-deepening intensity of penetration.”1 John Dewey wrote these lines in 1948, in the shadow of World War II, in a new introduction to Reconstruction in Philosophy. That book was based on lectures he gave in Japan and China in 1919, in the shadow of World War I. Dewey wrote these two texts in moments of great crisis in the modern political system, arguing that philosophy and political theory can be relevant to a crisis-filled present but only if their practitioners reflect carefully on their own purposes and limitations, reconstructing their inquiries as a response and contribution to human experience and education in turbulent times. I see the collaboration represented by this volume as a continuation of what Dewey was doing a century ago. The world was in crisis, and he responded by reaching across borders. Today, a sense of global crisis is again all around us, whether we diagnose it as a crisis of capitalism, runaway economic inequality, climate change, resurgent ethnic nationalism, declining protections for human rights, the rising number of refugees and migrants around the world, or the displacement of human labor by automation. Many of us are moved by the judgment that if our theoretical endeavors have anything to contribute in response, they must also be global in spirit. In this book, our collective response is a multivocal interpretation of the enterprise of comparative political theory, which broadly aims at decentering European thought traditions in the way we define our field. Our project is a continuation of Dewey’s in another way as well. Dewey’s trip to Asia in 1919 began with his lectures at the University of Tokyo, xiii Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht, on 19 Nov 2020 at 15:35:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108635042.001

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which he gave at the invitation of Shibusawa Eiichi, the architect of Japan’s remarkable economic self-modernization during the early Meiji period (1868–1912 CE).2 It is also thanks to Shibusawa Eiichi, indirectly, that the authors in this volume embarked more than a decade ago on a project in comparative political theory, a collaboration between colleagues from Japan, China, Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as North America and Europe. Dr Masato Kimura, then Research Director of the Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation, heard in the idea for our project an echo of Shibusawa’s lifelong commitment to international exchange as a pathway to learning how to construct humane and flourishing societies in the modern age. With the gracious encouragement of Masahide Shibusawa, then President of the Foundation, Jun’etsu Komatsu, then its Managing Director, and the Foundation’s board and staff, we designed a multiyear international research project, East Asian Perspectives on Politics. This project would not have been possible without the willingness of the Shibusawa Foundation to take a risk on an unconventional project in what was then still considered an emerging field. We are immensely grateful to the Foundation for taking this risk and providing generous financial and institutional support for our workshops and for its exceedingly kind hospitality for our early planning meetings in Tokyo and Nara. The Foundation also cosponsored a final planning meeting at the Peter Wall Institute at the University of British Columbia, organized by Mark Warren, to whom I offer additional thanks. All of the members of our original project team – Joseph Chan, Baogang He, Leigh Jenco, Youngmin Kim, Terry Nardin, Ken Tsutsumibayashi, and Mark Warren – invested tremendous thought and effort into organizing a series of five international workshops whose overarching purpose was to help bolster the field of comparative political theory. More specifically, the workshops aimed to heighten intellectual engagement between scholars working in East Asian thought traditions and those working in Euro-American traditions. Baogang He and Mark Warren partnered with the Fudan Institute for Advanced Study at Fudan University in Shanghai for our first workshop, “The Cultural Sources of Deliberative Politics in East Asia,” held in 2010.3 I wish to express our gratitude to Zhenglai Deng and Sujian Guo for making this partnership possible, and our sorrow over Zhenglai Deng’s untimely passing in 2013. Our second workshop, “East Asian Perspectives on Legal Order,” was organized by Ernest Caldwell and Terry Nardin and held the same year at the National University of Singapore, with the Asia Research Institute and the Faculty of Arts and

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Preface and Acknowledgments

xv

Sciences as our hosts.4 Youngmin Kim organized the third workshop on “Governance and Political Leadership in East Asia,” sponsored by the Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies, the Department of Political Science, and the International Institute for Asian Studies at Seoul National University in 2011.5 Also that year, we held the fourth workshop on “East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy,” which Joseph Chan co-organized with Doh Chull Shin and the support of the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong.6 Ken Tsutsumibayashi and Yoshihisa Hagiwara organized our fifth workshop, “People and Citizens in History and Political Imaginations of East Asia: Changing Conceptions of 民 Min.”7 It also took place in 2011, hosted by the Centre of Governance for Civil Society at Keio University. The Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto provided institutional support throughout the project, in particular through the excellent work of its Assistant Director, Ashfaq Khan. We are deeply grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which provided an International Opportunities Fund grant in support of the project as a whole. We are also tremendously indebted to each of the co-organizers of these workshops; to our project funders, including our institutional hosts, who contributed not only funding but also skilled staff support, space, and attentive hospitality; and to the staff who gave so much of themselves to ensure that each workshop went well. I wish that it were possible to thank individually every person whose conscientious work contributed to the project’s success. The present volume grew out of the sixth and final workshop in the project, which was hosted by the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) at the University of Victoria in 2012. Jeremy Webber and James Tully made possible the University of Victoria’s institutional partnership and coorganized the workshop program with Leigh Jenco and me. This capstone to the East Asian Perspectives project “zoomed out” from its regional focus to reflect on the practice of “deparochializing political theory” as a global endeavor that aspires to transform not only our research but also our teaching practice and curriculum design. I am deeply grateful to Leigh for her intellectual leadership throughout the project and to Jeremy and Jim for joining it with such astonishing generosity and insight. We are also deeply grateful to CAPI, the Consortium on Democratic Constitutionalism (DemCon), and the Albert Hung Chao Hong Lecture Series for their financial and logistical support. Renée McBeth of DemCon worked above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that the workshop went smoothly. In

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addition to the Shibusawa Foundation and the University of Victoria, SSHRC again stepped up to support the workshop through its Connection Grants program. Participants in the Victoria workshop included most of the contributors to this volume but also many others who profoundly enriched our discussions: Stephen Angle, Jim Anglin, Akeel Bilgrami, Gregory Blue, Paul Bramadat, Simone Chambers, Elton Chan, Glen Coulthard, Prasenjit Duara, Avigail Eisenberg, Michael Elliott, David Elstein, Robert Gibbs, Yoshihisa Hagiwara, Burke Hendrix, Bumsoo Kim, Masato Kimura, Jun’etsu Komatsu, Nikolas Kompridis, Dorothy Kwek, Anthony Laden, Rinku Lamba, Helen Lansdowne, Qing Liu, Warren Magnusson, Andrew March, Jaby Mathew, Val Napoleon, Nobutaka Otobe, Shin Osawa, David Owen, Andrew Rippin, Tobold Rollo, Heidi Stark, Sor-hoon Tan, Jacob Tischer, Yasuo Tsuji, Dale Turner, Guoguang Wu, Feng Xu, and Peter Zarrow. Many thanks to each and every one of these colleagues for making the workshop such an exciting event. The Victoria workshop was so rich that it proved impossible to capture the full range of the discussion there between the covers of a single book. In the end, we decided instead to use the project’s final publication – the present volume – to showcase some of the diverse theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical approaches that can serve the intergenerational goal of deparochializing political theory: unsettling the received traditions that structure our thinking about politics in order to generate “a philosophy relevant to the present,” as Dewey put it. Each of the contributors drew not only on his or her scholarly expertise but also on conversations in the workshop and in the larger project, to generate a unique interpretation of this common goal. Many thanks to all of them for the careful thought (and revision!) that they invested in their chapters. I am more grateful than words can express to the authors, the Shibusawa Foundation, and Cambridge University Press for their patience and perseverance through the horrifically long time it has taken to produce this volume. Because of a series of institutional and personal upheavals, I was unable to steward the project to completion on a timeline that did justice to the contributors or their pathbreaking ideas. Their resoluteness in seeing the project across the finish line is a testament, I believe, to the importance of the much larger aspirations that the project and the volume seek to serve. It has been a great privilege to work with them in serving these aspirations, however imperfect my own service has been. My debt of gratitude mounts high, as well, toward colleagues who made it possible to publish this work with Cambridge University Press. Robert

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xvii

Dreesen was enthusiastically supportive when I first proposed the volume and has been all I could have hoped for in an editor. Jackie Grant kindly guided the project in the early phase of the publication process, and Erika Walsh capably steered it through the final revisions. Laura Blake has managed the production process with expeditious grace and generous attention to detail, including securing the needed permissions for the cover art. Thanks also to Gayathri Tamilselvan for attending to the technical dimensions of the production, to Wade Guyitt for the final copyediting of the manuscript, and to Roger Bennett for preparing the index. We also appreciate immensely the generous feedback and incisive criticisms provided by Stephen Angle and two anonymous reviewers. Their comments stimulated greater engagement among the contributors, leading to a more integrated conversation throughout the volume than might have occurred otherwise. They also pressed us to reflect more deeply on how different locations in the global academy shape the practice of deparochializing political theory. Erica Frederiksen deserves a special note of thanks for her painstaking work in preparing the manuscript for publication. Her keen eye for style and care for detail added polish to the volume as a whole. I would also like to express my gratitude to members of the University of Toronto community who have supported this work, especially Joe Carens, Danny Hutton-Ferris, Jaby Mathew, Devin Ouellette, Matt Walton, and members of the comparative political theory reading group. Two of the chapters have been published in earlier versions. James Tully’s chapter was originally published as “Deparochializing Political Theory and Beyond: A Dialogue Approach to Comparative Political Thought,” Journal of World Philosophies 1 (2016): 51–74 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License). Leigh Jenco’s chapter considers anew the arguments she first set forth in Leigh Jenco, “Re-centering Political Theory: The Promise of Mobile Locality,” Cultural Critique 79 (Fall 2011): 27–59 (Copyright 2011 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota). We are grateful for permission to publish the current versions here. The art we have selected for the cover returns us to Shibusawa Eiichi’s legacy for this volume’s project. This ukiyo-e print by Utagawa Yoshiiku8, “Does It Look Like Them? A Goldfish Parody: Fish and Turtle with Faces of Actors,” was made in 1863, in the waning years of the Edo period (1603–1868). Around the same time, a youthful Shibusawa Eiichi, inspired by sonnoˉ joˉ i (“expel the barbarians”) thought, joined a plot of resistance against the Tokugawa regime for yielding to foreign (especially

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American) pressures to open Japan to Western trade. In the end, Shibusawa abandoned as impractical the scheme to capture a castle and burn foreign settlements in Yokohama. Instead, a few years later, he joined a Japanese delegation to France, where he keenly studied the financial institutions that were to inspire his contributions to Meiji-era reforms. The Utagawa school of woodblock print-making was the most prominent and influential in late Edo and early Meiji Japan. It was particularly well-known for its influence on Yokohama-e, the genre that depicted the curious customs and practices of Westerners living in Yokohama.9 Utagawa Yoshiiku (1833–1904) was a leading exemplar of this form. Perhaps his observations of the interactions between foreigners and Japanese informed his image of the fish and a turtle: diverse beings who appear to be attempting some form of conversation but with very uncertain prospects of success. Like some of the essays in this volume, the print evokes a playful spirit. And like Shibusawa Eiichi’s abandoned plot, Utagawa Yoshiiku’s print was subversive of established authority: defying an edict against depicting Kabuki theater actors (on the ground of their decadent influence on society), it placed famous actors’ faces on animals. Deparochializing political theory, we wager, may also be subversive, even when practiced playfully and with constructive intent. As this work finally reaches it end, I would like to note again two people whose inspiration and support were monumentally important for the project as a whole and for the completion of this volume. The title “Research Director” fails to capture the extraordinary skill with which Masato Kimura fostered our collaboration and made it come to fruition. Through his unique style of leadership, he taught us that the success of a complex collaboration depends on taking good care of relationships. Like a gardener tending his landscape, he cultivated a personal connection with each of the organizers and quietly ensured that all of the project’s needs were being met. He was our champion, our cheerleader, and, in rare moments of disagreement, our mediator. This volume would not exist were it not for Masato’s nurturance and leadership. Masahide Shibusawa, like his great-grandfather Eiichi, has devoted his life to reaching across borders in order to deepen a humane understanding of the modern condition. Masahide paid us the honor of perceiving some harmony between our project and his own extraordinary vision. We are grateful to him not only for his support for the project but also for participating in many of our discussions, enhancing them with his characteristic grace, warmth, and depth of insight.

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As a gesture of thanks for their guidance and their friendship, we dedicate this volume to Masato Kimura and Masahide Shibusawa.

notes 1. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004), iv. 2. Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 241. For further insight into the life and thought of Shibusawa Eiichi, see Masahide Shibusawa, The Private Diplomacy of Shibusawa Eiichi: Entrepreneur and Transnationalist of Modern Japan (Kent: Renaissance Books, 2018); and Patrick Fridenson and Takeo Kikkawa, eds., Ethical Capitalism: Shibusawa Eiichi and Business Leadership in Global Perspective (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017). 3. The journal Political Theory published a special symposium that grew out of this workshop in February 2014 (volume 42, issue 1). It included articles by Jensen Sass and John Dryzek, Melissa Williams and Mark Warren, Baogang He, Sor-hoon Tan, and Nicholas Tampio. 4. Ernest Caldwell and Terry Nardin edited a special symposium based on this workshop, published in the Chicago-Kent Law Review (volume 2012–2013, issue 1). It included articles by Ernest Caldwell and Terry Nardin, Tom Ginsburg, Rogers Smith, Arun K. Thiruvengadam, Ernest Caldwell, Victor V. Ramraj, Arif A. Jamal, Michael W. Dowdle, Roy Tseng, and Leigh Jenco. 5. Some of the papers presented at the Seoul workshop were published separately. Authors who presented papers at the workshop include Eric Hutton, Kang Chan, Curie Virag, Peter Ditmanson, Youngmin Kim, Tadashi Karube, Hiroshi Watanabe, Peter Zarrow, Jirong Yan, and Bumsoo Kim. We are especially grateful to Youngmin Kim for taking on the organization of this workshop while also completing his own major book, A History of Chinese Thought (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018). 6. The Hong Kong workshop generated a book, Joseph Chan, Doh Chull Shin, and Melissa S. Williams, eds., East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy: Bridging the Empirical-Normative Divide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). It includes chapters by Melissa S. Williams, Bruce Gilley, Daniel A. Bell, Wai-man Lam, Kenneth Paul Tan and Benjamin Wong, Min-Hua Huang, Doh Chull Shin and Youngho Cho, Benjamin Nyblade, and Leigh Jenco. 7. Ken Tsutsumibayashi edited a special issue of the Journal of Political Science and Sociology on the basis of this workshop (Issue No. 16, May 2012). It included articles by Ken Tsutsumibayashi, Tze-Ki Hon, Hee-Tak Koh, Michael Burtscher, Myoung-Kyu Park, Robert Culp, Yoshihisa Hagiwara, and Baogang He. 8. Blockcutter: Ôta Komakichi (Hori Koma, Hori Tashichi), Japanese Japanese, Edo period, 1863 (Bunkyū 3), 6th month. Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper Vertical oˉ ban; 36 × 25.2 cm (14 3/16 × 9 15/16 in.) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, 11.41231. 9. See Frederick Harris, Ukiyo-E: The Art of the Japanese Print (Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2010), 162–179.

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Note on the Text

Naming conventions in East Asian societies place a person’s family name or surname prior to the given or personal name; European conventions use the reverse order. Many contemporary authors from China, Korea, and Japan follow European conventions when publishing in English, and the contributors to this volume have chosen to do so. In most cases in this volume, names for classical or historical figures from East Asian contexts follow East Asian convention, with the family name preceding the given name, whereas names for contemporary figures often follow European conventions. We apologize to readers for any confusion that might arise from this mixing of conventions, and we encourage them to investigate further if they are uncertain about particular names they find in the text. We also apologize to contemporary colleagues if we have reversed the name order that they prefer to use, whether inadvertently or for stylistic reasons. Transliterations of Chinese terms in this volume follow the Pinyin system. Transliterations of Japanese terms use Hepburn romanization.

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1 Introduction The Practice of Deparochializing Political Theory Melissa S. Williams

1.1 introduction We are living through an epochal change in the structure of our social and political orders, a transformation whose trajectory we cannot predict but whose consequences we will surely not escape. These transformations are taking hold, as well, in the academic field that dedicates itself to grasping the world of politics in thought. A growing number of political theorists have taken the potentially radical step of asking if and how their discipline can be modified to grapple with a world no longer centered in the West, either politically or conceptually. Although Western intellectual traditions continue to dominate the academic journals and introductory course syllabi, the emergence of “comparative political theory” – the inclusion of historically marginalized and “non-Western” thought in the way we define the parameters of political theory – is already transforming the field. Most accounts of the purposes of comparative political theory cite the changes wrought by globalization and late modernity as their starting points, but the rationales and motivations for “deparochializing political theory” are diverse.1 For some, a shifting geopolitics adds warrant to a shift of our scholarly attention to the thought traditions of rising powers such as China and India or to Islamic thought as a resource for understanding political Islamism in the twenty-first century.2 Some are motivated by democratic or postcolonial concerns to press for the inclusion of historically suppressed voices in a global conversation about a shared political future.3 For many, the new realities generated by a nowglobalized modernity, from the displacement of territorially bounded

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Melissa S. Williams

sovereign states as the presumptive unit of political order to the warming of the planet, give us ample reason to look to marginalized, non-Western, or non-modern voices for ways of imagining alternative modes of political relationship.4 It has been two decades since the expression “comparative political theory” was introduced into our lexicon by Roxanne Euben’s pathbreaking scholarship on Islamic political thought and by Fred Dallmayr’s intrepid work in engaging non-Western thinkers and texts.5 It took another decade before we began to see a significant upsurge in the number of works on non-Western political thought by scholars who self-identify as political theorists or political philosophers.6 Euben and Dallmayr added momentum to a development that had been underway for some years. Anthony Parel, for example, had addressed work on Gandhian political thought to English-speaking political theorists since the late 1960s.7 Bhikhu Parekh’s book on Gandhi’s political philosophy appeared nearly a decade before Euben’s and Dallmayr’s articles.8 As a field, political theory has been a relative latecomer to cross-cultural engagement, with figures such as Raimundo Panikkar building early bridges between political theory, comparative philosophy, and comparative religion.9 Although comparative political theory is the most important new development in the discipline over the last several decades, the decentering of Western thought in the larger field of political theory is still in its early stages. The transformation of a field of scholarly endeavor may be motivated by changes in the world it studies, but it is not generated by those changes, as if they were natural forces to which the world of ideas inevitably adapts. The academy is a conservative institution, for better and for worse: it holds fast to the frameworks by which knowledge claims have been established in the past. Unsettling, adapting, and multiplying those frameworks requires the conscious and intentional agency of people who go against the grain of habit and convention because they judge these to be inadequate to the kind of knowledge we ought to be seeking. Thus there are structural reasons, deeply rooted in the academy in general and political theory in particular, why it is difficult to respond to the common and sound intuition that in a globalized era we need to globalize our understanding of political thought as an object of understanding and political theory as an academic discipline. The professionalization of the academy generates immense disincentives to individual scholars to reach beyond the boundaries of the field as they received it. For undergraduates, it remains likely that their first introduction to political theory will be a survey of a Western “canon,” giving them the

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impression that, if they are curious about non-Western thought, this is not the field for them.10 The series that is preeminent for producing authoritative texts for student use, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, has recently become global in its scope. This work is still in its early stages, however, and many interesting and important texts in nonWestern political thought remain untranslated. For graduate students, it is still difficult to find the necessary supervisory capacity for topics in nonWestern thought within the confines of political science departments. If they are lucky, they will gain the support of political theory faculty to recruit colleagues from other disciplines to provide the necessary expertise and guidance – but it is safer, professionally, to cleave to Western thought. For older scholars trained in Western thought, who nonetheless agree on the importance of deparochializing political theory, there is the risk of venturing into new scholarly terrain without hope (or even the intention) of developing the expertise that would equip them to contribute to specialized debates. The distinctiveness of the present volume arises from its contributors’ joint commitment to resisting these tendencies in the academy by devoting themselves, over a period of years, to generating and sustaining a conversation about the purposes, subject matter, and methods of comparative political theory. This conversation has the qualities that Anthony Laden ascribes to reasoning as a social practice, in which participants offer reasons in the spirit of invitation rather than as authoritative and decisive considerations that should govern the relationship between them.11 The aim has not been to reach agreement on the tasks or scope of comparative political theory, about which the contributors continue to disagree, sometimes pointedly. The conversation has changed and sharpened contributors’ judgments about these questions, but that has been a side effect of the shared judgment that brought them together: that the conversation itself is of key importance for our times. The interlocutors in this conversation approach it from a wide range of social positions within the academy. Some are senior political theorists who are not experts in any non-Western thought tradition but who have gone to significant lengths to foster the development of comparative political theory and to engage with its practitioners. Others took the risk as younger scholars to become expert in thought traditions that were foreign to their native cultures. All of the contributors played roles in a multiyear international research project, East Asian Perspectives on Politics, whose purpose was to foster the field of comparative political theory through a series of conferences held throughout East Asia and in

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Canada. The experimental design of the project was based on the supposition that deparochializing political theory is a long-term, even intergenerational task that requires the sustained commitment of both those who are experts in non-Western thought and those whose expertise is rooted in Euro-American traditions. It requires a conscious choice, together with a willingness to step outside our comfort zones and actively disrupt our familiar frames of reference. All of the contributors to this volume have demonstrated these qualities through their participation in the project and in many other ways over the years. The individual chapters in the volume reflect the contributors’ diverse methodological and substantive scholarly approaches but also exemplify, individually and collectively, the depth of engagement that is at once so difficult and so necessary for the field to move forward. The volume’s origins in a project with a regional focus on East Asia are reflected in many of the chapters, but this focus does not define the volume as a whole. Rather, the authors sometimes draw on philosophical or historical resources rooted in China or Japan (as well as from South Asian, Indigenous, Islamic, Buddhist, and Latin American thought and practice) to explore alternative pathways toward “deparochializing political theory.” The neologism “deparochialize” gestures toward the idea that, despite our disagreements, we converge on the idea that a defining purpose of political theory is, as Quentin Skinner once put it, to equip us to “become less parochial in our attachment to our inherited beliefs.”12 Its grammatical form as a present participle in the volume’s title, Deparochializing Political Theory, expresses the authors’ shared judgment that our common endeavor is a demanding, active, ongoing, and incomplete practice. The chapters in the volume exemplify the contributors’ considered judgments about what sort of practice it must be for them as individuals, given their understanding of the tasks of political theory and their more specialized scholarly commitments. For some, such as James Tully, deparochializing political theory is both a form of political praxis and a practice of the self that does not flinch from the epistemic and psychological challenges of engaging with the thought of culturally different others within profoundly unequal power relations. For other contributors, the practice of deparochializing political theory generates experimentation, play, and disruption in relation to the concepts and categories through which contemporary political theory denotes political regimes. In Chapter 7, Baogang He and Mark E. Warren adopt this approach in relation to the categories of authoritarianism, meritocracy, and democracy; Youngmin Kim (Chapter 4) in relation to republicanism; Joseph Chan and Franz

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Mang (Chapter 6) in relation to popular sovereignty; and my own contribution (Chapter 8) in relation to democracy in the global era. A more radical possibility for the practice of deparochializing political theory, opened up in the chapters by Leigh K. Jenco (Chapter 3) and Ken Tsutsumibayashi (Chapter 5), is to replace the knowledge practices we have received from our own societies with those of other societies, constituting a new intellectual center for our political thought and action. As an intergenerational project, deparochializing political theory requires not only that we widen the scope of our scholarship but also that we change the way we introduce our students to the practice of political theory. Every time we teach an introductory course based on one or another understanding of the Western “canon” we risk reproducing the flawed presupposition that political thought is a Western phenomenon rather than a human one. Consequently, as Stephen Salkever argues (Chapter 9), we have reason to regard comparative political theory as first and foremost a commitment to a certain kind of education, one suited to a global age – and only secondarily as a disciplinary specialty. We need to reflect critically on how to perform this teaching task well but also on how to do it in a manner that addresses our students where they are, in the global order as it is. Teaching comparative political theory in North America, as Salkever has done, is not precisely the same undertaking as it is in Singapore, where ideas inflected by Indian and Islamic traditions circulate alongside ideas with roots in China and Europe, as Terry Nardin relates (Chapter 10). And, as Duncan Ivison shows in his contribution (Chapter 11), the challenges of globalizing the political theory curriculum must be read through the lens of the larger reasons for globalizing the curriculum, a goal often mentioned by academic administrators but seldom backed by thorough and compelling justification. As Nardin suggests in his reflections on the distinctive demands of teaching comparatively in the Singaporean context, the practice of deparochializing political theory demands attentiveness to the particular positions we inhabit as scholars and teachers, not only in relation to our methodological, theoretical, and pedagogical commitments but also in relation to global power structures and their histories. Our judgments about which modes of thought need to be “decentered” and “recentered,” to borrow Jenco’s terms, are appropriately and necessarily shaped by our judgments about how to locate ourselves within these larger structures. As Tsutsumibayashi shows in Chapter 5, what counts as “East” or “West” looks quite different from the perspective of Japan as compared with Chinese or European perspectives. James Tully’s approach to deparochializing political theory (Chapter 2) is

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deeply informed by the injustice of settler colonialism in his native context of Canada as an element within the much larger history of modern European imperialism and its ongoing effects. Chan and Mang (Chapter 6), working in the East Asian context of Hong Kong, begin their project of deparochialization by acknowledging that most “East–West” comparisons leave Islamic thought out of the conversation between Confucian and European traditions, an omission they begin to redress. The challenges of deparochializing political theory, in short, vary according to how scholars are positioned in different parts of the world, the thought traditions that prevail where they reside, and the power relations that shape their contexts of thought.13 Whether in the final analysis comparative political theory proves to be a specialized subfield, at the present stage of the debates there are good reasons to regard deparochializing political theory as an ethos and a practice. Taken together, the chapters in this volume open up divergent but potentially complementary ways of understanding what sort of a practice it is: a practice of transforming a discipline, a practice of education, a political practice. The volume as a whole reinforces recent pleas for methodological pluralism in comparative political theory.14 The contributors demonstrate that a commitment to deparochialization is compatible with a wide array of approaches to political theory, from the study of ancient thought (Salkever), ideas-in-context (Tsutsumibayashi), and the history of political thought (Kim, Nardin) to analytic approaches (Chan and Mang), methods-centered approaches (Jenco), the critical theory of power relations (Tully), the construction of regime taxonomies (He and Warren), and contemporary normative and democratic theory (Ivison, Williams). The authors also show, by example, that deparochializing political theory is not the exclusive province of those who have developed their scholarly expertise in a body of non-Western thought, even though their scholarship will do the most important substantive work in transforming the field. Rather, it is a common responsibility for all political theorists, department colleagues, and university administrators who are persuaded by the claim that a global era demands that we expand our resources for understanding politics beyond those generated by the history of political experience in European and settler colonial societies.

1.2 overview of chapters James Tully’s practice of “deparochializing political theory” has developed over decades of teaching and scholarship through which he has performed his distinctive vision of “public philosophy” as a practical critical activity.

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His critical approach is indebted to Foucault, carrying out the “work that thought brings to bear on itself . . . through the practice of a knowledge that is foreign to it.”15 For Tully, the thought upon which we need to gain this critical purchase is, above all, the thought that generated and sustains a now-globalized modernity, reproducing its systems of domination. The origins of global modernity lie in the formation of the territorially bounded sovereign state in Europe but through imperial expansion and the subjugation of Indigenous peoples in the New World (initially) and globally (eventually), a process that has unfolded over the last half-millennium. For Tully, then, globalization provides the context, the motivation, and the resources for deparochializing political theory. The context is set by “global relationships of horrendous inequality, dependency, exploitation and environmental damage.”16 The motivation arises from the conviction that “there is no way to address the multiple crises of globalization that does not pass through engagement in genuine dialogues among and across the traditions of political thought present on this small planet.”17 And the resources include the exemplars of genuine dialogue from whose non-violent practices of resistance and “diverse citizenship” we have the opportunity to learn because of the increased interdependence and networked communication that arise with globalization.18 In his contribution to this volume (Chapter 2), Tully takes us deep into the phenomenology of the kind of dialogue across traditions that is capable of disrupting the unjust power structure that currently connects diverse traditions in the modern global order. He contrasts “genuine dialogue” in which traditions have equal status as forms of human understanding with the many kinds of “false dialogue” that are likely to emerge under circumstances of unequal power and power-knowledge. As beings that make sense of the world through our received traditions, we tend to project onto others the terms that make the world meaningful to us – a tendency that is all the more pronounced when our position of privilege in a structure of social power is thereby secured. Deparochializing our political thought must begin by “reparochializing” it, recognizing that the truths we hold to be self-evident and universal have arisen within a sociohistorically specific context. Thinking together across traditions is exceedingly demanding emotionally and psychologically. The “deep listening” required for genuine dialogue requires practices of the self, such as meditation and nonattachment, that must be cultivated over time before dialogue can generate reciprocal elucidation and transformation. But when we succeed, participants in this dialogue can achieve not only mutual understanding but also the possibility of bringing to light

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ways of “thinking, judging, deliberating and acting together in response to the situation they share that were unimaginable and unthinkable prior to the dialogue.”19 Leigh K. Jenco, whose work on modern Chinese thought has made her a leader in the field of comparative political theory, also situates the contributions of “deparochializing political theory” in relation to the realities of globalization (Chapter 3).20 But her vision for the field projects possibilities for radical self-transformation that go beyond even the emancipatory aspirations articulated in Tully’s ideal of a genuine dialogue among traditions. Transcultural dialogue is a worthy goal, Jenco affirms, but, because it begins from the supposition that human thought is rooted or embedded in received ideational frameworks and social relations,21 it also supposes that political thought must always proceed from where we are now and accept, at least initially, the limits on what we are capable of thinking that we inherit from our sociohistorical situatedness. The more radical possibility she envisions is that we might instead leap out of our ideational skins and into an altogether different form of thought developed by and for different people living in a different context, using their modes of knowledge and knowledge-seeking as the platform from which we innovate our own thought and practice. Such a feat might appear almost superhuman, but Jenco argues that we know it is humanly possible because it has been done. In her most recent book, Changing Referents: Learning Across Space and Time in China and the West,22 Jenco examines the pursuit of “Western Learning” among a group of Chinese thinkers who formed a common purpose in response to the crises of late Qing (1644–1912 CE) political rule and the growing encroachments of European imperialism. She shows that an intergenerational succession of intellectuals found the answers for China’s future in the active displacement of Chinese thought traditions by Western traditions of thought. They trained themselves in the art of bianfa, “changing referents,” by replacing Chinese knowledge practices with Western ones. They formed intellectual communities of inquiry around a common commitment not only to learn Western ideas and apply them to Chinese circumstances but also to think from within Western forms of thought in order to innovate, both intellectually and politically, for their own context and its problems. This was not a dialogue seeking a new ground of shared understanding between Chinese and Western traditions but a decision to inhabit Western modes of knowledge and constitute a new discursive community whose participants were not Chinese and Western “Others” but rather Chinese adepts in “Western Learning.” These

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scholars thus anticipated, in many ways, what we are now doing when we seek to deparochialize political theory in a radical way. In her chapter for this volume, Jenco revisits her argument that the most ambitious way of understanding the project of “deparochializing political theory” goes beyond “decentering” European thought traditions in the ways we understand politics, thus making space for non-Western thought traditions as constituent elements in the discipline we call political theory. Rather, a more thoroughgoing deparochialization of our discipline would recenter historically marginalized thought traditions as the starting point for critical inquiry and theoretical innovation, eventually yielding new theories that count as knowledge that is relevant to our own sensemaking in the world, knowledge for us and not merely about them. Jenco elaborates this gestalt-shifting approach to cross-cultural theorizing through a discussion of some of its best exemplars, including Stephen Angle’s work on sagehood and Ingrid Jordt’s work on Theravada Buddhism. In Chapter 4, Youngmin Kim’s scholarly engagement with the history of Chinese political thought, including his recent book-length treatment of that subject,23 has led him to grapple with a problem that is central to the project of deparochializing political theory: how to delineate the boundaries of a thought tradition such that it is tractable as an object of study and deepened understanding. Kim problematizes the notion that comparative political theory can rest on stylized wholes such as “the Western tradition” or “Confucianism”; any specification of the characteristic features or representative thinkers of such traditions, and every periodization of their histories, are exercises in boundary-drawing that do violence to the plurality of intellectual contributions that constitute them and the historical problem-situations to which they were addressed. “Confucianism,” he argues, is proving useful for a wide array of twenty-first-century theoretical and ideological agendas, but the striking variety of contemporary “Confucianisms” raises the question of whether it is operating as a floating signifier, “fugitive concept,” or even “a pack of tricks played on the dead.”24 Yet these worries do not lead Kim to abandon the project of deparochializing political theory as a practice of comparison between bounded systems of political thought. Rather than looking to geographic regions or broad intellectual traditions to provide the requisite boundaries for the units of comparison, Kim turns to the self-identification of individuals as participants in a common project, bearers of “a collective identity that they themselves construct.”25 The unity of “Chinese political thought” is generated by individuals’ reference to China as the site or object of

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political concern. In his chapter in this volume, Kim argues that the tradition of True Way Learning (TWL), a branch of Confucian tradition that became dominant in mid- to late imperial China, constitutes a sufficiently well-bounded community of thought and practice to serve as a useful comparator with similarly bounded traditions in other historical contexts. In this way, TWL was a localized knowledge community of the sort that Jenco highlights in Chapter 3, one whose claims about political life were intended to be, and potentially were, generalizable beyond the context in which they arose. TWL is a particularly interesting object for comparative study, on Kim’s account, because its precepts contradict the stereotype that Confucian political thought is hierarchical and authoritarian – a common Orientalist trope. Kim situates the rise of TWL in the transition from the Northern Song period (960–1127 CE), in which a meritocratic class of literati came to play an important legitimating role in the imperial state, to the Southern Song period (1127–1279 CE), in which a diminished state left many trained as literati without a prospect of officeholding within the state bureaucracy. In the Northern Song period, the centralization of state authority went hand in hand with the formalization of principles of legitimate authority (guoshi) that were increasingly seen as binding on both emperor and scholar-officials. Because the role of scholar-official was technically open to any who could pass the civil service examinations, the Northern Song period represented a move in the direction of inclusiveness, participation, and equality as compared with the preceding Tang dynasty. TWL emerged following the collapse of the Northern Song dynasty, recodifying principles of political authority as universally valid precepts of individual virtue and combining personal morality with an ethos of service to good governance at the local scale. Practitioners of TWL imagined themselves as members of what Kim calls a “metaphysical republic,” connected to one another across vast geographic spaces not through the formal political institutions of the state but through their joint normative commitment to live in accordance with law-like principles (li). Because its practitioners envisioned their roles in local leadership as supportive of (rather than as competitors to) the imperial state, TWL buttressed the state’s capacity to govern a vast territory with a relatively small bureaucracy. Kim’s reconstruction of TWL as a variety of republican thought enables a comparison with republican strands in modern Euro-American thought. He draws strong parallels to Kantian republicanism, both because what unites “citizens” is not necessarily a formal status within a state but

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a commitment to uphold universally valid principles and because the individual’s right to criticize the state by invoking these principles does not generate a right to resist its authority. There are further continuities with Madisonian republicanism’s preoccupation with the possibility of republican order on a large territorial scale, a problem whose solution lay in the multiplication of sites and scales of collective self-rule – what James Bohman, in his adaptation of Madisonianism for twenty-first-century republicanism, calls “distributed popular sovereignty.”26 This multiscalar and distributed conception of political authority is analogous, Kim suggests, to the late imperial Chinese order’s combination of “decentralized republic of virtue and emperor-centered hierarchical state.” Noting important differences between TWL and American republicanism, particularly with respect to the perceived legitimacy of overt political contestation, Kim holds out the possibility that TWL might still serve as an ideational resource for twenty-first-century Chinese reformers, just as Enlightenment republicanism has inspired reimaginings of anti-despotic political order among American and European thinkers. Unsettling the boundaries of comparison in “comparative political theory” is also a central contribution of Ken Tsutsumibayashi’s Chapter 5. Tsutsumibayashi’s contributions to deparochializing political theory have entailed a double journey. The first part of this journey took him from his native Japan to the study of Western political thought (and particularly French Enlightenment thought and liberalism) at Cambridge University, yielding major works on Benjamin Constant and the history of Western political thought in both Japanese and English.27 His interests in liberalism generated an interest in the diffusion of liberal ideas such as toleration through the postwar institutions of liberal internationalism and global governance. This global sensibility, in turn, led to his second journey back to the operation – and limits – of liberal universalism in East Asian contexts. Tsutsumibayashi notes the risk that the terms of intercultural dialogue about topics such as human rights may be set in the lexicon of Western liberalism, obscuring both the roots of these ideas in European intellectual traditions and the ethical resources rooted in East Asian thought traditions. Yet configuring intercultural dialogue in terms of broad differences between cultural traditions flattens the diversity within cultures and plays into the power interests at stake in delineating the boundaries of “cultures” in one way rather than another, whether in nationalist or civilizational frames. Although the ideal of intercultural dialogue is ethically worthy, it cannot be advanced through a model of “globalization from above” without introducing the distorting effects of power politics. The alternative, he argues, is

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a decentered, and hence unruly and fragmentary, approach rooted in civil society relations at ground level.28 Instead of beginning from intellectual traditions or bodies of thought as the units of analysis, Tsutsumibayashi focuses on the ways in which the meaning of concepts derives from their practical use in particular historical moments. The distinction between “East” and “West,” which still frames so many debates in comparative political theory, dissolves under this contextualizing gaze: from the perspective of Japan as the “far eastern province,” “the West” signified China before it signified Europe. The influence of ideas from “the West” on Japanese political thought has a history much older than the history of European colonialism. Yet the flow of ideas between Japan and other societies has not always been from West to East. In the late nineteenth century, the geographic directionality of ideational influence was more complex. Japanese thinkers engaged European ideas, and their hybridization of these ideas with older ideas from Japanese and Chinese thought, in turn, shaped the terms of political discourse in China and Korea. Nonetheless, Tsutsumibayashi argues, there was a clear cultural directionality in the flow of ideas in this period, toward institutions, social relations, and forms of subjectivity that could be rendered congruent with modernity, in particular the modern idea of the sovereign territorial state and its correlative legitimating people. The chapter traces the remarkable efflorescence in Japanese thought of innovative constructions of Min (“the people”) in Meiji-period (1868–1912 CE) thought. These new compound concepts joined traditional Confucian significations of Min to other terms, generating innovative ways of understanding the political role and identity of ordinary (non-elite) persons within a modern political order: the people as ethnic nation, as citizenry, as rights-bearers. Neologisms based on the ancient concept of Min inflected these terms with ethical meanings that did not map directly onto the Western concepts of which they were often translations. Ideational movement in the direction of modernity was not simply a process of “Westernization” but the production of new and “multiple modernities,” as Shmuel Eisenstadt put it.29 Although Tsutsumibayashi stresses the importance of understanding ideas in context, he disagrees with those who argue, as do Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent, that a contextual or “scholarly” approach to CPT means abandoning an “engaged” or normative view of its purposes.30 Rather, he agrees with Tully’s argument in this volume that, at the end of the day, the purpose of understanding ideas in contexts is to enable the exchange of ideas for normative ends. The guiding purpose of deparochializing political theory

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is, for Tsutsumibayashi, the improvement of the conditions of human livingtogether in the face of a now-globalized modernity. The political ideas that have emerged in particular times or places may prove helpful in both diagnosing and responding to contemporary problem situations. Regarding ideas as properties of “East” or “West,” “Europe” or “nonEurope,” unleashes perverse claims of cultural superiority or inferiority and generates backlash – what Tsutsumibayashi, following Isaiah Berlin, calls “bent twig” reactions. The practice of deparochializing political theory requires us to relinquish cultural “ownership claims” over ideas and invites us to regard the history of ideas as a common pool of resources that can enrich practical reason. The transformations wrought by modernity are also a central theme in Joseph Chan and Franz Mang’s contribution to the volume (Chapter 6). A leading scholar of Confucian political philosophy, Chan’s contributions to deparochializing political theory began two decades ago, when he first brought his training in Anglo-American analytic philosophy into conversation with debates over “Asian values” and human rights discourse. Confucian political philosophy, on Chan’s view, offers a pathway toward overcoming modern political thought’s neglect of the cultivation of ethical character as constitutive of the life well lived, an idea common to ancient thought in both Western and East Asian contexts31 – a point noted, as well, in Stephen Salkever’s contribution to this volume. As Chan puts it in the preface to his book Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times, “The language and substance of perfectionism certainly need to adapt to some of the core values and institutions of modernity, but it would be a great loss to modern people and civilization if these perfectionist perspectives on ethics and politics disappeared from our intellectual horizon.”32 Like Chan’s, Franz Mang’s work addresses issues in social and political philosophy and comparative political philosophy using primarily analytic methods. For Chan and Mang, the practice of deparochializing political theory forces us out of our scholarly comfort zones to engage with traditions that are new to us – in their case, contemporary Islamic thought as well as the contemporary Confucian thought with which both are more familiar. Braving the challenges to stylized reconstructions of broad thought traditions that Kim noted in Chapter 4, they demonstrate its advantages for the precision of normative argumentation in contemporary theory. Their chapter adopts a reconstructive-analytic approach to comparing Islamic and Confucian ideas about popular sovereignty. Distinguishing the

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philosophical from the political connections between popular sovereignty and democracy, they argue that the idea of popular sovereignty is suspect philosophically and normatively. At least in its strong versions, popular sovereignty is mired in a paradox from which there is no philosophical escape. The people cannot give themselves laws without institutions, but to be principled those institutions must be law-governed. If the doctrine escapes this paradox by positing the arbitrary will of the people as the source of political authority, it is not more morally choiceworthy than the sovereignty of an absolute ruler. As a normative principle underpinning democratic rule, Chan and Mang argue, popular sovereignty is a myth. Nonetheless, in Western contexts it has sometimes been a useful myth in sustaining popular energies that can check elite powers and further democratic reforms. Matters look different when we examine popular sovereignty through the lenses of mainstream Confucian and Islamic thought. By reconstructing prominent figures in each of these traditions, Chan and Mang first argue that neither tradition can be reconciled at a philosophical level with the idea of the people as the ultimate source of legitimate political authority. Even though strands of both Confucianism and Islam are compatible with democratic forms of political rule, neither tradition locates the source of political authority in a higher moral order. Whether through doctrines of tianxia (“all under Heaven”), dao (“the Way”), or divine sovereignty, both Confucianism and Islam measure the legitimacy of political orders according to their conformity to this higher order. Nonetheless, perhaps popular sovereignty could be a “useful myth” in Confucian- and Islamic-heritage societies, just as it has sometimes been in Western ones. Chan and Mang consider and reject this possibility. In Confucian-heritage societies, ideas of popular sovereignty would undermine perfectionist ideals of meritocracy through which leaders have historically been held to account for serving the welfare of the people. Their argument for the undesirability of popular sovereignty in Muslim societies is more complex. There, they focus in particular on the undesirability of a state doctrine of popular sovereignty as the basis of the state’s claim to legitimacy, arguing that such a doctrine would disrespect citizens for whom the Islamic principle of divine sovereignty is a pillar of their identity as Muslims. Given that the doctrine of popular sovereignty is neither philosophically sound nor indispensable for projects of democratization and civil liberties, it is neither necessary nor desirable for states with significant Muslim populations to endorse it.

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The theme of Confucian meritocracy is also central to Baogang He and Mark Warren’s Chapter 7, on the challenges of regime classification in contemporary China. In classical approaches to regime taxonomy, classifying a particular political order within a typology of regimes turns on identifying the particular mix of its most important institutions and their associated purposes. He and Warren’s past collaborative work has unsettled this familiar approach through a combination of theorizing and empirical research.33 On the empirical side, He has studied (and designed) innovations in Chinese political institutions over the last several decades, including experiments with voting and participatory democracy. In their collaborative work, He and Warren have drawn on these studies to disrupt distinctions between “democracy” and “authoritarianism” and, indeed, the classical approach to regime taxonomy in which a regime’s character flows from the institutional forms that predominate in its decision-making processes. More specifically, they have shown that deliberative institutions, conventionally associated with democracy, are not only present in authoritarian China but are designed to serve the purpose of legitimizing authoritarian rule, in part through an appeal to normative ideals of popular consultation and responsiveness that have a long history in Chinese political thought. China’s regime hybridity thus unsettles theories of politics that arose initially in the study of Western political orders in both normative and taxonomical dimensions. The empirical reality of “authoritarian deliberation” is not an oxymoron, as it would be read by conventional theories, but a new category that forces us to rethink the relationship between institutional forms, regime classifications, and the normative underpinnings of both. In recent years, several scholars – notably, Daniel Bell in his recent book, The China Model – have argued that Confucian ideals of meritocracy have been a significant factor driving China’s astonishing economic success in recent decades, just as in Singapore’s earlier success under Lee Kuan Yew. By combining ideas of meritocracy with the powers of a modern developmental state, Bell argues, China has provided the world with a normatively viable alternative to the models of political legitimacy characteristic of Western liberal democracies, at a moment when those democracies are facing profound crises of legitimacy.34 In their chapter, He and Warren contest Bell’s argument while laying the foundation for a “comparative political theory of merit in governance.” Their purpose is not only to counter the notion that China’s current regime is meritocratic but to reject altogether the claim that “political meritocracy” is a regime type that can be coherently contrasted with

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“democracy.” Distinctions between regime types turn on how power is conferred on officeholders, whereas “meritocracy” refers to the qualities the officeholders possess. At the level of ideal types in the Weberian sense, there are really only two categories of regime: authoritarian regimes, in which power is conferred by elites; and democracies, in which it is conferred by citizens. All successful regimes require merit, the qualities of expertise, moral judgment, and political judgment that together can generate effective policies to serve collective interests. Authoritarian and democratic regimes differ in how they understand merit and in the institutional arrangements they use to ensure that officeholders are meritorious in the necessary ways. Thus the key conceptual distinction when we consider the place of merit in political orders is not between democracy and meritocracy but between authoritarian meritocracy and democratic meritocracy. Turning to the case of China, He and Warren draw on empirical research to argue that the current regime is a hybrid form: “authoritarian meritocracy with democratic characteristics.” The intense performance demands for governing a complex society and fast-growing economy have put pressure on political elites to legitimize their authority by building both meritocratic and democratic features into their institutional orders. For the meritocratic elements, they have drawn on the history of Confucian ideals and institutions to buttress a public narrative that officeholders possess the expertise and virtue to govern well. But they have also experimented with democratic institutions that bolster the moral and political qualities of decision-making by allowing citizens’ plural interests and perspectives to carry some weight in policy outcomes. Of particular interest are innovations that creatively combine institutional devices of authoritarian meritocracy with those of democracy, especially at the local level – innovations from which democracies might learn for the design of meritocratic bureaucracies in the administrative state. In practice, however, the Chinese innovations have sacrificed both meritocracy and democracy to the temptations of authoritarian control that typify the regime as a whole. For He and Warren, in sum, “deparochializing political theory” entails suspending the presuppositions of the theoretical frameworks political scientists and political theorists have developed for understanding political development and regime classification, frameworks modeled on patterns of political modernization in Western societies. My own judgment of the importance of comparative political theory grew out of earlier work on the ways in which deep structures of social,

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economic, and cultural injustice compel a rethinking of the defining ideals of democratic politics. What remains of common ideas of democratic equality, inclusion, toleration, and social justice when we examine them from the perspective of historically marginalized groups within putatively democratic societies? During my time at the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto, these questions broadened out to the larger field of “ethics in translation,” of which deparochializing political theory is a branch. This was the starting point of the collaborative project that generated the present volume. My Chapter 8 begins with the challenge that contemporary democratic theory is rooted exclusively in Euro-American thought traditions. This is problematic not only for understanding democracy in non-Western contexts but also because it impedes the formation of democratic theory appropriate to a global age. How can a theory of democracy in the global era claim global validity if it draws exclusively on Western political experience? Building on an earlier collaboration with fellow contributor Mark Warren,35 my approach in this chapter is a playful attempt to map a strategy of inquiry for deparochializing democratic theory in a global age. It proceeds by finding points of contact between debates in the literature on global democracy and contemporary forms of politics that draw on non-Western understandings of the political. These points of contact are the scales of politics that are constituent elements in theoretical accounts of democracy in the global era. The chapter considers three case studies of non-Western conceptions of democracy addressing a global, state, or transnational scale of politics: contemporary Chinese cosmopolitanism (tianxia theory), the theoretical foundations of state-led local democratization in China (drawing on He and Warren’s work), and a transnational democratic movement (La Vía Campesina). Drawing continuities and discontinuities between the conceptions of democracy that we can reconstruct from these cases with recent literature on democracy in the global era, the chapter argues that they press us toward a transcultural, transcalar, translocal, and systemic understanding of democracy’s global potential. The final three chapters of the volume turn our attention to the transformations of educational practice that follow from a commitment to deparochializing political theory. The first of these (Chapter 9) is by Stephen Salkever, a scholar of ancient Greek political thought who was among the first to teach comparatively in a serious and sustained way. This work, in which he initially collaborated with Michael Nylan, a scholar of ancient Chinese thought, began in the 1980s. In 1994, when

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the “canon wars” were raging across American campuses, Salkever and Nylan published an important essay on comparative teaching that pushed against both “traditionalists” (who argued for maintaining a practice of liberal education centered on Western classics as “permanent standards of truth and beauty”) and “radicals” (who read Western texts with the eye of “the avenging unmasker”).36 Instead, Salkever and Nylan argued that teaching comparatively is deeply compatible with the abiding aim of liberal education: “to foster the preferences, skills, and habits of mind that support lives of persistent curiosity and self-reflection.”37 Quoting Mencius, they cast the practice of teaching ancient Greek and Chinese texts side-by-side as one of “looking for friends in history” by opening up conversations between students and ancient thinkers about human problems that are recognizable across boundaries of space, time, and culture. Texts should be chosen not as representatives of a culture or tradition but as exemplars of original thinking that unsettle the self-understandings of their authors’ contemporaries as much as they might unsettle ours. Salkever’s chapter in this volume reflects on the contributions of comparative political theory to “deparochializing or provincializing not only Western political theory but perhaps even liberal education as such.” Here, Salkever helpfully distinguishes between the practice of deparochializing (increasing the cultural range of ideational resources on which theory and education draw) and provincializing (demonstrating how embedded a given theory is in its sociohistorical context and hence unsettling contestable claims to universal validity). Both ways of construing the tasks of comparative political theory position it as a way of increasing our capacities for “constructive escape” from our own endoxa, a term Salkever borrows from Aristotle to denote the “prevailing reputable opinions” that, left unexamined, limit our social and political imaginations and stunt our capacity for political judgment. Once we see the purposes of comparative political theory in relation to this capacity for critical reflexivity, he argues, its significance as a practice of liberal education takes priority over its character as an academic discipline or specialization. Unsettling the endoxa of globalized modernity in the twenty-first century may be better served by journeys of the imagination to ancient thought, whatever its global location, than to the thought of contemporary cultural “others” whose lives and opinions have been shaped by the same social forces as our own. Political philosophy does seek a kind of universality, but it is “ever-provisional,” anchored in its own critical and reflexive relationship to the local and historically specific conditions that generate the problems it poses for itself. Salkever draws out the

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implications of this way of understanding political philosophy for comparative political theory as an educational practice, from the importance of juxtaposing contradictory texts within a thought tradition (as a method for avoiding cultural essentialism) to the principles of textual interpretation that can guide students in honing their capacities for critical reflection and, ultimately, for improved ethical and political judgment. If deparochializing political theory is a practice of liberal education, should we worry that liberal education might be a form of Western cultural imperialism? Salkever raises this question from the perspective of a North American educator and answers it provisionally but optimistically in the negative. The question looks rather different from Terry Nardin’s perspective as a political theorist teaching at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Nardin’s Chapter 10 grows from the experiment with deparochializing political theory that he undertook while teaching in Singapore. His chapter reflects on the experience of teaching as part of a team in a year-long course in philosophy and political thought that is itself part of a larger cross-cultural curriculum for all students in the College. The course crosses the civilizational boundaries that often define how political theory is usually taught. It rejects the distinction between “Western” and “nonWestern” thought – a distinction, Nardin persuasively argues, that privileges European thought, throws the rest of the world into a residual category, and hides the fact that the rise of “the West” entailed bringing much of the world under the rule of Europeans. Drawing on ancient and modern texts from India and China as well as from Europe, the course combines the close reading of political texts with that of those more broadly philosophical. In doing so, it requires faculty as well as students to venture beyond the perimeter of the familiar. By drawing on a wider range of texts than usual in studying political theory, it invites students and teachers to explore a diversity of genres and their associated contexts, presuppositions, and reverberations. It addresses disputes about canons, relevance, translations, and expertise, inviting students to engage with an intellectual inheritance that is neither fixed nor venerated. And it illustrates how faculty can educate one another as they teach all students in a liberal arts college, not just those who choose to study politics, to think philosophically and politically. In these and other ways, it suggests unexpected ways in which the study of political thought can address the challenges of transcending parochialism. The closing chapter of the volume, by Duncan Ivison, is written from his dual perspective as a political theorist and as a professor and senior

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administrator at the University of Sydney. As a political theorist, Ivison’s commitment to deparochializing political theory has grown out of his critical reexamination of the liberal tradition from the standpoint of its involvement with the history of colonialism, with particular attention to the rights of Indigenous peoples and the interplay of colonialism and multiculturalism in liberal societies.38 As an administrator, Ivison has grappled with the challenges of translating vision statements about the importance of “globalizing the curriculum” into practical reality. Ivison sets out in Chapter 11 three potential rationales for globalizing the curriculum: the civilizational rationale; the global citizenship rationale; and the rationale of taking moral disagreement seriously. Only the last, he argues, provides a strong underpinning for deparochializing a curriculum by decentering Western traditions in its core design. In a way reminiscent of the “culture wars” of the 1990s, the “civilizational rationale” for globalizing the curriculum is actually an argument against decentering the West very much; to the contrary, its purpose is to underscore the claim that the commitments that generate the ideas of toleration and respect for cultural diversity have their origins in Western thought traditions. As Ivison notes, such a celebration of Western civilization not only treats non-Western thought as if it had only secondary importance for self-understanding in the globalized twenty-first century but also fails to situate canonical writings in the context of the power relations they enabled or resisted – and hence fails to teach students to read critically and sift out for themselves the texts’ resources for reflection on our contemporary condition. The global citizenship rationale for globalizing the curriculum focuses, instead, on the kinds of knowledge students need to adapt and contribute to a globalized world. Yet when motivated by a spirit of cosmopolitan humanism, focused on cultivating students’ capacities for empathetic interpretation, this rationale may not actually generate a strong argument for including non-Western traditions in the curriculum: a deep and thoughtful engagement with texts in the Western canon might be sufficient for this task. Ivison’s alternative rationale for globalizing the curriculum is that it is necessary for taking seriously the deep and persistent moral disagreements that shape different global actors’ responses to globalized modernity. Taking disagreement seriously means resisting the dual temptations of reducing differences between traditions to an easy relativism and constructing other civilizations in essentialized terms. Instead, it entails a willingness to suspend one’s own received commitments sufficiently to enter into the perspective of a culturally different other and be open, at least in principle, to being persuaded by them.

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Both face-to-face and through their engagement with one another’s texts, the authors in this volume have developed their ideas through conversation, reasoning with and against one another in the spirit of an invitation to think beyond the usual boundaries of our field. Each has stepped outside his or her scholarly comfort zone to explore deparochializing as an ethos, as a practice, and as an intergenerational project. By exemplifying a plurality of theoretical and methodological interpretations of “deparochializing political theory,” we hope to encourage readers to join this conversation from whatever positions in the political theory academy they now inhabit.

notes 1. For helpful surveys, see Andrew March, “What Is Comparative Political Theory?,” Review of Politics 71 (2009): 531–565; Diego von Vacano, “The Scope of Comparative Political Theory,” Annual Review of Political Science 18 (2015): 465–480; and Daniel J. Kapust and Helen M. Kinsella, “Introduction: Theory’s Landscapes,” in Kapust and Kinsella, eds., Comparative Political Theory in Time and Place: Theory’s Landscapes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1–24. See also the important edited collection by Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent (eds.), Comparative Political Thought: Theorizing Practices (London: Routledge, 2013). 2. See, e.g., Daniel A. Bell, China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from Al-Banna to Bin Laden (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). 3. E.g., Fred Dallmayr, “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 2 (2004): 249–257; Farah Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice, Discipline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Melissa S. Williams and Mark E. Warren, “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory,” Political Theory 42, no. 1 (2014): 26–57. 4. E.g., James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, Volume II: Imperialism and Civic Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Loubna El Amine, “Beyond East and West: Reorienting Political Theory Through the Prism of Modernity,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 1 (2016): 102–120. 5. Roxanne Euben, “Comparative Political Theory: An Islamic Fundamentalist Critique of Rationalism,” Journal of Politics 59, no. 1 (1997): 28–55; Fred Dallmayr, “Toward a Comparative Political Theory,” Review of Politics 59, no. 3 (1997): 421–427; see also Roxanne Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

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6. In addition to works already cited, see, e.g., Akeel Bilgrami, “Gandhi, the Philosopher,” Economic and Political Weekly 38, no. 39 (2003): 4159–4165; Roxanne Euben, Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Michaelle Browers, Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006); Rajeev Bhargava, “The Distinctiveness of Indian Secularism,” in T. N. Srinivasan, ed., The Future of Secularism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007); Leigh Jenco, Making the Political: Founding and Action in the Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Changing Referents: Learning across Space and Time in China and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Sudipta Kaviraj, The Imaginary Institution of India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); John Borrows (Kegedonce), Drawing Out Law: A Spirit’s Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010); Andrew March, Islam and Liberal Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Karuna Mantena, “Another Realism: The Politics of Gandhian Nonviolence,” American Political Science Review 106, no. 2 (2012): 455–470; Diego von Vacano, The Color of Citizenship: Race, Modernity and Latin American/Hispanic Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Stephen Angle, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity, 2012); Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); Sungmoon Kim, Confucian Democracy in East Asia: Theory and Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Loubna El Amine, Classical Confucian Political Thought: A New Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Matthew J. Walton, Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Leigh Jenco, Megan Thomas, and Murad Idris, eds., Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020) offers a masterful overview of the state of the field. 7. E.g., Anthony Parel, “Symbolism in Gandhian Politics,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 2, no. 4 (1969): 513–27; see also Anthony Parel and Ronald C. Keith, eds., Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies under the Upas Tree (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003). 8. Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1989). 9. E.g., Raimundo Panikkar, “What Is Comparative Philosophy Comparing?,” in Eliot Deutsch and Gerald James Larson, eds., Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 116–136. 10. Isis Leslie, “Internationalizing Political Theory Courses,” PS: Political Science and Politics 40, no. 1 (2007): 108–110. 11. Anthony Laden, Reasoning: A Social Picture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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12. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 126. 13. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this point. 14. E.g., Melissa S. Williams, Joseph Chan, and Doh Chull Shin, “Political Legitimacy in East Asia: Bridging Normative and Empirical Analysis,” in Joseph Chan, Doh Chull Shin, and Melissa S. Williams, eds., East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy: Bridging the Normative-Empirical Divide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Brooke Ackerly and Rochana Bajpai, “Comparative Political Thought,” in Adrian Blau, ed., Methods in Analytical Political Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 15. This volume, 26, quoting Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 8–9. 16. Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, Volume II, 5. 17. This volume, 30. 18. Tully, “On Global Citizenship,” in On Global Citizenship: James Tully in Dialogue (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), sec. 2. 19. See 51 of this volume; emphasis in original. 20. Jenco, “‘What Does Heaven Ever Say?’ A Methods-centered Approach to Cross-cultural Engagement,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 4 (2007): 741–755; Jenco, Making the Political, 8. 21. “Endoxa,” in the Aristotelian sense that Stephen Salkever invokes in his contribution to the volume, or “social imaginaries,” in Charles Taylor’s sense. Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). 22. Leigh K. Jenko, Changing Referents: Learning across Space and Time in China and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 23. Youngmin Kim, A History of Chinese Political Thought (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018). 24. This volume, 95. 25. Kim, A History of Chinese Political Thought, 8. 26. James Bohman, Democracy Across Borders: From Dêmos to Dêmoi (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007). 27. E.g., Ken Tsutsumibayashi, “Benjamin Constant’s Theory of Perfectibility,” Journal of Law, Politics, and Sociology 79, no. 12 (2006): 1–62; “Pierre Bayle and Benjamin Constant on Toleration,” in Vicki A. Spencer, ed., Toleration in Comparative Perspective (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 61–78. 28. Ken Tsutsumibayashi, “Fusion of Horizons or Confusion of Horizons? Intercultural Dialogue and Its Risks,” Global Governance 11, no. 1 (2005): 103–114, and “Rethinking Political Theory in the Wake of China’s Rise,” Journal of Political Science and Sociology 13 (2010): 121–126. 29. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” in Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, ed., Multiple Modernities (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 1–29. 30. Freeden and Vincent, “Introduction: The Study of Comparative Political Thought,” in Comparative Political Thought, 1–23.

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31. The commonalities between ancient Greek and ancient Chinese perfectionism are also noted by Stephen Salkever in his chapter in this volume. For a more general argument in favor of understanding comparative political theory as a search for alternatives to modernity in premodern thought, see El Amine, “Beyond East and West.” 32. Chan, Confucian Perfectionism, xiv. 33. Baogang He and Mark E. Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political Development,” Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 2 (2011): 269–289. 34. Daniel A. Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 35. Williams and Warren, “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory.” 36. Stephen Salkever and Michael Nylan, “Comparative Political Philosophy and Liberal Education: ‘Looking for Friends in History,’” PS: Political Science and Politics 27, no. 2 (1994): 238–247. 37. Ibid., 238. 38. See, e.g., Duncan Ivison, Postcolonial Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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2 Deparochializing Political Theory and Beyond A Dialogue Approach to Comparative Political Thought James Tully

2.1 introduction: clarification The objective of this chapter is to deepen our understanding of transformative engagement in comparative and critical dialogues of comparative or transnational political thought. The objective is not to develop a “globalized discourse about moral standards for judging politics.” The first five sections discuss the challenges of dialogical comparative political thought. The following three sections discuss how a dialogue approach responds to these challenges and generates comparative and critical mutual understanding and mutual judgment. This objective is well expressed by Michel Foucault: [W]hat is philosophy today – philosophical activity I mean – if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known? . . . [I]t is entitled to explore what This work was originally presented at the conference on “De-Parochializing Political Theory: East Asian Perspectives on Politics; Advancing Research in Comparative Political Theory,” University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, August 2–4, 2012. The conference literature suggested the focus on “moral standards for judging politics” that I decline in the opening sentence. I would like to thank Melissa Williams, Project Leader, East Asian Perspectives on Politics, and the main organizer of the conference, for inviting me to participate and for her comments on my presentation. I would also like to thank Akeel Bilgrami, Paul Bramadat, Nikolas Kompridis, Anthony Laden, Andrew March, Tobold Rollo, Gina Starblanket, Heidi Stark, Yasuo Tsuji, and Feng Xu for their comments. I am also grateful to Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach and Jim Maffie for their editorial comments on the draft. I am deeply indebted to John Borrows, Aaron Mills, and Joshua Nichols for discussions on all aspects of the article since 2012 and especially the sections on Indigenous peoples and their traditions of political thought and practice.

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might be changed, in its own thought, through the practice of a knowledge that is foreign to it. The “essay” – which should be understood as the assay or test by which, in the game of truth, one undergoes changes, and not as the simplistic appropriation of others for the purpose of communication – is the living substance of philosophy, at least if we assume that philosophy is still what it was in times past, i.e., an “ascesis,” askesis, an exercise on oneself in the activity of thought.1

In addressing this objective, I will also say something about another aim: what are the best methods for decentering Western traditions? If we introduce our students to a global conversation or dialogue that is focused on the moral bases of political relationships, then we may inadvertently fail to decenter Western traditions. A focus on moral principles that are said to provide the foundations of political relationships, and the earlier response to globalization of focusing on moral standards of political judgment, are both constitutive and orienting features of dominant Western theories. If we prescribe that the response to globalization has to be a conversation focused on these questions of moral principles, then we may well continue the dominance of this Western orientation to politics, rather than decenter it, and constrain students and participants from other traditions to formulate their engagement in these terms. It would then not be a genuine dialogue among traditions but an assimilative monologue masquerading as a global dialogue. Much of the so-called cosmopolitan dialogue on globalization is monological in precisely this sense, as we all know. Therefore, the first step in decentering Western political traditions is to set aside the prescriptive search for moral standards of judgment or moral principles of political association as the telos of global dialogue. I am not against moral standards coming up in dialogues and participants from some traditions proposing that they be the focus of the dialogue. I am just warning against it being prescribed as the focus.

2.2 on understanding engagement in genuine dialogues among traditions If we wish to deepen our understanding of engagement in meaningful or genuine dialogue among and across different traditions of political thought, then we should enquire into the conditions of meaningful or “genuine” dialogue.2 These conditions include the ethical practices of openness and receptivity to the otherness of others that enable participants to understand one another in their own traditions (mutual understanding) and to appreciate the concerns of one another regarding

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globalization and the injustices and suffering it causes (mutual concern). The participants may discuss moral standards of judgment and moral bases of political relationship at times in the dialogue, but these are meaningless unless and until through deep listening each comes to understand and appreciate the concerns of others as they experience and articulate them in the terms of their own traditions without assimilation or subordination. The problem of the “meaninglessness” of abstracted moral principles is even worse than this. Abstract moral principles can literally mean anything the user wishes them to mean unless they are grounded and articulated in relation to the experiential self-understanding of those to whom they are applied. Take these dominant moral standards as examples: treat each other as free and equal; treat others as ends in themselves, never only as means; and employ the difference principle of organizing politics to the benefit of the least well-off. These moral principles have been, and continue to be, used to justify the greatest inequalities in human history; modern wars of intervention, conquest, subjugation, and modernization; environmental destruction and climate change. They also have been, and continue to be, used to criticize these injustices of globalization by equally elaborate and well-defended critiques of the dominant justificatory theories. This is one of the contemporary problems to which the turn to the understanding of the grounded ethical practices of engagement in multitradition dialogue is the response. If we can explicate the conditions of genuine dialogues, then the participants themselves will work out their understanding of and responses to globalization. That is, a genuine dialogue is not prescriptive: the participants coarticulate their own scripts democratically.

2.3 six obstacles to deparochialization and genuine dialogue I propose that the project of deparochializing political theory can be seen as the work of creating genuine dialogues among and across traditions of political thought and practice.3 Engagement in genuine dialogues can accomplish much more than deparochializing political theory, as we will see, but it must achieve this first if the other benefits of genuine dialogue are to be achieved. Deparochializing conversations are exceptionally difficult to engage in yet exceptionally rewarding if we do so.4 The conditions of a genuine

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conversation or dialogue are difficult to explicate because it is so easy to finesse the demands of such a dialogue: that is, to appear to engage in them while all the time remaining within one’s own tradition (as much of the global dialogue literature does today). Engagement in what we can call non-genuine or “false” dialogues is as common as rain, and it conceals the demanding conditions of genuine dialogue from view. Like Gadamer, I distinguish genuine dialogue (mutual or reciprocal understanding) from two main types of false dialogue that fail to live up to the demands of genuine dialogue: strategic-instrumental (strategic) and deliberativeimperative (legislative). Also like him, I discuss both face-to-face dialogues and dialogues between interpreters and the texts of other traditions of political thought, although I place more emphasis on the first.5 Allow me to mention six ways in which genuine dialogue is suppressed by false dialogue. First, it is often simply a matter of a person or a dominant tradition being aware that they are pretending to engage in a genuine dialogue with people from other traditions but continuing to do so to get the upper hand (strategic dialogues). However, the problem of false dialogue is much deeper than this. Second, in other cases, the individuals or collective agents who engage in a false dialogue deceive themselves into believing that they are engaged in a genuine dialogue, so there is the psychological problem of selfdeception to overcome. This problem is common in many of the participatory dialogues employed in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies of democratization and transitional justice, and, indeed, it is seen by many as a deeply embedded feature of Western traditions of dialogue with non-Westerners, brought to awareness only in times of crises, such as after world wars, decolonization, 9/11, and the war on Iraq, and then quickly forgotten. Yet, the difficulty of false dialogue is more fundamental. Third, the fundamental reason we get off on the wrong foot is that the very condition of being in a meaningful world with others in any tradition is that humans always and pre-emptively project over, interpret, and try to understand the other in the terms and ways of their own tradition. This is an ontological condition of sensemaking. Our living traditions disclose the world to us as an actually and potentially meaningful world. Unless there is some awareness that the horizon of understanding of one’s own tradition, which discloses the other and their way of life as meaningful in its terms, has to be called into question in the course of dialogue with others, who, as a matter of course, enter dialogue under the horizon of

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their tradition, then the dialogue, by definition, will remain a false dialogue in which each misunderstands the other and responds to this misunderstanding by re-imposing – often unconsciously – their traditional understanding over others. Unless there is a critical practice within a tradition or within the course of the dialogue that raises this problem to self-awareness and addresses it by bringing aspects of one’s background horizon of disclosure into the space of questions at the center of the dialogue, genuine dialogue cannot begin.6 In addition, this disclosure and projection of our form of preunderstanding over the world (and interpreting and acting under its sway) is true not only with respect to human beings but also all living beings, including the earth itself. We must somehow learn to listen to and understand the norms of self-organization of all forms of life and of the animate earth as a whole if we are not to destroy it by acting on them under our traditions that disclose them as externalities or resources for the use and abuse of one species.7 Fourth, even when tradition-critical practices are present in traditions or dialogues among them, there is a multiplicity of factors that override or undermine them: psychological, military, economic, religious, rationalistic, political, face-saving, and so on. Fifth, these weighty factors are in turn legitimated by a multiplicity of “secondary explanations” that, as Franz Boas argued, every tradition gives to itself – such as the grand theories of civilization, modernization, and globalization generated by the West over the last half millennium of global expansion.8 These are called “secondary” explanations because they often redescribe and conceal what is really going on in false dialogues and the escalating struggles that result from them in the terms of acceptability and approval of that tradition: terms such as progress, modernization, liberty, necessary means to world peace and justice, and so on. For example, Rousseau pointed out that “slavery” and “subordination” are often redescribed as “liberty.”9 These secondary explanations give us a false picture of our histories of interactions with other traditions. The demand that global dialogues follow certain allegedly universal rules and be oriented to allegedly universal ends is often said to be a kind of textbook example of this failure to see what one’s traditional form of representation conceals from view and of the failure to call the form of representation into the space of questions, even though it has a critical dimension within it. The reason this occurs is that the juridical language of representation of the tradition presents itself as meta-traditional from the outset, conceptually and historically, giving rise to “legislative” rather than genuine dialogues.10

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As a result of these five factors (and a sixth below), a natural disposition to see the world in the terms of one’s own tradition in the first instance is continually finessed, rather than faced and addressed, at each stage of interaction, as false dialogues escalate to the submission of one participant to another, or to conflict. These escalating misunderstandings and conflicts, in turn, are then legitimated by the secondary explanations of modern politics: namely, that peace cannot be brought about by peaceful means and democracy cannot be brought about by democratic means; both require violence and authoritarian rule to bring less-advanced others to see the superiority or universality of the particular form of peace and democracy on offer. These secondary explanations and their effects in practice lend credence to a global norm of modern politics: in time of peace, prepare for war. Once this becomes the norm, even those traditions that are disposed to peaceful means of dispute resolution through genuine dialogue see that it is strategically rational to prepare for war in response to the others who have already done so. This security dilemma at the center of modern politics discredits genuine dialogue and undercuts the mutual trust on which it depends because it becomes rational to enter into dialogue in a distrustful way; that is, pretending to engage in genuine dialogue in hopes it might work out, yet openly preparing for conflict if it does not. The dialogical effect of the open hand on the other – the nonviolent power of genuine dialogue – is undermined by the hidden fist in the background, prompting others to do the same in response. As Nietzsche argued in “The Means to Real Peace,” and generations of International Relations scholars and game theorists have reiterated ever since, this logic leads to the security dilemma and ever-escalating arms races, world without end.11 Accordingly, it is not difficult to see that if the logic of finessing genuine dialogue by means of the secondary explanations that comprise the language of development and globalization is not confronted, it will lead to the destruction of billions of Homo sapiens and other forms of life on earth, as Hannah Arendt forewarned in the 1960s and many others have since substantiated.12 Thus, in conclusion to this section, if this analysis is even partially accurate, there is no way to address the multiple crises of globalization that does not pass through engagement in genuine dialogues among and across the traditions of political thought present on this small planet.13 Moreover, as these five obstacles show, engagement in deparochializing dialogues is not a simple task that we can do in a year or two. Many have failed, not only for the five reasons given above but also for a sixth reason.

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The long, slow, intergenerational crafts of teaching, acquiring, and exercising the ethical practices of engagement in genuine, deparochializing dialogues have been ignored, and fast-time teaching, dialogues, negotiations, bargaining, and pre-scripted, transitional processes have proliferated.14 Given these six obstacles, the cultivation of genuine conversations and dialogues is one of the most important yet difficult tasks in the world. It requires learning and acquiring the ethical practices of genuine dialogue despite our human, all-too-human, dispositions to overlook the requisite critical work on our self-understandings and the self-understandings of others and on all the factors piled up to dispose us to finesse these ethical practices of mutual understanding and concern. But, if genuine dialogue were to succeed in some future generation of people educated and proficient in the requisite ethical practices of engagement, then, in virtue of their sustained engagement in these dialogical relationships, they just might be able to bring into being another world of possible ways of living together peacefully and democratically that we can scarcely even imagine today. We can scarcely imagine these possibilities because our imaginations are constrained by the traditions and false dialogues we inhabit and the factors that hold them in place. Nevertheless, we can begin to explore some of the first steps of engagement and of teaching engagement in genuine dialogues of deparochializing, mutual understanding and concern, and critical comparison.15

2.4 recognizing the parochiality of political theory To begin these steps, I will clarify how I am using the term “deparochialize.” The sense I wish to explicate consists of steps that bring us to recognize the parochial character of modern political theory. Deparochializing shares many similarities with projects to “decolonize,” “provincialize,” and “de-imperialize” political theory.16 First, most political theories are written in ways that hide the spatialtemporal parochial contexts in which they are written and the locations of authors within them. This so-called transitive or even transcendental feature of political theory is a direct result of the grammar of the written phonetic language in which it is written. That is, a theory is standardly presented in general or universal terms and using concepts that are presumed to apply across the range of parochial cases or instances to which the general concepts of the theory refer. The grammar generalizes local problems, arrangements, groupings, forms of speech, genres of reasoning,

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and senses of terms such as justice, freedom, citizen, oppression, and so on. The contextual or parochial conditions of possibility of the theory are concealed by the transitive character of most written languages. The abstraction and reification of written meaning (called “literal” meaning) from the enveloping lifeworld of oral language usage and its meaning-in-use (practical meaning) began with the development of written alphabetical language in the West.17 The Platonic dialogues were written during the first generation of users of Greek as a written language. The prior generation of oral language users and many of Socrates’ interlocutors, especially Meletus in the Apology, connect the explication of terms like “justice” and “courage” to specific instances, places, and stories when and where they are spoken by concrete individuals – that is, to events in specific circumstances. Meletus explains that (participatory) democracy consists in dialogues with fellow citizens over the differing senses of political concepts in differing circumstances, judging, agreeing, and disagreeing in particular cases while acting together.18 In contrast, Socrates asserts that, if they are to know what these terms mean, they have to go beyond giving examples and find a definition that transcends all its instances and contains within itself a set of criteria common to all uses. Once the few possess this general knowledge over, rather than within, the field of politics, Socrates immediately concludes, it legitimates the use of power-over the many, as in any other craft, rather than participatory democratic power-with.19 With these two moves to knowledge-over and power-over, the dominant tradition of Western political theory (and practice) is founded and participatory knowledge-with and power-with eclipsed.20 Accordingly, the first step in deparochializing political theories is to “reparochialize” them: to recontextualize their presumptively general or universal terms back into the parochial contexts in which they make sense. This is a step common to decolonization and provincialization as well. Moreover, it is also an insight of the tradition of philosophy of language initiated by Wittgenstein: sensemaking is contextual. Here the aim is to bring us to see that the great political theories that presume to be general or universal rest on quite specific and limited senses of the terms in question – senses that in turn make sense given the circumstances in which they are normally used.21 Second, some local theories are internally related to global power: that is, they are employed to describe, justify, legitimate, or operate systems of power that modernize or globalize the world (politically, legally, militarily, economically, subjectively, etc.). In this sense, the generalization of

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parochial institutions in these theories of modernization occurs de facto by the spread of these institutions and practices of Western imperialism. At the same time, other traditions of political thought are changed by their interaction with the spread of this knowledge/power/subjectification ensemble: rendered marginal, lower, particular, primitive, exotic, assimilated, and subordinated, etc., by processes of modernization. Accordingly, the second step in deparochializing political theories is the hard work of studying the complex relationships between political theories and forms of power.22 These two steps show the sense in which political theories are parochial. What I mean by deparochializing is coming to realize that political theories, which are always presented in the language of abstraction and generalization (of not being parochial), are parochial – that is, partial and limited in their sense and reference. Once “we” who take these steps become aware of the limited and partial scope of any political theory, we have deparochialized our understanding of it. We are now not so parochial as to presume our local theories are general or universal in either sense or reference. This difficult form of self-awareness is the first condition of opening oneself to genuine non-imperial dialogues among different traditions.23 As a result of this parochial feature of modern political theory and our awareness of it, genuine dialogue among traditions of political thought becomes all the more important. Humans literally need dialogue with other limited traditions of political thought to see their own limitations and to see beyond them by means of the perspectives of others. Hence, it is dialogue itself that deparochializes, as I will argue. The third step is to realize that the genre of political theory in the West is only one species of the larger family of forms of political “thought.” Political theory, as theory, is a quite peculiar way of reflecting on the world of politics. As Aristotle responded to Plato, the study of politics, which I will call political thought, cannot be theoretical in the sense Plato gave to it – that is, of universal validity. Political thought, in contrast, is practical, not theoretical, and it holds only for a limited number of cases and contexts. It holds “for the most part,” as Aristotle put it, not for all time and place. If students of political theory are not to be parochial in the negative sense, then we need to study many other types of political reflection, not only the highly specialized and abstract academic genre called political theory. So, we should replace “political theory” with the phrase “political thought” as the more general category in which political theory is one species. If we fail to do this, then we are going to continue the

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dominance of one genre of political thought by only accepting types of political thought in other traditions that approximate the parochial features of Western political theory. The central distinction between political theory and political thought more generally is that political theory presupposes that its central terms are rigid designators, concepts that have necessary and sufficient conditions for their application in every case. If this were not the reigning presumption, then theorists would not build general theories in the sense that this term has come to have in the West over the last half-millennium – that is, that the theory sets out the necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of political concepts in every case. Political thought makes no such presumption. It is based on the presumption that political vocabulary is composed of terms that have an indeterminate number of criteria of application, and thus of uses (sense, reference, and evaluative force), and these are fought over and altered in the course of political struggles. They are modifiable “family resemblance” terms, as Wittgenstein puts it, or, in the fields of rhetoric and discourse analysis, metaphors and cluster concepts. They have a range of senses and references and complex relationships among them but no invariable set of properties in every instance. Accordingly, political judgment – the employment of these terms in actual cases – is akin to aesthetic judgment, not to the determinate judgment of theoretical reason that employs concepts with necessary and sufficient conditions for their application.24 Political thought in this broad sense emerges everywhere and anywhere that people converse on the ways they govern and are governed in all their activities. It is not restricted to a type of theory or a particular place of composition, such as within the institutions of higher education, or to reflection on a canonical set of institutions. Political thought develops in countless conversations and contexts. A mantra of the World Social Forum captures this crucial point of genuine global dialogue: “there is no global justice without epistemic justice.”25 That is, wherever there are people involved in practices of governance of themselves and others – and this is in every form of society, small or large – there is political thought in and about those practices of governance. They are coextensive. Communities are epistemic communities with distinctive forms of knowing. These take many forms: all forms of written reflection, oral traditions, music, art, theatre, direct action and inaction, private scripts, and so on can be forms of political thought in this broad and “global” sense, both historically and in the contemporary period.26

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It follows that the range of “texts” that should be included in the study of transnational political thought must be much broader than the narrow range of texts that conform to the canons of Western political theory.27 This is not only to decenter Western political theory or any other form of official political theory in any other civilization. It is also to democratize local/global genuine dialogues among traditions of political thought by not privileging one authoritative type. And it follows from this conclusion that the form of genuine dialogue cannot be prescribed beforehand, because to be true to these considerations of global justice is to develop genuine dialogues from the ground up, from the dialogue-genres of the world’s communities of political thought.

2.5 political thought takes place in traditions The next feature is that comparative political thought should always place political texts in their background traditions in order to make sense of them. A genuine dialogue is a dialogue across and among the world’s traditions in which particular instances and genres of political thought have their homes. To ignore this and cherry-pick interesting ideas out of other peoples’ traditions is to commit an epistemic and social injustice. Oral and written traditions, in my opinion, are the background “modes of disclosure” of the world in which political thought emerges and takes place. There is a multiplicity of political thought within any tradition, given the indeterminacy of the vocabulary, the standpoints of individual political thinkers, the problems of the times, and so on. Traditions are ongoing dialogues among their members, who accept, question, negotiate, and modify the aspects of their traditions as they carry them on. Thus, what functions as a “background” shared intersubjective presupposition and what functions as a “foreground” subject of discussion can vary over time. Members of traditions also engage, directly or indirectly, in dialogues with members of other traditions, exchange ideas and use them in novel ways. Traditions are rarely or never completely closed by a frontier. This “diffusion thesis” of the coevolution of human traditions was advanced in nineteenth-century Berlin and substantiated by anthropologists in the twentieth.28 Political theorizing and political thinking more generally thus take place seamlessly within broader traditions in this sense and are meaningful in virtue of so being. This is why transnational comparative political theory and thought has to comprise dialogues among and across

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traditions if it is to avoid false dialogues of prejudging and interpreting the political thought of other traditions within the background of one’s own. For a comparative dialogue across traditions to be genuine, the participants have to be able to call into the space of questions of the dialogue (to foreground) constitutive background features of the traditions involved in the course of the dialogue. This is a condition of mutual understanding. These features are constitutive features of political thinking that members of traditions normally take for granted. Given the fact that traditions change, interact, and learn from each other, we know that this practice of foregrounding and mutual understanding is not only possible but actual.29 However, we also know it is exceptionally difficult. As both Gadamer and Bohm underscore, calling into question a deepseated prejudgment of one’s traditional horizon of understanding goes against that person in a demanding sense. It brings an aspect of her or his identity and tradition (their “world,” in Arendt’s sense) into question and opens it to testing for what it both reveals and conceals. Initial reactions are often defensiveness, resentment, aggressive response, or finesse.30 It requires the virtue of the courage of truthfulness for the participants to open themselves to each other in this self-critical and often selftransformative experience.31 Moreover, traditions of political thought, and members within them, are radically differently situated in relation to each other under the long and complex historical processes of globalization. These massive inequalities along many axes would seem to make genuine dialogue across traditions impossible. However, the resiliency of traditions and the practices in which they are lived enables humans to continue to inhabit the processes of globalization differently.32 It is not the case that globalization constructs the identities of individuals and groups all the way down, as early post-structuralism presumed. Rather, the relations between processes of globalization and their hegemonic forms of political thinking and the diverse traditions in which people live are immensely complex and irreducible to simple generalizations, as contextual studies of communities of nonassimilation show. Global inequalities and injustices make genuine dialogue and the exercise of the virtue of courage reciprocally across traditions exceptionally difficult, and the pretense of inclusion and dialogue is often simply the assimilating and subordinating ruse of the hegemonic partner.33 Nevertheless, these conditions do not render genuine dialogue impossible or fruitless. As I will argue in the following sections, as difficult as genuine dialogue is, it is the only way that global injustices can be brought to light from the perspectives of the lived experience of the

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people who suffer them, and, reciprocally, call into question the deeply entrenched constitutive features of the hegemonic traditions and their secondary explanations that legitimate these injustices.34

2.6 traditions are grounded in practices and places One of the reasons traditions are resilient and billions of people are able to live diversely in the contemporary world, despite all the grand theories of convergence, is that traditions are grounded in practices. These practices include: first, everyday practices of the embodied, sensuous, emotional, reasonable, and unreasonable human beings in dialogical relationships to themselves, each other, the living earth, and the spiritual realm (practices of the self); and, second, the larger practices or forms of organization, interaction, and conflict resolution in which these self-practices are exercised. Furthermore, practices are grounded in places, in the ecosystems in which humans live. Thus, political theory makes sense in light of the conventions of political thought in which it is grounded; political thought, in light of the traditions in which it is spoken and written; traditions, in light of the practices in which they are embedded; and practices, in the places in which they “take place.” It is not that these “circumstances” or “contexts,” or some subset of them, determine political thought causally. Phenomenologically, the lived experience and lived meaning of political thought makes sense in light of embodied human interaction with tradition, practice, and place: the “lifeworld.” On this view, humans are always already in a “perceptual dialogue” with the living earth that surrounds them by means of all their senses: “This perceptual reciprocity between our sensing bodies and the animate, expressive landscape both engenders and supports our more conscious, linguistic reciprocity with others.”35 If, in contrast, persons take the meaning of political thought to be a function of an autonomous system of signs, it can mean anything or nothing. They then give an abstracted spoken or written text of political thought meaning by placing and interpreting it in their background traditions, practices, and places without noticing they do so. The striking consequence of this phenomenological view of meaning for genuine dialogue is the following. Not only do participants in a genuine dialogue have to enter into the dialogue with this practiceand place-based view of the scope of the meaning of their own and others’ political thought, but the dialogue itself also should take place, as much as

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is humanly possible, where the interlocutors’ utterances have their meaning in this worldly sense – that is, in each other’s traditions, practices, and places – if they are to achieve mutual understanding. If they meet only at conferences, public spheres, the United Nations, universities, or on Skype, their dialogues will be abstract, manipulative, and false. Thus, it is “back to the rough ground” of meaning-in-use in traditions, practices, and places if we wish to understand one another.36 Despite the growing evidence for this view of meaning-in-use, the vast majority of global dialogue literature continues to take the model of an abstract, official public sphere as the appropriate site for global dialogues. In the exchange of disembodied speech-acts over presumptively traditiontranscendent norms in these empty spaces, each pre-interprets others in the terms of their background, and, while they appear to agree or disagree earnestly, simply agree or disagree with the proposed norm as they understand it within their tradition. They thus bypass the mutual understanding of the very differences the dialogue is supposed to clarify and reconcile. If there is apparent agreement, the underlying differences reappear when the norm is applied differently in practice, and then each accuses the other of not following the norm as they agreed in the exchange.37 Locating dialogues of comparative political thought in the places where they are practiced, especially for the less powerful, is not only an issue of epistemic justice. It also gives oppressed minorities confidence and courage to speak truthfully to the powerful in their own languages and ways. This enactment, in turn, is empowering for younger members of the community who witness it. Taking the class out of the classroom, community-based and land-based coursework and workshop dialogues as well as study abroad and exchange programs are examples of meeting this condition.38 When such dialogue options are unavailable, it is the role of scholars of comparative political thought to simulate them, as much as possible, in their scholarship and teaching. This is done by situating texts in their contexts (traditions, practices, and places) in edited editions and in lectures. Publications, lectures, assignments, and class presentations are often in dialogical form among texts from different traditions in order to deparochialize Western political theory and initiate cross-tradition understanding. Comparative political thought draws on dialogue methods in contextual history of political thought, anthropology, comparative philosophy, linguistics, hermeneutics, postcolonial studies, gender studies, Indigenous studies, and community-based research, as well as developing new methods.39

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Therefore, in these ways and others, the research and teaching of comparative political thought is dialogical all the way down in order to meet the challenges surveyed in the first five sections and generate meaningful knowledge. The following sections discuss ways that participation in genuine dialogues brings about comparative political knowledge.

2.7 deep listening and nonattachment How does participation in genuine multitradition dialogues of comparative political thought overcome the six obstacles to deparochialization, bring to awareness the parochiality of political thought, take into account the four contexts of sensemaking, enable practices of openness and courage of truthfulness, bring about mutual understanding and concern, and enable comparative and critical political judgments? This is the work of the next three sections. If participation is successful, it lays the intersubjective groundwork not only for thinking together across traditions but also for living together and conciliating disputes together nonviolently.40 To bring out the way that participation in these genuine dialogues brings about the transformative self-understanding of the participants, I prefer the phrase “dialogues of reciprocal elucidation.” It brings into focus the central feature of interdependency. The participants codepend upon the reciprocal speech acts of listening and responding to each other to free themselves from their habitual mode of disclosure, to move around and see the field of the political from other limited disclosures, and thus to see the limits of their own in comparison and contrast. The intersubjective relationships of listening and responding, in turn, are gift-gratitudereciprocity relationships and, when successful, virtuous cycles of reciprocal elucidation and enlightenment that the participants bring into being and cosustain by the ways they exchange speech acts of various kinds.41 A preparatory exercise is to become aware of and reflect on the problems with Western political theory and the difficulties they create for understanding other traditions canvased in the previous sections. The first participatory step is to practice the art of “deep listening” to the political thought of other traditions. This involves cultivating an ethos of openness and receptivity to others.42 One of the best ways of doing this is to disclose the dialogue, not initially as a comparative or critical question-andanswer game but as an exchange of storytelling and narratives in which the participants say or perform where they are coming from and why they are here so they come to know each other, the ways they are comfortable talking to each other, the languages they prefer to use, and so on. Deep

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listening also attends to the embodied and place-based dimensions of dialogue: being responsive to where the dialogue takes place and the linguistic and non-linguistic interactions that make the participants feel comfortable with each other.43 For example, when Indigenous people meet with other tribes or with settler governments in North America, practices of reciprocal deep listening and storytelling often lay the groundwork for relationships of peace and friendship before the contentious dialogue begins.44 All the genres of speech-acts in genuine dialogues of reciprocal elucidation share one feature with exchanging stories. They are “invitations” or “proposals” to the listeners to consider the issue at hand this way rather than that and request their thoughtful response, trying again in another way if listeners do not understand, and so on. Imperatives (commands), strategic manipulation, and coercive threats have no place in genuine dialogue because they are modes of false dialogue (legislative and strategic). These relationships treat dialogue partners as means, and they lead to victory, defeat, or compromise, not to mutual understanding.45 Ethical practices of deep listening, of openness and receptivity, are partly but not fully cultivated through participation in dialogue. They also require preliminary practices of the self that prepare the participants for engagement. These are meditative practices on the importance of the dialogue for oneself and others and how its success depends on how one attends to what others say or do, controls one’s emotions, and conducts oneself. The initial rounds of getting to know one another ease novitiates into the exercise of these dispositions because challenging questions are not raised.46 Finally, the practice of deep listening cultivates one of the most important dispositions of dialogue: nonattachment. As we have seen, humans are deeply attached to their background view of the world and the assumptions that compose it. It appears not as a view but as the comprehensive view. It is attached not just to ways of thinking but also to feelings, emotions, and the body. When it is challenged, the immediate impulse or charge is anger and defensiveness or aggressiveness, and the depth of attachment can be seen in body language. This is “attachment.” Pema Chodron explains its importance: [Shenpa, the Tibetan word for “attachment”] points to a familiar experience that is at the root of all conflict, cruelty, oppression, and greed. I think of shenpa as “getting hooked.” Another definition is . . . the “charge” – the charge behind our thoughts and words and actions, the charge behind “like and don’t like” . . . [For example, s]omeone criticizes you . . . or says a harsh word and immediately you

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feel a shift. There’s a tightening that rapidly spirals into mentally blaming this person, or wanting revenge, or blaming yourself. Then you speak and act. The charge behind the tightening, behind the urge, behind the story line or action is shenpa.47

Attachment forecloses genuine dialogue. The antidote is to cultivate the counter-disposition of nonattachment or “suspension” by means of ethical practices of meditation, patience, and deep listening. This is not to abandon one’s own views or embrace relativism. It is simply to suspend one’s attachment to them so one can listen deeply to others and enter into dialogue with them without prejudging what they say. Meditation, deep listening, and initial storytelling cultivate and strengthen nonattachment for the agonistic dialogue to come.

2.8 empathy and interdependency Nonattachment, deep listening, openness, and receptivity create the preconditions for empathy: the intersubjective ground of comparative dialogues of genuine mutual understanding. Empathy is generated and sustained by participation in dialogues of reciprocal elucidation, but there usually has to be beforehand a certain awareness of the need for empathy and a willingness to take the risks and exercise the courage it involves. If not, attachment and its vicious cycles of defensive-aggressive and counter–defensive-aggressive misunderstanding and distrust hold sway. No one has given a better explanation of the need for empathy to open oneself to the difficult transformative experience of genuine dialogue than Franz Boas, the founder of dialogical anthropology in Germany, Canada, and the United States: [T]he activities of the human mind exhibit an infinite variety of form among the peoples of the world. In order to understand these clearly, the student must endeavor to divest himself entirely of opinions and emotions based upon the peculiar social environment into which he is born. He must adapt his own mind, so far as feasible, to that of the people whom he is studying. The more successful he is in freeing himself from the bias based on the group of ideas that constitute the civilization in which he lives, the more successful he will be in interpreting the beliefs and actions of man. He must follow lines of thought that are new to him. He must participate in new emotions, and understand how, under unwonted conditions, both lead to action.48

There are four more or less sequentially learned modes of empathy in dialogical interactions: (1) the coupling or pairing of one’s living body with others’ living bodies in perception and interaction in the course of dialogue

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(affective and sensorimotor coupling); (2) the imaginary movement of transposition of oneself into the places of other partners in dialogue (imaimaginary transposition); (3) the perspectival understanding of dialogue partners as others to oneself and of oneself as another to them (mutual selfand other-understanding); (4) the ethical realization of the partners as ethical beings, similar in this regard to oneself (ethical awareness).49 There are two distinct ways in which the movement of imaginary transposition, of putting oneself in the shoes of another, is understood.50 In the first, “false” empathy, a person imagines herself or himself in the shoes of another but does not change their self-understanding. This move displaces the other and discloses the other’s situation through their own, transposed, parochial worldview, masquerading as universal, thereby bypassing deparochialization. In the second, genuine, Boasian empathy, through participation in genuine dialogue, partners are mutually drawn out, and draw themselves out, of their prejudgments and drawn imaginatively into the lived experiences and lifeworlds of each other, as much as is humanly possible. This empathetic experience is imaginary transposition into another mode of being in the world with others. It is a “limit experience” in the double sense of neither complete departure from the limits of one’s own lifeworld nor complete assimilation into the lifeworld of other partners but a kind of intermediacy: being-with (Mitsein). The first point of empathetic imaginary transposition for comparative political thought is that it is not possible to know (or even to imagine) how to treat another concrete human being as an ethical human being unless we come to understand their suffering and well-being as they experience and articulate them in their traditional ways – in comparison with others. The ethical norms of “treating each other as ends rather than means” or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” either hang in the air as vague, universal pronouncements or are operationalized by linking them to the background prejudgments of the theorist, policy specialist, or activist.51 Nonattachment and empathy deparochialize this imperious disposition and enable the mutual understanding that is the basis of appropriate ethical and political action. It may seem that empathy is necessary in practical dialogues but inappropriate for dialogues with theoretical texts and traditions of political thought. I demur. Quentin Skinner and Sheldon Wolin have shown in different ways that political theories are written by living authors deeply engaged in responding to problems of injustice (suffering) and justice (well-being) of their times. Understanding texts in the ways that they were understood at the time, or in different contexts, requires explicating

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the problems and their contexts and enabling readers to imaginatively transpose themselves into them. This differs in degree but not in kind from real-time dialogues.52 Empathetic imaginary transposition is not only the basis for reciprocal understanding. Meditation on the experience of other ways of being begins to bring to awareness the interconnectedness and interdependency of all the participants and, by extension, all human beings. This is the infinite variety of forms of being human Boas mentions. Ways of life of humans are seen perspectivally, as one moves around – not as independent, all the same, nor antagonistic but, rather, as interconnected and interdependent by virtue of infinitely complex webs of similarities and dissimilarities expressed in the languages of the world. This is the participatory experience of diversity awareness, of the lifeworld as a multiverse rather than universe, and of being-human as both being-there (Dasein) and being-with (Mitsein). This experience is expressed in different ways in many traditions.53 For example, Thich Nhat Hanh refers to this experience as “interbeing,” his translation of Tiep Hien. He too argues that it comes to awareness through meditation, deep listening, empathy, and mutual understanding.54 As ecologists and political ecologists argue, imaginary transposition can be extended through dialogues with nonhuman lifeforms: animals, plants, ecosystems, and the living earth as a whole (Gaia). These are participatory dialogues within and with the places in which political thought, traditions, and practices take place and on which they depend for their well-being. With deep listening, we too can imaginatively “think like a mountain,” as Aldo Leopold argued we must do to save the planet, as Indigenous peoples have been doing for thousands of years, and as teachers and students are learning to do today.55 This experience of interconnectedness and interdependency calls into the space of questions the presupposition of much of modern Western political thought that humans are basically independent and antagonistic. From the empathetic dialogue perspective, this presupposition appears to be the manifestation of an underlying attachment (shenpa) to the modern Western worldview as a whole – an aggressive refusal of nonattachment, openness, empathetic dialogue, and so of deparochialization. It is important not to conflate empathy and compassion. Empathy enables mutual understanding and awareness of interdependency through dialogue. However, it does not provide motivation for acting together in response to the sufferings and injustices that empathetic dialogue discloses. This requires the further step of compassion. Compassion is the

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cognitive, sensible, and emotional repertoire of dispositional capacities that moves humans from mutual understanding of concrete situations of suffering to appropriate forms of mutual action in response.56 Compassion means sharing the passions of suffering and well-being with others, not only imaginatively, as with empathy, but actually, in modes of acting ethically and politically together. It comes into praxis through empathy and dialogues of reciprocal elucidation. In summary, deep listening and empathetic dialogue bring forth the dawning awareness of an ethical attitude or orientation among participants of being members in a world of human diversity and biodiversity. In contrast, the dominant tradition of modern moral and political theory, from Socrates to Habermas, discloses the world from a basically legislative stance. As a result, dialogue takes place within this juridical orientation of universalization, obligation, and coercion, displacing empathetic dialogue, reciprocal elucidation, and compassion. Both Peter Kropotkin and Albert Schweitzer argued that the modern ethical orientation of being-in-the-world-with diverse others developed in response to the parochialism and resulting injustices of the legislative orientation, and many have followed in their footsteps.57 This ethical orientation to comparative political thought is a manifestation of an ethical maxim common to many ethical and spiritual traditions: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As we have seen, there are two ways to interpret this norm. The first is the false – imperial colonizing or parochial – way of transposing yourself and your traditional worldview into the shoes of the other and thus arguing that others and their institutions should be made over in your image, for this is what you would want. This is the standard modernist moral justification of both imperial globalization and violent resistances to it.58 The second is the genuine way of deep listening and empathetic dialogue. It assumes that what human beings would want to have done to them is for others not to impose their ways on them but, rather, to listen carefully to their own understanding of the situation they inhabit, in their own ways and traditions, until they imaginatively understand it as much as is humanly possible, then, in reciprocity, enter into a dialogue of comparison and contrast with other similar and dissimilar situations to work up good responses. The ethical orientation lays the indispensable groundwork for one of the oldest political norms in the Western tradition, “what touches all must be agreed to by all,” as well as the more current, “all affected should have a say (and often a hand) in the exercise of power.” As Schweitzer argued, it brings into being a basic “reverence for all forms of life.”59

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2.9 reciprocal elucidation and transformation All concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated elude definition: only that which has not history is definable. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

The previous sections survey the complex conditions or stage-setting of the central activity of dialogical comparative political thought: translation. Translation brings with it an additional set of conditions that need to be borne in mind by participants along with the previous ones. Translators today are situated in the dense relationships of translation constituted by the last 500 years of translation across traditions among translators from hegemonic societies and the counter-translations of translators from subalternized societies (”writing-back”). That is, relationships of translation and counter-translation are located within the larger global “contrapuntal ensemble,” as Edward Said called it.60 These are not simple self/other relationships of translation. Translators are situated within an ensemble of different ways of using the language of political thought in their own societies along intersectional lines of inequality and difference – class, gender, ethnicity, race, region, language, sexual orientation, settler/indigeneity – and, at the same time, they are translating spoken and written texts from similarly complex societies.61 These inequalities and differences are now so great that there is often little communication or understanding across them. The interweaving of political thought and traditions is yet more complex, due to the vast increase in “diffusion” since Boas and brought about by immigration from former colonies to metropole societies under postcolonial conditions, and vice versa, and the deeper penetration of settler-colonial societies, such as Canada and the United States, into the still colonized Indigenous Fourth World. Furthermore, the “networkization” of global communication; the global spread of capitalist modes of production, commodification, strategic-instrumental forms of thought, subjectivity, and dialogue; the rise of institutions of global governance; the spread of international law and its presumptively universal language of commerce, human rights, and the good life; and the militarization of conflict and conflict resolution all bring with them complex relationships of communication.62 The great dangers in this situation are not only incomprehension and misunderstanding due to inequality and difference. They also include the ever present danger of the reign of a global network Esperanto that brings about, at best, a fast-time listening and superficial communication but not

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understanding. Interlocutors often use the same words, and so presume they understand each other, but, as we have seen, they understand the words differently because they interpret them in light of their own background form, or forms, of life. Or they can barely cling to a meaningful form of life, as in the massive cases of impoverishment, forced migration, war refugees, climate refugees, and genocide. In addition to the proliferation of strategic-instrumental and legislative dialogues, another danger is what might be called the dialogue of hegemonic ventriloquism, in which the more powerful partners consult with and listen to the less-powerful others and then translate what they hear into the presumptively universal or higher language of their hegemonic discourses.63 Yet another danger is the influence neoliberal universities that promote many of these trends have on academic research.64 Bearing all these conditions and dangers of translation in mind, what are the distinctive features of translation dialogues of transformative reciprocal elucidation? First, participation in translation dialogues of reciprocal elucidation “elucidates” or clarifies texts being translated in light of their contexts. In so doing, participants “enlighten” or bring enlightenment to each other.65 This is a transformative experience consisting of the following six steps. Through dialogue, they: (1) free each other partially from deep attachment to their worldviews; (2) move each other around to see the phenomenon (text) in question from each others’ perspectives as much as humanly possible; (3) from these other perspectives each sees their own and others’ perspectives as limited perspectives (mutual deparochialization); (4) through further dialogue, they come to see similarities or commonalities, as well as dissimilarities, in the different ways they disclose the phenomenon from different perspectives; (5) they then go on to exchange critical and comparative judgments and to see if these too share commonalities through negotiation or deliberation; and (6) thus, participation in this dialogical work of translation transforms and transposes the participants into its nonviolent, conciliatory mode of being-in-the-world-with-others and, eo ipso, into the pluriverse that participation brings to light. This is the dialogical deparochialization of, and alternative to, the monological tradition of enlightenment and cosmopolitanism.66 The most important set of capabilities that participants acquire through participation – in addition to deep listening, empathy, and, eventually, compassion – is called the intersubjective virtue of the courage of truthfulness: parrhesia and satyagraha. “Parrhesia” is the Greek term for this virtue.67 “Satyagraha” is the term Gandhi invented to characterize holding

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on to and being moved by (graha) truthfulness (satya) in everything one says and does.68 The first and best-known feature of this intersubjective virtue is the disciplined capacity to speak as truthfully as possible. This is not to speak “the truth,” as it is commonly translated, for the obvious reason that participation in dialogue teaches the partners that no one person or tradition knows the whole truth but only a limited perspective on it. Each participant needs the participation of all others, also speaking truthfully, to get as close to the truth as is humanly possible by sharing perspectives. They are interdependent in this radical sense. The second, less known yet equally crucial, reciprocal feature is the courage to listen truthfully to what the others are saying no matter how difficult this is – that is, deeply and openly by means of nonattachment. When speakers and listeners exercise these reciprocal kinds of courage of truthfulness in taking turns, a third feature comes into being: a “parrhesiastic pact.”69 This is just the term for a genuine dialogical relationship among them. Being reciprocally truthful binds the parrhesiastic partners together in the search for truth. Each dialogue with others who see the situation differently is an “experiment in truth,” in Gandhi’s famous phrase.70 Next, how do truth-seeking participants proceed to bring about mutual understanding? The translating participants elucidate the phenomena (texts) in question (Q) by drawing analogies and dis-analogies to other phenomena with which the listeners are already familiar (F). They suggest, for example, that Q is similar to F in their tradition in the following aspects yet dissimilar in other aspects. The two phenomena Q and F share what Wittgenstein calls one or more “family resemblances,” just as members of families share different characteristics, but none is common to all members. A similarity is a criterion, or set of criteria, for identifying Q and F among the whole cluster of contestable criteria used to identify Q and F. The dialogue continues with other analogies and dis-analogies, similarities and dissimilarities, with different phenomena of comparison and contrast, until a whole web of crisscrossing and overlapping similarities and dissimilarities between Q and a series of Fs comes to light. Each similarity and dissimilarity forms an “intermediate step” that enables listeners and questioners to begin to get a sense of the meaning of Q in its traditional contexts relative to their own. These intermediate steps enable these partners to “see connections” between the phenomenon in question and the phenomena invoked in comparison and contrast. That is, they begin to see how Q is used in various contexts and shades of meaning and so begin to acquire the ability to use the concept themselves – to

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understand it in its context. These are steps one and two in reciprocal elucidation. The reason why participants are able to acquire this kind of participatory ability and mutual understanding of other texts and traditions of political thought is that, mutatis mutandis, this is how humans acquire the ability to use and understand language in general. According to this view, humans acquire these abilities through examples and practice, not through the acquisition of a rule stating the necessary and sufficient criteria for the application of the concept in every case, because there is no such essential set of criteria. Wittgenstein illustrates this thesis by taking his readers through various examples of games, showing that there is no one criterion common to all of them but that similar and dissimilar criteria are invoked in different instances of games. He concludes: “we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.” He then goes on to show how participants learn meaning-in-use through examples and practice. They not only learn how concepts are used in different contexts by invoking crisscrossing and overlapping criteria; they also go on to learn how to give contextual reasons to contest habitual uses and to present novel uses. The dialogical work of translation is the extension of this ability to learn meaning-in-use by means of examples and practice in different traditions of political thought and to present translations of them that bring understanding to others. Wittgenstein calls such a translation a “surveyable representation” (uebersichtliche Darstellung) that brings understanding in the sense of “diversity-awareness” or “seeing-as.”71 As we have seen, interpretation and translation of particular “texts” has to include interpretation and translation of the contexts in which they make sense. This is especially important in comparative political thought. Political contests over the practices of politics are always also over the languages of political thought that are used to describe, evaluate, defend, and contest these practices. This ongoing contestedness of political concepts explains why Nietzsche says they have histories, not definitions. Translation dialogues of reciprocal elucidation are no exception. They too are in these relations of contestation, of agreement and disagreement, of understanding and misunderstanding, of the languages of politics.72 They bring to this field a distinctive nonviolent way of contestation. The acquisition of the abilities of mutual judgment is much the same as mutual understanding. Practitioners of languages of political thought are always already involved in judgments because political concepts are never purely descriptive. They are terms that describe and evaluate at the same

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time: they “characterize” the phenomena. Think of “democracy,” “freedom,” “oppression,” and so on. In addition, in learning how to use a concept in various contexts, they learn judgments of correct and incorrect uses, and how to give reasons to contest, criticize, and legitimate dominate uses, as well as to extend the use of concepts in new ways and give reasons pro and contra. Moreover, in dialogues of reciprocal elucidation, standards and ways of judging are placed in the intersubjective space of translation and compared and contrasted, as in mutual understanding. Comparative insights and limits and strengths and weaknesses of various types of judgment are brought to light from various perspectives and the family resemblances and dissimilarities among them explored. When people learn a language or tradition of political thought, they learn how to make judgments and counter-judgments, critique and counter-critique within a background structure of prejudgments that constitutes a worldview or form of representation.73 As participants move through the six steps of translation dialogues of reciprocal elucidation, they free each other from their background prejudgments to varying degrees and draw them into the foreground of comparison and critique. The revolutionary feature of mutual understanding and mutual judgment is that they are not oriented to transcending the multiplicity of traditions and languages of political thought in order to understand and judge them from a universal viewpoint. They aim to deparochialize and detranscendentalize this imperious disposition and place it in the field where it belongs, with other limited viewpoints. They orient the participants to learn how to understand and judge multiperspectivally from within the lifeworld of living theories, traditions, practices, and places of comparative political thought by learning their way around within them and with each other. It is the practice of a worldly, immanent critique. The practice of translation dialogues of reciprocal elucidation can be illustrated by three examples. Boaventura de Sousa Santos sees the “work of translation” as the disclosure of the political world as a pluriverse capable of being disclosed from multiple modes of disclosure in comparison with each other. He uses the example of the work of translating concerns over human dignity in terms of the Western concept of human rights, the Islamic concept of umma, and the Hindu concept of dharma.74 In this case, the work of translation will reveal the reciprocal shortcomings or weaknesses of each one of these conceptions of human dignity once viewed from the perspective of any other conception. Thereby, a space is opened in the contact zone for dialogue and mutual understanding and for

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identification, over and above conceptual and terminological differences, of commonalities from which practical combinations for action can emerge. The lifelong work of Dennis Dalton in translating Gandhi’s political thought is an exemplar of the reciprocal elucidation approach. He carefully situates Gandhi’s political thought and practice in the historical context of Indian traditions and shows what is traditional and what is novel. He then compares and contrasts these translations and interpretations of Gandhi’s thought and practice with equally careful, contextual interpretations of similar and dissimilar political thought and practice in the West. Readers are thus able to come to understand such complex concepts and practices as swaraj and swadeshi by way of their similarities and dissimilarities with freedom and economic self-reliance in Western traditions and thus go on to make comparative judgments themselves.75 Last but not least, the most famous example of a decolonizing dialogue of reciprocal elucidation of comparative political thought is Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj of 1909.76 In summary, mutual understanding and judgment that can be achieved in dialogues of reciprocal elucidation is neither a comprehensive view nor a consensus. It consists in bringing to light background forms and ways of thought and being from various traditions and becoming able to view and discuss them comparatively from different limited perspectives. They become meaningful for the participants. This is what Gadamer calls the “fusion of horizons” and Bohm describes as the exposing and sharing of tacit meanings in common in dialogue.77 The diverse forms and ways of thought and being are no longer isolated and foreign. They are meaningful precisely because the participants have elucidated the webs of similarities and dissimilarities (family resemblances) that connect them in their diversity. To borrow a metaphor from Wittgenstein, the languages of comparative political thought compose a “labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.”78 The participants in a dialogue of reciprocal elucidation learn their way around the places and connecting paths, and the labyrinth becomes full of meaning to them. Thus, a “genuine dialogue” of reciprocal elucidation is meaningful in this sense. The “dia” in “dialogue” does not mean “two.” It means to partake in and of logos (meaning) with others.79 Dialogues of reciprocal enlightenment exist in many cultures, and they too exhibit webs of family resemblances and dissimilarities. For example, in many Indigenous North American traditions, there are somewhat

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similar practices of dialogue that bring about similar transformative meaningfulness among participants. This is often called “being of one mind.” To begin, they usually give thanks in reciprocity to Mother Earth for all the interdependent ecological relationships of gift-reciprocity (symbiosis) that sustain life.80 Then they listen carefully and quietly to each other’s stories of where they come from and how they see from their different perspectives the situation that has brought them together. They understand these dialogue relationships as gift-reciprocity relationships, derived from dialogues with the living earth. The Nootka word for participation in such dialogues on the Northwest coast is “Pa-chitle” (tr. Potlatch), the verb “to give.”81 Moreover, within stories, there is usually a character, such as Raven on the Northwest Coast, who has the ability to transform him- or herself into the ways of thought and being of other living beings, human and more-than-human. The gift exchange of stories and mask dances transform the listeners into the ways of life narrated in the stories. Through engagement in these dialogues, they become able to understand and share all the different meanings of their situation in common. This is to be of one mind. It lays the groundwork for negotiating and acting together in response to the situation they share.82 Finally, dialogues of reciprocal elucidation have a purpose beyond mutual understanding and mutual judgment. First, the intersubjective world of shared meanings brings to light ways of thinking, judging, deliberating, and acting together in response to the situation they share that were unimaginable and unthinkable prior to the dialogue. This is often the practical reason for the dialogue. According to Aeschylus and Protagoras, the democratic system of justice in the West was founded on this insight.83 Even more importantly, the complex repertoire of nonviolent, contestatory, and conciliatory ways of being-with-each-other that the participants acquire in dialogue prefigure and dispose the participants to relate to others in similar ways when they respond to suffering, disagreement, and conflict in the lifeworlds they inhabit. In taking this further, compassionate step, they become the change they experience in dialogue. They extend nonviolent practices of deparochializing political thought into the world of nonviolent practices of deparochializing and transforming unjust political relations.84

notes 1. Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 8–9. For my interpretation of this aim, see

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3.

4.

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8.

9.

James Tully James Tully, “To Think and Act Differently,” in Public Philosophy in a New Key (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1:71–132. I borrow the term “genuine” dialogue from the conference agenda. I mean by this term the type of dialogue I describe in this article. The participants engage in genuinely trying to understand each other and their concerns. I take this to mean what most people mean by a “meaningful” dialogue. See Section 2.9 for this sense of “meaningful.” I discuss the points in this and the following section in more detail in James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) and in dialogue in James Tully, On Global Citizenship: James Tully in Dialogue (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) and Robert Nichols and Jakeet Singh, eds., Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context (New York: Routledge, 2014). I sometimes use “conversation” and “dialogue” interchangeably to emphasize that these conversations occur in everyday interactions. However, “conversation” is the broader term, including everyday dialogues that include some but not all of the conditions of genuine dialogue, yet are the intersubjective ground of genuine dialogue. For this type of distinction, see Anthony Laden, Reasoning: A Social Picture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1999), especially 341–380. For interpretations of Gadamer close to my own, see Nicholas Davey, Unquiet Understanding: Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006) and Bruce Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). This is the central insight of Martin Heidegger’s early Being and Time, and it became the starting point for Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and the field of phenomenology as well as for Gadamer. Ludwig Wittgenstein states that it is the central problem he addresses in the Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2009), 109–115. He uses the terms “picture” and “form of representation” for mode of disclosure. Fritjof Capra and Pier L. Luisi, The Systems View of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Sean Esbjorn-Hargens and Michael E. Zimmerman, Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World (Boston: Integral Books, 2009). Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man (New York: Macmillian, 1911). In this classic text and his methodological articles, Boas used the example of how the unjust treatment of Indigenous peoples of the Northwest coast of North America by Europeans was redescribed by them in ways that legitimated it to explain how secondary explanations function. See James Tully, “Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas: Anthropology, Equality/Diversity and World Peace,” in Ned Blackhawk and Isaiah Wilner, eds, Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, trans. Franklin Philip (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

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10. This is a central problem of the Kantian tradition. See Amy Allen, The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 11. Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Means to Real Peace,” in “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” in Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), remark 284, 380–381. 12. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, 1970). For a recent restatement, see Craig Dilworth, Too Smart for Our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 13. The anthropologist Wade Davis estimates that there are roughly 7000 traditions around the world: The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2009). 14. See David Bohm, On Dialogue (London: Routledge, 2014) for this sixth, crucial feature, and Alison Mountz et al., “For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University,” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 14, no. 4 (2015): 1235–1259, http://142.207.145.31/index.php/acme/article/view/1058/1141. 15. One of the best-known examples of an attempt at dialogues across traditions as a worldwide educational project is the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. It was set up by Turkey and Spain after September 11, 2001, to replace the military clash of civilizations with a dialogue of civilizations through cross-civilization education in dialogue from an early age. I was involved in the early drafting, and I draw on this experience. See United Nations Report on the High Level Group on The Alliance of Civilizations (2006), www.unaoc.org, accessed December 31, 2019. 16. See Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide (London: Taylor and Francis, 2015); Madina V. Tlostanova and Walter D. Mignolo, Learning to Unlearn: Decolonial Reflections from Eurasia and the Americas (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012); Allen, The End of Progress; Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) for provincialization; Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, 1:15–132, 2:125–222 for de-imperialization; and Robert Nichols, The World of Freedom: Heidegger, Foucault, and the Politics of Historical Ontology (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014) for the problem of deparochialization of Western philosophy through Heidegger and Foucault. 17. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (New York: Random House, 1996), 93–136. 18. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998), 175–206. 19. Plato,“The Apology,” in The Trial and Death of Socrates, trans. George M. A. Grube (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1975), 24b–25c. 20. Socrates embodies the courage of truthfulness and the dialogical way of practicing it. He (or Plato) does not recognize the perspectival character of all individual practical knowledge claims (including his) and thus the need for

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21.

22.

23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

James Tully the dialogical (democratic) negotiation of them to reach a truth acceptable to all, whereas Meletus and Protagoras (and the rhetorical tradition) do realize this. See Hannah Arendt,“Socrates,” in Jerome Kohn, ed., The Promise of Politics (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 5–40; Gadamer, Truth and Method, 355; and Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) on the rhetorical tradition that follows from Aristotle on practical knowledge; and Section 2.9 of this chapter. Michael Temelini, Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015) presents a careful survey of this tradition. Wittgenstein cites Socrates for the craving for generality and disregard of particular cases in The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), 20, 26–27. For an introduction to this scholarship, inspired by Edward Said and Michel Foucault among others, see Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, vol. 2, and Nichols and Singh, Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context. In the modern period, Johann Herder was among the first to articulate this critical step in his response to the imperialism of Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy and European political theory more generally. See Frederick M. Barnard, ed., Herder on Nationality, Humanity and History (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2003). Kant’s replies are in Immanuel Kant, Political Writings, ed. Hans S. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 192–220. See Temelini, Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics; Laden, Reasoning; and Section 2.8 of this chapter. See de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South. James Tully, “On the Global Multiplicity of Public Spheres,” in Christian J. Emden and David Midgley, eds., Beyond Habermas: Democracy, Knowledge and the Public Sphere (New York: Berghahn, 2013), 169–204; Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, 1:291–316. I will continue to use “text” for the broad range of phenomena that are interpreted, translated, and discussed in dialogues, such as political thought, speech, enactments, practices and activities, problems, traditions, and places. This is for the sake of simplicity, not to privilege written texts. Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, 155–191. The diffusion thesis is associated with Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and Adolf Bastian (1826–1905). These features of traditions are discussed by Wittgenstein in On Certainty, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974). See Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, 1:39–70. For a detailed examination of the possibility of foregrounding and mutual understanding in early modern treaty dialogues between Indigenous people and European settlers in North America, see Michael Asch, On Being Here to Stay (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). Gadamer, Truth and Method, 341–357; Bohm, On Dialogue, 70–95. See Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2011) for the origins of this ethical virtue in the West. See Section 2.8 of this chapter.

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32. David Scott, “Traditions of Historical Others,” Symposia on Gender, Race and Philosophy 8, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 1–8, http://web.mit.edu/~sgrp/2012/ no1/Scott0412.pdf. See also Tully, On Global Citizenship, 33–84. 33. The liberal norm of inclusion and process of transitional justice often function in this way. See, e.g., Balakrishnan Rajagopal, International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements, and Third World Resistance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Anver Emon and James Tully, “Editors’ Introduction: Pluralism, Constitutionalism, and Governance,” Middle East Law and Governance 4, nos. 2–3 (2012): 189–193. 34. This is one meaning of the mantra “there is no global justice without epistemic justice.” 35. See Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 89–90. For substantiation of this view of meaning from other disciplines, see Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007) and Capra and Luisi, The Systems View of Life. Abram became aware of this view of meaning through his dialogues with Indigenous peoples in North America and Asia. 36. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 107. I am indebted to Tobold Rollo for discussions of this issue. 37. For concrete examples of how this occurs in the European Union, see Antje Wiener, The Invisible Constitution of Politics: Contested Norms and International Encounters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). She has gone on to develop a global research project on conditions of genuine dialogue. See Antje Wiener, A Theory of Contestation (Heidelberg: Springer, 2014). 38. For example, this is at the heart of community-based research and teaching with Indigenous peoples throughout Canada. The Faculty of Law and the Indigenous Governance Graduate Program at the University of Victoria have a number of exemplary programs: www.uvic.ca/igov, www.uvic.ca/law/abo ut/indigenous/indigenouslawresearchunit. 39. For example, the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political thought series, under the editorship and methodology of Quentin Skinner, classifies the texts as “thought” not theory, includes marginal texts and contextual introductions, and is expanding beyond the Western canon. 40. This has been the aim of most dialogue approaches to world understanding and peace, as, for example, in the UN Alliance of Civilizations in the 2000s (see note 16). See Kenneth R. Melchin and Cheryl A. Picard, Transforming Conflict through Insight (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2008). 41. I borrowed the term “reciprocal elucidation” from Michel Foucault, “Polemics, Politics and Problematizations,” in Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 381–390, and developed it in Tully, Strange Multiplicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). See Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, 1:15–38. 42. Nicholas Kompridis, “Receptivity, Possibility, and Democratic Politics,” Ethics and Global Politics 4, no. 4 (2011): 255–272. 43. For an excellent survey of literature on these features of deep listening and her own examples, see Emily Beausoleil, “Responsibility as Responsiveness:

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44.

45. 46.

47. 48.

49.

50.

51. 52.

53. 54.

55.

James Tully Enacting a Dispositional Ethics of Encounter,” Political Theory 45, no. 3 (2016): 291–318. See Hester Lessard, Rebecca Johnston, and Jeremy Webber, eds., Storied Communities: Narratives of Contact and Arrival in Constituting Political Community (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010); Cary Miller, “Gifts as Treaties,” American Indian Quarterly 26, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 221–246; Taiaiake Alfred, Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Peterborough: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 13–17. See further Section 2.8 of this chapter. This is a fundamental feature of the analysis of conversational reasoningtogether advanced by Laden, Reasoning. See also Bohm, On Dialogue, 24–29. For these practices of deep listening in the Engaged Buddhist tradition of conflict resolution and reconciliation, see Thich Nhat Hanh, Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism (Berkeley, CA: Parallax, 1993). Pema Chodron, Practicing Peace in Times of War (Boston: Shambala, 2007), 55–56. Compare Bohm, On Dialogue, 27–29. Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, 98. See James Tully, “Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas,” and Isaiah Wilner, “A Global Potlatch: Identifying Indigenous Influence on Western Thought,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 37, no. 2 (2013): 87–114. For the neuroscience, phenomenological, and ethical research that substantiates this account of empathy, see Thompson, Mind in Life, 382–412, and Mark Johnson, Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993). Obviously, the first step does not apply in the dialogue with written texts, but, as we have seen, these are often based on embodied dialogues in the field. For a recent survey of the vast contemporary literature on these two senses of empathy, and the popularity of the false sense, to which I am indebted, see Rebeccah J. Nelems, “What Is This Thing Called Empathy?,” in Rebecca J. Nelems and L. J. Theo, eds., Exploring Empathy (Leiden: Brill, 2018). This is the main thesis of Johnson, Moral Imagination. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics: Volume I: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). See Temelini, Wittgenstein and the Study of Politics, for a study of this experience in Wittgenstein. Thich Nhat Hanh (1987). See also Nelems, “What Is This Thing Called Empathy?”; Thompson, Mind in Life; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald A. Landes (London: Routledge, 2012). See Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 137–41; Stephan Harding, Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia (Cambridge, MA: Green Books, 2013), 35–62; Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 73–92.

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56. See, e.g., Dalai Lama, Beyond Religion: Ethics for the Whole World (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2012); Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Basis of Morals,” in Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, trans. David E. Cartwright and Edward E. Erdmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 210–275. 57. Petr Kropotkin, Ethics: Origin and Development (London: George F. Harrap, 1924); Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics (London: A & C Black, 1946). For more recent work, see references in notes 57–68, and for a comparative discussion, see Michael Lambek, Veena Das, Didier Fassin, and Webb Keane, Four Lectures on Ethics: Anthropological Perspectives (Chicago: Hau Books, 2015). 58. See James Tully, “Rethinking Human Rights and Enlightenment,” in Kate E. Tunstall, ed., Self-Evident Truths? Human Rights and the Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 3–35; Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, 2:127–165, and Sections 2.2–2.3 of this chapter. 59. Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics, 240–260. 60. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993). 61. Rita Dhamoon, Identity/Difference Politics: How Difference Is Produced and Why It Matters (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009); Eve Tuck and K. Wyane Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigenity, Education, Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40, http://decolonization.org/index .php/des/article/view/18630. 62. James Tully, “Communication and Imperialism,” in Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker, eds., Critical Digital Studies, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 257–282. 63. This is perhaps the most common form of colonizing translation, which includes only to subordinate and assimilate, while allowing a patina of multicultural differences to be recognized and celebrated. See Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, 1:291–316. 64. Mountz et al., “For Slow Scholarship.” 65. Enlightenment in French, L’Éclaircissement, has these two senses as well, and Foucault probably had this in mind when he coined the phrase “reciprocal elucidation” (Foucault 1986: 381–390). 66. See James Tully, “Diverse Enlightenments,” Economy and Society 32, no. 3 (2003): 485–505. For an influential articulation of a dialogue view of enlightenment, see Martin Buber, I-Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1970), and Between Man and Man (London: Routledge, 1993). 67. See Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech (Los Angeles: Semiotext, 2001); Foucault, The Courage of Truth; Marcel Hénaff, The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, and Philosophy, trans. Jean-Louis Morhange (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 101–155. 68. See Mohandas K. Gandhi, Satyagraha: Non-Violent Resistance (Boston: Shocken, 1961); Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 12–30. 69. Foucault, Fearless Speech, 11–20.

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70. Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (London: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2011). 71. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 65–68, 122. 72. See David Owen, “Reasons and Practices of Reasoning: On the Analytic/ Continental Distinction in Political Philosophy,” European Journal of Political Theory 15, no. 2 (2016): 172–188. 73. Wittgenstein explores the learning and questioning of judgments in On Certainty, remarks 104–152. 74. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “The Future of the World Social Forum: The Work of Translation,” Development 48, no. 2 (2005): 15–22, 17. 75. See Rachel F. McDermott, Leonard A. Gordon, Ainslie T. Embree, Frances W. Pritchett, and Dennis Dalton, Sources of Indian Traditions, vol. 2, 3rd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 183–452; Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi; and Dennis Dalton, “Gandhi’s Significance at the Center of Indian Political Discourse” (lecture, Gandhi Workshop, Reed College, Portland, OR, April 16, 2016). 76. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. Anthony J. Parel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 77. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 306–307; Bohm, On Dialogue, 29–31. For a careful analysis of this “limit experience” in the case of Foucault (and Max Weber), see Arpad Szakolczai, Max Weber and Michel Foucault: Parallel Life-Works (London: Routledge, 1998). 78. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 203; emphasis in original. 79. Bohm, On Dialogue, 6–7. 80. See, e.g., the Rotinoshonni Thanksgiving Address of the Haudenosaunee in Alfred, Wasase, 13–17. 81. George Clutesi, Potlatch (Vancouver: Sidney, 1969), 9–10. 82. See John Borrows (Kegedonce), Drawing Out Law: A Spirit’s Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010); Robin W. Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2013); Richard Atleo Sr. (Umeek), Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1996); Wilner, “A Global Potlatch”; Valerie R. Napoleon, Ayook: Gitksan Legal Order, Law and Legal Theory (Ph.D. dissertation, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, 2009); Vernon Wilson, A Post-Delgamuukw Philosophical Feast: Feeding the Ancestral Desire for Peaceful Coexistence (MA thesis, Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, 2015). 83. Athenians introduced the jury system when they realized that a single agent could not judge justly and devolved judgment to the demos in the form of juries: Aeschylus, “Eumenides,” in Oresteia, trans. Alan Sommerstein (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), and Desmond Manderson, “Athena’s Way: The Jurisprudence of the Oresteia,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 15, no. 1 (2019): 253–276 for this interpretation; Plato, Protagoras, ed. Gregory Vlastos (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill, 1956). 84. Gandhi’s nonviolent mode of contesting and transforming violent oppressors, Satyagraha, for example, is interpreted in this way by Gandhi’s friend

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Richard Gregg, in The Power of Nonviolence (London: Routledge, 1935), 43–65. For an enlightening example of how to take dialogues of reciprocal elucidation into the world of cooperative responses to neoliberal globalization, see Pablo Ouziel, Vamos Lentos Porque Vamos Lejos: Towards a Dialogical Understanding of Spain’s 15M (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, 2015).

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3 Recentering Political Theory, Revisited On Mobile Locality, General Applicability, and the Future of Comparative Political Theory Leigh K. Jenco

3.1 introduction In this post-universalist era, the idea of providing guidance for culturally different communities and individuals is rightly condemned as imperialist. Yet this very recognition of cultural limitations ironically encourages further Eurocentrism: fearful of making imperialist claims about political life that apply to all, many contemporary theorists carefully qualify the reach of the problems they examine and the applicability of the normative theories they propose. How may this vicious cycle be truncated? This volume attempts to engage this problem at various points, as part of an emerging body of research in comparative political theory (CPT). CPT joins postcolonial studies, feminism, and subaltern studies to suggest that more sensitively calibrated forms of inclusion may deparochialize our political thinking, without replicating the homogenizing universalism of earlier centuries. Painfully aware that they are situated within the privileged cultural frames of the modern West, comparative political theorists identify their struggle in terms of understanding differently situated others, amid power disparities created by colonialism, American hegemony, and the global flow of capital. While agreeing with the general scope and point of this volume, I hope to identify in this chapter some of the sticking points that prevent CPT from

This chapter is a revised version of an article originally published as “Recentering Political Theory: The Promise of Mobile Locality,” in Cultural Critique 79, no. 79 (Fall 2011): 27–59. I would like to thank Murad Idris and Megan Thomas, for inspiring conversations in the meantime, and Wu Chan-liang, my host during my visiting position at National Taiwan University, for his insight and encouragement of this project. I am also grateful to the University of Minnesota for granting permission to republish.

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advancing a more radical critique in the field of political science and political theory. There are at least two such sticking points, and this chapter hopes to offer an alternative theorization that works past both of them. The first sticking point is the failure of CPT to congeal into an internally selfreferential, cumulative body of substantive knowledge that goes beyond methodological considerations toward formulating more broadly relevant research questions about political life. Recently published work in CPT, particularly work focused on how or if we are to engage so-called nonWestern thought, continues to proceed largely without specific reference to the very bodies of excluded thought it asks the discipline to engage.1 That is, its own arguments about methodology proceed without any actual reference to the “non-Western” ideas or voices such a methodology is meant to access.2 More worryingly, there is little reference in such work to the limited but growing scholarship that does attempt sensitively calibrated, contextually sophisticated examinations of thought that has historically been marginalized in political theory. This failure to engage the substantive contributions of such work – most prominently its ongoing exploration of the kinds of normative claims that might be made within and against the teleological category of “modernity”3 or amid the uneven, contested formation of rationalized secular institutions in postcolonial societies4 – leads scholars such as El Amine to conclude that much work in CPT has “outlived its usefulness.”5 According to El Amine, this is due to the fact that global adoption of the state form now means there is only one suitable response . . . to modern state oppression, and this response has to deploy the network of concepts that accompanied the coming of the modern state: constitutionalism, law, rights, and democracy. Confucian rituals will not work as a response to modern inequalities, and the Islamic dhimma system will not be a plausible answer to modern multiculturalism.6

A more coherent and durable body of scholarship might have preempted such simplistic dismissals, through the compelling accumulation of work in political theory that would perhaps demonstrate the lack of global convergence on a single state form or the irreducible value to contemporary political life of the ideas (such as Confucian ritual) that El Amine would confine to “pre-modernity.”7 Yet the apparent lack of such coherence may explain why, increasingly, scholars who self-consciously situate themselves outside CPT feel compelled (or entitled) to pronounce redemptively upon the direction, scope, and purpose of this field.8 The second sticking point is more complex, having less to do with the sociology of the field of CPT as it has developed so far and more to do

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with the intellectual project of CPT itself, particularly how it engages the tension between universalism and contextualized knowledge that motivated emergence of the field in the first place. This second sticking point – which I would call an overemphasis on the constraints of context – is in some ways the converse of the first, and it forms the primary focus of this chapter. Many of the more sophisticated attempts to counter the Eurocentrism of political theory and other disciplines insist that we cannot displace, but only “provincialize,” European thought categories (to use Dipesh Chakrabarty’s phrase9), for their persistent recurrence is presumed to be an unavoidable result of global colonial domination and of the Western theorists’ own inescapable situatedness.10 Our task, in Fred Dallmayr’s words, becomes simply “to steer a difficult path between global uniformity and radical cultural difference,” in which mutual contestation but not a radical supplanting of categories or thought traditions can take place.11 Ironically, Eurocentrism (by which I mean the cognitive hegemony of categories rooted in Western European and, to a lesser extent, American intellectual and historical experience) becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy on this view. As a destiny that can at best be negotiated but never fully overcome, it circumscribes our access to alternative terms of inquiry. As a result, non-Western materials are invoked by these studies merely to pique our “sense of wonder,”12 increase understanding of our own ideological positions,13 enhance our own cosmopolitan thinking,14 or enlarge our canon of texts.15 In this chapter, I hope to break past such sticking points by offering an alternative to engaging foreign sources of thought – which neither constructs a “third space” of dialogue or contrast16 nor assumes that we have somehow reached a state in which a presumedly “shared malaise” of modernity effectively erases meaningful cultural and political differences between the West and non-West.17 Rather, I suggest we take seriously the broader ambitions of historically marginalized (often coded “nonWestern”) thought to have wider-than-local significance. To do this, I argue, we must reconceive the “local” not as a cultural context that permanently conditions our understanding and argumentative claims but as a particularized site for the circulation of knowledge. Two examples from Asian experience – indigenization movements in China and Taiwan, and the historical practice of Sinology by Japanese and Euro-American scholars – demonstrate the analytic purchase of this recalibrated notion of locality, as they belie the widely held assumption that necessarily parochial starting points circumscribe subsequent attempts to pursue inquiry on alternative or foreign grounds. The result is not simply self-reflexivity

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about the parochialism of our own debates – producing what we may call decentered theory, already performed admirably by comparative political theorists, feminists, and postcolonial scholars, among others. I raise the more radical possibility of recentering the constitutive terms, audiences, and methods of theoretical discourse. Although Eurocentrism has long been critiqued in fields such as history, anthropology, and sociology, in this essay I primarily engage the emerging discourse of deparochialization in political theory because the process poses instructive and uniquely poignant challenges for its disciplinary selfidentity. The main reason for this is that the mission of political theory, an “unapologetically mongrel sub-discipline” of political science, is not primarily ethnographic, but normative and meta-analytic: otherwise diverse political theorists are “united by a commitment to theorize, critique, and diagnose the norms, practices, and organization of political action in the past and present, in our own places and elsewhere.”18 Whether those commitments are centered around a series of shared questions rather than answers, a set of canonical texts, a disciplinary positioning vis-à-vis political science, or a transhistorical search for the good, the field’s systematized reflections or “theories” do not seek in the first place to document or predict but to gain ameliorative traction on the political realm they simultaneously inhabit, scrutinize, and help to define. Being selfconsciously constituted by theory production, however, means that the field is open to a unique and paradoxical risk when it attempts deparochialization: it is the theories themselves – the generalizations or insights disciplined by ongoing historical and contemporary conversations about what is or should be relevant to and constitutive of political life – and not the subjects of their analyses that demand redress. The simple inclusion of more “non-Western” materials (whether case studies, voices, or canonical texts) within its disciplinary purview is not enough to disturb this level of its parochialism. Yet if it turns out that localized circulations of knowledge are not rooted but are to a certain degree mobile, as I hope to argue, then differently centered disciplines, canons, grammars of normativity, and audiences of address may threaten not only the texts but also the methodological traditions, audiences, and scholarly communities around which various schools of political theory have congealed. The result is that these alternative sites of knowledge may come to supplant even those theories, such as postcolonialism and various forms of cross-cultural comparison and inclusion, that ground contemporary methods of deparochialization; even more radically, they may come

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to replace the academic conventions and commitments that originally marked the identity of both political theory and, perhaps, “theory” as such. My examination of political theory here, then, stands not as an exhaustive study of deparochialization so much as a uniquely charged entry point into wider dilemmas with implications for theory making in a variety of other scholarly fields. Simply by calling itself “political theory,” of course, the practice proclaims its parochial origins and takes an existing disciplinary form as a given. But by accepting that its research findings may put its very self-identity at risk, recentered political theory differs from other available alternatives. It does not produce merely knowledge about how historically excluded others can remind “us” of our own specificity, nor does it trouble the finitude of categories implied by secular, rationalist social scientific approaches; rather, its knowledge becomes increasingly disciplined by resources, audiences, and concerns sited in other, globally diffuse communities that discourage return to a parochial starting point.

3.2 destabilizing the local In claiming to offer a distinct approach to cross-cultural engagement that takes historically marginalized (often coded as “non-Western”) traditions seriously as sources of theory production, my call to recenter theory implicitly criticizes existing alternatives for stopping short of this more radical goal. In much scholarly literature on cross-cultural theorizing, solutions to the problem of Eurocentrism aim primarily to draw attention to the limits and contingency of those “master signifiers” inscribed within and by dominant (often coded as “Western” or “Europeanized”) social scientific and humanistic discourse.19 This effort, pioneered and articulated by postcolonial studies, defines Eurocentrism as the projection of “the West” and its disciplinary categories as a universal measure of knowledge against which all other life-worlds or cultures must be compared.20 Confronting Eurocentrism so understood thus entails recognizing the closures, contingencies, and silences enacted within Europeanized discourse as its local categories become inscribed as universal ones. This kind of “critical work seeks its basis not without but within the fissures of dominant structures.”21 It thus aims more to mitigate what Fred Dallmayr calls the “bland universalism” accompanying colonialism and first-world capital flows22 than to engage foreign discourses as potential outside replacements for the problematic categories of Europeanized knowledge.

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Precisely because this confrontation with Eurocentrism aims at its “fissures” rather than its alternatives, the critical stance that undermines the certainty of Europeanized categories – and so enables the entry of more cosmopolitan renderings of human life-worlds – also returns the theorist to the very audience and discourse whose terms originally prompted the critique. Although addressing Eurocentrism on one level, it reconstitutes it on another: the analysis chastens Europeanized categories only insofar as it continues to inhabit them.23 Those theorists who explicitly urge the inclusion of non-Western voices in our debates about political life, including political philosophers such as Charles Taylor as well as comparative theorists such as Roxanne Euben, ground this move in an understanding of knowledge as local and rooted. In contrast to an older cosmopolitanism that promoted indiscriminate tolerance or rootless eclecticism, this “new cosmopolitanism” is characterized by its resistance to imperializing universalism, on the one hand, and its unwillingness to sacrifice the “rootedness” of individual persons within their particular cultural backgrounds, on the other.24 In this way they can resist both functionalist equivalences and universalizing ambitions – Archimedian vantage points that transform localized insight into general, “universal” knowledge – and instead seek a new space for communication across cultural differences.25 Many culturally sensitive political thinkers analogize this cosmopolitan negotiation of rooted selves to a conversation, which takes place between differently situated interlocutors to encourage mutual transformation – whether in the form of convergence, as for Bhikhu Parekh and Charles Taylor,26 or of accommodation without strict consensus, as for James Tully and Fred Dallmayr.27 Charles Taylor calls what emerges “a language of perspicuous contrast,” in which, rather than imposing “our” terms on “them,” we “formulate both their way of life and ours as alternative possibilities in relation to human constraints at work in both.”28 Hans-Georg Gadamer and those comparative political theorists influenced by him, such as Fred Dallmayr, invoke a similar process that encourages a “fusion of horizons.” These dialogic, supposedly mutually transformative encounters are conducted as often between texts as between people; they mean to facilitate mutual sympathy, grounded in the credibility of differently situated ways of life, as a means of combating universalist hegemony and hierarchical power relations.29 The dialogic approach further develops the postcolonial articulation of Eurocentrism by showing how critique can flow from both cultural locales without asserting the singular dominance that characterizes more “homogenizing” approaches.

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There are problems with this position, however, despite its important role in correcting imperializing narratives fueled by unreflective, often Western-centric universalism. Pratap Mehta, speaking of the cosmopolitan viewpoint that underlies these and other approaches to cultural difference in political theory, has insightfully pointed out that its “hermeneutic potential is greater than its transgressive possibilities.”30 That is, the encounter with otherness has enhanced the interpretive richness of our self-reflections by making us ever more aware of the silences and contingency of “our” own sources of knowledge. But it has ignored possibilities for fundamental transformations in knowledge production prompted not only by the inclusion of cases and voices that our own theories marginalize but also by shifts in the very audience, language, and resources assumed in the production of intellectual work. Roxanne Euben’s analysis of “Muslim and Western travelers in search of knowledge,” for example, gathers Muslim perspectives not to set political theory on a new track addressed to Muslim audiences disciplined by their terms of debate but to make a tripartite argument notably independent of any particular Muslim viewpoint: that “the association of travel and the pursuit of knowledge is not confined to any particular cultural constellation or epoch”; that “knowledge about what is familiar and unfamiliar is produced comparatively”; and finally that “the course and consequences of exposures to the unfamiliar are unpredictable.”31 Farah Godrej’s plea for including non-Western perspectives within a cosmopolitan political theory, similarly, does not expect to advance political theory along non-Western lines so much as enhance the discipline’s capacity for self-reflection. She recommends an immersive interpretive understanding of texts situated in non-Western cultural frames to thereby “disturb or dislocate our familiar understandings of politics,” working from the assumption that “the very movement of [a] Western reader within the ‘Western tradition’ of political theory . . . may allow her to find familiarity in these [Western] texts that eludes her in the encounter with a non-Western text.”32 Godrej and Euben are representative, but certainly not exhaustive, of how the attempt to unmask Western universalistic ambitions through localizing or “rooting” knowledge in culturally specific contexts ends up effacing the ability of historically excluded traditions or debates to discipline our own inquiry. Despite the fact that these theorists all recognize such others as theory-producing, self-reflective beings – hence their inclusion within political theory and philosophy – they paradoxically prohibit the often long-standing strains of thought that lie behind their claims from displacing the very debates or categories in Western thought recognized to

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be problematic. Rather, frameworks of comparison confine theoretical claims to their communities of origin, resulting in the paradoxical insistence by cross-cultural theorists that any project of inclusion cannot transcend its own origins in European Enlightenment thought. This is not only for the reason that European thought dominates global knowledge production – a key motivation for postcolonial theorists, whose project turns in large part on exposing the aporia of Western modernity in global settings – but because the individual Western researcher is assumed to be rooted in his or her local, Europeanized categories to such an extent that his or her understanding of non-Western ideas is permanently constrained. Indeed, this embeddedness is seen by many, including Charles Taylor, as the constitutive problem of learning across cultures,33 on the assumption that the only other alternative would be a “view from nowhere” that reinforces existing power relations by according the status quo a claim to neutrality.34 The starting assumption of these analyses is revealed to be precisely that we cannot transcend our own situated particularity radically enough to do more than, in Euben’s words, “negotiate” these other particulars, as we “disclose commonalities in the cross-cultural production of knowledge.”35 As Anglophone political theorists, we are situated always-already within the putative tradition that constitutes political theory and always-already outside of any other possibilities.

3.3 a new center for the local, or new local centers? It seems that, if we are to actualize the “transgressive possibilities” to which Mehta alludes, we must address not only the Eurocentrism that elides non-Western particularity but also that which ignores non-Western generality – the Eurocentrism which fails to take seriously alternatives to Europeanized theory as a necessary or default source for critical intellectual analysis. The need to articulate and address this second form of Eurocentrism is particularly salient now that non-Western thought, formerly relegated by regimes of colonialism to the status of particularist belief or “tradition,” is increasingly refashioned as a legitimate form of authoritative knowledge amid and against wider, global(ized) communities of argument. Although often mischaracterized as pure identity politics amounting to a “clash of civilizations,”36 intellectual movements such as Kyoto school philosophy and New Confucianism do not always confine their claims to existing members but often assume that their

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inquiry names and resolves more general human dilemmas.37 Even those movements such as Negritude or Islamic feminism, which work primarily to address the concerns of a specific group, necessarily advance more general claims about how and on whose terms their group relates to others that exist outside of it. This global reality suggests that Western-trained scholars must learn to treat engagements with foreign others as more than just case studies, whose particularities present evidence for interrogating the lapses of existing theories but not for posing original ones that are relevant or meaningful to “us.” At the same time, this move entails a paradox. We must somehow simultaneously affirm the possibility that localized discourses can formulate more widely generalizable claims, even as we recognize the internal diversity and external contestability that, in global modernity, perpetually chasten any ambitions to universalism and in some cases prompted the emergence of these intellectual movements in the first place. One way of resolving the paradox may be to interrogate the notion of rootedness or embeddedness that in many contemporary theories functions as a limiting device to excuse a perpetual return to Eurocentric categories on the part of those who already work within them, on the one hand, and to confine the wider ambitions of non-Western thought to local application, on the other. Much contemporary cross-cultural theory interprets the condition of local situatedness as the inevitable “rooting” of a researcher in the comprehensive cultural background of his or her place of origin, but this is a conception that I will argue is both unproductive and unrealistic. In this section, I explore two kinds of phenomena – indigenization movements and the historical practice of Sinology – that belie assumptions that local knowledge situates the researcher in a way that creates an insurmountable and necessary background condition for future knowledge production. These two phenomena work from opposing directions: the first resisting foreign forms of knowledge on the basis that they have comprehensively displaced native ones; and the second pursuing foreign knowledge to displace existing native knowledge. Both urge a reconsideration of how locality – the very particulars invoked in new cosmopolitan thought to resist imperialist, universalizing ambitions – may actually constrain or enable us; they suggest more transformative ways political theory may engage globally diffuse thought. These considerations inform and further justify my subsequent proposal to recenter political theory along localized communities of knowledge rather than simply assimilate them within our own self-critique.

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We may begin by noting the exemplary irony in the fact that many of those who most insist on the inescapabilty of Europeanized categories (such as Dipesh Chakrabarty, Gyan Prakash, and their fellow subaltern studies scholars) are themselves not of European or American cultural descent. It is their Anglicized (and often overseas) education, not their local contexts or countries of origin, that determine how and to what extent they participate in Anglophone academic debates – debates that, by their own insightful admission, seemingly render Indian, and much other non-Western, thought incapable of critical application to the present.38 The irony of their position can be tied to larger trends on the world stage that reveal important but often overlooked functions for local knowledge. The disconnect between scholar and subject that marks postcolonial and subaltern studies mimics the dilemma and the irony of other indigenization movements around the world, from Japan to the Philippines, which likewise challenge the dominance of foreign categories over native thought.39 These movements share a goal with the new cosmopolitan position outlined earlier in this section in that they engage “the putative generality contained explicitly or implicitly in the ‘theory’ of social sciences derived from the West by asserting the importance of, or proposing the total replacement by, the sociocultural specifics or traditions of indigenous (non-Western) contexts.”40 Yet the problem these movements address, remarkably, belies the common assumption of many comparative political theorists and philosophers that the connection between local cultural background and theoretical knowledge is insurmountably tight. Indigenization movements confront precisely the opposite dilemma: namely, when scholars from disparate parts of the world return to their native countries after receiving training abroad, they effectively become, in polemic terms, “vassals” of foreign research agendas who must overcome their condition by consciously reinserting nativist thought into their analysis.41 This phenomenon does not merely confirm claims that Europeanized categories, due to colonialism and other devices of Euro-American dominance, are somehow especially inescapable for everyone in the modern world. Some indigenization movements, including recent variants on Taiwan and ongoing critiques by Japanese of the conflation of Chinese culture with “Confucianism” (ruxue; in Japanese, jugaku), respond to the long-standing dominance of Chinese – not EuroAmerican – thought in native scholarly production.42 Regardless of their target of attack, these movements demand greater responsiveness to native conditions by local scholars on the basis of a presumed connection between scholarly research and its social, cultural, or historical context. Ironically,

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however, these movements arose precisely because no necessary connection in fact exists between context and research (or researcher) – even if dilemmas, resources, and traditions take on characteristic features when they are (as a matter of historical circumstance) localized, lending the “nativist” cause a sense of urgency and relevance. These tensions between cultural context and academic research are dramatized by one particular example of indigenization, undertaken by Chinese philosophers to recover traditional forms of inquiry and knowledge organization. The debate over the terms for such a possibility has come to be labeled the “legitimacy” (hefaxing) of Chinese philosophy.43 As one of its most prominent participants, Zheng Jiadong, describes the debate, the issue centers on whether categories from Western philosophy should or even can be used to describe traditional Chinese thought – and if and how such thought can be validated as possessing claims to knowledge without recourse to such labels.44 An earlier generation of scholars often defended “philosophy” as a capacious and fluid category capable of meaningful application to the history of Chinese thought.45 But recent participants, such as the philosophers Wei Changbao and Lin Anwu, have begun to argue that calling classical Chinese thought of whatever vintage “philosophy” is a form of “epistemic violence.” They seek to develop, as an alternative, knowledge formation using “traditional systematics” (chuantong de tili).46 These efforts include the revival of Chinese classicism and hermeneutic techniques (jingxue) associated with late Imperial debates over the interpretation of the classics, the identification of a Chinese cultural essence, and the renewed use of terms that originally structured traditional Chinese (primarily but not exclusively neoConfucian) knowledge classifications. Both sides recognize the value and relevance of so-called traditional Chinese thought (Zhongguo chuantong sixiang) for confronting modern dilemmas, counting on the pervasion of “Chinese” thought beyond the national borders once thought to contain it. The debate rests on to what extent the modern Western disciplinary terms of “philosophy,” such as metaphysics, ethics, or ontology, best articulate or can be made to develop that value. In this case, contrary to the assumptions of much contemporary political theory and other variants of the new cosmopolitan position, locality does not function as a contingent particular evacuated of externally directed, universal ambitions, nor does it decisively determine the capacity of an individual scholar to produce theory along one line rather than another. The dual goal of the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy debate, after all, is to examine if and how it is possible for Chinese philosophers to overcome the

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overwhelming influence of the contemporary discipline of philosophy on their own ways of thinking, as well as to examine and promote the value of Chinese thought for modern audiences, Sinophone and otherwise. These goals suggest ways to inscribe locality in a way that points beyond Eurocentrism of the second sort, rather than reconstitutes it. First, as with the subaltern studies and indigenization scholars, the analytic capacities of these Chinese philosophers, as well as their ultimate intellectual products, are revealed to be matters more of scholarly training, (uneven) access to resources, and intellectual temperament than of specific social/cultural backgrounds. These are not activities anyone, anywhere, is “born into” or, conversely, cannot be trained to practice – as those who advocate the indigenization of Western disciplines (or, in the Japanese case, the identification of “Chinese thought” with “Confucianism”) have discovered to their dismay. Far from portraying local particulars as confined or confining, this disconnect between location and intellectual production – specifically between thought traditions relevant to political or philosophical reflection and their spaces of origin – renders local particulars radically mobile. In fact, the ambition to formulate claims with applicability beyond the local context turns precisely on the mobility of both ideas and the discursive backgrounds that generate them. Second, this mobility does not mean locality or rooted traditions do not matter at all, however. The other half of the Chinese philosophy debate turns on localized sympathies for, and understandings of, traditional Chinese thought that in general are far more alive in Sinophone communities (if not individuals) than in, say, Francophone ones. The motives and resources for rescuing Chinese thought have indeed clustered, for a variety of historical, economic, linguistic, and social reasons, in particular (albeit diasporic) locales – even as its participants often assume that the significance of their findings extends far beyond them.47 The community’s general agreement about what constitutes significant targets and methods of research is informed and facilitated by local concerns and historically available resources; it is often, but not always, shaped by geographic immobility, linguistic accessibility, and path-dependent convention. This localized commitment ensures that these attempts at disciplined knowledge production will remain relevant to and analytically rigorous within some human society, even as the tendency to ethnocentrism is persistently undermined by the broader ambitions of its discourse amid competing, globally diffuse claims to general insight. Locality, in other words, is not some kind of permanent (albeit constantly penetrated) dwelling place that persists in shaping the

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entirety of its residents’ theorizations, even if it does mark important sites for the circulation of knowledge. Before going further, I should clarify that a focus on locality does not – as some have recently claimed of comparative political theory in general48 – recreate an East–West binary, prevent the articulation of more generally relevant insights, or inhibit the posing of globally significant questions. The more productive reading of locality I am offering here, prompted by the ironic quandary of indigenization movements, preserves it as significant for theory making not because it decisively embeds us in one way of thinking over another or draws definitive boundaries around thought and where ideas may travel. Rather, locality is significant because it often stands as a concentrated site of audiences, sympathies, and standards that generate particular kinds of reflections and render them viable in local (but possibly broader) contexts. On this view, we can accept that grounding in some context of localized discourse is necessary to ensure relevance and discipline (i.e., to take advantage of the refinements of knowledge produced by the nexus of localized concern, access to particular resources, and so on) and to facilitate particular insight within always-uneven domains of vision, without assuming that such a context must be local to where we are or begin, geographically or conceptually. If this is true, however, we would expect to find not only native thought production colonized by foreign forms but also the reverse: culturally foreign others taking up native scholarly practices, concerns, and so on. This approach in fact characterizes much of Sinology, which remains remarkably indebted to indigenous modes of scholarship in pursuing general questions in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, literature, and history.49 European, American, and especially Japanese scholars of Chinese studies have largely worked within or were informed by China’s own self-reflective, scholarly tradition in the process of analyzing its thought and history. By engaging the scholarly heritages originally localized within Chinese elite discourse – the knowledge communities of the past that constituted that heritage, as well as those of the present that continue it – Sinologists take those academic traditions seriously as methodologically and substantively capable of advancing compelling knowledge claims. For our purposes, Sinology both demonstrates the possibility of a “mobile locality” and begins to indicate what a recentered political theory may look like. I do not mean to claim, of course, that Chinese studies in Europe and America is not, and never has been, immune to Eurocentric or political

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influence.50 My point is simply to show that, and how, “localized” modes of processing knowledge can themselves come to discipline further inquiry in general and by erstwhile “outsiders” in ways markedly beholden to research agendas already established within those local scholarly communities. To take one example, much early and ongoing work by non-Chinese on China’s textual products, including philosophical texts, proceeded in close dependence on already-existing Chinese forms of scholarship, such as text criticism (kaozheng), textual exegesis (xungu), and the study of ancient characters (gu wenzi xue). Bernard Karlgren’s monumental Grammata Serica and its later revised versions, for many years standard references in the field of early and middle-period Chinese phonology and paleography, are among the most well-known demonstrations of Sinological indebtedness to Chinese forms of learning.51 Karlgren’s phonological reconstructions built on and further developed Qing dynasty kaozheng and xungu scholarship related to classical Chinese rhyme categories based on early works such as the Shijing (Classic of Poetry). Other early Sinologists not only built on Chinese scholarship but were recognized by the Chinese themselves as academic equals: the Scottish missionary and translator James Legge (1815–1897) was so conversant with Chinese textual analysis that he was widely recognized as a specialist – in the sense of a classical exegete or xungu expert – by native scholars. The French scholar Paul Pelliot (1878–1945), among the first “professional” Sinologists in Europe, rivaled some Chinese scholars in his command of traditional Chinese bibliographic materials as he produced annotations and commentary – traditional Chinese modes of academic expression – on Chinese sources.52 Their exegetical endeavors were more than “merely” philological; for the literati communities of Imperial China, such practices comprised relatively autonomous fields of expertise and genres of expression, in which scholars could debate traditionconstituting and society-informing values.53 During the late Imperial and early Republican periods in which Legge and Pelliot wrote, these debates extended to such questions as: In which ancient sources of thought, if any, should we ground our political community? What is the relationship between contemporary reality and the historically situated insights of past thinkers? How can we validate textual sources as authentic transmissions from the ancient masters, and what does this say about their authority to guide us in posing and answering these questions? Being recognized as members of that exegetical community meant that Pelliot and Legge both contributed to, and were disciplined by, the standards and goals comprising the central concerns of exegetical scholarship.

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Such reliance on indigenous sources and scholarly communities has resulted in not only new knowledge about China but also attempts to refigure existing Western disciplinary practices. A recent example is the call by Taiwanese and mainland Chinese scholars for the creation of a “new discipline” combining philology (i.e., traditional Chinese text criticism), archeology, and history to better interpret – or, in Li Xueqin’s view, “rewrite” – ancient Chinese society on the basis of new textual and artifactual evidence, including recently excavated bamboo slips, bronze vessels, and silk manuscripts with writing in ancient characters (gu wenzi).54 Their calls have been largely taken up by North American and European Sinologists, who, in the judgment of American Sinologist Edward Shaughnessy, “share much of the same perspective as their Chinese colleagues in terms of the fusion of history and philology” and look to Chinese paleographers such as Guo Moruo, Qiu Xigui, and Li Ling for foundational guidance. None of these approaches, of course, precludes the application of contemporary disciplinary standards, but all suggest ways in which contemporary Eurocentric knowledge organization, typified in the disciplinary organization of most internationally recognized universities, can be challenged from alternative points of view. Arthur Hummel’s (1884–1975) monumental historical work Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing [Qing] Period, produced in collaboration with Chinese scholars, offers another example.55 Rather than provide a narrative chronology, Hummel’s work collates biographies of important figures in the form of what Chinese scholar Hu Shi has identified as traditional Chinese historiography56 – a field that included much of what we would today call history of thought, political biography, local history, demography, cultural and political geography, and even security studies. Emphasizing the productive confluence of these now-distinct genres of knowledge in the biographical form of historically situated persons of influence, Hummel’s work demonstrates how communities of knowledge that structure inquiry in a “local” context can become mobile, not through putative similarities to Western academic categories but through their indigenous refinement and definition of what becomes a shared object of concern. Sinology in Japan before the Meiji era (1868–1912) particularly blurs the line in this way between its object and method of research, especially in the study of philosophy. In Japan and Korea, the study of China had begun much earlier than in Europe and North America. From the tenth century onward, Chinese philosophy and literature were less fields of study than actual direct means of organizing scholarship.57 Until the

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nineteenth century, in fact, “Sinology” (Japanese: kangaku) described the study of Song and Ming dynasty neo-Confucianism, with no recognized distinction between these Chinese philosophical imports and Japan’s own schools of thought. Education in the Confucian classics, for these imperial Japanese scholars, was education.58 The contemporary scholar of foreign Sinology Qian Wanyue characterizes this long-standing connection between Japanese value systems and the study of Chinese art, philosophy, and literature as a “mother/son relationship, not a relationship of two different cultures.” It was not until the Meiji period that Western disciplinary techniques, and the articulation of nation-based identities, inaugurated Japanese recognition of China not as a “mother culture” but as a “cultural other” or “subject” of research.59 Even during the modernization effort of this era, however, Sinology formed a central, philosophical counterbalance to what many in Japan saw as overly instrumentalist Western knowledge. These concerns prompted the creation of a short-lived Classical Training Institute at Tokyo University in 1882, as well as varied articulations of a uniquely “East Asian” identity that many argue overly subsumed Japanese scholarship within Chinese schools of thought.60 The study of China had become largely academicized in Japan after the end of World War II, moving away from “Confucianism” (Rugaku) toward a so-called scientific version of “Chinese studies” (Shinagaku/Chūgoku gaku).61 Despite this trend to positivism, however, contemporary Japanese scholars are not all convinced that Japanese scholarship and philosophy have entirely overcome the influence of Chinese thought, specifically Confucianism, on their practice. Koyasu Nobukuni has recently argued that Japanese scholarship has unduly centered on Chinese contributions to Confucianism to the detriment of indigenous Japanese innovations and applications.62

3.4 recentering political theory Both indigenization movements and the practices of Sinology suggest that the real dilemma for political theory as it confronts non-Western thought may not be how to avoid the imposition of Western universalism or how to respect local difference but how to take differently localized claims seriously as the constituents, and not simply the targets, of potentially generalizable reflections on political (and other slices of) life. Many comparative political theorists would presume that this more radical regrounding of political theory is impossible, despite the evidence adduced thus far in this chapter. They often cite the Gadamerian insight that

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existing understandings are negotiable but ultimately non-transcendable components of all knowledge and learning. Even those scholars such as Andrew March, who urge us to take foreign traditions seriously by engaging them on their own grounds, insist that “direct argumentation from within an alien ethical tradition” is ill-advised and unlikely to meet with success.63 Similar views about the limits of understanding are also articulated within the Chinese academic community. He Peizhong, drawing on his own research into how foreigners study China, has repeatedly insisted that foreigners can offer an important “outsider” perspective on Chinese issues but cannot themselves provide “insider” insights. Only by studying what outsiders say about us can we learn more about ourselves, He insists, partly because “they” have put “our” culture to such obvious use in advancing their own civilization and scholarship.64 It may be true that “Western” forms of learning shape the prejudices of these “outsider” investigators and theorists as individuals, many of whom were thoroughly trained in Europeanized academic disciplines before turning their gaze toward the others that those disciplines, including political theory, have historically excluded. Yet it remains a largely unanswered question – especially in light of attempts around the world to overcome what are seen to be unduly pervasive foreign influences on native scholarly production – to what extent those intellectual prejudices have anything to do with national or ethnic cultures rather than with training, institutional incentives, expectations, or intellectual resources. Although these latter conditions often channel intellectual effort into recognizable localized patterns (sometimes conflated with, but not reducible to, nationally defined “cultures”), the mistake is to think that the contingently local clustering of particular concerns, methods, and agendas confines a theorist of a particular ethnic or cultural background to those traditions of reflection his or her society happens to have produced. In an influential article, Peng Guoxiang suggests the hubris – and contradictions – of a purely insider–outsider dichotomy like the one presumed by He Peizhong (and advocates of the new cosmopolitan position): “Don’t we, who are in the very middle of all this, sometimes not completely understand Chinese philosophy ourselves? . . . We do not want to excessively claim that researching our own history and culture is a special advantage, but ought to use truly ‘original research’ as the means of manifesting ourselves.”65 Peng acknowledges the capacity of original research by Chinese to speak for itself within an international community of scholars, just as He grounds the value of foreign China studies in the absorption by Westerners of

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Chinese civilization. But both fail to consider the broader implications at stake here: if work by Chinese scholars is intelligible and compelling to outsiders, so too can Chinese scholarship itself constitute a basis for, rather than a target of, philosophical and theoretical work done by nonChinese. Indeed, Chinese research on Chinese studies in Korea and Japan recognizes this very possibility by highlighting their contributions to Chinese thought. Of course, most thinkers do come to see those traditions circulating in their place of residence as more relevant to their lives and concerns than other global alternatives, given that the former are often more tightly linked to the actual dilemmas of the society in which they live. These localized places may and often do evidence historically close relationships with the theoretical creativity of their (always-changing) residents, and these relationships are important for connecting people to ideas and arguments they care about. It remains unclear, however, how, if at all, the fact of localized knowledge production can predict the presence of any given perspective in particular human minds, on the one hand, or decisively preclude the adoption and development of what are perceived to be culturally alien modes of thought, on the other. This is not to ignore the very important power dynamics at work in structuring the access of scholars to one agenda or opportunity over another; rather, it draws attention to them as objects of reform, precisely by suggesting that knowledge production is tied more closely to contingent structures of power, inclination, and commitment than to inevitably overpowering cultural background conditions. The need to gain traction on such structures, in fact, specifies the project of recentering as a multigenerational, interdisciplinary, and collective effort to target not simply the research subjects of individual scholars but also the modes and sites of training, constitutive practices, and target audiences of the entire disciplinary enterprise. Taking cues from Sinology, we can think of ways to reorganize political theory around localized communities of knowledge, supplying to individual researchers the linguistic, historical, and cultural proficiency in particular thought traditions that constitute many of the individual “prejudices” that shape theorizing in the first place. These research initiatives need not be dictated necessarily by the nationstate territorialization that now organizes area studies but, rather, by the concentrations of primarily scholarly audiences and concerns within – and across – particular regions of the globe. This shift in focus does not mean to provide perfect insight into some indelible cultural essence; rather, it simply suggests that we facilitate

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access, by way of linguistic and other forms of training, to diverse fields of interconnected knowledge and schools of thought abiding in particular locales. Of course, postcolonial and democratic theorists have pointed out repeatedly how institutionalized regional divisions, such as those promoted by area studies, impose on a hybrid and fluid world a particular “strategic geopolitical ecology” subservient to the interests of dominant (read: American) powers.66 Edward Said, in particular, argues that the “area studies” of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American researchers had the effect of constructing “the Orient” into a category that “is not so much a way of receiving new information as it is a method of controlling what seems to be a threat to some established view of things.”67 We need not supply a full defense of area studies’ particular disciplinary history, however, in order to make the less stringent claim that a focus on localized scholarly communities rather than texts or people offers important benefits to the field of political theory. This is especially true if, unlike contemporary critics of area studies, we recognize that and how scholars in those “areas” themselves draw and redraw political, intellectual, and geographic boundaries – including those imposed on them by others. Localized debate does not entail a sacrifice of self-critique; it simply recenters it by turning it to internal purposes. The study of “foreign Sinology” (guoji Hanxue) in Chinese academic communities, for instance, interrogates boundaries by retaining Chinese civilization at the center of inquiry and evaluating the success of foreign and domestic boundary drawing in those terms.68 Regionalized discourses by non-Westerners (such as variously deployed Japanese constructions of “East Asia” in the twentieth century) also demonstrate how boundaries can empower as much as dominate indigenous intellectual production.69 At the very least, such burgeoning scholarship on how regionalization discourses inform and enable knowledge from within those very same regions belies claims that a localized approach necessarily implies a unilateral reification of arbitrary boundaries, particularly those of nationalism, or that imposed or internal regionalized notions preclude critical engagement. As Taiwanese scholar Chen Kuan-hsing argues, these regional imaginaries can serve as critical “anchoring points” for multiplying frames of reference to facilitate comparisons that bypass EuroAmerica as a necessary source of universal theory.70 Reinscribing local particulars as sites of general knowledge production, in turn, recognizes that local communities of inquiry and audience offer already-existing epistemological frameworks that themselves ground self-critique rather than standing as passive objects of analysis.

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Michaelle Browers’s study of Arab civil society discourse demonstrates how the translation practices required for such an effort offer more than simply rough correspondences; translation in this ambitious sense is “not so much a hindrance to understanding as an opportunity for different understanding – that is, for political and conceptual contestation in Arab political thought.” As Browers suggests, the very frame – not just the substance – of inquiry changes to make new sources of critique available within (not simply “about”) particular streams of discourse.71 Political theorists must join foreign colleagues to map knowledge differently, spending extensive time in a particular geographic region interacting with indigenous academics on their terms and in their language. These theorists do not only read canonical texts but also treat scholars throughout the world like true colleagues by inviting them to conferences, reading their work, discussing their work with them, and engaging their findings in both native and foreign languages – much the way foreign scholars in American universities already do, by learning English and participating actively in Anglophone academia.72 Political theory would begin to resemble the diffuse knowledge networks found in area-specific fields, in which the dominant language of research and study is (often) not English and the main contributors are not North American or European.

3.5 recentered political theory: two examples Two examples from recent scholarly work on Asian thought begin to illustrate (but by no means exhaust) what this recentered political theory may look like. I have chosen to analyze the work of scholars who are “Western” in terms of nationality and academic location, because their position belies the necessity of their own Eurocentrism and inverts the much more common direction of intellectual influence from the “West” to the “East.” The first is Stephen C. Angle’s recent book Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy.73 Although Angle ultimately grounds his argument in analytic philosophical discourse without directly problematizing “philosophy” as a field of knowledge organization, his analysis is exemplary of recentering in other important ways. Angle’s primary goal is “to flesh out and push forward a contemporary Confucianism based on Neo-Confucian orientations” to their defining but contested goal of sagehood (sheng), understood as a character ideal that cultivates moral spontaneity in accord with the ethical-political principles of the Way (dao).74 He argues that a viable extension of neo-Confucian sagehood in the modern world is centered on reverence for harmony (he), interpreted as respect for

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the interdependence of self and world indicated by the neo-Confucian value of li (coherence). In elaborating his argument, Angle does not ignore counterarguments or insights from contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy, but he identifies their relevance in terms of the neo-Confucian ideals at issue, rather than as independently valuable or definitive paradigms of what “philosophy” or “moral character” should look like or be compared to.75 Writing in English but drawing more extensively on Sinophone sources than Anglophone ones, Angle problematizes the issue of audience by explaining that his argument addresses, in addition to his “colleagues in the West,” “fellow scholars of Confucianism, and perhaps a broader Chinese audience as well.” He notes his indebtedness to the Chinese scholars with whom he engaged (in Chinese) while doing research at Peking University and presenting his work at universities across China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.76 It is precisely by working within the internal threads of neo-Confucian tradition and engaging its contemporary advocates that Angle defends its unique contributions to the ideals of the contemporary world. He holds that it can be taken seriously by everyone, “whether or not their ancestors could have been Confucians,” but without subordinating it to the terms or concerns of analytic political philosophy.77 Although Angle does not address the possibility of how or if his project implies disciplinary displacement, other projects have come to interrogate the modes and foci of knowledge production within political science and philosophy. The elaboration of alternative “disciplines” to structure knowledge in different but productive ways offers another illustration of recentering. Ingrid Jordt, a Buddhist yogi haun (i.e., established meditator) and anthropologist, shows how the phenomenon of Buddhist mass lay meditation in Burma reconfigures political legitimacy along Buddhist lines by authorizing the laity “to verify the activities of both sangha [Buddhist monastic community] and state.”78 In the process, participants in this movement develop new ways to verify the interior knowledge gained from meditation (such as if and to what degree political leaders, monks, and laypeople have progressed toward nyanzin, or stages of insight) that in Jordt’s view cultivates a distinct disciplinary enterprise. Likening this discipline to Western psychology or cognitive science, Jordt suggests that it poses compelling and heretofore unexplored connections between how ethical training such as meditation can cultivate particular beliefs and verifiable mental transformations in its practitioners.79 Although conventional political science has typically ignored interior mental states, Jordt argues that they are essential components for the “moral empirical theory of knowing,

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praxis, and being” in Burmese Buddhism and thus are at least partly constitutive of the political actions that contest and affirm the legitimacy of political rulers.80 These two examples show how recentering, although ultimately a collective and ongoing project, can begin to take shape when individual scholars address diverse communities of scholarship and participate in the production of knowledge in accord with their disciplinary conventions. As Angle and Peng argue, these very local environments and resources that make such communities possible and relevant does not preclude their applicability (through some form of explicit or implicit translation) to the more general questions that circulate within the circumferences of other “local” communities, whether they be disciplinary, cultural, or intellectual. It is on the basis of precisely such resources, in fact, that local circumferences are often reconfigured – but without subordinating them to dominant Eurocentric practice. Jordt’s experience as an advanced Buddhist meditator and her careful attention to Burmese theorizations of meditation is another example: reconceptualizing in Buddhist terms what constitutes political authority includes not only identifying its particular components (including nyanzin discernment by the laity, as well as their recognition of leaders’ pon, the accumulation of merit from past lives), but also reframing the very idea of “political authority” to work across and reflect the influence of multiple past and future lifetimes.81 Jordt thus belies social science attempts to read the then-ruling military junta in Burma in conventional terms, as a regime of purely coercive compliance beyond the reach of effective popular critique that takes the exclusive form of democratic voting and protection of human rights. Just as importantly, she also gestures toward an ambitious new frame for political life that ruptures both temporal and spatial boundaries that usually contain it, requiring explanation by way of the “native epistemology” of vipassana meditation that constructs political meanings in Burma.82 Her project, like Angle’s, affirms the viability of alternative non-Anglophone knowledge communities to pose questions about and solve contemporary political problems, even as both deny through example the inevitability of the hold of any particular kind of local thought (including and especially that of Europe and America) on the academic production of scholars in American and European universities and elsewhere. The potential of such radically mobile locality is all the more possible if, over time, the training for political theorists no longer emphasizes conversance with a set of Euro-American texts, themes, and (almost purely) Anglophone conversations but instead centers its students within

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other, equally rich thought traditions that, while demonstrating provisional relevance to political life, are guided by distinct concerns (such as sagehood or nyanzin), disciplined by particular canons (Zhu Xi’s compilation of the “Fourteen Books” and its subsequent commentarial amendments, Buddhist sutras of the Theravada tradition), and addressed to other, possibly non-Anglophone or multilingual audiences (Sinophone academia, the global Buddhist intellectual community). In some ways my call for a “mobile locality” echoes recent discussions by scholars of area studies to reconfigure that field as a site of creative theorization rather than “a mere domain of application and observation,” in Michael Dutton’s words.83 Numerous scholars within and outside Anglophone academe, including Sheldon Pollock, a major figure in the field of classical Indian studies, point to classical philology (including ancient Sanskritist practices) as a powerful disciplinary (and disciplining) antecedent from which theory-producing knowledge might be drawn to challenge the homogenizing paradigms of empiricist social science.84 By acknowledging with them that other intellectual traditions throughout time and space have organized and analyzed knowledge very differently, the very notion of what it is we are doing when we do not only “social science” but also “political theory” will come under scrutiny from new, diverse audiences – perhaps culminating in the radical supplanting (rather than merely supplementing) of dominant streams of political-theoretic discourse by currently existing alternatives. Angle’s and Jordt’s projects address multidisciplinary and multilingual audiences, but each is centered in distinct communities of knowledge production that make their resulting insights possible even as they expose existing disciplines to risk.

3.6 new communities and new disciplines Recentered political theory, in sum, turns on the localized character of theorizing rather than claims about its essential character, origin, or inherence in persons of particular ethnicity. It is worth asking, however, if this approach will substitute one form of ethnocentrism for another, in the process “ghettoizing” knowledge into area-specific forms and discounting the value of comparative, cosmopolitan, or disciplinedriven research.85 As Joseph Levenson, one of the most influential postwar historians of modern China, puts it, “-ologies” like Sinology “suggest not simply chapters in the history of man, as parts of the proper study of mankind, but self-contained intellectual puzzles.”86

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For Levenson, disciplinary research is precisely what legitimizes solutions to these puzzles as knowledge because it relates them to broader intellectual questions that emerge from comparison with each other. Michael Freeden has recently characterized the task of comparative political theory in similar terms: The crux of the matter is that when we study political thought in a comparative perspective, we are above all studying the nature of politics, long before we claim to study the thought and practices of a region, or state, or culture. That, I wish to emphasize, is the crucial point about how to approach comparative political thought. Experts as we may be in some area or local phenomenon, it is a mistake to cut ourselves off from the larger purview of what is the type of thought-practice we are investigating. That is to say, rather than seeing ourselves just as scholars of India, or the UK, or Chile, or Islam, we are investigators of human political conduct and discourse, who then rely on particular case studies. We all occasionally lose sight of that, wrapped up as we are in the details and the excitement of the small print of our scholarly enterprises.87

There are important assumptions at work in both Levenson’s and Freeden’s claims about how – and where – general knowledge about the “nature of politics” can be produced. The presumption is either that an appeal to shared questions or comparison is necessary to legitimize what foreign others think and believe as relevant to us in the first place; or that comparison of “human political conduct and discourse” can proceed without being grounded in a knowledge community that, when viewed from a more self-reflexive angle, would appear as much a “case study” as the Indian, Islamic, or other thought it scrutinizes. Freeden and Levenson thus elide the very questions that might rescue academic knowledge production from its deep ties to Europeanized theory: What scholarly communities, grammars, or teacher–student lineages – elaborated, reproduced, and enforced by whom, and how? – encourage the raising of certain questions or concerns (including those about cross-cultural engagement and the study of politics as a reified, discrete sphere of human activity) and discourage others? How might these knowledge communities come to discipline our actual reflections on and definitions of political life, rather than simply provide disparate “voices” or “case studies” to remind us of our own specificity, or reinforce the belief that political theory is already dealing with questions that other communities share? The answer lies in interrogating the assumption that we must either be engaged in reflection that culminates in general, intelligible knowledge about political life, or we are investigating local contingency. Participants

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in the “legitimacy of Chinese philosophy” debate again offer instructive alternative theorizations. As Peng Guoxiang has argued, focusing on Chinese thought or (more controversially) “philosophy,” one is confronted with a tension, perhaps, between contemporary analytic philosophy and the Chinese area focus – the disciplinary criteria of the former may even make recognition of the latter impossible – but not necessarily between disciplinary rigor and the formation of shared knowledge, on the one hand, and the area focus on the other.88 To assume the tension exists is to disclaim a priori the possible existence of other standards of disciplinary organization – such as those celebrated by Wei Chengbao and Lin Anwu, discussed in Section 3.3 – that exist within disparate regionalized communities. Here, the dichotomization between local and general only holds if “knowledge” is associated with that set of disciplinary categories currently enjoying institutional recognition in leading universities. Recognizing this impasse, some Chinese commentators have celebrated the non- or interdisciplinary nature of area-based research as the only way in which these traditional forms of knowledge can be retained and deployed.89 Recentered political theory banks precisely on the recognition that foreign communities of scholarship support rigorous research agendas that, while locally anchored, often do make wider claims about the modern challenges of a globalized world even as they remain open to internal critique. Recentering thus indigenizes, rather than “provincializes,” European thought (including conventional political theory) and its methods of categorization. “Provincialization,” as Dipesh Chakrabarty describes it, happens when we renew European thought “from and for the margins”; it addresses Eurocentrism not by rejecting European thought but by exposing its inadequacies in articulating difference.90 Such a process is only possible for the same reasons that make it necessary: namely, the belief that European thought constitutes the “intellectual existence” of everyone in the modern world, even if its categories remain inadequate and problematic for registering non-European experience.91 Recentering political theory does not deny the pervasion of Europeanized thought, but it does dispute the conclusion that only European thought is, or can be, “everybody’s heritage,” as Chakrabarty claims, or that the viability of other bodies of thought turns on their capitulation to European categories of modernity. It simply affirms that Europeanized categories or traditions are as “local” as any others, without for that reason dismissing the possibility of their wider applicability. Recentering thus offers another kind of response to Eurocentrism by refusing European thought as an always-necessary medium of thought, translation, or critique and Euro-American academic audiences as default

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communities of address. I have tried to argue that this second response to Eurocentrism is as urgently necessary as the first, but the possibilities for critique that each opens are distinct and sometimes in tension with each other. The first response urges attention to irreducible difference, attempting more cosmopolitan renderings of existing forms of knowledge production to counter the iniquities and occlusions of homogenizing universalism. Its audiences and much of its theoretical tools abide in Anglophone academia. The second confronts the possibility of generalizable claims emerging from local contexts as a means to explore methodological as well as substantive alternatives to Eurocentric inquiry. This second response banks on plural ways of knowing the world, but it necessarily remains susceptible to the possibility that any given local discourse may operate on assumptions that suppress or ignore difference (or register it in different ways). The second response thus provides no guarantee that such alternatives will not degenerate into essentialism and relativism, but it broaches this risk both to facilitate more widely compelling alternatives and to recognize that remedies for parochialism need not emerge from within the terms that Europeanized theory has already set out. Yet because the proliferation of legitimate centers of knowledge production entails increasing numbers of competing possibilities for differently situated critique, these alternatives will nevertheless likely avoid collapsing into provincialism. Precisely because they advance general claims in a globalized world meant to apply beyond the boundaries of some designated in-group, they are drawn into wider fields of scholarly justification that demonstrate the possibility for cross-cultural critique to take place absent “the West” as a universal term of translation – a possibility that Chen Kuan-hsing labels “inter-referencing.”92 The process of deparochialization may begin, then, from the insight that reflection on political life happens in a diverse array of times and locales, but there is no guarantee that what emerges after serious investigation of those reflections will look anything like political theory – or its cosmopolitan variants meant to address the fact of global political experience – now does. And why should it? The identity of political theory, both as a subfield and as a scholarly community, has been continually contested and transformed more than once over the span of its short existence.93 The challenge we now face in deparochializing it perhaps bodes even more radical changes. Unless we persist in maintaining that mere existence within Anglophone academia automatically roots scholars within the particular tradition(s) and definitions that conventional political theory currently espouses, we are led to ask if knowledge exists for the sake of our academic

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disciplines or if our academic disciplines exist for the sake of knowledge. Our findings may reveal significant overlaps with existing concerns in political theory; they may end up constructing new trans-local communities on the basis of shared concerns; but they may also raise the possibility – as the studies of Angle, Jordt, Peng, and others mentioned in this chapter do – of intelligible, compelling, but largely overlooked modes of knowing in the world that reorient us to different traditions, languages, and audiences.94 Precisely because these alternatives may aspire, just as political theory often does, to make claims that are both persuasive to outsiders and universal (or at least generalizable) in scope, we cannot now predict if or how political theory (or, indeed, any localized center of discourse) will serve as an appropriate ending point for these explorations. Other thought traditions or scholarly lineages may reject “political theory” as a disciplinary initiative in favor of other ways to organize knowledge, read texts, or defend propositions, among other things. We cannot simultaneously maintain a commitment to taking those alternatives seriously while continuing to insist that political theory maintain disciplinary coherence or that its future development resemble in some significant way its present practice. We need not agree with every possible alternative, but we cannot rule out the possibility that one or more of them will convince some of us to start producing and valuing knowledge in a completely new way. It seems that if we truly wish to affirm, on its own terms, the value of work grounded in non-Western contexts, we are also committed to recognizing that disciplines exist for knowledge rather than the other way around. And that means we must be ready to do more with those “nonWestern others” than add their voices or texts to our existing conversations, especially if our goal is to deparochialize the theories of political theory, which are shaped by particular forms of training, languages, and intellectual lineages rather than simple episodic engagement. We must also open ourselves to the discipline of those complex and no doubt internally contested intellectual communities from which such voices and texts emerge and allow their lines of argument and concern to lead us to unexpected forms of knowledge – at the risk of dissolving or replacing our own discipline(s), if not the possibility of critique.

notes 1. E.g., Andrew March, “Islamic Foundations for a Social Contract in Non-Muslim Liberal Democracies,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 2 (2007):

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5. 6. 7.

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9. 10.

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235–252; Loubna El Amine, “Beyond East and West: Reorienting Political Theory through the Prism of Modernity,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 1 (March 2016): 102–120; Richard Shapcott, “Beyond Understanding: Comparative Political Theory and Cosmopolitan Political Thought, a Research Agenda,” European Journal of Political Theory, online first (August 2016). An argument I made over a decade ago in Leigh K. Jenco, “What Does Heaven Ever Say? A Methods-Centered Approach to Cross-Cultural Engagement,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 4 (2007): 741–755. E.g., Roxanne L. Euben, “Contingent Borders, Syncretic Perspectives: Globalization, Political Theory, and Islamizing Knowledge,” International Studies Review 4, no. 1 (2002): 23–48; Megan C. Thomas, Orientalists, Propagandists, and Ilustrados: Filipino Scholarship and the End of Spanish Colonialism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). E.g., Rochana Bajpai, Debating Difference: Group Rights and Liberal Democracy in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011); Humeira Iqtidar, Secularizing Islamists?: Jama’at-E-Islami and Jama’at-Ud-Da’wa in Urban Pakistan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014); Michael W. Dowdle, “China’s Present as the World’s Future: China and ‘Rule of Law’ in a Post-Fordist World,” in Leigh K. Jenco ed., Chinese Thought as Global Theory: Diversifying Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences and Humanities (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016). El Amine, “Beyond East and West,” 104. Ibid., 108. See Ken Tsutsumibayashi’s contribution to this volume (Chapter 5). Of course, such work has been undertaken extensively outside of political theory: Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow, eds., Body, Subject, and Power in China, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1994); Adam B. Seligman and Robert P. Weller, 2012. Rethinking Pluralism: Ritual, Experience, and Ambiguity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). E.g., Melissa S. Williams and Mark E. Warren, “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory,” Political Theory 42, no. 1 (February 2014): 26–57; Shapcott, “Beyond Understanding”; Daniel J. Kapust and Helen Kinsella, “Introduction: Theory’s Landscapes,” in Daniel J. Kapust and Helen Kinsella, eds., Comparative Political Theory in Time and Place: Theory’s Landscapes (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism: A Work of Comparative Political Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 12–13. Ibid., 3. Roxanne L. Euben, Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 197. Fred Dallmayr, Alternative Visions: Paths in the Global Village (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 7; March, “Islamic Foundations for a Social Contract in Non-Muslim Liberal Democracies,” 237.

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14. Farah Godrej, “Towards a Cosmopolitan Political Thought: The Hermeneutics of Interpreting the Other,” Polity 41, no. 2 (2009): 135–165. 15. Isis Leslie, “Internationalizing Political Theory Courses,” PS: Political Science and Politics 40, no. 1 (2007): 108–110. 16. As Charles Taylor, “Understanding and Ethnocentricity,” in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 125; James Tully, Chapter 2 of this volume. In his contribution to this volume, Ken Tsutsumibayashi offers a thorough and critical comparison of my position with that of Tully’s (see Chapter 5). 17. As in El Amine, “Beyond East and West,” 111–112. 18. John S. Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, and Anne Phillips, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 5, 4. 19. E.g., Euben, Journeys to the Other Shore. 20. Gyan Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism,” American Historical Review 99 (1994): 1475, n. 1; Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 29, 43. 21. Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism,” 1486–1487. 22. Fred Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 99. 23. Jenco, “What Does Heaven Ever Say?” 24. Scott L. Malcomson, “The Varieties of Cosmopolitan Experience,” in Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, eds., Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 233–235. 25. Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Euben, “Enemy in the Mirror.” 26. Bhikhu Parekh, “Non-Ethnocentric Universalism,” in T. Dunne and N. J. Wheeler, eds., Human Rights in Global Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 27. Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism. 28. Taylor, “Understanding and Ethnocentricity,” 125. 29. Fred Dallmayr, “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 2 (2004): 124–144; Euben, “Enemy in the Mirror,” 13. 30. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “Cosmpolitanism and the Circle of Reason,” Political Theory 28, no. 5 (2000): 633. 31. Euben, Journeys to the Other Shore, 15–16 et passim. 32. Godrej, “Towards a Cosmopolitan Political Thought,” 138, 139. 33. Taylor, “Understanding and Ethnocentricity,” 130–131; Godrej, “Towards a Cosmopolitan Political Thought,” 158, 159. 34. Euben, Journeys to the Other Shore, 27. 35. Ibid., 45. 36. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22–49. 37. For example, Chris Goto-Jones argues by example that Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitaro’s theory of “worldly history” offers a viable alternative to

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39.

40.

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contemporary Western historiography, intended to be relevant not primarily in Japan but more urgently in crisis-ridden Europe. Chris Goto-Jones, “The Kyoto School, the Cambridge School, and the History of Political Philosophy in Wartime Japan,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 17, no. 1 (2009): 13–42. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 6; Padmini Mongia, ed., Contemporary Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 6; Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism.” As Portia Reyes points out, however, subaltern studies is a particular kind of indigenization movement because – unlike related movements in Asia, including those Reyes examines in the Philippines – its practitioners write in the language of the colonized (English), adopt European intellectual discourse, and occupy academic positions within the Euro-American metropole. See Portia L. Reyes, “Fighting over a Nation: Theorizing a Filipino Historiography,” Postcolonial Studies 11, no. 3 (2008): 241–242. Maukuei Chang, “The Movement to Indigenize the Social Sciences in Taiwan: Origin and Predicaments,” in John Makeham and A-chin Hsiau, eds., Cultural, Ethnic, and Political Nationalism in Contemporary Taiwan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 223. Guoshu Yang, “Xinli xue yanjiu de zhongguo hua: Cengci yu fangxiang,” in G. Yang, ed., Huaren bentu xinlixue yu huaren bentu qihexing (Taipei: Wunan, 2008), 19. Nobukuni Koyasu, Dong Ya Ruxue: Pipan yu Fangfa, trans. W. Chen (Taipei: Taiwan Daxue chuban zhongxin, 2004); Weifen Chen, “You ‘toyo’ dao ‘To’A,’ cong ‘jukyuo’ dao ‘jugaku’: yi jindai Riben wei jingjian tan ‘To’A jugaku/DongYa ruxue’,” Taiwan Dong Ya wenming yanjiu xuekan 1, no. 1 (2004): 201–232; Chang, “The Movement to Indigenize the Social Sciences in Taiwan,” 239–244. For a critical English-language overview of the debate, see Carine Defoort, “Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate,” Philosophy East and West 51, no. 3 (2001): 393–413. Zheng traces the historical roots of the movement to early-twentieth-century critiques of classical and imperial-era thought in China: Jiadong Zheng, “Zhongguo zhexue de hefaxing wenti,” Zhongguo zhexue nianjian (2001) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan, 2001), Sec. 2. Zheng, “Zhongguo zhexue de hefaxing wenti,” Part 1. Dainian Zhang, Zhongguo zhexue da gang (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chuban she, 1982), 2–3; Lai Chen, “Guan yu ‘Zhongguo zhexue’ de ruogan wenti qianyi,” Jiang Han Luntan 7 (2003). E.g., Changbao Wei, “Zhongguo zhexue de hefaxing xushi jiqi chaoyue,” Zhexue dongtai 6 (2004): 7–9. E.g., Zongsan Mou, Carsun Chang, Junyi Tang, and Fuguan Xu, “A Manifesto for a Re-Appraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture,” in Carsun Chang, ed., The Development of NeoConfucian Thought, vol. 2 (New York: Bookman, 1958). El Amine, “Beyond East and West.” David B. Honey, Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology (New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 2001).

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50. China’s position in Asia during the Second World War, and its subsequent adoption of communism as a state ideology, assured both the nation and those scholars who studied it a central place in Cold War strategizing. See Bruce Cumings, “Boundary Displacement: Area Studies and International Studies during and after the Cold War,” in C. Simpson, ed., Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War (New York: New Press, 1998). Yet, ironically, those very studies uncovering Eurocentric bias in Sinological scholarship were only possible on the basis of additional, more carefully executed, area-based research, and often took place under the auspices of area studies associations and journals. Cumings’s own article appeared in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, a disaffected offshoot of the Association for Asian Studies. See Charles O. Hucker, The Association for Asian Studies: An Interpretive History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973). 51. Bernhard Karlgren, Grammata Serica Recensa (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1957); Axel Schuessler and Bernhard Karlgren, Minimal Old Chinese and Later Han Chinese: A Companion to Grammata Serica Recensa (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i, 2009). 52. Honey, Incense at the Altar, xv, 62. 53. Peter Bol, review of Liu Tsung-yuan and Intellectual Change in T’ang China by Jo-shui Chen, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 55, no. 1 (1996): 166; John Makeham, Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 9. 54. Xueqin Li, “Zouchu yigu shidai,” Zhongguo wenhua 7 (1993), cited in Edward L. Shaughnessy, Rewriting Early Chinese Texts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 1. 55. Arthur Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1943). 56. Shi Hu, “Preface,” in Arthur Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1943). 57. Peizhong He, “Guowai Zhongguo xue yanjiu de fazhan yu yiyi,” Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan yuanbao (2008), Introduction, 2. 58. Margaret Mehl, “Chinese Learning (kangaku) in Meiji Japan (1868–1912),” History 85 (2000): 49. 59. Wanyue Qian, Cong Hanxue dao Zhongguo xue: Jindai Riben de zhongguo yanjiu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007), 10, 54. 60. Chen, “You ‘toyo’ dao ‘To’A,’ cong ‘jukyuo’ dao ‘jugaku’,” 221–5. 61. Peizhong He, ed., Dangdai Zhong wai Zhongguo xue yanjiu (Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2006), 6. 62. Koyasu, Dong Ya Ruxue; John Makeham, Lost Soul: “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 90. 63. March, “Islamic Foundations for a Social Contract in Non-Muslim Liberal Democracies,” 238. 64. He, “Guowai Zhongguo xue yanjiu de fazhan yu yiyi.”

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65. Guoxiang Peng, “Hefaxing, shiyu yu zhutixing–dangqian Zhongguo zhexue yanjiu de fanxing yu qianzhan,” Jiang Han Luntan 7 (2003). 66. Ravi Arvind Palat, “Fragmented Visions: Excavating the Future of Area Studies in a Post-American World,” in N. N. Waters, ed., Beyond the Area Studies Wars (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000), 69. 67. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 59. 68. “Foreign Sinology” (i.e., studying the study of China undertaken by nonChinese foreigners) has been a serious focus of Chinese research for more than three decades; see Shaodang Yan, “Wo dui guoji Zhongguo xue (Hanxue) de renshi,” Guoji Hanxue 5 (2000): 6–10. 69. In his analysis of Japanese constructions of “the East” (Toˉ yoˉ ) and “East Asia” (Toˉ ’A), for example, Chen Weifen notes that “although [these concepts] took contrast/opposition with the West as their starting point, both were guided by the search for the particular cultural characteristics of East Asian locales and the possibilities for exchange among these cultures” – even as the constituent boundaries of “East Asia” tracked Japan’s own imperialist agenda in the region. Chen, “You ‘toyo’ dao ‘To’A,’ cong ‘jukyuo’ dao ‘jugaku’,” 218. 70. Kuan-hsing Chen, China as Method (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 212, 226. 71. Michaelle L. Browers, Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006), 8, my emphasis. 72. I discuss these processes in more concrete detail in Leigh K. Jenco, Changing Referents: Learning Across Space and Time in China and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), ch. 9. 73. Stephen C. Angle, Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of NeoConfucian Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 74. Ibid., 26. 75. Ibid., 22–25. 76. Ibid., 8, vii–viii. 77. Ibid., 179. 78. Ingrid Jordt, Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007), 212. Here and throughout, I follow Jordt’s usage in referring to the country as Burma rather than Myanmar. 79. Ingrid Jordt, “Defining a True Buddhist: Meditation and Knowledge Formation in Burma,” Ethnology 45, no. 3 (2006): 195. 80. Jordt, Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement, 61. 81. Ibid., 183, 197. 82. Ibid., 60, 191. 83. Michael Dutton, “The Trick of Words: Asian Studies, Translation, and the Problems of Knowledge,” in George Steinmetz, ed., The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and Its Epistemological Others (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 117. See also Hillenbrand 2010; ChanLiang Wu, ed., Chuantong siwei fangshi yu xueshu yuyan de jiben teshuxing lunji (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2010); Sheldon Pollock,

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84.

85.

86. 87.

88. 89.

90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

Leigh K. Jenco “Areas, Disciplines, and the Goals of Inquiry,” The Journal of Asian Studies 75, no. 4 (November 2016): 913–928, doi:10.1017/S002191181600111X. Dutton, “The Trick of Words,” 101; Pollock, “Areas, Disciplines, and the Goals of Inquiry,” 916. See also Wu, Chuantong siwei fangshi yu xueshu yuyan de jiben teshuxing lunji, for discussion of the theoretically productive features of “traditional-style” knowledge production. Godrej, “Towards a Cosmopolitan Political Thought,” 160; Arthur Wright, “The Study of Chinese Civilization,” Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (1960): 233–255. Joseph Levenson, “The Humanistic Disciplines: Will Sinology Do?,” Journal of Asian Studies 23, no. 4 (1964): 508. Michael Freeden, “Comparative Political Thought: Future Directions” (paper presented at the 21st World Congress of Political Science, Santiago, Chile, 2009), 2. Peng, “Hefaxing, shiyu yu zhutixing–dangqian Zhongguo zhexue yanjiu de fanxing yu qianzhan.” Fagao Zhou, Hanxue lunji (Taipei: Zheng zhong shuju, 1965), 12; Leigh K. Jenco, “Is There Philosophy Outside the West? The ‘Legitimacy of Chinese Philosophy’ Debate and the Global Extension of Disciplinary Knowledge,” in Leigh Jenco, Megan Thomas, and Murad Idris, eds., Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 700–719. Historically, we find an example of this in study of Chinese thought in Japanese and Korean scholarly circles in the tenth century and after: here “Sinology,” closely linked to Confucian learning (ruxue), furnished its own criteria of scholarship, whose categorical divisions closely followed those proposed by more traditional Chinese philosophers in the present. See He, Dangdai Zhong wai Zhongguo xue yanjiu. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 17. Ibid., 16. Chen, China as Method, 226. John G. Gunnell, The Descent of Political Theory: The Genealogy of an American Vocation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Such are the irreducibly varied findings of a recent collaborative attempt, undertaken by a multinational team of scholars and myself, to demonstrate “Chinese thought as global theory.” See Leigh K. Jenco, ed., Chinese Thought as Global Theory: Diversifying Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016). Each chapter demonstrates a different way in which Chinese thought across time might speak productively to (as well as against) more general questions of relevance to the humanities and social sciences.

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4 A Decentralized Republic of Virtue True Way Learning in the Southern Song Period and Beyond Youngmin Kim

4.1 introduction In recent years, comparative political theory (CPT) has had an increasingly visible presence in the field of political theory broadly construed.1 Indeed, in this globalized world, the call to take seriously perspectives outside the Western one has a substantial resonance. Specifically, as China rises rapidly as a global power, the Chinese tradition of political theory is appearing as an important resource with which to engage in CPT. Although the emergence of CPT in general and Chinese political theory in particular may be laudable from a moral point of view, however, the appropriate standards for methodological rigor in CPT remain contested. The present chapter aims to contribute to methodological self-reflection by calling attention to the importance of historicity in this field. The core of this chapter is the reconstruction of True Way Learning (TWL) as a significant and non-hierarchical view of political order, one that contrasts with common depictions of it as an apologia for autocracy, hierarchy, and despotism.2 Because TWL is often regarded as a branch of Confucianism, I begin by problematizing the term “Confucianism,” which features as a point of reference in much CPT literature, in part as a way of coming to grips with the rise of China as a global power. Increasingly, scholars allude to Confucianism as representative of publicspirited political outlooks in Chinese tradition.3 Yet it is important to interrogate what we mean by “Confucian,” a question that is particularly vexed because so many works are still dominated by ahistorical

I would like to thank Melissa Williams for commenting on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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perspectives. My argument is not that ahistorical approaches to Confucianism are problematic as such but that they hinder the rigorous use of the concept of Confucianism in CPT. As a way to sharpen our conceptual apparatus, we should take into account the full historical complexity of Confucian traditions. Indeed, CPT will be enriched by moving in a more historical direction, leading us to new pathways for the comparative study of political thought. I start by considering the inherent problems of the concept of Confucianism as a unit of analysis and then suggest TWL, one particular branch of the larger Confucian tradition, as an alternative object of theoretical reconstruction.4 After examining the historical context of TWL, I argue that it bears a closer “family resemblance” to republican thought traditions in the West than to either democratic or despotic models of politics.5 In the final section I ask whether the republican tradition of the West can contribute to elucidating TWL and speculate on what this might mean for the contemporary People’s Republic of China (PRC) and how it might take shape.

4.2 reconsidering confucianism In CPT literature, a reified, essentialized “Confucianism” has often served as a programmatic concept of Chinese political thought, but this concept has little connection to historical reality and thus may be misleading. As Michael Nylan has observed, this inexact term does “more to obscure than to enlighten.”6 In fact, there is no set of essential features that are stably valid throughout the Confucian tradition. When it is defined in very stylized terms, Confucianism is not a useful category for understanding long-term historical changes as its meaning varied greatly over more than a millennium. To begin with, “Confucianism” is a foreign neologism. There is no grapheme for Confucianism in classical Chinese. Perhaps the closest Chinese equivalent to “Confucian” is “ru.” As Nylan notes, “ru” referred variously to the classicist who engaged with textual studies; to committed followers of Confucius; to anyone who performed civil service, regardless of whether they were committed to Confucius’s teaching; or to literati in general, regardless of whether they were involved in civil service. It could even mean any conventional person: “The semantic boundary of the term has always been blurry.”7 Therefore, the term “ru” should not be equated with “Confucian” or “Confucianism.” According to Nylan, “Confucianism” comprises two fictive constructs. First, in the search for a counterpart in China to Christianity in

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Europe, Western missionaries and some Chinese conservatives devised “Confucianism” to “encompass the entire semantic field registered by a complex of Chinese terms referring to sorts of people and ideas.”8 Second, members of four successive political movements of the twentieth century – the May Fourth movement, the New Life movement, the antiConfucius campaign, and the New Confucian Revival – created a new construct called Confucianism, which built on a variety of traditions, excluding Daoism and Buddhism. Thereafter, scholars often used the term “Confucianism” to refer broadly to the mainstream cultural tradition of China, without any consensus as to either its theoretical contents or its practical ramifications. Most theorists tend to regard as “Confucian” only some selective aspects of the larger tradition;9 their respective theoretical agendas determine what features of the tradition are to be preserved as significant and what other features are to be discarded as inconsequential. What unites many Confucians is not the content of their ideas but the collective identity they themselves construct. In other words, the significance of a term such as “Confucian” lies not in the content of ideas but their function in signaling their shared identification with a broad and varied intellectual tradition. The fact that there are so many Confucianisms even in the twenty-first century shows that “Confucianism” still is a useful political category to many people for one reason or another. The sumptuous variety of theoretical agendas sustains a plethora of versions of Confucianism: progressive Confucianism, Boston Confucianism, perfectionist Confucianism, conservative Confucianism, political Confucianism, mind Confucianism, to name only a few.10 Whether there is any rigorous theoretical ground for claiming that all these “Confucianisms” can be encompassed within a single tradition or philosophical framework is less than clear. Comparative political theorists’ reconstruction of Confucianism might end up as more a pack of tricks played on the dead than a historically faithful entity. At worst, Confucianism may turn out to be a fugitive concept, one that can retreat into one aspect within the tradition when pursued from an uncharitable side and into another when pursued from another unsympathetic angle. The chances are that one will find therein what one wants to find. Those who are sensitive to the problematic aspects of “Confucianism” might want to discard the concept altogether and focus on its historical configurations. This is quite legitimate for historians. However, one who engages in CPT might not find this approach fully satisfactory. Endless fragmentation presents a challenge for those who look for a bounded

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entity for comparison. As Andrew March has observed,11 unlike fields where the object of study is a well-bounded single entity, CPT has a special burden because it is not always clear where the boundary between the objects of comparison lies: “For comparison itself to be the main methodological tool, there have to be not only distinct units, but their differences also have to be somehow enduring and generative of knowledge or insights greater than what is derived from treating them in noncomparative ways.”12 There is heuristic value in March’s call to define the enterprise of CPT in a way that takes “comparison” seriously, especially in the attempt to deal with a rather loose tradition such as Confucianism. As for the object of comparison, the more coherent, well-delineated, concrete, and clearly identifiable in its shape, the more rigorous the comparison may be. Drawing on March’s observation, one may better resist the following temptations: to compare two historically unequal parties such as that of the West and that of the non-West; to celebrate anti-hegemonic political theories through a certain unreflective presumption of truth, thus missing out on the richness of given traditions; and “to oppose crude clash-ofcivilizations thinking merely by pointing to notable, individual exceptions that are accessible and appealing to a Western audience.”13 However, an explicit comparison between discrete traditions of thought is not the only proper way to perform CPT. As this chapter hopes to demonstrate, CPT can also be properly performed by invoking certain shared dynamics, concerns, and preoccupations in the long trajectory of an analogous political thought tradition. In my view, a way to enhance scholarly rigor is to select a manageably distinct unit of analysis and to adopt a more contextual approach. A decontextualized approach makes it hard for us to adequately understand the political options that were open to the practitioners of a certain political theory. One can discern its peculiarities as a bounded political theory by examining its full historical characteristics. To do so, we should ask contextual questions: What historical conditions made a particular political theory a viable option, and for whom? What kind of native conceptual apparatus enabled them to develop political theory in the way they did? What were the specific historical consequences? This is not to say that political theory can be replaced by historical inquiry. Rather, it means that historical sensitivity would enable scholars to compare and theorize ethical traditions with greater rigor. Contextual questions would be helpful not only in making a political theory more comprehensible by making visible its roots but also in assessing its contemporary relevance even when

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a modern theorist reworks the tradition to which that political theory belongs. Most important, it would prevent cherry-picking evidence congenial to one’s agenda. Eventually it would allow us to address a political theory as an integrated unit for comparative studies.

4.3 true way learning in historical context One way to avoid problems that are endemic to writing on Confucianism in CPT is to focus on narrower traditions of political thought that are sufficiently determinate to be susceptible of the sort of precise theoretical reconstruction that could make them suitable comparators for other thought traditions but rich and varied enough to generate interesting theoretical insights and innovations. TWL meets these criteria and also warrants study as the most influential current of political thought during the last thousand years of imperial China’s history. It is important not to confuse TWL with the modern idea of Confucianism on which many political theorists have focused. My aim here is to reduce the risk of overgeneralization by invoking a historically well-situated term and putting it in historical context. By “TWL” I mean daoxue in classical Chinese. When introducing TWL among the diverse strands within Chinese intellectual traditions, I am not suggesting that we should get rid of the much larger family tree of “Confucianism” and recognize TWL and only TWL as “truly” Confucian. Quite the contrary. From a historical perspective, there is no such thing as a true Confucian. Rather, my claim is that TWL serves as a better candidate for CPT than “Confucianism,” for several reasons. First, it includes a well-developed and coherent theoretical account of politics. Although some scholars see more similarities between early “Confucian” thought and TWL, the proponents of the latter claimed that they were initiating a new order, a new conception of human nature, and a new place for humanity in the natural scheme of things. Indeed, their ideas differ substantially from earlier “Confucian” ideas. Therefore, one should treat TWL as a distinct unit rather than the continuation of an earlier tradition. Second, TWL is arguably one of the most influential strands in the Chinese intellectual tradition. Following its radical break with earlier Chinese tradition, it became central in Chinese culture as it formed the core of the curriculum tested by the civil service examinations required of nearly all candidates for the Chinese bureaucracy. Even those who had failed the examinations enjoyed a familiarity with TWL that afforded

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them common ground across regions and generations. It affected the way Chinese literati viewed politics until the civil service examination was abolished in the early twentieth century. Third, from its formative stage onward, it constituted a strong cohesive fellowship among its practitioners.14 They arose as an identifiable group in a common effort to reform the politics of the times. Those who identified with TWL wished to distinguish themselves from other “Confucians.” The fact that they often referred to themselves in terms of “our faction” shows a strong sense of shared community. They represented what Leigh K. Jenco has called a localized community of knowledge, which mapped knowledge differently through its own unique exegetical scholarship, presented a much broader vision than its concentrated site of audiences, and developed generalizable reflections on political life.15 Last but not least, throughout the late imperial period, TWL was quite successful in maintaining its shared theoretical premises and developing particular kinds of sociopolitical agendas and projects. That is, what its practitioners shared was not simply their general respect for Confucius as a sage but a much more concrete theory and blueprint for action.16 These features make TWL a well-bounded unit of analysis and thus a far more adequate basis for CPT than Confucianism. In what follows, I shall trace the unfolding of TWL, which gradually formed a distinctive mode of participatory politics in mid- to late imperial China. 4.3.1 The “Republican” Ethos in the Northern Song In 907, Zhu Wen, a regional commander, killed the last Tang emperor, thus officially ending the Tang dynasty (618–907). Amid the political turmoil of the Tang-Song transition, aristocratic families were ruined. In order to recentralize imperial authority, emperors of the Northern Song (960–1127) staffed their bureaucracy with men of humbler origin who lacked independent military bases and thus established themselves via the civil service examinations. When compared to pre-Song political culture, this new state of affairs embodied a considerable participatory mentality.17 The preceding Tang polity was a stratified pyramid, at the top of which the emperor held complete imperium; aristocratic families dominated all important government positions, and all other members of society were assigned their proper legal status as the emperor’s subjects. The conventional rendering of “Confucianism” is often tied to this kind of

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hierarchical political order. The idea of an all-powerful monarch, an entrenched aristocracy, and an obedient population left little room for the notion of active citizenship. All accountability flowed upward to the emperor, who was accountable to no one. Under these conditions, passive conformity was crucial in maintaining the stability of the polity. In a fully stratified and segregated society such as that of the Tang, conformity served as a virtue, as it was expected to minimize conflicts between different social strata. By contrast, in the Northern Song, there were almost no legal obstacles to government officeholding. The greatly expanding size of the state bureaucracy fostered a participatory mentality among the larger population. This expansion was a particular consequence of the decision by the Shenzong emperor to adopt the New Policies of Wang Anshi (1021–1086), with their statist and centralist vision.18 Wang Anshi’s vision upheld the radical hope of reshaping society through the transforming impulses of the political center. In particular, it invoked the benefit of large-scale, statewide institutions and bureaucracy. As the growing state bureaucracy was able to incorporate a larger number of the elite, those who passed the civil service examinations identified themselves with the Song polity much more than the Tang aristocratic families did with the Tang polity.19 The new Northern Song elite regarded the imperial court as the central source of authority and empowered the emperor as the ultimate arbiter of politics, as well as state bureaucrats as his proxies. This is one reason why some scholars have thought that the Song polity was unprecedentedly autocratic. Certainly, there was no strong and wellorganized noble class that might impose limits and checks on royal authority. However, this does not mean that government rested upon arbitrary decisions of unrestrained royal power. To the contrary, new ideas emerged as to how the emperor should relate to his subjects. What distinguishes the politics of the Song central government from earlier periods is not only the absence of aristocratic families but also the existence of guoshi (state orthodoxy or state principles).20 State orthodoxy represented a universal principle binding both rulers and ministers. Through freewheeling discussion, both rulers and ministers were responsible for originating state orthodoxy, a kind of institutional arrangement within which they themselves were to operate: “Emperors and scholarofficials set up guoshi together.”21 Just as rulers’ activities could be enabled by state orthodoxy, rulers were constrained by it. Once state orthodoxy was established, it served as the prevailing guideline in developing concrete policies.

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As state orthodoxy provided something of a brake on the caprice of a ruler by limiting the possibilities of action open to him, Song governance was not a type of despotism. To remain effective, a ruler needed to be involved in consultation and collective action in which he had to control the unpredictable exercise of arbitrary power and have a high tolerance for those who were not afraid to speak up. By the same token, ministers often did not back away from hardheaded negotiations with their rulers over policy implementation. As a consequence, Song state councillors were able to entertain considerable executive and political authority. In fact, even before the Song period, the importance of political advisors on the good ordering of the monarchy was well recognized. However, the Song notion of corporate, consultative governance goes beyond the early imperial discourse. For example, Cao Yanye (1157–1228) dared to say in his memorial in 1225, “An emperor and literati both are rulers who govern the realm.”22 To take another example, Zhang Fangping was bold enough to say to Song Emperor Renzong in 1040: “The empire cannot be ruled by Your Majesty alone; the empire can only be governed by Your Majesty collaborating with the officials.”23 Wen Yanbo (1006–1097) told the Shenzong emperor, “Govern the realm together with the literati.”24 Their statements stood in sharp contrast to those of ministers in the early empires. Early imperial rulers explicitly aimed to form obedient subjects. On this connection, for example, Jia Yi (200 bce–168 bce) said, “The role of ministers is to present themselves to their monarch whenever they think, hear, and know desirable things. Only the monarch possesses people; ministers assist him in his undertaking of governance.”25 By contrast, as Yu Yingshi demonstrated, Song scholar-officials generally saw themselves as full partners with the emperor in the work of the state. The expression “shichen” (teacher-minister) is also symptomatic of Song political culture. Wang Anshi said, “As for the literati, whose way is noble and whose virtue is lofty, even an emperor should let them take the ruler’s position facing south in order to seek their advice.”26 In echoing Wang’s lofty ideal, the Shenzong emperor called him shichen, a term which refers to a type of minister who plays the role of teacher to a ruler despite his or her lower political position.27 The antithetical category is junshi (ruler-teacher), which refers to a type of ruler whose political power is combined with moral authority. In employing the category of teacherminister rather than ruler-teacher, the Shenzong emperor made it clear that, as Wang was a righteous and noble advisor, his authority was justified by something other than political hierarchy. That being so, it would be no great exaggeration to say that there was more “republican” 28

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spirit than autocracy in Northern Song politics. The idea was that if an order imposed by the state or the emperor is itself subject to the deliberation of those on whom it is imposed, then it will not be dominating: it will not involve subjecting people to the will of an arbitrary despot. The “freedom” of the government officials came to be construed as, in effect, the right to live under a regime of policies and laws that one has a certain participatory role in creating. The apparatus of government had become wide open to literati via the abolition of the hereditary aristocracy. Commoners were able to become members of the literati if they cultivated themselves to the degree that they could pass the civil service examination.29 Once they became government officials, they were able to actively participate in politics rather than passively accept an order from an emperor. In short, even commoners, in principle, had the prospect of civic membership. 4.3.2 The “Republican” Ethos in the Southern Song In 1126, the alien Jin dynasty invaded the Song. In the following year, the Song court had to flee to the area south of the Huai River. When the Northern Song collapsed, many intellectuals attributed this to the disastrous effects of Wang Anshi’s policies. Accordingly, it is quite understandable that the Southern Song (1127–1279) witnessed a shift away from enthusiasm for broad institutional reforms toward an emphasis on the regeneration of individual morality. Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and others infused Southern Song literati with élan by setting TWL simultaneously against the previously prevailing modes of New Policies, Su Shih’s (1037–1101) Learning, and other competing positions. This is what historians call the TWL movement. Along with the latter’s concern with personal morality was an emphasis on local voluntarism. Practitioners of TWL focused much more on local community issues than they did on national politics, in response to declining state power at the local level: “[T]he loss of the north China plain to the Jin empire focused the central government on national defense rather than domestic social transformation, thus leaving greater space for local initiative.”30 To better understand TWL’s focus on personal morality and local voluntarism, we need to situate it in its sociohistorical context. As of the Southern Song, a far-reaching change took place in the patterns of the elite’s mode of living.31 Instead of seeking office in the central government, they performed a wide range of quasi-governmental tasks in local areas, such as the repair of irrigation systems; the

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construction of community granaries, schools, and shrines; participation in state-sponsored rituals; mediation in conflicts to avoid lawsuits; and leadership of self-defense militia. These local activities were voluntary in that obligation was self-imposed. TWL’s idea of equal moral potentiality (the possibility of sagehood) was the theoretical underpinning of this voluntarism. An imbalance between the number of talented individuals and the supply of available bureaucratic posts formed the larger backdrop for this turn to local activities and personal morality. Owing to economic development and the wider availability of printed books, the literati grew in number. Because the quotas for officials did not rise, the exams became increasingly competitive; only one out of every hundred candidates passed the triennial prefectural examinations.32 Members of the elite had to rethink their strategies for securing their own social status and that of their descendants. Consequently, the Southern Song witnessed a conscious move away from state-centered institutional reformism to local voluntary activism. Even after the Southern Song, the local character of the majority of the elite remained fairly stable despite dynastic changes because the imbalance between candidates and office posts continued. According to one estimate, as of the late Qing dynasty, there was only one magistrate per population of 200,000–300,000.33 In short, late imperial China was no longer organized primarily on the monist principles of official bureaucracy. A vast range of associations and quasi-intermediary bodies served as auxiliaries for state functions. TWL was attractive to the literati because its enhanced emphasis on personal morality provided a rationale for justifying their elite status.34 Indeed, most practitioners of TWL objected to strengthening the power of the state bureaucracy and instead underscored the importance of voluntary activities in the regions. Their anti-statist view evokes questions: What happened to the Northern Song “republican” spirit that was buttressed by the expansion of the state bureaucracy? Was it diminished along with the downsizing of government posts? Or did it survive in other forms? Some scholars have suggested that the practitioners of TWL shifted the focus of their attention from sociopolitical matters to the apolitical cultivation of the mind.35 However, critics of TWL under the Southern Song found it politically dangerous rather than a symptom of political apathy. In his memorial in 1196, Liu Dexiu said, “[T]he head of spurious learning [i.e., TWL] steals the ruler’s power to rule the realm and mobilize it.”36 That is, critics perceived the authority of TWL as threatening to the

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monarchy. This does not mean that Southern Song practitioners of TWL inherited the centralist outlook of the Northern Song. The following textual evidence indicates otherwise. According to Shen Jizu, a Southern Song intellectual who was critical of TWL, Zhu Xi would not respond to the order of a ruler, but set off immediately by carriage when summoned by local magistrates . . . He respects neither a ruler nor the state, but instead gathers his fellows . . . and demands high tuition from the rich.37

Why did Zhu take local magistrates seriously to the degree that, to the eyes of critics, they paid more respect to magistrates than to the emperor? It would be nonsensical to conclude, as critics did, that Zhu revered local officials more than the emperor. Zhu and other proponents of TWL never explicitly challenged the idea that monarchy was the most viable form of government. Rather, they did not invest the monarch and the state with ultimate and all-encompassing authority, in part because imperial patronage was not the source of their income and status, as reflected in the fact that practitioners of TWL demanded a good deal of tuition from the rich. Since Song times and onward, the expansion of transportation networks created the preconditions for the commercialization of the economy, which in turn created wealth independently from the state. It was the sage who possessed ultimate authority. Sagehood cannot be subsumed under existing political categories like ruler and ruled. TWL would admit that in practice it may not always be possible for everyone to be a sage and thus to establish a fully free and self-governing type of regime. However, everyone should strive to be a sage because everyone has the potential to become one. The dynasty as a collective entity was more important than the person of the ruler or the elite, who were said to be bridled by an obligation to involve sages in consultation and collective decision-making. The proper political order is more dependent on those who claim to have a better understanding of the public good than other members of society. TWL’s understanding of the public good centers on the law-like Principle (li), which broadened the “republican” spirit of the Northern Song by underpinning it with a richer philosophic meaning. Li is not something that can be created by human will. The monarch does not generate li but rather is constrained by it. A sage is superior to a monarch in the sense that a sage can have better access to li. The wellbeing of the world can be realized only by being aware of this li and then setting this awareness in motion. By the same token, the fundamental

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problem with a polity lies in lack of awareness and the failure to put awareness into practice. The currency of the concept of li represents a subtle and important shift in political language. Southern Song proponents of TWL did not understand politics in the same way the Northern Song elite of the preceding century did. They aimed at setting political life on a more certain, stable, and universalistic foundation. Rather than denouncing the hierarchical arrangement of society and the political form of monarchy, TWL redefined the self-image of the elite, not in terms of their relation to the social nexus in which each member of the realm was embedded but in relation to the concept of li. With a closer examination of the concept of li, we can gain insight into how the “republican” spirit survived the diminished chance of being a state official. It was to this concept that practitioners of TWL appealed in justifying their decision to engage in local voluntarism and to initiate what they themselves proudly proclaimed as the True Way. The concept of li in TWL challenged, among other things, commonplace assumptions about state–society relations. Generally speaking, early imperial theorists supposed that the unified whole is made up of the multiplicity of parts. In other words, a principle or pattern is realizable only when multiple parts add up to the whole, and a supreme leader has responsibility for realizing the principle/pattern by ensuring that each part is rendered its due according to the rightful place it occupies within the coordinated hierarchical whole. Li in TWL is different in that it expresses a Buddhist-inspired universal identity rather than a grand, interconnected pattern or order.38 The unity inscribed in li is not the kind of unity that is generated by connecting multiple parts. It is unity in the sense that each of the myriad things contains the essence of the whole universe. In short, a thing in the world is a microcosmos in itself, not part of the cosmos. This unique idea of part and whole resolved the vexed relationship between state and society. Without a belief in the unity that makes the self, the local, and the center cohere, the TWL project, which theoretically makes local voluntarism as significant as service in the central government, cannot be sustained. Seen in this light, practitioners of TWL in local society were not mere local strongmen with narrow horizons, living essentially by supplying local needs. Despite the local turn, they identified themselves neither with the center nor with their local base but with the cosmos itself. Indeed, the following passage of the Doctrine of the Mean came into widespread use throughout mid- to late imperial periods: “He who can partake in the transformative and generative processes of Heaven and

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Earth can stand, by virtue of this capacity, as a third term between them in the cosmic continuum.”39 Practitioners of TWL thought of themselves neither as mere subjects who passively received the ruler’s influence nor as mere consumers of whatever benefits accrued from being economically productive members of one’s society but as active citizens who cultivated rich civic life. In this scheme, an emperor holds no privileged place; both an emperor and a citizen are cosmic figures who possess a heroic vision. Self-fulfillment is possible only when the individual acts as a conscious and autonomous participant in shaping the cosmic and thus public good. TWL opened up to the many the quest for cosmic glory that previous political theory had made the preserve of the few. TWL is unusual in combining what are apparently two antithetical activities: acting locally and thinking globally, or even cosmically. In A History of Chinese Political Thought, I conceptualized this unusual feature as “the metaphysical republic.”40 By metaphysical republic I mean a type of association which is a community at the level of metaphysical principle, whose members relate to one another as equals in the potential to participate. Through the dual structure of phenomenal and metaphysical, one can be a fully fledged citizen without challenging one’s place in a stratified society. Without this “republican” aspect, a polity in the phenomenal world would not be universal and thus would not claim to embody the cosmic order. This outlook allows the followers of TWL to reject the idea that one needs to be at the political center of the bureaucratic empire in order to be an active participant in ordering the world. Of course, even the practitioners of TWL were aware that their polity was not a republic in the acephalous sense where one joined with one’s fellow citizens to make decisions that were binding on all. It was monarchical in form, being determined by authority descending from above. Thus, the political world is a partnership of hierarchical monarchy with the metaphysical republic in which everyone aims at sagehood. The question is whether this complex outlook was able to perform any role in the actual political process, addressing its practitioners to and carrying on a sustained discourse concerning issues of the larger, public interest. Practitioners of TWL began to organize people into symbolic and horizontal networks that extended beyond their immediate territorial and status affiliations, which could temporarily decouple them from their existing ties. At the same time, it remains true that they often organized themselves not on an explicitly political plane but on politically neutral ground in such a way that they rarely challenged the authority of the emperor while being critical of mismanagement by officials.

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At this point, it may be tempting to ask why local practitioners of TWL did not develop a contentious republic that put citizens in serious conflict with the monarch through, for example, a recurrently elective parliament. One may have a better historical understanding by recasting the question of the republic as a question about the collective choice the Chinese elite made from the Southern Song onward. Posed this way, the question becomes: how are the elite’s collective local turn and concomitant development of the metaphysical republic to be explained as an option for political action? The elite found themselves in a situation where their chances to fulfill their political ambition in the imperial bureaucracy became extremely slim because there were far more men of ambition than positions and titles for them to fill. As a rational agent, one prefers the least costly option available. The cost incurred by the radical unsettling of the political status quo is likely to exceed the individual’s estimate of the expected benefits. Therefore, the elite looked for a ready and satisfactory substitute for being government officials. For good or ill, China had huge uncharted local areas to exploit for the sake of the elite’s political ambition. The vastness of the country combined with a relatively slim state bureaucracy, making it far more possible for the Chinese than for most other people to think about solving their problems through a turn to the local than through fighting against the vested interests of the central government. Being a local elite with heroic metaphysical significance is better than being highly educated losers who have failed to obtain positions as officials. At the same time, owing to the huge distance between the political center and the local areas, the local elite had notorious difficulties in making their voice heard. This deprived them of a precious feedback mechanism that might have stimulated the formation of a fully developed republic. Seen in this light, the mid- to late imperial Chinese elite probably failed to develop a fully fledged republic because they did not have to. China had a considerable capacity to divert what might otherwise have been a revolutionary force or discontent with a local option. This capacity may be viewed as an asset from the ruler’s viewpoint, in that maintaining the integrity of a vast territory and population at a low cost gave China an overwhelming advantage in the search for hegemony in interstate relations. The asset of a vast territory would become a liability under modern conditions of factional politics, but the preference for the local turn over the messiness of a radical voice persisted throughout the late imperial periods.

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4.4 republicanism in different contexts The implication of the foregoing argument is that republicanism serves as a more congenial frame than liberalism and/or democratic theories for discussing TWL in a comparative way. Liberalism is inherently at odds with TWL’s perfectionist assumptions, such as the existence of the objectively good life and the perfectibility of human nature. In addition, TWL never endorses the validity of “rule by the many” as such. This puts my reading of TWL at odds with reconstructions of “Confucian” political thought that focus on the relationship between Confucianism and liberaldemocratic ideals.41 Some scholars have aimed to interpret the Confucian tradition in such a way that it accommodated both liberal and democratic values. Others have reconstructed Confucianism as an alternative democratic theory to the dominant liberal democracy of the West.42 Alternatively, those who are skeptical of the connection between democracy and Confucianism have instead brought to the fore political meritocracy, de-emphasizing democratic ideals such as political equality.43 Different as they are, all these positions are similar in one respect: they have all worked to show whether “Confucianism” is compatible with or hostile to liberal/democratic visions. It is not the purpose of this chapter to arbitrate among differing views on the relation between Confucianism and liberal democracy. Instead, I would like to note that this kind of debate can be traced back to early-twentiethcentury Chinese philosophy, before CPT had emerged as a subfield in political studies. Seen from the long-term perspective, the prime mover responsible for this debate was the tendency to view Chinese political culture in terms of autocracy, despotism, or authoritarian collectivism. The tendency can in turn be traced back at least to Montesquieu (1689–1755) and his identification of the Chinese emperor as a paradigmatic oriental despot. Scholars often attributed apparent nonliberal and nondemocratic aspects of Chinese political culture to its “Confucian” legacy, which seems to sanction oppressive governance and ignore individual autonomy. Those who were against this tendency attempted to (liberal-) democratize Confucianism. The debate as a whole arises from a tendency to explore non-Western ideas through the prism of Western ideologies rather than in their own terms. Instead, I propose that we compare TWL with other participatory modes of government, including some that were prominent in the West. I have used the term “republican” to denote modes of politics that give central importance to ideas of the common good, equal freedom, and the

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political participation of citizens. This enables us to see how TWL bears a “family resemblance” to many strands of Western republicanism, itself a varied tradition. Reading the Western republican tradition from a historical perspective, we can trace the various purposes for which different thinkers have claimed the mantle of “republicanism” over time in order to address the political problems characteristic of their particular contexts. This enables us to gain some clarity in our judgments about which versions of Western republicanism are most apt for comparison with the “republicanism” of TWL. In the remainder of the chapter, I argue that the most interesting comparison is between TWL thinkers and modern Western republican thinkers who were preoccupied with the problem of how to realize republican ideals in large-scale polities, where the face-to-face relations between citizens of the ancient Greek city-state were no longer available as the foundation of a political order grounded in freedom, political equality, and participation. More specifically, I argue that it is worth comparing what I call the “metaphysical republic” of TWL with Immanuel Kant’s republicanism of ideas, and TWL’s localism with the Madisonian “extended republic.” Taken together, TWL, Kant, and Madison can be read as ideational resources of contemporary ideas for a “distributed republic” in which political action in dispersed localities is oriented by shared ideas of freedom, the public interest, and active participation. The challenge for modern Western proponents of republicanism who no longer lived in city-states was how to reformulate republican ideals in such a way that the ideal of self-governance was realizable in other settings. Let me turn first to consider Kant’s cosmopolitan republicanism and the parallels between it and TWL. First, there is a certain shared sense of human commonality: everyone has the right to be free (for Kant) or potential to be morally perfect (TWL) by virtue of one’s humanity. This human commonality supports a theoretical equality of political opportunity. At the same time, for both Kant and TWL, such human commonality is compatible with the inequality of members of a given society in wealth, power, status, etc.44 In addition, both ascribe a capacity for moral autonomy to human beings. According to Kant, one is one’s own master in that one is not subject to other masters but only to universal law; according to TWL, one must be one’s own master (zhu) by realizing li in one’s own humanity. Therefore, both TWL and Kantian republicanism advocate a voluntary undertaking of obligation. Obligation is the product of the rightful condition in which individuals fulfill self-realization.

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Second, Kant argues that the actions of the state must be omnilateral, rather than just the unilateral acts of the state officials making the decision.45 In other words, the action of the state differs fundamentally from actions of private individuals in that it is exercised for the sake of the public interest according to principles that are valid for all members of the public. Likewise, TWL argues that the state must embody public spirit expressed by li, not the private will of the ruler. At the same time, according to Kant, the right of members of the public to offer interpretations of the public interest and to criticize public authorities does not entail a right to revolt. Indeed, if the state is public-spirited enough, it is selfcontradictory for the people to entertain the right to resist the sovereign or the sovereign’s agents. According to Pettit, Kant goes so far as to think that the subjects of an oppressive regime lack the right to disrupt civil order.46 TWL also does not recognize rights of active resistance to the emperor. Political voice and action are justified in terms of social responsibility to uphold li and should not be anti-state per se. When being vigilant for and alert to any possible misdoing and ready to challenge and contest the state authorities, the primary role of the literati is not that of resister but that of participant in ordering the world. Third, both Kant and TWL stand in an uncertain relationship to democracy. For them, human commonality does not necessarily mean actual participation of the people in making the laws. Their ideas, such as the common good, often turned out to be in tension with extensive popular participation and ultimate popular judgment. For example, the Kantian idea that “all are equal to one another as subjects” is quite consistent with the claim that “citizenship should only go to the relatively wealthy.”47 As long as their decisions are public-spirited enough, the most virtuous can themselves adequately represent the public interest and thus decide what is best for the political community. However, there are also differences. For example, Kant wants to demonstrate that “a rightful condition can give authority to laws rather than human beings, so that the actions of particular human beings in making, enforcing, and applying laws can be exercises of public rather than private power, and so are instances of an omnilateral will.”48 To construct such a theory, Kant develops a distinction between the offices and the officials carrying the offices out. This distinction allows Kant to argue that it is law rather than people that rules, even if the actual ruling is performed by people. It reflects Kant’s idea that empirical acts cannot be the foundation of normative theory. By contrast, TWL does not need such a distinction because it conceives human beings themselves as those who

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embody the pubic spirit. According to TWL, it is people rather than law that rule. Li in TWL’s vision is not simply an a priori idea but possesses an empirical dimension because li combines with vital energy (qi) in the phenomenal world. Desirable political order could only be realized by individuals cultivating qualities that all people innately possess. Another substantial difference between Kant and TWL is that, whereas Kant talks about freedom as a right to give oneself a law, TWL talks of being true to ethical propensities endowed at birth.49 According to Kant, political authority and law bind people but at the same time make them free because people themselves are conceived as the authors of the laws that bind them. However, even if one were to reconstruct TWL’s idea of freedom, it could not be done in a Kantian way because TWL does not develop social contract theory, even as a “mere idea of reason” or “heuristic device.” The reason why there is little discussion about the right to choose in TWL is that human beings are believed to have a shared conception of empirical good. What is particularly interesting for the purpose of this chapter is the cosmopolitan feature of Kantian republicanism. Like other Enlightenment republicans who were living in the European Westphalian system of hierarchical states, Kant tackled the problem of how to build a republican argument for an ever-expanding zone of peace among members of the states. In so doing, he transcended the limits of the ancient models of smallscale republics. Kant developed his idea of a republic of republics in his germinal essay, “Perpetual Peace.” He explored “a government without a state with supreme authority and a monopoly of the means to violence.”50 In other words, Kant rejected a world state in favor of a federation of republican states. Individuals who embrace this ideal of republican cosmopolitanism can see themselves as participants in a common project of realizing a political order in which right (Recht) reigns, a project that is not limited to the states of which they are citizens. “The peoples of the earth have entered in varying degrees into a universal community,” Kant wrote, in which “a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere.”51 In Kant’s view, one can see oneself as a participant in a quasi-transcendental community of rational beings who seek to live in accordance with universally valid principles. Yet this universal community should not entail a world state, he argued, which would be undesirable, because it would concentrate too much power in a few hands, and impracticable, because it would extend “too far over vast regions.”52 Kant was not alone in reworking the republican ideas in grappling with the question of how republicanism can be realized in a much larger

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space.53 Many cosmopolitan and federalist republicans rejected the idea of the governance of a universal, despotic monarchy under a single ruler.54 The problem of establishing republican political order on a large territorial base was of defining importance for the American founders, who sought to disprove Montesquieu’s claim that republican government was possible only on a small scale. For Americans, republicanism meant more than simply the elimination of a king and the institution of an elective system. They needed to invent a vision in which people could have a thoroughgoing commitment to political participation. Many scholarly monographs and theoretical perspectives have been devoted to the explanation of the new republicanism. We might contrast, for example, J. G. A. Pocock’s reconstruction of the civic humanist tradition, from Aristotle through Machiavelli and Harrington to the American founding intellectuals, with Paul A. Rahe’s Tocquevillean view that the ordinary American citizen participated in the political process of local government and formed public associations in the light of self-interest rightly understood.55 To assess the persuasiveness of these competing interpretations of American republicanism is not the purpose of this chapter. Noteworthy, however, is that the new republicanism seemed to devise a more local and self-interested mode of political participation than the classical theory of republicanism. Seen in this way, the American experience of republicanism echoes TWL, for Chinese literati were also confronted with the challenge of how to maintain the participatory mode of political life on an “extended” territory, in the sense that the ratio of government officials to population and territory had been steadily decreasing. In other words, TWL of the Southern Song fulfilled a function in its day somewhat akin to that of American republicanism. In understanding how such a local mode of American republicanism can be connected to the politics of the central government, Madison’s view is instructive. Madison came up with a new republican vision that was neither a loose federation nor an enlarged state by utilizing the conception of plural and distributed popular sovereignty. Built into this Federalist tradition is a fruitful tension between the center, with its constrained supremacy, and the claims of the smaller units to self-rule. To come to terms with this tension, republicans advocated dispersed powers across multiple processes and locations in the form of a federation of republics. They saw such multilevel systems and a pluralist approach not as ineffective but as a way to be truly republican because it divided and retrained the power of a hierarchical order. In particular, the Federalists argued that size and diversity were not impediments to

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republicanism but enabling conditions for it. Thomas Paine observed that “what Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude.”56 The idea of a distributed republic is still alive in today’s political imagination. For example, in imagining a new form of political order for the European Union that is neither national nor international and neither anarchy nor despotism, James Bohman seeks to revive the Madisonian strand of republican political thought. According to him, interaction across multiple levels and polities is essential for healthy selfrule. And such an interaction should be guided by the principle of distributed popular sovereignty rather than unified popular sovereignty. Only then can a peaceful transnational order and popular democratic rule be united. If citizens are to be engaged as citizens of both Europe and the member states, their will must be engaged at various stages and locations in the process. An analogous distributed rather than unitary ideal, rooted in TWL, constituted the basis for late imperial Chinese political order, which was neither a bureaucratically strong state nor a confederation but a polity characterized by a unique combination of decentralized republic of virtue and emperor-centered hierarchical state. As was discussed in Section 4.3.2, TWL in Southern Song sought a new basis for “republican” self-rule that overcame many of the difficulties caused by a decreasing chance to serve in government. For Zhu Xi and other late imperial TWL theoreticians, TWL provides an idea of divided political authority in the multilevel polity, where sharing and distributing power between center and periphery, state bureaucrats and local literati is central. From the TWL perspective, a more unitary hierarchical structure is not normatively desirable because it would rob the literati of the cultivation of their capacities for leadership through more direct practices in local communities. This particular Southern Song innovation in “republican” thinking constituted the ideological basis for the enduring form of late imperial Chinese political order, to the extent that the literati no longer believed in the likelihood of continued government service for their descendants and TWL continued to be central in literati’s learning. The late imperial political order could not be adequately conceived on the structure of the state bureaucracy alone. Adding the new layer of authority of the “metaphysical republic,” TWL provided a way to redefine the interactive relationships among the local and the national, the emperor and the literati. The local community enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the central government, as local TWL practitioners

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thought of themselves not merely as subjects of the hierarchical state but citizens of a transcendental republic. In particular, TWL practitioners’ deep identification with li made their participation and influence in local communities more effective and significant. This suggests that a largescale empire can also promote robust political participation when there is a high degree of ideological convergence. By promoting voluntary local activism, TWL devised a form of government that stood between a loose federation and the strong form of the modem hierarchical state. Seen in this way, the conventional image of Chinese despotism is misleading not because there was a quasi-democratic ethos in late imperial Chinese political culture but because there was this layer of a distributed “republic.” However, it should be noted that the quasi-“republican” vision of TWL is less open to contestation than American republicanism. The metaphysical republic of TWL implies that the imperial state assigned the role of constructive dissenter to the elite within the broader framework of governance. Constructive dissenters were allowed to assert their viewpoint on condition that they engaged in governance as members of the same team. Literati carried out the creation and maintenance of order, good relations, and mutual support among the members of local communities, allowing the state not to expand its administrative scope in regulating social life. The purpose of local voluntarism was civic to the extent that it expressed responsibility for the provision of the material and moral requisites of a healthy common life. This unique feature of late imperial China allows us to view state–society relations not as adversarial but as organic. In the organic vision, one does not measure state power in terms of the capacity of the central government to affect society or the capacity of society to limit the steering room of the government. Rather, what matters is the degree of state embeddedness, which enables a state–society synergy in maintaining the presence of an empire in the midst of vassal countries. Despite the decreased concentration of power, state power can still be considered strong because it is shared. When shared, both ruler and ruled view power as their own. Accordingly, power can be more fluidly ceded by the center to local groups, and vice versa, according to circumstances. Rulers’ power is not threatened even when it is delegated to local agents. Local agents are not alienated by their exclusion from central bureaucracy. At the same time, organized capacity for collective action against the central government is discouraged on the grounds that it undermines the organic fabric of the polity. Instead, associations and intermediary bodies are co-opted as political agents of the imperial vision.

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Just as Westerners have drawn on the republican tradition to inspire their political thought and action, TWL has provided Chinese political actors with a rich resource to tap when they want to be more participatory. Indeed, one could see the localist turn as a recurring long-term historical pattern in China – in the Southern Song, late Ming, and now.57 At the beginning of each dynasty or regime, the more or less topdown approach to transforming society gained the upper hand in implementing laws and policies, followed by a localist turn when an era of statist policies was receding. Localist turns often had in common: voluntary initiatives for maintaining local order, increased commercial activities, economic recovery, a revival of lineage or descent-group activity, and the pursuit of private wealth. That is also what has been happening in contemporary PRC in the post-Mao era.58 That is, one can see another possibility for local identity formation and activism after a sustained attack on localism by the CCP in the twentieth century.59 To one degree or another, TWL gave the localist turn an ideological justification, which enabled local literati to see their political action as something that had broader significance at the level of the larger national whole. What is intriguing in the ideological landscape of the contemporary PRC is the fact that the central government, rather than local activists and intellectuals, seeks to appropriate “Confucianism” as their ideological justification. This is possible because “Confucianism” is a free-floating resource – that is, a generalized ideological resource “not embedded within or committed beforehand to any primary ascriptive-particularistic groups.”60 In other words, different social occupational groups or government can use “Confucianism” in the pursuit of varying political goals. In fact, there were precedents for this in Chinese history, such as the case of Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–1398) in which the central government employed “Confucianism” as a way to impose a uniform national social policy, to demand standardization, and to create the expectation that the ruler should function as both a top manager and supreme teacher.61 At the same time, TWL also set a precedent for the formation of a local community, identity, and social agendas, as we have examined. Local identity may create the grounds for collective action, and local activism may in turn be a resource for increasing the locale’s participation in national politics as well as transforming local society. However, the legacy of TWL has both assets and liabilities. It is not very amenable to contentious politics when they are needed – though, in the contemporary context, overtly contentious politics are not likely to be successful, and TWL may offer more viable alternatives. If some contemporary Chinese

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political actors wish to pursue contentious politics for participatory democracy, one of the important challenges they set for themselves would be how they are to channel their own traditional “republican” ethos in the way they want. When this ethos has been successfully channeled, it may no longer be TWL. In any case, it remains to be seen whether contemporary PRC local intellectuals also want to reinterpret the legacy of TWL in ways the central government may find politically dangerous.

4.5 conclusion The Chinese ethical tradition, much of which has been called “Confucianism,” has undergone a number of significant transformations, and to undergo further modification is natural and not foreign to its protean nature. However, because of its protean nature, it is not always amenable to comparative studies. To be valid, “Confucian” political theory should be subject to rigorous epistemic standards. One way of doing this is to clarify what we mean by “Confucian,” and this will in turn help us to locate a well-bounded object of comparison, among relatively isolated fragments of this large and inchoate tradition. By so doing, one can identify the character of a given body of thought more clearly. In this light, this chapter has attempted to replace a vague notion of “Confucianism” with TWL, which would allow us to understand the Confucian tradition as its practitioners in the recent past understood themselves. At the same time, this chapter has not purported to offer a side-by-side comparison of TWL and another school of thought. Instead, it has focused on a shared problematic of two similar and yet distinct traditions of political thought: TWL and modern Western republicanism. As their historical conditions changed from those of a small-scale political community to a much larger one, both TWL and republicanism were confronted with the challenge of how to reconceive the very notion of what it is they were doing when they engaged themselves in ordering the world. Not attending much to TWL’s indication of its own concerns, presentday scholars have often transformed it into a kind of democratic theory or authoritarianism. Contrary to what those scholars maintain, comparison between a democratic vision and TWL not only squeezes the Chinese tradition into a mold foreign to it but also misses what is actually there. This is not so much wrong as it is wrongheaded, missing the point and concerns of TWL. Thus, I have suggested that republicanism might serve

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as a better candidate for comparative study, because TWL in mid- to late imperial China represented the anti-despotic thinking of an extraordinarily active elite stratum. They operated in no small part through local voluntarism, writing, and publishing. At the same time, the range of their political participation was limited. Although their political vision was not an oligarchy because leaders came from a much wider stratum than upperclass families, it was not democracy (the idea that “the many” should rule) because it never developed institutionalized means for consulting the opinion of the lower strata. Even during the heyday of the populist version of TWL (Wang Yangming’s learning in late Ming), democratic modes of government were not considered legitimate. A remaining question is: who could tap into this “republican” tradition, and in what direction would it point politically? Whereas the government of the PRC has attempted to appropriate the Confucian tradition for its own purposes, this “republican” resource may be available to those who want to participate in Chinese politics more actively than they have hitherto.

notes 1. Pinyin is used for all transliterations except personal names of those scholars who write in English and who use different transliterations. I have converted direct quotations from English-language secondary sources whose authors employed the Wade-Giles system of romanization into the Pinyin system. 2. The idea of the ever-aggravating despotism in imperial China still recurs in Chinese academia. On the case of mainland Chinese scholarship, see Yuri Pines, The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 63–68. For a review of Western social science literature on this issue, see Richard Von Glahn, The Economic History of China: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 3. See, e.g., The Princeton-China Series and the SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. 4. TWL is an English translation for daoxue in classical Chinese. It has been often called neo-Confucianism in Anglophone scholarly discourse. 5. For a detailed explanation of the historical context of TWL, see my A History of Chinese Political Thought (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018) on which arguments of this chapter are based. 6. Michael Nylan, The Five “Confucian” Classics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 363. My discussion of the term “Confucianism” and “ru” draws on Nylan, The Five “Confucian” Classics, 3–5, 363–367. 7. Ibid., 363. 8. Ibid., 366.

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9. Stephen C. Angle surveyed representative contemporary Confucian thinkers in his Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012). My observation can be applied to them. 10. On the examples of many contemporary versions of Confucianism, see ibid., ch. 1. 11. Andrew F. March, “What Is Comparative Political Theory?,” The Review of Politics 71, no. 4 (2009): 565. 12. Ibid., 537. For a competing view, see Diego von Vacano, “The Scope of Comparative Political Theory,” Annual Review of Political Science 18 (May 2015): 18, 470. 13. March, “What Is Comparative Political Theory?,” 557. 14. On the fellowship of TWL, see Hoyt Cleveland Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1992). 15. On TWL’s knowledge production through exegetical scholarship, see Youngmin Kim, “Zhu Xi’s Political Philosophy: With a Special Focus on His Commentaries of the Four Books,” in Dao Companion to Zhu Xi’s Philosophy (New York: Springer, 2020). See also Leigh K. Jenco’s Chapter 3 in this volume. 16. See Peter K. Bol, Neo-Confucianism in History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 17. On the details of the structure of power during Tang-Song transition, see Kim, A History of Chinese Political Thought, chs. 4 and 5. 18. On the details of Wang Anshi’s New Policies, see Paul J. Smith, Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991). 19. Y. Yu, Zhuxi de lishishijie (Shanghai: Sanlian shudian, 2004), 207–208, 215–219. 20. On guoshi, see ibid. 21. Ibid., 8. 22. Cao Yanye, Changguji, juan 5. 23. Dieter Kuhn, The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 121. 24. Li Tao, Xuzizhitongjianchangbian, juan 221. 25. Jia Yi, Xinshu, juan 9. 26. Wang Anshi, linchuanxiansheng wenji, juan 82. 27. Li Tao, Xuzizhitongjianchangbian, juan 233. 28. In this chapter I am using an alien term “republican” to denote a Chinese thought tradition. As I use the terms heuristically, I employ it with caution and as if in quotation marks. 29. Yu, Zhuxi de lishishijie, 169, 221. 30. Peter K. Bol, “The ‘Localist Turn’ and ‘Local Identity’ in Later Imperial China,” Late Imperial China 24, no. 2 (December 2003): 1–50, 5. 31. Robert M. Hartwell, “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750–1550,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42, no. 2 (December 1982): 365–442; Conrad Schirokauer and Robert P. Hymes, “Introduction,” in Robert P. Hymes and Conrad Schirokauer, eds., Ordering the World:

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32.

33.

34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

Youngmin Kim Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 4. John W. Chaffee, “Chu Hsi in Nan-k’ang: Tao-hsu’eh and the Politics of Education,” in Wm. Theodore de Bary and John W. Chaffee, eds., NeoConfucian Education: The Formative Stage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 415. Masahiko Aoki, “Historical Sources of Institutional Trajectories in Economic Development: China, Japan and Korea Compared,” Socio-Economic Review 11, no. 2 (April 2013): 242. Tillman, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy, 252. Yu, Zhuxi de lishishijie, 652. Also see James T. C. Liu, China Turning Inward: Intellectual-Political Changes in the Early Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University: 1988). J. Shu, Zhuzi dazhuan (Fujian: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 1992), 958. Shen Jizu, sichao wenjianlu, juan 4 qingyuandang. Philip J. Ivanhoe, Ethics in the Confucian Tradition (Atlanta, GA: The American Academy of Religion, 1990). Andrew Plaks, trans., Ta Hsüeh and Chung Yung (The Highest Order of Cultivation and On the Practice of the Mean) (London: Penguin, 2003), 44. “Partake” is an English translation of the Chinese character “can” (參). The same character is used in translating “participation” into Chinese. I discuss the concept of the metaphysical republic in more detail in Kim, A History of Chinese Political Thought, ch. 6, on which this section draws. On the state of the art, see Fred Dallmayr, ed., Border Crossings: Toward a Comparative Political Theory (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999); on the state of the recent debate, see Sungmoon Kim, Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 1–4; on the earlier history of theoretical reconstruction of Confucianism, see Sor-Hoon Tan, Confucian Democracy: A Deweyan Reconstruction (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 6–16. For an example of a much earlier attempt, see Hattori Unokichi, “Jukyo to demokurashii,” Shibun 1 (1919): 327–335. Tan, Confucian Democracy. Daniel Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 292. Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 190. Philip Pettit, “Two Republican Traditions,” in Andreas Niederberger and Philipp Schink, eds., Republican Democracy: Liberty, Law and Politics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 195–197. Ibid., 178. Ripstein, Force and Freedom, 191. Wm. Theodore de Bary, The Liberal Tradition in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

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50. James Bohman, “Kant, Madison and the Problem of Transnational Order: Popular Sovereignty in Multilevel Systems,” in Andreas Niederberger and Philipp Schink, eds., Republican Democracy: Liberty, Law and Politics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 62. 51. Immanuel Kant, Kant: Political Writings, 2nd ed., ed. H. S. Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 107–108. 52. Immanuel Kant, The Doctrine of Right, Part I of the Metaphysics of Morals in Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 487. 53. In discussing cosmopolitan and federalist republicans, I draw on Bohman, “Kant, Madison and the Problem of Transnational Order.” 54. Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500–c. 1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 200; Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 55. Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 53–54. 56. Thomas Paine, “The Rights of Man,” in Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 185. 57. Bol, “The ‘Localist Turn’ and ‘Local Identity’ in Later Imperial China.” 58. Edward Friedman, “Reconstructing China’s National Identity: A Southern Alternative to Mao-Era Anti-Imperialist Nationalism,” Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 1 (1994): 67–91; Tim Oakes, “China’s Provincial Identities: Reviving Regionalism and Reinventing ‘Chineseness’,” Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 3 (2000): 667–692; Peter K. Bol, “Local History and Family in Past and Present,” in Thomas H. C. Lee, ed., The New and the Multiple: Sung Senses of the Past (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2004), 307–348. 59. Bryna Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation: Regional Networks and Identities in Shanghai, 1853–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 227–304; Karen Wigen, “Culture, Power, and Place: The New Landscapes of East Asian Regionalism,” American Historical Review 104, no. 4 (1999): 1183–1201. 60. S. N. Eisenstadt, The Political Systems of Empires (New York: The Free Press, 1963), 27. 61. Edward L. Farmer, Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering of Chinese Society Following the Era of Mongol Rule (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995).

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5 Deparochializing Political Theory from the Far Eastern Province Ken Tsutsumibayashi

5.1 introduction If Japan is “the land of the rising sun” at the far eastern extremity of the known world, then the rest of the world must necessarily be located in the “West.” For centuries, China, Korea, and even the Buddhist paradise (imaginary though it was) were perceived by many Japanese to be in the West. This perception gradually changed from around the sixteenth century and was completely transformed by the time Japan faced what is commonly referred to as the “Western impact” in the latter half of the nineteenth century. At this juncture, China and Korea were definitively reconfigured as “the East,” and “the West” came to signify Europe and the United States.1 From a Japanese perspective, the import of “Western” ideas (whether from China and Korea or from Europe) is not something that arose anew with the rise of European colonial power. Rather, “the West” was a source of ideational innovation whose absorption into Japanese society and culture was regarded as largely beneficial, not an alien imposition. To be sure, the travel of foreign ideas to Japanese shores was often bundled up with power inequalities between the “exporting” societies and Japan, but the ideas themselves were generally not seen as vehicles of dominating power – at least, not exclusively or inextricably so. This chapter adopts an attitudinal stance toward encounters with “foreign” ideas that is inspired by Japan’s historical perspective as the “Far Eastern Province.” It sketches an approach to deparochializing political theory through the analysis of East Asian (but above all Japanese) experience of modernization in the wake of the “Western 120 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht, on 19 Nov 2020 at 15:35:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108635042.006

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impact” of the nineteenth century. The analysis is theoretical as well as historical in that it ultimately attempts to provide and justify a theoretical perspective that would hopefully expand and enrich the contemporary debate on comparative political theory/thought (hereafter, CPT). The rationales and methods for deparochializing political theory (or cultivating CPT) are many and varied, even within this volume. I share many of the concerns and viewpoints expressed by CPT scholars and draw on their ideas, but in this chapter I develop my own take on CPT, in three parts. The first part comprises two sections, both of which engage with contemporary discussions of CPT. In Section 5.2, “Theory or Thought?,” I begin by contrasting James Tully’s emphasis on “thought” in Chapter 2 of this volume with Leigh K. Jenco’s insistence in Chapter 3 on “theory” or “theorizing” as a way of deparochializing Euro-Western modes of political thinking. While “thought” seems better suited to understanding the kind of issues that are dealt with in this chapter, I emphasize the importance of Jenco’s insight about the mobility and generalizability of local knowledge. In Section 5.3, “The Weight of Modernity and Its Directionality,” I underline the overwhelming force of modernity as a constraint on the possible shapes of contemporary politics. In discussing the directionality of influence of ideas, I focus mainly on the views propounded by S. N. Eisenstadt and Loubna El Amine. The second part of my argument also proceeds in two sections. Section 5.4, “Changing Conceptions of Min,” builds upon the preceding insights by focusing on how local knowledge (especially the notion of min, or “people”) has historically travelled and changed across time and space in East Asia and how the directionality of influence has shifted toward modernity following the Euro-Western intervention in the nineteenth century. In Section 5.5, “Japan’s Modernization and the Love-Hate Relationship with the West,” I offer a slightly more detailed analysis of how the Japanese reacted to “Western impact.” On the basis of this analysis, I develop the third and final part of my argument. In Section 5.6, “‘Bent Twig’ and ‘Ownership Claims,’” an attempt is made to articulate my own theoretical perspective for understanding and practicing CPT in the spirit of an “engaged” mode of inquiry in Andrew March’s terms – that is, with the aim of generating normative judgments about political life and not only “scholarly” insights into the political thought of a particular culture at a particular moment in time.2 My aim is to buttress dialogic models of CPT, such as Tully’s, by seeking

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ways to avoid certain common obstacles to dialogue such as negative reactions to others’ cultural chauvinism (what I call, following Isaiah Berlin, “bent twig” reactions).

5.2 theory or thought? CPT’s “T” could either stand for “theory” or “thought.” Whether or not one is more appropriate than the other depends, unsurprisingly, on how theory and thought are defined. Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent distinguish between “comparative political theory” and “comparative political thought” by stating that the former inclines towards “searching for or creating a new theory or a language that transcends differences” while the latter is concerned primarily with “understanding and decoding” political ideas in context.3 In other words, comparative political theory is characterized by “the unifying prescriptive and ethical drive” and comparative political thought by “the interpretative drive,” and they argue in favor of the latter. While this distinction may be consistent with the kind of research agenda that Freeden and Vincent have set for themselves,4 it is less informative for characterizing the bulk of CPT literature. This chapter, for one example, is underwritten by both the interpretive and ethical drives. Tully’s and Jenco’s approaches also defy such dichotomous categorization.5 Since my argument incorporates both Tully’s and Jenco’s insights, let me begin by reformulating the theory/thought distinction based on their views. According to Tully, political theory is a subspecies of political thought and is primarily concerned with universal validity. This is why it has the tendency to become highly specialized and abstract. In contrast, political thought is Aristotelian in the sense that it is first and foremost a search for practical knowledge that holds “for the most part” and not, as in Plato, “for all times and places.” Political thought is thus “based on the presumption that political vocabulary is composed of terms that have an indeterminate number of criteria of application, and thus of uses (sense, reference, and evaluative force) and these are fought over and altered in the course of political struggles” (34), and it cannot make sense divorced from specific contexts. So CPT’s “T” for Tully would signify “thought,” and this would further imply that one ought to focus not only on highly abstract and systematized theories but also on various kinds of verbal as well as non-verbal “texts” that include “oral traditions, music, art, theatre, direct action and inaction, private scripts, and so on” (34).

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This may give the impression that Tully is opting for comparative political “thought” in the same sense as Freeden and Vincent, but it departs from their view in stressing a conception of dialogue oriented by an “ethical drive” for transformative engagement, not merely “understanding and decoding.” Yet contrary to Freeden and Vincent’s account of “theory,” the purpose of intercultural dialogue, on Tully’s view, is not to generate “unifying” or “prescriptive” normative discourse. Tully’s aim is rather “reciprocal elucidation” by means of “genuine dialogues from the ground up” (35) – an aim that this chapter shares. Jenco, on the other hand, is first and foremost committed to theory, theorizing, or theory production in her endeavor to deparochialize political theory. But what she has in mind is not “theory” as defined by Tully. Nor is it appropriate to place Jenco in the comparative political theory camp à la Freeden and Vincent. While Jenco herself might be propelled by some sort of “ethical drive,” adjectives such as “unifying” and “prescriptive” are not apt characterizations of her approach. Interestingly, she distances herself from comparative political theorists, feminists, and postcolonial scholars whose work (“admirably,” she adds) contributes to decentering political theory, thereby exposing the limited, contingent, and parochial nature of all (but above all Euro-Western) debates (62, 63). Jenco aims for a “more radical goal” (64): not only decentering but also “recentering” theory by displacing dominant Eurocentric discourse and instead placing at the core non–Euro-Western local traditions as sources of theory production, not simply objects of analysis using EuroWestern frameworks. The radical nature of this approach is captured in Jenco’s statement that such recentered theories “may come to replace the academic conventions and commitments that originally marked the identity of both political theory and, perhaps, ‘theory’ as such” (64). Thus “theory” for Jenco has a distinctive meaning, divorced from conventional understandings of the term, and perhaps this is why she uses the expression “knowledge production” interchangeably with “theory production.” If so, it seems that Tully’s “thought” is, after all, not all that far removed from Jenco’s “theory.” Indeed, judging from Jenco’s words, the ultimate goal seems rather similar or at least compatible: “Recentered political theory banks precisely on the recognition that foreign communities of scholarship support rigorous research agendas that, while locally anchored, often do make wider claims about the modern challenges of a globalized world even as they remain open to internal critique” (84). And yet there are differences worth mentioning. Jenco’s attachment to the word “theory” derives from her overriding concern to relativize or

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decenter (or even displace) the prevalent theoretical practices in the contemporary academy – not just Eurocentric ones but also postmodern, postcolonial, subaltern, and cross-cultural studies, which she argues still operate within the confines of European intellectual traditions.6 In other words, by focusing on the “methods of inquiry” themselves,7 she is in effect trying to redefine “theory.” As she states elsewhere, “theory . . . is itself constituted by the process of generalizing from one particular context to another.”8 Jenco’s distinctive account of theory – local knowledge that can be valid for other contexts – is central to my argument as well. Despite similarities between Jenco’s “theory” and Tully’s “thought” (such as emphasis on extratextual practices as constituting intellectual activities9), the idea of theory as “mobile locality” stands in some tension with dialogical approaches that stress the importance of situated knowledge (including Tully’s), a point to which I will return shortly. First, though, I want to highlight a difference between Jenco and Tully that derives not from the constitutive elements that make up theory or thought but from the difference in target audiences and modes of engagement. Jenco’s discussion of “theory” is primarily addressed to scholarly communities with the aim of realizing theory generation from non–EuroWestern intellectual locales (thereby recentering political theory but ultimately in the expectation that locally generated knowledge might have global relevance). In contrast, Tully’s reflection on “thought” is addressed to a wider public with the intention of articulating the conditions that would allow them to engage in genuine dialogues leading to ethical practices of mutual understanding and mutual concern. Hence the contrast between Jenco’s critique of postcolonialist commitment to anti-universalism, situated knowledge, and even dialogue and Tully’s sympathies toward them,10 as well as between Jenco’s refusal to rule out some form of “hierarchical understanding of power”11 and Tully’s thorough commitment to democratic conversation. Under this rubric, my argument once again veers toward Tully’s “thought” since it is concerned with conditions that would allow meaningful dialogue and reciprocal elucidation within and beyond knowledge communities. But I also agree with Jenco’s idea of theory as mobile local knowledge. Since this position may stand in tension with Tully’s position (though perhaps the tension is more apparent than real, given the transformative nature of Tully’s dialogue based on “deep listening” and “empathetic imaginary transposition” [41–44]), I will briefly touch upon it while posing some issues that may highlight the difference between Jenco’s position and mine.

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Arguing in favor of “mobile locality,” Jenco takes issue with political thinkers (many of whom are sympathetic to the cause of deparochializing political theory) who make much of the culturally embedded nature of local knowledge. Taking Charles Taylor, Roxanne Euben, Bhikhu Parekh, Fred Dallmayr, and also James Tully as representative of this current (64–66), Jenco points out that, by assuming one cannot transcend one’s situated particularity, they paradoxically confine themselves to thinking or theorizing within the Eurocentric framework. Hence her emphasis on “non-Western generality” based on the idea that certain non–(Euro-)Western thought is generalizable, having relevance for a wide range of peoples in today’s globalized world even if it would be a mistake to claim universal validity on its behalf. I concur with Jenco’s point about mobile locality, and I agree with her contention that one should not make too much of local embeddedness. However, I would emphasize that the globally shared conditions of modernity today (with their globally entrenched political, legal, and economic arrangements accompanied by power disparities of diverse kinds) make the mobility of “theory” more or less one-directional: toward modernity. It would take more than just scholarly engagement with non–EuroWestern traditions of political thinking and practice to decenter political theory, let alone recenter it. Of course, Jenco is fully aware of the weight and gravity of the forces of modernity; the whole point of CPT, she might argue, is to challenge the status quo despite the adverse conditions. But even so, and while I find her aim and approach highly original and inspiring, I believe it would be helpful to articulate what it is that we are trying to decenter – and for what purpose. If the ultimate goal is to improve the living conditions of human and other beings on this planet (which are increasingly being challenged by the forces of globalization) with the involvement and collaboration of a great many human agents with various values and interests, then the project of decentering or recentering political theory must surely be understood as a means and not an end in itself – though one should be sensitive to instances where the practice of political theory in its present form could be seen as tantamount to “epistemic injustice.”12 If so, it would be worth distinguishing between the problematic and non-problematic aspects of modernity while keeping the practical question in view: What can we hope to achieve given where we are, with all the existing conditions that characterize global modernity (which are not immutable or inescapable but are significantly constraining)? Moreover, in approaching the matter in this way, I believe it is important to resist the notion that modernity is uniquely “Western”13

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and to unsettle the wide presumption (even or especially among those who are engaged in decentering political theory) that “Western political theory” (the object of critique) is “European.”

5.3 the weight of modernity and its directionality It is relatively uncontentious to claim that the contemporary world has come to assume the characteristics that it has due to the overwhelming forces of modernity or modernization. What this entails is that the directionality of influence was more or less one-directional, not necessarily from “the West” to “the East” but shifting (however contingently and notwithstanding reactionary moments) toward modernity. Despite this, it is immensely contentious to argue that there is one homogenizing notion of modernity that is based on the European model. Political realities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries certainly defy this kind of generalization, and it seems more plausible to argue, as does S. N. Eisenstadt, that there are “multiple modernities.” Needless to say, when it comes to identifying the common core of various modernities, we once again enter the realm of disagreement. While most would agree that the notion of modernity comprises cultural as well as material or institutional elements, scholars differ in their specification of these elements and their relative importance. My argument inclines toward Eisenstadt’s view, which places sufficient weight on the cultural and ideological aspects, seeing it as “a story of continual constitution and reconstitutions of a multiplicity of cultural programs.”14 And while I also take on board Loubna El Amine’s argument rejecting the East/West dichotomy in favor of the modern/premodern division,15 I believe she places too much emphasis on the material or institutional aspects. Since El Amine develops her argument in relation to CPT scholarship, let me elaborate on this point. El Amine too follows Eisenstadt in separating “modernity” from “Westernization,” but she prefers to speak of modernity in the singular owing largely to her focus on what she calls the “modernity package,” which signifies certain globally shared material conditions of modernity.16 El Amine is sympathetic to the project of CPT or (as she calls it) “global political theory” but criticizes the current practice of CPT for its “continuing essentialization of East and West” and for assuming “almost as a matter of definition, the divergence between Western and non-Western traditions, rejecting convergence ex ante.”17 Interestingly, one such criticism is directed at Jenco’s idea of decentering and recentering political

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theory. While acknowledging how Jenco and other CPT scholars have contributed to expanding the canon of political theory to include non– Euro-Western thinkers, El Amine states that such endeavors might have “outlived their usefulness,” for “ironically, they reinforce the very East– West dichotomy they were intended to overcome by prescribing a distinct methodology for the study of the East.”18 Moreover, by emphasizing the “modernity package,” she dismisses, as naive, attempts to resist state oppression by resorting to traditional non-European thought such as Confucianism: Confucian virtues and rituals might have been reasonable and effective in medieval China, but in this day and age, where modernity pervades, this is no longer the case – hence her call for constitutionalism, law, rights, and democracy.19 I partly agree and partly disagree with El Amine’s analysis and assertion. I agree that the sovereign nation-state is the principal organizational unit constituting today’s world politics regardless of region, and, however challenged or limited in its influence, it is indeed one of the defining characteristics of modernity. Moreover, given that modern states are not likely to wither away in the foreseeable future, it would be prudent to guard the normative ideas such as rights, democracy, and constitutionalism, which taken individually may not be of modern origin but taken together are suited to legitimizing, controlling, restraining, and resisting modern state power. However, where I disagree with El Amine’s view is that she sees “modernity as a primarily material and institutional, rather than philosophical or cultural, condition,” thereby stressing the centrality of “bureaucratization, centralization, and territorialization embodied in the modern state.”20 Her claim, moreover, that “once the state is adopted as a model, then the range of normative ideas to choose from is limited, since these have to be responsive to the institutional characteristics of the state”21 seems unnecessarily self-confining and restrictive of the scope and creative potential of political theory amenable to or compatible with modern conditions. To be fair, El Amine does not completely ignore the nonmaterial or noninstitutional aspects of modernity. Yet for her, they remain secondary and passive: “religion, ethnicity, and culture matter, but they have to be understood in the context of the material and institutional forces of modernity.”22 I would argue that the influence goes both ways. Not only are material and institutional forces of modernity varied and mutable, but their foundations are in the final analysis nonmaterial. They are based on opinion à la Hume:23 how people perceive, understand, support, and legitimize (all of which are influenced to a greater or lesser degree by religion, culture, worldviews,

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and political thought) would to a large extent affect the shape and workings of modern political structures, resulting in differences that cannot be reduced to the commonalities in material and institutional conditions. Moreover, I am not sure why an attempt to develop “global political theory” (and in that discussion, she even approvingly refers to Jenco’s idea) must imply the rejection of the “modernity package” as a whole.24 If anything, I believe it would be important to hang on to certain “modern” democratic, constitutional values and systems even as we venture toward decentering political theory or developing a global political theory. In view of the above, while accepting El Amine’s claim that many CPT scholars are overly committed to the East/West division, I part company from her assumption that any successful attempt at cultivating CPT must entail the wholesale rejection of the “modernity package.” Indeed, it seems that other contributors to this volume, including Jenco, Tully, and Williams, while being open-ended about the fate of modern institutions (since none presumes the final outcome or destination of political form), are committed to certain modern ideas – i.e., democratic conversation, nonviolence, human rights, free scholarly engagement, self-reflection and critique, gender equality, etc. Taken individually these may not be modern in origin, but taken together they form ideas characteristic of modernity— and this was how many East Asians perceived them. Even Williams, who is keen to relativize the Westphalian political imaginary, is firmly committed to a form of modern democracy and hence hardly prepared to reject wholesale the “modernity package.” Yet I also believe that it is possible to show how knowledge production could occur within and from the non–Euro-Western traditions while embracing modernity. To illustrate this point, I will focus on the example of how Japan reacted to and dealt with the forces of modernization. But to set the scene for this analysis on Japan and the changing directionality of influence, and to grasp the larger context in which this transformation occurred, I shall first provide a brief historical account of how the notion of min transformed in East Asia, particularly in China and Korea, in the period leading up to the “Western impact.”

5.4 changing conceptions of min Historically, ideas and knowledge have travelled in multiple directions. Broadly speaking, in the East Asian region, the directionality of influence was from China to Korea and Japan prior to the “Western Impact” (which signified massive political, economic, and military intervention by

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European powers and the United States in the nineteenth century) and from “the West” (now read as Euro-American powers) to Japan to Korea and China posterior to it. This is a widely acknowledged fact that simply goes to show the general pattern of how the directionality of influence normally goes from the dominant party to the less dominant party. But we lose sight of some interesting innovations that occurred during this reversal of influence if we simply assume that China was the dominant power until a certain time and the Euro-West after it, with a set of systematized knowledge being transmitted from the dominant party to the less dominant party. Instead, detailed analysis of how certain terms became translated and embedded in the seemingly less dominant locale, with new words being formed and morphed during the process of reception, yields insights into innovative adaptations and reversed flows of knowledge production within the region. This is well-illustrated by the example of min. Min is a term that broadly refers to the English word “people” and is expressed by the Chinese character 民. It is of ancient Chinese origin, but the character as well as its pronunciation (“min”) have long been used in similar ways in China, Korea, and Japan. (Because classical Chinese script and the meaning attached to characters was common to the literary cultures of all three societies – though the pronunciation of the characters varies across languages – key concepts such as min could travel from one context to the others, sometimes shaping political vernaculars as well as discourses among intellectual elites.)25 Like many Chinese characters, 民 is an ideogram, which evolved from a pictogram symbolizing a “pierced eye.” Interpretation of its original meaning varies from blind slaves to conquered tribes to sightless servants whose eyes were pierced to serve god (including minstrels).26 Regardless of its origin, however, the meaning of min shifted over the course of history in China, Korea, and Japan, and in the modern era it has come to mean “people” or “citizen” in the Euro-Western sense of the term – or, to be more precise, European terminologies such as “people,” “citizen,” and “nation” were translated (practically as neologisms) with compounds based on the Chinese character 民 – for example, 人民 “people” (Japanese: jinmin; Chinese: renmin; Korean: inmin), 市民 “citizens” (Japanese and Chinese: shimin; Korean: simin), 国民 or 民族 “nation” (Japanese: kokumin, minzoku; Chinese: guomin, minzu; Korean: kukmin, minjok).27 A typical comparative approach then might be to start from these modern European conceptions and search for equivalences in the past so

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as to excavate East Asian versions of people-centered politics, popular sovereignty, or even democracy. But this is precisely the type of approach that Jenco admonishes as Eurocentric, one that employs a Euro-Western conceptual framework only to treat non–Euro-Western traditions as case studies. Thus an approach more in line with the spirit of CPT would require one to focus on the performativity or illocutionary force of certain words and notions within specific locales while seeing how these words and notions have travelled across time and space accompanied by conceptual innovations and change – thus demonstrating the embedded as well as mobile nature of knowledge. With this in mind, let us begin by briefly identifying some of the core min-related ideas that derived from Confucianism. I limit my discussion to Confucianism, not because this was the only significant factor that contributed to the development of min-concepts (this was hardly the case, and for a more complete analysis one must look at other traditions – in all their variety and distinctness – as well as how they have come to be embedded in different specific locales at different times) but because it helps to highlight the dynamics of the mobility of min-related ideas across China, Korea, and Japan. At the core of Confucian (political) thought is the idea that the supreme leader of a political community (i.e., the emperor) must rule in the interest of the people (min). As the “son of heaven” who must rule in accordance with the “mandate of heaven” for the sake of “all under heaven,” the emperor existed to serve the people, not the other way around. As Hiroshi Watanabe explains, it was based on a populist concept of “government for the people,” even if not quite a “government by the people.” What is more, for Confucius, the ruler was understood to be the “father and mother of the people” whose duty was to guide and instruct the people and, when necessary, rebuke and punish them for their own good – with fatherly or motherly love.28 This idea travelled from China to Korea and Japan in the pre–“Western impact” period and influenced to a greater or lesser degree the political languages and practices of these countries. One might argue that, however people-centered it may have been, this type of paternalistic or maternalistic politics could not and did not lead to “government by the people” – thereby confining people to be passive subjects ruled from above – and that it was only with the introduction of Euro-Western thought (with newly translated terms that included the Chinese character min) that the “people” came to be seen as active agents capable of political participation. But recent scholarship has revealed innovations

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that occurred within Confucianism – especially in China and Korea, though less conspicuous in Japan – leading to the transformation of the status of min from a passive one to a more active one (though not in a linear or irreversible way).29 For example, Tze-Ki Hon demonstrates this in the context of late imperial China, focusing particularly on the changing significance of the status of min as rendered by the Cheng-Zhu School of Neo-Confucianism. The initial breakthrough occurred in the eleventh century with the introduction of the term 生民 (shengmin “the living people”), signifying a break from the “paternalistic and condescending tone that was often associated with min 民 in classical Confucianism.”30 In other words, “beginning from the eleventh century and continuing on until the end of the nineteenth century, it was this more egalitarian notion of min as ‘the living people’ that was predominant in the Neo-Confucian discourse.”31 While this change mainly concerned the societal role of the literati, it was a process in which the elite gradually distanced itself from the center of political power and instead came to play a more positive role as the head of, and in solidarity with, “the people.” A similar development in Korea is recounted by Hee-Tak Koh and Myoung-Kyu Park.32 Both argue that min had been central to the language of political legitimacy in Korea, especially during the Chosun Dynasty (1392–1910) – with terms such as 民本 (minbon “people as the basis”) serving as a vehicle of change. Of course, this did not immediately signify the rise of popular sovereignty in the Euro-Western sense, and in many cases there remained a large gap between the philosophical or ideological language of min and the practice of governance, which may still have been “for the people” but not “by the people.”33 Yet Hee-Tak Koh meticulously traces the passage from the passive min to a more active min in the language of political legitimacy, demonstrating significant conceptual developments from around the mid-Chosun period that wrought a discernible change in popular consciousness and in the status of min in the political arena. While it may have owed largely to unintended consequences, Koh demonstrates how the principle of minbon came to be used against the elite’s arbitrary rule and for justifying people’s active participation in the public sphere. Moreover, at the local (village) level, it became increasingly common for the ruling yangban class to decide together with the representatives of the people. This kind of change, according to Koh, was widespread, and with time people “began to realize that the political order based on minbon principle should be not for the official but for the people, and for this purpose, the order should be

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opened and administrated on the principle of public participation.”34 Koh even goes on to assert that “this change can be also viewed as a part of the spread of Neo-Confucianism in East Asia.”35 In contrast, Confucianism never functioned as a state ideology in Japan; it was never perceived as a systematic theory or thought for legitimizing, assessing, and at times criticizing political authority and practice. This is not to say that the influence of Confucianism was negligible in Japan. On the contrary, during the Edo or Tokugawa period (1603–1868), Confucianism was not only embraced by prominent scholars, political leaders, and advisors but spread from cities to rural areas and from the samurai class to wealthy farmers, merchants, and even down to the village population.36 There were occasions also where Confucian ideas inspired protests and uprisings by the farmers against local actors such as the privileged merchants, moneylenders, and village officials. Nonetheless, popular revolts rarely challenged the legitimacy of the government authority itself.37 Of course, in order to maintain such authority (which was fundamentally authoritarian in nature), the Tokugawa regime had to attain some sort of popular support or 民心 (minshin) in order to maintain de facto legitimation. Minshin can literally be translated as the “hearts and minds of the people,” though it signified not so much the opinion of the people as the collective psychology of tranquility or restlessness. And while minshin was a moral concept central to ancient Chinese thought (including Confucianism), in Japan it was not uncommon to see it as an object of manipulation. For the Tokugawa regime, what sustained their de facto authority was not some Confucian theory of legitimacy but an elaborate display of “majesty” based on military might, prestige, and ceremony that awed people into submission.38 Japan’s selective intellectual borrowing from ideational cultures to its geographic west continued after the “Western impact” of the nineteenth century, particularly with respect to European notions of people and nation. As Michael Burtscher’s meticulous analysis shows, newly developed min-related terms appeared with all their innovative meanings – most notably 民族 (minzoku) and 国民 (kokumin), which were to all intents and purposes translations of the European term “nation.”39 They were employed largely for nation-state building – not necessarily for democratization40 – and, once this modernization process took off, the directionality of regional influence more or less reversed, with Japan at the forefront translating and creating new terms and concepts that were subsequently adopted by Korea and China.41 Through this process, the practice and language of politics changed radically in East Asia, each

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country in its own way trying to respond and adapt to the new reality of international order.42 On the face of it, this may seem like a simple case of transplanting foreign ideas to native soil. But I would argue that there is more to it than meets the eye. While predominantly instrumental, this kind of innovation seems worthy of the name “knowledge production.” To be sure, there was little choice but to modernize (the alternative was a loss of independence), but, despite the external threats, it was driven from within (“selfmodernization”) and led to various forms that cannot be reduced to any one model. In this respect, it conforms with Eisenstadt’s “multiple modernities” thesis. However, this instrumentalist mode of innovative adaptation to modernity is not the only possible form. There is another type that achieves knowledge production by actively affirming the intrinsic value of the other’s knowledge while attempting to improve it through fusion with indigenous knowledge. I wish to demonstrate this point by focusing on the Japanese experience of modernization, but, as will become apparent, it was not a simple, straight path but rather one that was accompanied by tensions and antagonisms.

5.5 japan’s modernization and the love-hate relationship with the west Many of the intellectuals and political actors who guided Japan toward modernization were keen to learn from the Euro-West – obtaining all kinds of books, translating them into Japanese, and inviting foreign instructors, thereby rapidly transforming the political, legal, social, and cultural landscape. But their perception of the Euro-West was often one based on a “love-hate relationship,” to use an expression employed by Sukehiro Hirakawa.43 A sense of crisis and urgency (often accompanied by fear and hatred of the “barbarians”) predominated in the minds of many Japanese immediately following the arrival of Commodore Perry’s naval fleets, “the black ships,” in 1853. But as Japan became more and more familiarized with “Western civilization,” there began to appear a sense of wonder as well as genuine admiration toward it. Many Japanese found the nonmaterial and non-technological aspects of European civilization highly appealing. Some argue that this was what differentiated Japan from China, whose Sinocentric worldview prevented China from incorporating Euro-Western

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institutions and cultures.44 But as Jenco’s argument concerning bianfa (ideas for radical reform that sought to transform the very approach to learning and knowledge itself, even ways of life and customs) shows, in China too there were indeed movements to go beyond the instrumentalist “self-strengthening” (ziqiang) policies.45 In any case, in Japan, the modernization process cannot be captured adequately by the popular slogan wakon-yosai (和魂洋才) – “Japanese spirit, Western learning.” As Hirakawa explains, this slogan is ambiguous and moreover is a variation of the old slogan (dating back a thousand years) wakon-kansai (和魂漢才) – “Japanese spirit, Chinese learning.”46 However, both slogans capture an underlying psychological state: the love-hate relationship with a seemingly dominant culture or civilization. There is admiration and enthusiasm to learn from “the other,” on the one hand, but also visceral reactions against it often deriving from selfassertive pride or an inferiority complex (sometimes they are two sides of the same coin). Let us first look at the “love” aspect of the Japanese toward the EuroWest (though, as it will soon become evident, even the admirers of the Euro-West often came to hold antagonistic sentiments when confronted with certain issues central to this chapter). There were many Japanese who thought it equally important to emulate the nonmaterial and nontechnical aspects of European civilization. They tended to argue that the material and nonmaterial aspects were interdependent – that modern institutions cannot function properly without embracing modern (and what they now took to be “Western”) thought. Thus, many leading intellectuals committed themselves to the task of achieving “civilization” (文明開化 bunmeikaika) at the cultural level, with an implicit (and sometimes explicit) assumption that Japan was only “half civilized” (半開 hankai), that it needed to improve not only its national material strength but also its social and political morality. Leading “Enlightenment” figures such as Yukichi Fukuzawa, Amane Nishi, Masanao Nakamura, Mamichi Tsuda, Hiroyuki Kato, Arinori Mori, and Chomin Nakae (to mention just a few) sought to learn and to propagate what they understood to be Euro-Western ideas of personal independence, political participation, discursive ways of conducting social relations and politics, and sometimes gender equality. It was not long before movements to establish a European-style parliamentary system gained momentum (most notably the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement), involving not only the elites but also ordinary people who gathered to discuss and draft constitutional texts (私擬憲法 shigikenpo).

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What is worth noting here is that many of these actors did not find this kind of Euro-Westernization process humiliating or leading to the loss of their identity. If anything, they found it invigorating and empowering, leading to the progress of the Japanese nation and morality. European terms such as “citizen,” “right,” “liberty,” “constitution,” “society,” “debate,” “individual,” “philosophy,” “science,” and “democracy” were translated into Japanese (often as neologisms), and it did not take long before they gained wide currency. This is no doubt an example of the mobility of local knowledge. And while the directionality of influence seems to go from the Euro-West to the East, one could say that it is more than that. When European words are translated into Japanese, Chinese characters are often employed. For instance, in Japanese, “right” is usually translated as “ken-ri” with the use of two Chinese characters 権 (Japanese: ken) and 利 (ri). Ken (権) signifies “power” and ri (利) “interest.” The fact that translators used these Chinese characters says a lot about how they understood the term. One could argue that the moral component of “right” is lost (though not entirely, as some would argue that 利 contains certain moral connotations).47 But Fukuzawa often employed the Chinese character 理 (a Confucian word, also pronounced “ri” in Japanese, that denotes the principle governing the universe) to translate “right” (権理 ken-ri). He sometimes used four characters 権理通義 (kenritsugi) to stress the moral component: 通義 (tsugi) implies common morality or justice. We can see that Fukuzawa wanted to make ken-ri a moral concept – to allow people to think that it is right to stress one’s right.48 Therefore, the act of translation itself can be seen as an attempt to reconfigure certain moral and political language as well as actual modes of behavior. If right is only seen as personal power or interest, devoid of moral connotation, then stressing one’s right could become interpreted as a self-centered act, something not to be encouraged (which, some argue, has been the case for a long time in Japan49). The above example, though oversimplified, goes to show how a seemingly straightforward translation can be accompanied by an imaginative and creative process, which I think is worthy of the name knowledge production.50 In Fukuzawa’s case, he tried to embed these “civilizational” ideas (a lot of which came from Guizot and J. S. Mill) in the Japanese context while rejecting Confucian thought, since he thought the latter was detrimental to their realization. The most extreme example is provided by Arinori Mori, an important political figure who became the first Minister of Education (thus often referred to as the founder of the

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modern Japanese educational system), who even once advocated replacing Japanese with English as the national language.51 But there were, on the other hand, many intellectuals who thought it possible to converge Euro-Western thought with Eastern thought. For instance, Chomin Nakae, who translated and commented on Rousseau’s The Social Contract (incidentally into classical Chinese-style writing, or 漢文 kanbun) and was nicknamed the “Rousseau of the East,” considered that Rousseau’s ideas and (neo-)Confucian ideas had many things in common, not least the notion of “the general will.”52 Inazo Nitobe, a prominent diplomat and educator who once served as the Under-Secretary of the League of Nations, thought European civilizational ideas and Samurai spirit were compatible and mutually reinforcing.53 For Eiichi Shibusawa, “the founding father of Japanese capitalism,” a capitalist mode of economy would be improved if combined with Confucian morality.54 These examples serve to illustrate that, regardless of where the ideas came from (whether from Europe or from China), many Japanese thinkers believed it was possible to embed them in their local environment and make them seem less foreign or not foreign at all.55 Knowledge production has had a multidirectional geographical flow, undermining the thesis of one-directional influence from the West to the East, but it still makes sense to interpret the movement of ideas as a predominantly unidirectional flow toward modernity or multiple modernities. These instances were not moments of lost identity or indicative of an inferiority complex, though, as I shall explain, these phenomena did emerge from time to time, especially when people felt offended by condescending or discriminatory attitudes among Westerners. Such attitudes were a key driver of antiWest sentiment, nationalism, indigenization movements, pan-Asianism, and at times xenophobic jingoism. Before looking at this negative aspect of the love-hate relationship with the Euro-West, let us consider very briefly an example in which the civilizational process of Japan was understood in the context of a dynamic and providential world history. Kanzo Uchimura and many of his associates and followers embraced not only European civilization but also Christianity (which was banned during the Tokugawa era). They saw world history from an eschatological standpoint, and Japan’s mission was seen as taking the baton from the Euro-West and completing the process. Hence his conviction (as expressed in his epitaph) “I for Japan, Japan for the World, the World for Christ, and All for God” and his idea that a second Reformation could and should occur in Japan.56 From this perspective, one could imagine

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how the acceptance of European civilization did not cause occasion for self-depreciation. If anything, he was a proud and self-assured patriot who believed that Japanese spirituality was not only superior to that of the Euro-West but that it would serve as a catalyst to bringing about good for the entire world. This is an example that shows how certain Japanese thinkers tried to embrace European ideas only to improve them and throw them back to the world. It may not have had resonance in the Euro-West, but certainly the aim was to achieve a reversal in the directionality of influence. But even these thinkers with dynamic visions of the future of humanity were not entirely free from anti-West sentiments. As so often happens, a sense of betrayal transformed impassioned love into a strong feeling of hatred or disillusionment. In Uchimura’s case, a somewhat idealized image of the “Christian” West was shattered after spending some time in the United States. His firsthand experience of racial discrimination, coupled with incidents such as the establishment of anti-Chinese and antiJapanese immigration laws, transformed him into a critic of the EuroWest, though he was always committed to Christianity and criticized government policies of both the Euro-West and Japan from its standpoint.57 Nitobe, also a devout Christian, was similarly outraged by “Yellow Peril” rhetoric and waged a vociferous protest against it. For many young and proud intellectuals (largely from samurai families) who travelled to Europe and the United States with great expectations, the experience of being discriminated against was a cause for embitterment and disillusionment, often prompting a search for national identity. Nor was this kind of reaction confined to those who travelled to the Euro-West. A lot of Japanese were shocked and angered by what they saw as double standards or hypocrisy in European nations’ treatment of Japan. The Tripartite Intervention of 1895 (a diplomatic intervention by Russia, Germany, and France urging Japan to give up the gains attained by the Sino-Japanese War), “Yellow Peril” discourses, and exclusion policies were such occasions. For instance, after the Tripartite Intervention, Soho Tokutomi, a prominent writer and journalist who was once Christian and very pro-Western, transformed into a champion of anti-Western nationalism, eventually becoming an ideologue of the “Greater East Asia War.”58 There were of course those who had been consistently anti-West and who tried to build upon the nationalist traditions preceding the “Western Impact.” They searched for and stressed genuinely Japanese ideas, though such an enterprise was often pursued in reaction to Chinese civilization in

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the premodern period and to Euro-Western civilization in the modernization period. But whatever their specific views or allegiances, many of them came to support the newly established Japanese sovereign state equipped with a modern state apparatus – with the emperor as sovereign. This goes to illustrate that traditionalists, nationalists, and anti-West ideologues were all committed to modernization. Another notable development was the elevated status of Shintoism as the state religion. The general perception (even today) is that Shintoism is an ancient, indigenous religion that has been around unchanged for millennia in Japan. But as Hiroshi Watanabe has demonstrated, state Shintoism (with its expected role as providing the moral backbone of the Japanese nation) was deliberately created by the Meiji leaders based on the model of Christianity in Europe and the United States. These leaders, having travelled to the Euro-West in the latter half of the nineteenth century, were struck by how religious Europeans and Americans were (not by how secular they were, which might have been the selfperception of many intellectuals in the Euro-West), and they were convinced that ordinary people’s (though not the elites’) allegiance to the state owed much to the influence of Christian belief.59 Based on this chapter’s arguments, I shall now try to specify one theoretical perspective that I think would be appropriate for advancing CPT research of the engaged kind.

5.6 “the bent twig” and “ownership claims” What transformed “love” toward the Euro-West into “hate,” for many Japanese, was the perception that Japan was not being treated with equal respect or, worse, that it was being condescended to, racially discriminated against, or subjected to efforts at colonial domination. This kind of reaction is not at all unique to the Japanese. As Charles Taylor argues, “a person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves.”60 While Taylor addresses this problem mainly in the context of multiculturalism, he also explains that the politics of nationalism is often a reaction to demeaning treatment from others and that it is fueled by a need for due recognition.61 Isaiah Berlin discusses the problem of nationalism with precisely these issues in mind. Nationalism “usually seems to be caused by wounds, some form of collective humiliation.”62 He explains this sort of psychological reaction by referring to Schiller’s “bent twig” theory.63 And while this

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may explain nationalistic movements in many Asian and African countries liberated in the latter half of the twentieth century, Berlin argues that it is hardly a non-European phenomenon. Indeed, the “bent twig” theory was initially employed to explain the rise of romanticism and nationalism in Germany as a reaction against French domination and its condescending regard.64 The deep-rooted nature of this psychological reaction is reflected in the following remark by Nehru, as recounted by Berlin: He [Nehru] said that the reason why he had a preference for Russians [over the English], although he went to school and university in England and was happy there, and admired the English, was because the English, however public spirited and benevolent, nevertheless couldn’t help patronizing Indians a little. The Russians were crude and barbarous, but they were not superior. That was the difference. Finally, he said that Russians did not make Indians feel beneficiaries. He felt this even about the Japanese. He said, “You can imagine my feelings about the Japanese who were militaristic, imperialistic, Fascists, who did terrible things in the war, and yet when I went to Japan, I felt they were brothers, and I can’t feel that about the English.65

If this kind of “bent twig” phenomenon poses a serious obstacle to conducting a meaningful intercultural dialogue, then it is important that we seek ways to avoid or overcome it. And while this is not the only obstacle to genuine dialogue, as is evident from Tully’s analysis, I shall focus on how this aspect can be tackled in the hope of contributing constructively to the CPT debate. As I have already argued, when one’s purpose is to generate knowledge in and for a local context, the origin of illuminating theories and ideas can fade in significance. For many Japanese, there was little unease in employing European knowledge to transform Japanese institutions and culture. Even today, the majority of Japanese political theorists who endlessly discuss Rawls and Habermas hardly seem fearful of losing their native identity. It would be presumptuous to label them as “vassals” of Western imperialism, and most of them perceive themselves as generating knowledge that is relevant to Japan and sometimes to the rest of the world. Some local innovations could have global implications due to certain shared conditions of modernity – and of course the point is not to accept these conditions uncritically but to engage in a critical exercise to identify problems and search for solutions. Thus, on the one hand, I believe it is important to recognize that knowledge production and originality could occur even when seemingly “foreign” ideas or theories are employed as frameworks of analysis. Of

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course, this is not to deny the cogency of Jenco’s argument for attempts to generate theory from the East based on a non-European method of inquiry. I think this kind of approach is possible and meaningful with regard to traditions whose discourse revolves around certain canons and “intense exegetical exercises.”66 It seems to work for China, and, as Jenco states, it may also work for other “commentarial traditions across the globe.”67 However, in many regions that do not have strong commentarial traditions, knowledge production and originality tend to occur at the nontextual or nontheoretical level. This is why, in thinking about CPT that focuses on the practice of intercultural dialogue, I believe it is equally important to center the discussion around “thought” as defined by Tully. I would also add that, whatever approach one takes, the interaction between theory and thought could provide meaningful insight and that the adoption of certain “Western” theoretical frameworks (at least in the first instance) should not immediately be a cause for alarm or be seen as an obstacle. What is serious and must be confronted, I believe, is rather the condescending attitudes that give rise to “bent twig” reactions. My next task, then, will be to search for ways to overcome this obstacle. It is a truism to say that the contours and defining values of “the West” have shifted considerably over the course of history. Some modern Europeans might claim that ancient Greek philosophy and JudeoChristian thought form the two pillars of Western civilization, but this kind of identity was, needless to say, a later invention. Such identification would certainly have seemed bizarre to the ancient Greeks themselves (who considered the non–Greek-speaking peoples barbarians) and the early Christians. Identity is a historically developed psychological construct and is constantly in flux (as is also evident from Youngmin Kim’s argument in Chapter 4). There is no rationally justifiable reason to conclude once and for all that “the West” (whatever or whoever it may include or exclude) could claim ownership of Western political theory or thought. What is important for CPT and intercultural dialogue, it seems to me, is to relativize (what I wish to call) these “ownership claims.” Let me elaborate. If certain ideas such as democracy, human rights, gender equality, etc. are considered not “Western” but “modern” ideas sharable across cultures, and if dialogues around these issues could be conducted without the “Westerners” (whoever this may be) condescendingly treating the “nonWesterners” as recipients of “Western” ideas, then it would seem that

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there would be a better chance for a collaborative creation of knowledge and ethos that go beyond the East–West distinction and foster the mutual understanding and concern that would be necessary for tackling impending global issues. It might not be possible to relativize all “ownership claims,” since they are a medium of personal and communal identity, part of what makes people “us.” It would be ludicrous and harmful to demand the refutation of many of the locally embedded values and traditions that make up their identities. However, for certain values, concepts, and theories that have great appeal across cultures, such as democracy, it is possible to share and own them together. And no doubt the specific contents and meanings of such shared ideas, as well as how they are embedded in specific locales, would be transformed through dialogue.68 John Dunn once claimed that “we are all democrats today.”69 Similarly, it is possible to claim that “we are all moderns today” and that these shared conditions of modernity would be the starting point of dialogue or scholarly conversation, a framework within which different local ideas can be discussed while allowing room for that framework to evolve as a result of the interaction. This may sound utopian or unrealistic, but it does not have to be. The present reality is that many (even comparative political theorists) are caught up with the East–West distinction – both camps making “ownership claims” and pledging allegiance to one or the other. The relativizing of “ownership claims,” one might argue, is similar to the notion of “nonattachment” that appears in Tully’s chapter, the idea that to participate in genuine dialogue it is important to be able to suspend (even if momentarily) judgment from one’s comprehensive worldview, which is linked to one’s thinking and feeling (40). I have coined the term “ownership claims” so as to emphasize the exclusionary aspect of such a worldview, the notion of claiming sole entitlement to certain ideas and refusing to share them with others. I also intend to lower the hurdle somewhat by suggesting that, while it would take considerable effort to achieve “nonattachment” from one’s comprehensive worldview, it would be less demanding to limit the refutation of “ownership claims” to a number of values that seem (at least potentially) universally appealing to a great number of people around the world. In considering the method of CPT in relation to “ownership claims,” I believe it would be important to focus not only on certain concepts and how they can be embedded within each locale but also on how certain names or terms could be shared across cultures. It is true, as Wittgenstein argued, that meaning derives not from the word itself but from its use.70

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So it is important to understand how words are used to imply certain things within specific contexts. Now while this understanding of language and meaning might invite us to focus more on concepts than on actual words, I believe it is equally important to pay attention to how and why certain specific words become the object of appeal or contestation. To give a concrete example, John Dunn focuses on the word “democracy” and not simply on its concept to explain certain features of modern politics. This, it seems to me, is a useful approach, since, while it may be possible to find similar concepts that correspond to certain words and this may help to foster mutual understanding between traditions, it is often the case that condescending attitudes and “bent twig” reactions result from one party trying to make ownership claims to certain words such as “democracy” and “human rights.” While it might be possible to identify concepts expressed in local traditional vocabularies that correspond to certain European words and concepts, it is when words (such as “democracy” and “human rights”) are claimed exclusively by their Euro-Western proponents and used to criticize others in a condescending manner that “bent twig” reactions arise (as was the case in the Western human rights–Asian values debate).71 It would therefore be more helpful, I think, to forgo ownership claims on certain words and ultimately to share them as always-contested ideational resources.72 This would ultimately imply that Western political theory ought no longer to be considered “Western” but as a “modern” form of political thinking that can be owned, shared, and criticized across cultural boundaries and, when convenient, serve as a temporary platform for intercultural dialogue.

notes 1. The historical trajectories of the Japanese notions and imageries associated with the terms “East” (東 higashi), “West” (西 nishi), and their cognates (東洋 toyo, 西洋 seiyo, 東域 toiki, 西域 seiiki, 東洲 toshu, 西洲 seishu, 東国 togoku, 西国 saigoku, 東方 toho, 西方 seiho) are in fact far more complicated and ambiguous than I have made them out to be in this simple introductory remark (intended primarily to illustrate the extent of the influence of the “Western impact” on the geopolitical perception and self-defining beliefs of many Japanese at the time). Perhaps surprisingly, this theme is relatively unexplored, but the following work illustrates the complexity surrounding the changing conceptions of “East” and “West” in the Meiji era. Tsuyoshi Saito, Meiji no kotoba (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1977), esp. ch. 2. That the Ministry of Education in 1894 introduced into the junior high school (of the old education system) curriculum a new subject “Oriental history” (東洋 史 toyoshi) is indicative of the decline of the status of Confucianism.

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7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

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Confucianism is no longer seen as constituting the basis of learning but has simply become, together with the histories of China and Korea, a part of Oriental Studies understood as a kind of area study. I thank Takeharu Okubo for suggesting these points. One should also note that the identification of Japan as the “land of the sun” and the “land of the gods” at times led some to state the centrality and primacy of Japan over the rest of the world. See Hiroshi Watanabe, A History of Japanese Political Thought, 1600–1901, trans. David Noble (Tokyo: International House of Japan, 2012), 280–289. Andrew March, “What Is Comparative Political Theory?,” The Review of Politics 71 (2009): 531–565. Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent, eds., Comparative Political Thought: Theorizing Practices (London: Routledge, 2013), 8. I am sympathetic to their argument developed in the section entitled “Language, translation and transmission” in ibid., 15–18. Though Freeden and Vincent have pigeon-holed Jenco into the comparative political theory camp. Ibid., 7, 23 fn. 9. Leigh Jenco, “‘What Does Heaven Ever Say?’ A Methods-centered Approach to Cross-cultural Engagement,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 4 (2007): 745. Ibid. Leigh Jenco, Changing Referents: Learning Across Space and Time in China and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 19–20. Jenco, “‘What Does Heaven Ever Say?’,” 744, 751. Ibid., 753. Ibid., 751. Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus 129, no. 1 (2000): 1–29. Ibid., 2. Loubna El Amine, “Beyond East and West: Reorienting Political Theory through the Prism of Modernity,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 1 (2016): 102–120. Ibid., 109. Ibid., 103, 106. Ibid., 104. Ibid., 108. Ibid., 106. Ibid., 107. Ibid., 110. David Hume, “Of the First Principles of Government,” in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 32–36. El Amine, “Beyond East and West,” 113. However, if one wishes to see how the meaning of 民 has evolved over time and how it became embedded in different locales, one must also pay attention

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26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

Ken Tsutsumibayashi to the various country-specific conditions. For example, 民 in Japanese can also be pronounced “tami,” which derives from yamatokotoba (ancient Japanese language that existed prior to the introduction of Chinese characters, around the fourth or fifth century). And when the Chinese character 民 was introduced to Japan, it converged with the old word tami whose meaning was not exactly coterminous with min. The importation of Chinese characters signified “mobile locality,” but the process of absorption and conceptual change was distinctive to each locality and often proved complicated as well as multifarious. See Takeo Matsui, “‘Min’ no gogenkoshaku,” Seiji-keizaironso 1, no. 2 (1950): 88–94. Shizuka Shirakawa, Jitou, new ed. (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2004), 845–846. Some of these scripts appear in ancient Chinese, Korean, and Japanese texts, but the modern Japanese translators did not base their translations on their ancient usage. Watanabe, A History of Japanese Political Thought, 15–17. Watanabe adds that this is a stark contrast to the Kantian position, which sees paternalism as a form of tyranny. This was one of the important findings from the East Asian Perspectives on Politics (EAP) Tokyo Workshop. Many of the papers from this workshop are included in the Special Issue on the EAP Tokyo Workshop, Journal of Political Science and Sociology 16 (2012). Tze-Ki Hon, “From Sheng Min 生民 to Si Min 四民: Social Changes in Late Imperial China,” Journal of Political Science and Sociology 16 (2012): 12. Ibid., 12. Hee-Tak Koh, “How Had the Status of ‘the People’ Been Changed in Choson (朝鮮) Period of Korea?,” Journal of Political Science and Sociology 16 (2012): 33–46; Myoung-Kyu Park, “Conceptual Transformation, Identity Formation and Political Membership in Modern Korea: Kukmin (國民), Inmin (人民), Minjok (民族) and Simin (市民),” Journal of Political Science and Sociology 16 (2012): 107–122. Park, “Conceptual Transformation,” 109–110. Koh, “How Had the Status of ‘the People’ Been Changed,” 42. Ibid. Interestingly, the shogun Tsunayoshi (1646–1709), on the basis of his commitment to Confucianism, issued a decree that stated: “The people are the foundation of the nation. Each and every one of the daikan [shogunal intendants charged with administering the lands under direct control of the Tokugawa house] must be attentive to the hardships of the people, and is hereby ordered to see that they do not suffer misfortunes such as hunger and cold.” See Watanabe, A History of Japanese Political Thought, 81. Yoshio Yasumaru, Nihon no kindaika to minshushisou (Tokyo: Aoki-shoten, 1974), 88–89. See Koichiro Matsuda, Gisei no ronri (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2016), 231–246; Hiroshi Watanabe, Higashiajia no ouken to shisou, rev. ed. (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2016); Watanabe, A History of Japanese Political Thought, esp. ch. 3.

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39. Michael Burtscher, “A Nation and a People? Notes toward a Conceptual History of the Terms Minzoku 民族 and Kokumin 國民 in Early Meiji Japan,” Journal of Political Science and Sociology 16 (2012): 47–106. 40. For a view that a robust public sphere coexisted with an authoritarian regime in Japan prior to 1945, see Mary Berry, “Public Life in Authoritarian Japan,” Daedalus 127, no. 3 (1998): 133–165. 41. For a Korean example, see Myoung-Kyu Park, “Conceptual Transformation, Identity and Formation of Political Membership in Modern Korea,” 110–119. The word 民族 (minzu) had existed in China since the ancient times, but it was 民族 (minzoku) as the Japanese translation of the European term “nation” that gained currency in China and Korea from the late nineteenth century onward. See Tomotsugu Udono, “Chukaminzoku no gainen wo megutte,” Bulletin of the Aichi Prefectural University Graduate School of International Cultural Studies 10 (2009): 1–26. 42. Needless to say, the historical trajectories of modernization and nation-state building in China, Korea, and Japan differ enormously from each other and would require a detailed and context-specific analysis for a fuller picture. See for instance, John Fitzgerald, “The Nationless State: The Search for a Nation in Modern Chinese Nationalism,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 33 (1995): 75–104; Gi-Wook Shin, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006); Kwon Hee-Young, “An Archeological Approach to the Birth of the Gungmin in the Republic of Korea,” The Review of Korean Studies 13, no. 3 (2011): 13–32; Kevin Doak, A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People (Leiden: Brill, 2007). It is well to recognize that nation-state building in Korea and China was induced as much by the threats from the Japanese as by the threats from the Western colonial powers. 43. Sukehiro Hirakawa, Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship with the West (Kent: Global Oriental, 2005). 44. For instance, Shogo Suzuki, in his Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society (Oxford: Routledge, 2009), states the following: “While the Chinese elites’ pursuit of ‘wealth and strength’ primarily entailed attempts to introduce some level of Western technology and industry, the Meiji leadership’s endeavors to achieve the same goal went further. Not only did they introduce Western technology and industry, but they also consciously sought to emulate the political institutions and culture of the ‘civilized’ states” (114). See also Hirakawa, Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship with the West, 206. 45. Jenco, Changing Referents, esp. ch. 4. 46. As for various strands of thought associated with wakon-yosai, see Sukehiro Hirawaka, Wakon-yosai no keifu (Tokyo: Kawadeshobo, 1971). 47. The word 権利 (quanli in Chinese) itself can be found in classical Chinese texts but signifying something quite different from the European term “right” and devoid of ethical connotation. When the Chinese translation of Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law appeared in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the word “right” was translated as quanli. Given that this book (the Chinese version) was reprinted in Japan soon after its publication in

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48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

56.

57. 58.

59.

Ken Tsutsumibayashi Beijing, it is possible to postulate some Chinese influence on the Japanese translation of “right.” But before long, quanli or kenri came to assume other meanings and nuances, as the Japanese themselves began to translate “right” (or “recht” or “droit”) under different circumstances. For a more detailed and subtle analysis of how the European term “right” was translated into Japanese, see Takeharu Okubo, “The Concept of Rights in Modern Japan,” in Leigh Jenco, Murad Idris, and Megan C. Thomas, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 394–414; Akira Yanabu, Honyakugo seiritsushijijyo (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1982); Takeshi Ishida, Nihonkindaishisoushi niokeru hou to seiji (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1976). For a more nuanced account, see Juro Iwatani, “Dejitaru de tumugu Fukuzawa Yukichi no hou no kotoba,” MediaNet 15 (2008): 38–40. See Takeyoshi Kawashima, Nihonjin no houishiki (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1967). Masao Maruyama, Bunmeironnogairyaku wo yomu, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1986). He was one of the founders of Meirokusha, a society that promoted Westernstyle civilizational thought. Fukuzawa was a leading figure in this society. Watanabe, A History of Japanese Political Thought, 427–428. His book Bushido: The Soul of Japan, written in English and published in 1900, was widely read in the West (including by Theodore Roosevelt). Patrick Fridenson and Takeo Kikkawa, eds., Ethical Capitalism: Shibusawa Eiichi and Business Leadership in Global Perspective (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), esp. ch. 2. There were of course slavish imitators of Western ways of life as well. Fukuzawa pejoratively calls them the “civilizing know-it-all profs” (開化先 生 kaikasensei) and mocks them with the utmost vigor and humor. See Yukichi Fukuzawa, An Encouragement of Learning, trans. David A. Dilworth (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2012), 113–114. Hiroshi Shibuya and Shin Chiba, eds., Living for Jesus and Japan: The Social and Theological Thought of Uchimura Kanzo (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013); Kunichika Yagyu, Nihonteki Protestantism no seijishisou (Tokyo: Shinkyo, 2016); Saburo Takahashi and Yasushi Hinaga, Luther to Uchimura Kanzo (Tokyo: Kyobunkan, 1987); Kei Chiba, “Uchimura Kanzo to dainino shukyoukaikaku,” Studium Christianitatis 47 (2012): 4–32; Hiroaki Matsuzawa, “Uchimura Kanzo no rekishi-ishiki (1),” Hokudaihougakuronnshu 17, no. 4 (1967): 56–106; Yasuhiro Takahashi, “Uchimura Kanzo no nationalism,” Niigatadaigaku gengobunka kenkyu 6 (2000): 57–83. For Uchimura’s experience in the United States and his anti-Americanism, see Hirakawa, Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship with the West, 210–228. This change of attitude is often reflected in translations of Western literature. For an interesting example centered around the translations of Sherlock Holmes novels, see Megumi Tsutsumibayashi, “‘There’s a West Wind Coming’: Sherlock Holmes in Meiji Japan,” Keio Communication Review 37 (2015): 83–109. Watanabe, Higashiajia no ouken to shisou, 271–286.

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60. Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Amy Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 25–73, at 25. 61. Ibid., 25, 64. 62. Isaiah Berlin, “The Bent Twig: On the Rise of Nationalism,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, ed. Henry Hardy (London: John Murray, 1990), 238–261, at 245. As for the idea that this is related to “the desire for recognition,” see Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 157–158. See also Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (London: Hogarth Press, 1979), 436: “It may be true that nationalism, as distinct from mere national conscience – the sense of belonging to a nation – is in the first place a response to a patronizing or disparaging attitude towards the traditional values of society, the result of wounded pride and a sense of humiliation in its most socially conscious members, which in due course produce anger and selfassertion.” 63. Berlin, “The Bent Twig,” 246, 251. Apparently, this metaphor is not from Schiller but from Plekanov. This was pointed out to me by Melissa Williams. See George Crowder, Isaiah Berlin: Liberty and Pluralism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 202, n. 7. 64. “The Bent Twig,” 246. See also “The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will,” in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, 207–237, at 218–219: “This sense of relative backwardness, of being an object of patronage and scorn to the French with their overweening sense of national and cultural superiority, created a sense of collective humiliation, later to turn into indignation and hostility, that sprang from wounded pride. The German reaction at first is to imitate the French models, then to turn against them.” 65. Ramin Jahanbegloo, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (London: Peter Halban, 1992), 201–202. 66. Jenco, “‘What Does Heaven Ever Say?’,” 751. 67. Ibid., 752. 68. This is in line with Tully’s idea of “cultivating an ethos of openness and receptivity to others” (39). Interestingly, Megan Thomas addresses the issues of epistemological “appropriation” and “ownership” in the context of Orientalism and CPT, making a similar point about how appropriation of foreign knowledge does not necessarily imply political domination. I thank Melissa Williams for pointing out this similarity. See Megan Thomas, “Orientalism and Comparative Political Theory,” The Review of Politics 72 (2010): 653–677. This analysis of Orientalism serves to show an instance in which local mobility goes from the East to the West. 69. John Dunn, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 1. 70. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968). On the difference between word and concept, see Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics: Volume 1, Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 158–174.

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71. See Ken Tsutsumibayashi, “Fusion of Horizons or Confusion of Horizons? Intercultural Dialogue and Its Risks,” Global Governance 11 (2005): 103–114. 72. This conforms with the view expressed in Melissa Williams and Mark Warren, “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory,” Political Theory 42, no. 1 (2014): 26–57.

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6 Is Popular Sovereignty a Useful Myth? Joseph Chan and Franz Mang

6.1 introduction Popular sovereignty is one of the most widespread but poorly understood notions in modern politics. Exalted as the highest principle of democratic legitimacy, the idea of popular sovereignty has been given various but broadly similar formulations: it is the idea that all government powers are derived “directly or indirectly from the great body of the people,”1 that “power vests ultimately in ‘the people,’”2 and that “the people are recognized as the source of political authority, to whom the exercise of power must be accountable.”3 But a moment of reflection leads to many difficult questions about the idea. One set of questions, which we set aside here, arises from the lack of any nonarbitrary way of defining the identity and boundaries of “the people” who have a legitimate claim to sovereign authority.4 A second set of questions, more central to our inquiry, concerns the idea of sovereignty itself. If sovereignty entails supreme, final, and unlimited authority to decide the basic rules of the political game, why should it be vested in the arbitrary will of any human agent, including “the people” as a collective agent? If the people’s will ought to be limited morally, politically, or constitutionally, how could such limitations be reconciled with the very idea of popular sovereignty? These theoretical difficulties seem so grave that some commentators have called popular sovereignty a fiction, a myth. But it may be a useful

We would like to thank Melissa Williams for her editorial suggestions and valuable comments.

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myth. In its name, leaders claim to represent the people and hence possess legitimate authority. In its name, popular revolutions and revolts are justified and demands for greater popular control of governments are made. Originating from Europe and America,5 and now spreading to the rest of the world, popular sovereignty remains a powerful idea that captures people’s imaginations and stirs radical action. According to some perspectives, if popular sovereignty is a myth, it had better be invented and reinvented again and again. But is the idea of popular sovereignty so devoid of intellectual merit that it can only be a myth? And if it is just a myth, what are the political consequences of keeping it well and alive? This chapter critically examines the idea’s philosophical merit and political impact on modern politics. Because of the idea’s global influence, it is important to critically examine it from the widest perspective. This chapter not only draws upon the Western critical philosophical perspectives and political experiences but also brings in two major non-Western ones – namely, Confucianism and Islam. There are several reasons for adopting such a wide comparative perspective. First, although the doctrine of popular sovereignty has its critics in modern Western political thought, it has more or less become a fixture in the “folk theory of democracy” in the West.6 The doctrine, however, has penetrated less deeply in Islamic countries and East Asian societies that have a Confucian heritage. The adoption or rejection of the doctrine is still very much a live issue for these countries, and hence a critical examination of the doctrine from their own perspectives is particularly meaningful for them. Second, this examination is also meaningful for the doctrine itself. The doctrine seems to claim universal validity for all countries – at least, nothing in the doctrine suggests that only certain peoples in the world possess sovereign rights over the authority of the countries in which they live. Thus, it is important to subject this claim to the strongest scrutiny by exploring how Islamic and Confucian traditions of thought, which also shape political culture in large parts of the world, might react to it. There are, of course, diverse reactions within these traditions: some see no difficulties at all in adopting the doctrine, and some even claim that it has always been an integral part of their traditions. But these are not dominant views, and our focus is on the more common critical (or “conservative”) responses that reject the doctrine or articulate a limited, weak version to make it compatible with the main elements of their traditions of thought. Third and finally, whatever the doctrine’s intellectual merit, it is important to look at its (actual and potential) influence on and consequences for

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the politics of the East and West. After all, political ideas may have reallife consequences; a good idea should be able to withstand political as well as philosophical tests. In other words, we will take popular sovereignty as a political as well as a philosophical doctrine. We will briefly look at some of the doctrine’s political consequences in the West, but a wider perspective that includes Islamic and East Asian concerns and experiences can provide a firmer ground for evaluating the usefulness, or otherwise, of the doctrine in politics. Specifically, what would be the likely consequences for good governance in Islamic and East Asian countries if the doctrine became a widely accepted view in those regions? Section 6.2 of this chapter argues that popular sovereignty as a philosophical doctrine is plagued with serious conceptual and normative problems. Sections 6.3 and 6.4 try to show that mainstream Islamic and Confucian thought would have great reservations about the doctrine, which is in great tension with their conceptions of political authority. The final two sections, 6.5 and 6.6, argue that, as a political doctrine, popular sovereignty has generated mixed consequences in Western democratic politics and would create undesirable effects on political development in Islamic societies and those with a Confucian heritage. We intend this chapter to be a contribution to the fast-developing field of comparative political theory. Scholars contributing to this field have employed different methods of analysis and pursued different aims, but, whatever the differences, they seem to share the conviction that crosstradition studies of political thought can enrich our own imagination, resist premature universalist conclusions, and promote mutual learning. In particular, we share this volume’s aspiration to deparochialize political theory. We will try to deparochialize the Western concept of popular sovereignty by examining its philosophical and political implications in non-Western contexts. As Melissa Williams notes in the Introduction of this volume, “the practice of deparochializing political theory generates experimentation, play, and disruption in relation to the concepts and categories through which contemporary political theory denotes political regimes.”7 We adopt such a spirit of experimentation in writing this chapter. More specifically, we broaden out from the usual East/West comparison and move into the unexplored terrain of Confucianism/ Islam comparison, using the premodern/modern distinction as a way of carving up units of analysis. We step outside of our own comfort zone (Confucianism) and venture into this unexplored terrain, being aware of our limitations as authors, as neither of us is expert in Islamic political thought.

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Comparative political theory is not defined with reference to any single methodological approach. We believe in pluralism of research methods: the choice of method is dictated by the purposes and interests of an inquiry, not the other way round. To be sure, each method has limitations, and we should be mindful of them. But we should not reject any research method simply because of its limitations, and we should be appreciative of the benefits that the adoption of a particular kind of method can yield. Given the purposes of this chapter, we are going to adopt a reconstructiveanalytic rather than historical-interpretive approach for comparing Western, Islamic, and Confucian ideas about popular sovereignty. For one thing, such a broad scope of comparison does not allow us to go into the interpretive nuances of each tradition in light of its changing circumstances over time. For another, textual reconstruction is necessary and appropriate because often what is said in a text needs to be extended and developed to a point where comparison with the modern concept of popular sovereignty is possible. Finally, since in this chapter we are more interested in normative evaluation of political concepts than exegetical analysis, we consider that analytic-philosophical techniques are more suitable than a historical-hermeneutical approach for our purposes.

6.2 raising doubts about popular sovereignty This section critically examines the idea of popular sovereignty as a philosophical doctrine. Our aim here is not to reject the idea but only to raise some serious doubts about its cogency. In a sense, “popular sovereignty” is a simple idea. It asserts that the ultimate political authority of a regime lies in the people. Another way to put it is that the ultimate source of political authority is the people. Yet this apparently simple idea conceals conceptual intricacy and theoretical difficulties. To begin with, the idea of popular sovereignty is radically open and indeterminate with regard to the people’s will and choice in politics. The idea that the people is the ultimate source of political authority does not tell you what kind of regime they want to live in, what views of justice they hold, and what liberties they believe they should have. To just focus on the issue of regime, historically, “popular sovereignty” has been understood to be different from “democratic government.” In early modern Western constitutional thought, jurists and political thinkers argued that popular sovereignty is compatible with a princely or a popular government.8 The thought is that the sovereign right of the people can be decoupled from its right of exercise.

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It is true that, in modern times, “popular sovereignty” and “democratic government” often get bound together. Popular sovereignty is often understood “to be immanent in a framework of constitutional rules that makes political leadership elective and gives equal rights of democratic participation to all citizens.”9 But as many contemporary constitutional theorists have stressed, there is a strong conception of popular sovereignty, one that captures the original understanding developed in early European modern thought. This conception holds that any constitutional order, democratic or otherwise, requires legitimacy, and this higher-order legitimacy can only come from the people through an extraconstitutional act. According to this conception, “the people as constituent power is taken to exist prior to and apart from all law, including constitutional law, and is taken to have the right to give itself whatever constitution it pleases.”10 In such a way, popular sovereignty affirms that the people’s will is the ultimate source of legitimate political authority. This strong conception retains the finality and supremacy as well as the extraconstitutional nature of the early modern conceptions of popular sovereignty. The present chapter focuses on this strong conception of popular sovereignty (hereafter just “popular sovereignty,” unless otherwise specified), for the weak one is just another name for constitutional democracy. Earlier we noted that popular sovereignty is a radically open and indeterminate notion with respect to the people’s will and choice. When this feature of open-endedness is combined with the features of finality, supremacy, and extraconstitutionality, the concept becomes highly problematic and runs into some well-known paradoxes. Let’s put aside the self-referential problem that the idea of the people leads to an infinite regress – who decides who the people are? – and the problem that the membership of the people can only be determined in an undemocratic way.11 Let’s also put aside the potentially incoherent nature of self-rule: why can the people be both the sovereign ruler and subject, and how can the absolute will of a sovereign agent bind itself to any promises?12 Let’s just focus on one dilemma: on the one hand, if the people of a country are to effectively exercise its power, then they would have to do it through some constitutional rules that are set by someone else before or beside them. In other words, the people’s will and choice must be constrained if they are to be constitutionally effective. On the other hand, if the people’s will and choice are to be final and supreme, they cannot be limited by constitutional rules, and so the charge of arbitrariness and illegitimacy can hardly be avoided. Why should the people’s sheer will and choice, irrespective of its content and unfiltered by any

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constitutional rules and conventions, have supreme political authority and legitimacy? Historically, to tame the will of the people some thinkers have set external limits or constraints on it by invoking the authority of divine law or natural law. But in doing so, popular sovereignty would lose its finality and supremacy as a preconstitutional authority. Other thinkers have injected conditions of rationality or morality into their description of the people so that they will never decide in ways that violate rationality or morality.13 This idealized or moralized version of the people, however, only brings in through the back door the same external constraints into the notion of the people. The fundamental question about popular sovereignty remains to be answered: if the people can make terrible mistakes just as monarchs and aristocrats do, why do they enjoy a sovereign right, an ultimate authoritative legitimacy beyond and above constitutional rules? Why are they entitled to make authoritative choices as freely as they please? The doctrine of popular sovereignty arose as a resource for resisting the arbitrary authority of absolute monarchs, unbound by law (legibus solutus),14 but the substitution of the arbitrary will of the monarch for that of the people is not clearly a gain from a normative point of view. The people’s resistance to serious misrule is morally justifiable, not necessarily because they can take back the rights they transferred to ruling officers but maybe because leaders who misrule will lose their moral authority to command.15 We have tried to show that the doctrine of popular sovereignty is open to challenges: Who are the people? How can the notion of the people be defined without arbitrariness or vicious regress? Beyond dubious claims of self-evident truth, what reasons can there be to think that the people have sovereign authority, with finality, supremacy, and extralegality as its features? Why can the people’s sheer, arbitrary will and choice be the source of political legitimacy, including the legitimacy of a constitution? The upshot of this discussion, as we said, is not to show that these challenges cannot be answered so the doctrine should be rejected. Rather, it highlights the difficult features of the doctrine and places us in a better position to appreciate why Islamic and Confucian traditions of political thought have serious reservations about popular sovereignty.

6.3 islamic reservations about popular sovereignty Let us first consider Islamic reservations about popular sovereignty. When scholars in Islamic studies talk about popular sovereignty, they do not

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necessarily take the strong conception of popular sovereignty (i.e., that any constitutional order requires legitimacy, and that legitimacy can only come from the people through an extraconstitutional act). By popular sovereignty they may mean that the people’s will is a source of legitimate rule in politics, but not that the people’s will is the ultimate source of legitimate rule in politics. Generally speaking, scholars in Islamic studies hold either that Islam and popular sovereignty are incompatible16 or that Islam and popular sovereignty can be reconciled in some way because God’s will and the people’s will need not be mutually exclusive in politics.17 We discuss these two views in the following. The view that Islam and popular sovereignty are incompatible is hardly surprising. Following the Qur’an, many Muslims believe that “there is no rule but God’s” (la hukma illa lillah).18 From this starting point, it follows logically that God’s will rather than the people’s will should be the source of rule for everything. Wael Hallaq (1955–) adopts this kind of antimodern view of morality and politics.19 Because Shari’a was the expression of God’s sovereignty, people should regard human ownership of anything as ultimately unreal.20 Moreover, the rule of Shari’a is in fact a kind of informal rule of jurists in accordance with their classical methods that are grounded on a commitment to the ultimate sovereignty of God.21 Hallaq thus rejects the moral legitimacy of the modern state, since the modern state, by its very nature, promulgates laws on the basis of its own sovereignty.22 He claims that the divine rule of Shari’a that is based on an unreserved commitment to God’s exclusive sovereignty should be endorsed and practiced.23 Notice that Hallaq would not deny that rulers should rule for the people – rule for the people’s interests and welfare – but this should not be confused with rule by the people.24 To him, God’s sovereignty implies that popular sovereignty is unreal. Many Islamic scholars also take an anti-liberal view of politics. For example, Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) is famous for claiming that the modern world is an un-Islamic space of pagan ignorance (jahiliyya) and that there is an urgent need for Muslim societies to restore God’s legislative sovereignty (hakimiyya).25 He goes as far as to reject any form of serious comparison between Islam and modern Western conceptions of governance.26 There are other Islamic scholars who can be treated as utopian Muslims, according to their political stances.27 These scholars, in general, criticize, deny, or dismiss the idea of popular sovereignty. But still other Islamic scholars are attracted to liberal democracy. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im (1946–), for instance, advocates liberal reformation of Muslim laws. To An-Na’im, Islam can only be preserved

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in the contemporary world through a clean separation of Islam from politics and an unequivocal endorsement of liberal democracy for Muslim societies.28 He even proposes that Muslim societies should become secular in the American fashion, such that Islamic teachings make no claim to authority over state coercion and legislation, though at times they might inform public morality.29 “[I]n order to be a Muslim by conviction and free choice, which is the only way I can be a Muslim,” he claims, “I need a secular state.”30 Nevertheless, AnNa’im would not endorse the strong conception of popular sovereignty. While he argues for the vital importance of constitutionalism, human rights, and active participation, he does not argue that the people’s arbitrary will ought to be treated as the ultimate source of political authority.31 In any case, the liberal conception of politics that he presents is not popular among Islamic scholars. According to most Islamic scholars, Muslim societies should either adopt an anti-modern view of politics (like Hallaq’s) or make a serious effort to reconcile Islam and democracy. This brings us to the question of how Islam and democracy might be reconciled. Unlike Hallaq and An-Na’im, many scholars in Islamic studies consider democracy and Islamic divine sovereignty to be, to some extent, compatible. Some of these scholars point out that the democratic idea of selfgovernance is rooted in the values and practices of classical Islam.32 Other scholars even claim that many Islamist groups have formed a crucial part of the resistance to authoritarian rule in Muslim societies.33 These two groups of scholars might endorse the view that the people’s will is a source of rule in politics, but they would probably not endorse the strong conception of popular sovereignty. For although they consider Islamic divine sovereignty to be compatible with some democratic practices, they generally believe that it is God’s will rather than the people’s will as expressed by an extraconstitutional act that is the ultimate source of political authority. To see more clearly how Islamic divine sovereignty may be compatible with democratic practice, let us consider briefly Rashid Rida’s political view. Rida (1865–1935) was a prominent Islamic reformer. For him, coercive power has been entrusted by God to the community.34 Consultation (shura) is the hallmark of his political theory, and he sees consultation as extremely important for election, constitutional interpretation, administration, and legislation.35 However, Rida thinks that “all that the [European] laws possess that is good and just has long since been laid down by our Shari’a.”36 So, while he considers Islam and certain

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democratic practices to be compatible, he would not accept popular sovereignty in the strong sense. Finally, for some Islamic theorists, God’s will and the people’s will are interwoven, but they would reject popular sovereignty in the strong sense. Consider briefly the theory of democracy of the former Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini (1930–1989). To him, “the legislative power and competence to establish laws belongs exclusively to God Almighty” and “the Sacred Legislator of Islam is the sole legislative power.”37 Yet he believes that the people’s consent is in fact immanent in Islamic governance, since “the body of Islamic laws that exist in the Qur’an and the Sunna has been accepted by the Muslims and recognized by them as worthy of obedience.”38 He endorses epistocracy for Muslim societies, which is called “governance of the jurist” (vilayet-i faqih): “since Islamic government is a government of law, knowledge of the law is necessary for the ruler,” and “the true rulers are the jurists themselves.”39 In essence, as Andrew March has nicely put it, Khomeini takes the traditional statements about the great importance of jurists of Islamic knowledge to be a kind of “Donation of Constantine.”40 In short, to Islamic scholars and politicians, even if some democratic practices are extremely important for Muslims, it is God’s will, not the people’s will, that is the ultimate source of legitimate political authority.

6.4 confucian reservations about popular sovereignty Like Islam, Confucianism would find it difficult to endorse popular sovereignty in its strong sense. The question of political authority is central to Confucianism from its very beginning. Who has the right to rule? And what does that right amount to? Like Islamic ideas, early Chinese ideas of political authority point to an objective order beyond the human realm, as expressed by the notion of Heaven’s mandate (tian ming). A person has the authority to rule if he received Heaven’s mandate to do so. The task of the selected ruler is to protect and promote the people’s well-being (bao min) by practicing benevolent rule (ren cheng) and being a moral exemplar for others.41 The ruler can keep his mandate if he is able to perform his task well but will lose it when he has continuously failed. The ultimate source of political authority lies with Heaven. It should be noted that over time the early Confucian conception of Heaven gradually evolved from being a deistic notion in which divine will is hard to predict to a moral-transcendental notion stripped of

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intentionality and then further to a stable conception of a higher moral and cosmic order (dao) for the human realm. Heaven’s sovereignty was no longer a will-based notion but a principle- or order-based one. Unlike the strong conception of popular sovereignty, the finality and supremacy of Heaven’s sovereignty is not combined with a will that can be asserted as it pleases. Rather, it is the finality and supremacy of a stable moral order that, theoretically, should reign through human society. This interpretation has been contested in the contemporary literature on Confucianism, however.42 In trying to integrate Confucian values with liberal democracy, some scholars have argued that Confucianism not only can accept the institutions of liberal democracy but contains democratic ideas, at least in their embryonic form, including popular sovereignty. Perhaps the most influential statement of this position is the Manifesto to the World on Behalf of Chinese Culture, coauthored by four leading Chinese Confucian scholars in the late 1950s: Carson Chang, Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan, and Mou Zongsan.43 Their thought has influenced several generations of scholars in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and, more recently, mainland China. These and other scholars have appealed to three popular ideas articulated in classical Chinese texts. Let us examine these ideas to see if they are equivalent to, or an embryonic form of, the idea of popular sovereignty or other democratic ideas such as political equality. The first is the idea of “tianxia weigong,” which appears in the famous passage about the Confucian ideal of social order, the Grand Union (datong) in the Book of Rites. The passage run like this: When the grand course was pursued, tianxia weigong, they chose men of talents, virtue, and ability; their words were sincere, and what they cultivated was harmony. Thus men did not love their parents only, nor treat as children only their own sons. A competent provision was secured for the aged . . . They showed kindness and compassion to widows, orphans, childless men, and those who were disabled by disease, so that they were all sufficiently maintained . . . Thus was [the period of] when we call the Grand Union.44

Some contemporary commentators have translated “tianxia weigong” in this passage as “the world belongs to the public,” in the sense that the people possess ultimate political power, and hence the idea of people’s sovereignty.45 But the passage does not mention political authority or sovereignty, where it lies, or who possesses it. It rather talks about how people behave in the Grand Union – they choose the talented and virtuous to serve for the common good, and the common people care not only about their own needs but also about those of others. The Grand Union is

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a society in which the spirit of the common good and compassion reigns. “Tianxia weigong” should therefore be translated as “the world is for the public” or “the world exists for everyone.” The key character “wei” suggests not a relationship of possession but a relationship of one thing acting or existing for another thing. James Legge, the first English translator of the Book of Rites, got it right when he translated the phrase “tianxia weigong” as “a public and common spirit ruled all under the sky.”46 The phrase, in our view, is not about a way of locating ultimate political authority but a form of governance. The second commonly cited Chinese idea appears in the Annals of Lu Buwei, a major classical text that incorporated early Confucian, Legalist, Daiost, and Mohist ideas. A passage on “Honoring Impartiality” states: The world does not belong to one person; it belongs to the whole world (tianxia fei yi ren zhi tianxia ye, tianxia zhi tianxia ye). The harmony of the Yin and Yang forces does not favor growth in only one species of thing, the sweet dews and seasonable rains are not partial to one thing, and so the ruler of the myriad people does not show favoritism toward a single individual . . . Heaven and Earth are so great that while they give life they do not raise anything as their own, and while they bring things to completion they do not possess them. The myriad things all receive their blessings and obtain their benefits, but no one knows whence they first arose. So it is with the Power of the Three August Ones and the Five Kings. When Duke Huan acted with impartiality (gong), set aside selfish interests and private aversions, and used Master Guan, he became the most important of the Five Lords-Protector. When he acted in pursuit of selfish interests, showed favoritism to those he loved, and used Shudao, maggots crawled out from his door.47

Again, some commentators have interpreted the phrase in the first sentence as meaning that the world and the ultimate political authority belongs to the people rather than to one person. But this passage is about the right way to govern, not about the right way to distribute political power. It says that the forces of the world (yin and yang) do not favor particular individuals or groups but give blessings to every living thing on earth. Similarly, political rule should practice impartiality and public spiritedness by promoting the good of everyone without prejudice or discrimination. The contrast to this ideal is political favoritism and partiality, which is the subject of the next chapter, “Dispensing with Selfish Partiality (Qusi).” So when “tianxia fei yi ren zhi tianxia ye, tianxia zhi tianxia ye” is translated as “the world does not belong to one person; it belongs to the whole world,” the words “belongs to” might suggest a property relationship in which the “owner” has a right to dispose of the possession as a matter of will. This is misleading. We suggest that the phrase be

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translated as “the world does not exist for one person only; it exists for the myriad things on earth.” The statement is about impartial governance, not popular sovereignty. The third and final idea used by some contemporary scholars to show that early Confucianism contains democratic ideas is the role of the people. Early Confucianism believed that the ultimate source of authority lies in Heaven. But how do we know that a ruler has the mandate of Heaven? How does Heaven reveal its choice? Mencius, who endorses the Heaven’s mandate theory, holds that the choice is revealed in part through the people’s acceptance of the ruler. For some scholars, this idea in Mencius indicates that the people have authority. In Mencius 5A.5, Mencius says that Heaven speaks through the gods (through religious sacrifices) and through the people: May I ask how he was accepted by Heaven when recommended to it and how he was accepted by the people when presented to them? When he was put in charge of sacrifices, the hundred gods enjoyed them. This showed that Heaven accepted him. When he was put in charge of affairs, they were kept in order and the people were content. This showed that the people accepted him.48

Heaven’s acceptance of a ruler can be seen by the people’s and gods’ acceptance (the latter is shown when no unusual things happen during sacrifices). Later Mencius even says: “Heaven sees with the eyes of its people. Heaven hears with the ears of its people.”49 This strong emphasis on the people’s acceptance seems to indicate that a democratic principle like popular sovereignty is at work. But is it? There are two ways of understanding the role of the people in this passage. The first way is that the people are the source of the ruler’s authority and that therefore we find here an idea of popular sovereignty. The second interpretive option is that, although the people play a role in the justification of a ruler’s authority, Heaven remains the source of authority. Since the mandate from Heaven is to protect the well-being of the people, popular contentment with the performance of a ruler is an indicator that the mandate has been (or will be) effectively carried out. As Justin Tiwald has argued, the people are like “a useful barometer of the ruler’s competence.”50 Similarly, Stephen Angle has argued that the people are “like thermometers, measuring the quality of rule and thereby indicating the presence or absence of legitimate authority.”51 In this second interpretation, the people’s acceptance is only an indicator of the quality of rule, which affects the granting of Heaven’s mandate. But the source of legitimate authority still lies in Heaven.

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We believe the second interpretation is the only correct understanding if we put this passage in the larger context of Confucian thought. Confucianism is a perfectionist philosophy. It has an objective conception of values and morality, which coheres with the metaphysical and natural order of things in the world. The term “Dao” or “Way” articulates this holistic understanding of the proper relationships among Heaven, Earth, and humans. The Confucian classic The Doctrine of the Mean talks about this triadic relationship: while Heaven and Earth create the myriad things and determine their natures, human beings (with complete sincerity) can “assist the transforming and nourishing powers of Heaven and Earth” and support the full realization of the natures of humans and animals. In this picture, humans are not the sovereign ruler or the source of values. Humans may assist the work of Heaven and Earth but may not replace it. Humans embody and complete the Way, but they are not its creator. From this broader Confucian perfectionist perspective, no humans, whether a single person such as a monarch or a group such as the people, possess a sovereign right whose will and choices determine the legitimacy of a political order and the authority of its political leaders. That legitimacy is determined, rather, by Heaven (when it is still a deistic notion) or (when intentionality is removed from Heaven) by whether the political order and its leaders can help bring about an objective conception of the order of the world in which the myriad things, including humans, can flourish. From this perspective, perfectionist values and principles have an independent status not reducible to people’s preferences and choices. These values and principles are more like constitutional principles that articulate and shape the fundamental character of a regime and serve as constitutional constraints over the government’s and the people’s choices.

6.5 popular sovereignty as a political doctrine for confucian heritage societies So far, we have argued that the doctrine of popular sovereignty is plagued with serious conceptual and normative problems. It is in great tension with Islamic and Confucian conceptions of the source of political authority. But the interesting fact is that, despite these abstract difficulties, the doctrine of popular sovereignty has become a key political belief in modern Western politics, and it has no shortage of adherents in other parts of the world. The doctrine has been frequently invoked to justify revolt against authoritarian rule (as in the 2010–2012 Arab Spring) or demands for democratic rights (as in the 2014 Umbrella

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Movement in Hong Kong).52 When an intellectually unfounded doctrine is at the same time a popular belief, it can be called a myth. If what we have argued thus far in this chapter is correct, then there is indeed a case to be made that popular sovereignty ought to be regarded as a myth. Even if popular sovereignty is a myth, is it one that serves some good purposes? Is it a useful myth? To answer this question, we must assess not only the intellectual merit of the doctrine of popular sovereignty but also the consequences of its political use. In other words, we should consider it not only as a philosophical doctrine to be debated in rational discussion but also as a political doctrine to be asserted or pursued by people in political action. In evaluating popular sovereignty as a political doctrine, we need to look at how “popular sovereignty” is commonly understood and used in politics and consider its actual and potential influences and consequences in this domain. In particular, we need to consider the likely consequences for good governance in Islamic and East Asian countries if the doctrine were to become a widely accepted view in those regions. This is what we will do in the rest of this chapter. In modern Western politics, the idea of popular sovereignty has a strong ideological hold. The old divine right of the king in premodern Europe has now been replaced with the new “divine right of the people.”53 Today, this idea is tightly linked with the concept of democratic government in which the people are supposed to enjoy an expansive range of powers, from the daily influence of public opinion and political participation to the selection of officials and legislators to (occasionally) the direct determination of policies and laws through referendums and ballot initiatives. When the banner of popular sovereignty is raised, it does not simply demand that a regime require the approval or blessing of the people, but also that people exercise their power. Although this modern, democratic version of popular sovereignty is more fiction than reality, it does yield some good practical results in politics. It legitimizes and stabilizes the democratic regime, which in turn ensures peaceful and orderly political succession. It provides ideological leverage for changes that make political institutions more responsive and accountable to the people.54 As Dieter Grimm writes, Popular sovereignty is not a reality, but an ascription. The sovereign remains only an abstract subject for the ascription of acts of public authority. This does not mean that recognizing the people as a subject for ascription has no practical

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significance. Popular sovereignty may be a fiction, but the fact that the people are recognized as the source of public authority, to whom the exercise of power must be accountable, yields real consequences that account for the difference between political regimes.55

But this modern view of popular sovereignty is at best a mixed blessing. As the reality always falls short of the ideal, the very idea of popular sovereignty ceaselessly entices more popular participation in politics and a greater demand for popular control. It instills little trust in political elites and places an almost religious faith in the people that they can learn from their mistakes, make the right choices, and find the right solutions. The problem with this populist understanding of popular sovereignty is not only that it fails to achieve a healthy balance between competent leadership and popular control to produce good-quality governance. It is a fiction that conceals manipulation and deception. As Glen Stazewski argues, the myth of popular sovereignty has induced in the United States many populist initiatives in the form of direct democracy by assuming mistakenly that “initiatives appear almost magically on ballots and in statute books as a result of the ‘will of the people,’ rather than the work of the unelected, and largely unaccountable, special interest groups that draft, finance, and lobby on behalf of the measures.”56 It also feeds the populist nationalism that is currently undermining constitutional democracy in so many places around the world.57 These downsides of the practice of popular sovereignty would be a serious concern for societies with a Confucian heritage, in which leaders are thought to be crucial for good governance. It is true that these societies have erred on the leadership side of the balance between leadership and popular control, to which extent the myth of popular sovereignty might help strike a better balance. But if the myth goes unchecked, there is a risk for these societies of erring toward the other side. And once respect for and trust in competent leadership is destroyed in a political culture, it will be difficult to rebuild. The modern understanding of popular sovereignty not only tends to undermine good governance in democracy, it also obstructs people’s imagination and acceptance of nondemocratic measures to address problems of modern governance. In societies with a Confucian heritage, there has been a long tradition of political meritocracy, working side by side with monarchial or authoritarian governments. The Confucian political ideal is meritorious governance, which means that those in office are in fact of merit (with virtue and talent) and govern effectively. This ideal is not defined with reference to the nature of the regime but in terms of the

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quality of governance. For a long time, Confucianism embraced hereditary monarchy, which was thought to be a more stable system than abdication or revolution, and it enjoyed political legitimacy. But Confucianism did not subordinate its ideal of meritorious governance to monarchy. Princes and emperors had to go through rigorous training in the classics and rituals in the hope that they could become virtuous and competent enough for their powers and responsibilities. In addition, they were assisted by a team of experienced and competent ministers led by the prime minister and chosen on the basis of merit. The imperial system in China was sustained (in part) by the meritocratic literati who loyally served and checked the emperors. Similarly, in modern times, under certain favorable conditions, Confucian scholars recognize democracy’s distinct contributions in the protection of people’s fundamental rights and the guarantee of peaceful transfer of power. Confucianism can take seriously democracy’s advantages for stability. But, like many reflective scholars in the West, Confucians are aware of the many problems in democratic politics and so would try to improve democracy’s meritocratic governance by injecting institutional and noninstitutional measures that may or may not be consistent with democratic principles.58 No contemporary Confucian scholars have proposed a purely meritocratic regime type. Most proposals call for certain kind of mixed regime of which democratic and meritocratic institutions are parts. However, if the modern understanding of popular sovereignty were to become a dominant ideology in a society with a Confucian political culture, these proposals to use political meritocracy as a corrective to democracy, or as part of a mixed regime, would not be politically feasible. As we can see, nondemocratic modes of selecting governing officials have been ruled out in modern Western politics for a long time, at least in the legislative branch.59 In the West, measures to address the ills of democracy can only be sought within the constraints of the democratic imagination. Political development in societies with a Confucian heritage need not be so constrained – they should feel free to consider all institutionally feasible types of institutions for the good of public governance. The substantive value of political meritocracy or a mixed regime might be discussed, but it would be a serious mistake if it were ruled out on the a priori grounds that it goes against the modern democratic spirit of popular sovereignty. The most serious practical consequence of popular sovereignty, however, has to do with its presumption that the people’s sovereign right and its implied political rights are a natural entitlement that requires no

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justification. This self-authorizing view of the people’s political rights is fundamentally at odds with the Confucian view. The latter holds that a political right is first and foremost a responsibility, not a moral entitlement. Whoever has a share in political rule, whether an officer or a voter, must take his or her responsibility seriously and acquire the necessary competence and virtue expected of the role. Confucian-inspired people would find the above practical consequence of the self-entitlement view deeply worrying. They would be very concerned if people began to regard themselves as masters to be served and not as citizens playing a responsible role in the important work of good governance. In a democracy, the selfrighteousness and complacency of the people is no less disastrous than the self-aggrandizement of the elite.

6.6 popular sovereignty as a political doctrine for a muslim society All of the above practical consequences of the ideology of popular sovereignty that concern a society of Confucian heritage would also concern a Muslim society. But there are two additional, uniquely Islamic concerns for the state’s endorsement of popular sovereignty in any Muslim society where a large number of citizens are deeply committed to Islam. First, the state’s endorsement of popular sovereignty might undermine the self-respect of Muslim citizens who are steeped in Islamic teachings. Second, even if democratization and a better protection of civil liberties are extremely important for a Muslim society, it seems not only undesirable but unnecessary for a Muslim society to pursue these goals by affirming popular sovereignty as a political doctrine and denying Islamic divine sovereignty. On the first point, consider the likelihood that a majority of citizens in a predominantly Muslim society would deeply disagree with a state doctrine claiming that the state’s legitimate authority stemmed from the will of the people rather than from divine will. Even if we believed that popular sovereignty is a philosophically sound and normatively legitimate doctrine, Muslim citizens would regard the state’s position as an affront to their deeply held religious conviction that only God’s will can be sovereign. Since a Muslim’s deepest personal convictions are normally interwoven with the status of Islam in his or her society, these significant changes would constitute a blow to this Muslim’s sense of self-respect. In response, one might argue that this is only how many Muslims would perceive those changes, but their perception of them does not show that their government should not endorse popular sovereignty as

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a political doctrine. In addition, some might argue that, insofar as popular sovereignty is a philosophically correct doctrine whereas Islamic divine sovereignty is not, the state will not disrespect Muslims qua rational autonomous agents by endorsing popular sovereignty. As some philosophers have pointed out, human beings qua rational autonomous agents do not and even should not only stick to their current beliefs, be those beliefs religious or non-religious.60 Moreover, the argument goes, rational autonomous agents should reflect constantly on their beliefs and commitments and seek to repudiate or revise them whenever rationality requires them to do so. We think that the argument about respect for rational autonomous agents is largely convincing, but it cannot justify popular sovereignty as a political doctrine insofar as a Muslim society is concerned. First, the argument is largely convincing because any person’s rational autonomous capacity should be respected by being recognized for what it is.61 Rational autonomous capacity, by its nature, seeks to affirm and grasp correct views of all kinds. So the state will not disrespect its people qua rational autonomous agents by only requiring them to accept what rationality requires them to accept.62 Nevertheless, respect for rational autonomous capacity is not the only relevant consideration. When we talk about respect for persons, we should also talk about showing respect and concern for people’s self-respect. To be clear, let us distinguish between two things: (1) Respect for citizens qua rational autonomous agents; and (2) Respect and concern for citizens’ self-respect. These two things may call for opposite state actions in some situations. Let us suppose that popular sovereignty is a correct political doctrine whereas Islamic divine sovereignty is not. So, respect for citizens qua rational autonomous agents provides a good reason for the state that governs a Muslim society to endorse popular sovereignty as a political doctrine. However, if the state focuses its attention instead on respect for citizens’ self-respect, then it would have a strong reason to endorse a doctrine of divine sovereignty. This is mainly because the state’s pursuit of popular sovereignty would bring about enormous changes that would seriously undermine the status and authority of Islam, and these changes, in turn, would greatly undermine the self-respect of many Muslim citizens. The last point about self-respect needs more explanation. For Muslims who are deeply committed to Islam, Islam is at the center of their worldview. Their sense of self-identity is, naturally, intertwined with the social and political status of their religion in their society. If a doctrine of popular

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sovereignty is pursued or enforced by their state, then their sense of selfidentity will be seriously challenged. This does not mean that Muslims could not transform their sense of self-identity by revising their worldview drastically to accord with the enormous political and social changes that are occurring, but that it is difficult for pious believers to transform their sense of self-identity in a fundamental way. A person’s sense of selfidentity is usually tied to her self-respect, and self-respect is a moral relation of a person to his- or herself that concerns his or her own intrinsic worth.63 A blow to a person’s sense of self-identity, then, normally amounts to a blow to his or her self-respect, where self-respect is essential to well-being.64 For these reasons we think there is a strong pro tanto reason for any state to refrain from denying the religious views of its citizens, at least insofar as these religious views are central to their sense of self-identity.65 But the state’s endorsement of popular sovereignty in a Muslim society is, in effect, an official denial of Islamic divine sovereignty and can deeply hurt the self-respect of Muslim citizens. Note that the reason for the state to show respect to its people’s selfrespect is a strong pro tanto one rather than a conclusive one; it could be overridden in some situations. For instance, if the state’s denial of a certain reasonable religious view is necessary for achieving an extremely valuable moral goal, such as the abolition of a wide range of unjust laws, then the pro tanto reason for the state not to deny the religious view may be overridden on the grounds of justice. Indeed, it is reasonable to think that due consideration should be given to both respect for citizens qua rational autonomous agents and respect for citizens’ self-respect. In this regard, we have three points to make. First, as argued, popular sovereignty lacks philosophical credence, and so there is little reason for any state to endorse popular sovereignty in order to respect citizens’ rational autonomous capacity. Second, as we have just shown, on the grounds of citizens’ self-respect, a state of a Muslim society has a strong pro tanto reason to refrain from endorsing popular sovereignty. Third, the strong pro tanto reason at issue may not be overridden by considerations of justice. This is mainly because the state’s endorsement of popular sovereignty seems to be unnecessary for a Muslim society in pursuit of a better protection of civil liberties and democratization. If a doctrine of popular sovereignty were necessary for Muslim societies to achieve some extremely important moral goal – say, democratization and a better protection of civil liberties – then the strong pro tanto reason in question may be overridden. However, we believe that a doctrine of popular sovereignty is

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not necessary for a Muslim society to pursue democratization and a better protection of civil liberties. Our main reason is that it is possible for a Muslim society to pursue these things (assuming that they are worth pursuing) by retaining Islamic divine sovereignty, provided that Islamic divine sovereignty is constrained in a particular way. For example, to An-Na’im, it is open to Muslims to decide how political power should be exercised. As discussed, he believes that Islamic morality should be kept away from the public domain in order to be preserved, since he considers that Islamic morality should not be imposed on people through the coercive use of state power. Following this view, a Muslim can endorse Islamic divine sovereignty in the minimal sense without embracing theocratic authoritarianism.66 In short, there need not be any fundamental conflict between Islamic divine sovereignty and the pursuit of democratization and legal protection of civil liberties. Even though there are laws and policies in some Muslim societies that hinder democratization and the protection of civil liberties, it is unnecessary for Muslim societies to change or abolish these laws and policies by means of denying Islamic divine sovereignty. To change or remove these problematic laws and policies, the relevant governments can affirm Islamic divine sovereignty in the minimal sense and look for a plausible interpretation of Islamic teachings that is compatible with, or even supportive of, those changes and reforms. In summary, we have sought to demonstrate that the state’s endorsement of popular sovereignty is undesirable for a Muslim society where a large number of citizens are deeply committed to Islam. Given the great importance of showing respect to and concern for Muslim citizens’ selfrespect, the state of a Muslim society has a strong pro tanto reason not to endorse popular sovereignty, as it implies a denial of some of the central ideas of Islam and challenges many Muslims’ sense of self-identity. This pro tanto reason can be overridden if the state’s endorsement of popular sovereignty is necessary for achieving a better protection of civil liberties and democratization. Yet, we think that the state’s endorsement of popular sovereignty is unnecessary for achieving these goals in a Muslim society, since a particular constrained form of Islamic divine sovereignty (i.e., Islamic divine sovereignty in a minimal sense) is compatible with, or even supportive of, these goals.

6.7 conclusion We have argued that popular sovereignty as a philosophical doctrine suffers from several serious difficulties: it lacks the necessary conceptual

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clarity and determinacy to be the first principle in politics; it is not necessary for justifying the people’s revolt or the legitimacy of political authority; and it goes against the mainstream Islamic and Confucian understandings of the ultimate source of authority. We have also argued that popular sovereignty as a political doctrine has led to certain undesirable practical consequences in modern Western politics, and that its adoption would cause many problems to societies with a Confucian or Islamic heritage. On the one hand, sovereign rights as moral entitlements are likely to generate a sense of self-righteousness and complacency on the part of the people and thus undermine the ethics of responsibility cherished by a Confucian-inspired society. On the other hand, the state’s endorsement of popular sovereignty for an Islamic society is not necessary as far as better protection of civil liberties and democratization are concerned, and importantly, it can seriously undermine the self-respect of Muslim citizens. Therefore, we consider that a modern, democratic understanding of popular sovereignty constrains people’s political imagination and can make people easily dismiss nondemocratic measures for tackling difficult problems facing democratic and nondemocratic countries. In short, despite its popularity in the West, popular sovereignty is a philosophical doctrine of dubious merit and, at the same time, a political doctrine with mixed and sometimes worrying practical consequences.

notes 1. James Madison, The Federalist Papers, no. 39, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/1 8th_century/fed39.asp, accessed 5 July 2019. 2. Martin Loughlin, “The Concept of Constituent Power,” European Journal of Political Theory 13, no. 2 (2014): 218. 3. Dieter Grimm, Sovereignty: The Origin and Future of a Political and Legal Concept (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 73–74. 4. See, e.g., Frederick G. Whelan, “Democratic Theory and the Boundary Problem,” in J. R. Pennock and J. W. Chapman, eds., NOMOS XXV: Liberal Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 1983). 5. See Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988). 6. Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 1. 7. See page 5 of this volume.

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8. Daniel Lee, Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chs. 6 and 9. 9. Lars Vinx, “The Incoherence of Strong Popular Sovereignty,” International Journal of Constitutional Law 11, no. 1 (2013): 102. 10. Ibid. 11. See Paulina Ochoa Espejo, “Paradoxes of Popular Sovereignty: A View from Spanish America,” The Journal of Politics 74, no. 4 (2012): 1053–1065. 12. See G. A. Cohen, “Reason, Humanity, and the Moral Law,” in Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, ed. Onora O’Neil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 167–188. 13. Andreas Kalyvas has argued that one could derive from the very concept of the people as constituent power a generative principle which is “inherently democratic and anti-colonial, since it consists of the predicates of equality, inclusion, participation and reciprocity, that is, of the norms of selfdetermination and autonomy.” See Andreas Kalyvas, “Rethinking ‘Modern’ Democracy: Political Modernity and Constituent Power,” in Gerard Rosich and Peter Wagner, eds., The Trouble with Democracy: Political Modernity in the 21st Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 50–89. Jürgen Habermas has argued for a procedural notion of popular sovereignty in which “sovereignty is found in those subjectless forms of communication that regulate the flow of discursive opinion- and will-formation” against the background of a liberal egalitarian culture. See Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), Appendix I, “Popular Sovereignty as Procedure.” There is no space to enter into a discussion of these two very interesting attempts to reconcile the people’s will and the requirement of practical reason and objective values. But we see these attempts as illegitimately stipulating liberal egalitarian values into the notion of the people and the formation of their will. 14. See, e.g., the discussion of the Monarchomach theory of constituent power in Lee, Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought, 142–149. 15. For his view of political authority, see Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), ch. 1. 16. See, mainly, Wael Hallaq, The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013); Sayyid Qutb, The Sayyid Qutb Reader: Selected Writings on Politics, Religion, and Society, ed. Albert J. Bergesen (New York: Routledge, 2008); and Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Islam and the Secular State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 17. See Khaled Abou el Fadl, “Islam and the Challenge of Democracy,” in Joshua Cohen and Deborah Chasman, eds., Islam and the Challenge of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 3–48; Ruhollah Khomeini, “Islamic Government,” in Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, trans. and ed. Hamid Algar (Berkeley, CA; Mizan Press, 1981), 27–149; and Malcolm H. Kerr, Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966).

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18. For a discussion, see G. R. Hawting, “The significance of the slogan lā ḥukma illā lillā h and the references to the ḥudūd in the traditions about the Fitna and the murder of ‘Uthmā n,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 41, no. 3 (1978): 453–463. 19. Hallaq, The Impossible State. 20. Ibid., 50. 21. Ibid. 22. He said, “any conception of a modern Islamic state is inherently selfcontradictory.” See Hallaq, The Impossible State, xi. 23. Ibid., 156–162. 24. Ibid., 72. 25. Andrew March, “Genealogies of Sovereignty in Islamic Political Theology,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 80, no. 1 (2013): 293–320, at 295–296. 26. Ibid., 295. 27. Andrew March, “Political Islam: Theory,” Annual Review of Political Science 104, no. 18 (2015): 103–123, at 104. 28. An-Na’im, Islam and the Secular State. 29. Ibid., 1–44. 30. Ibid., 1. 31. See ibid., 84–139. 32. See, e.g., Irfan Ahmad, “Democracy and Islam,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 37, no. 4 (2011): 459–470; Abou El Fadl, “Islam and the Challenge of Democracy”; and M. A. Muqtedar Khan, ed., Islamic Democratic Discourse: Theory, Debates, and Philosophical Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006). 33. For valuable discussions, see Nathan J. Brown, When Victory Is Not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012). 34. Anthony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 326. 35. Kerr, Islamic Reform, 163, 172. 36. Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought, 326. 37. Khomeini, “Islamic Government,” 55. 38. Ibid., 56. 39. Ibid., 59–60. 40. March, “Genealogies of Sovereignty in Islamic Political Theology,” 306. 41. This short sentence integrates several key ideas in the Book of History, the Analects, and Mencius. 42. The following discussion draws upon Joseph Chan, “Democracy and Meritocracy: Toward a Confucian Perspective,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34, no. 2 (2007): 179–193, and Confucian Perfectionism, Appendix 2. 43. An abbreviated English version of the Manifesto has been published under the title of “A Manifesto for a Re-appraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture” in Carsun Chang (Zhang Junmai), The Development of NeoConfucian Thought, vol. 2 (New York: Bookman, 1962). For further

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44.

45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

59. 60.

61.

62.

Joseph Chan and Franz Mang bibliographical details of the Manifesto and a detailed analysis of its views, see Albert Y. H. Chen, “Is Confucianism Compatible with Liberal Constitutional Democracy? The 1958 Manifesto on Chinese Culture and the World Revisited,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34, no. 2 (2007): 195–216. James Legge, trans., Book VII: The Liyun, sec. I, 2, The Liji, vol. 27, 365, in Sacred Books of the East, vols. 27–28 (Delhi Varanasi Patna Madras: Motilal Banarsidass, 1964). Deng Xiaojun, Ru jia si xiang yu min zhu si xiang de luo ji jie he [The Logical Integration of Confucian and Democratic Thought] (Chengdu: Sichuan People’s Publishing, 1995), 262. Ibid. John Knoblock and Jeffery Riegel, trans., The Annals of Lu Buwei (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), ch. 4, book 1, 71–73. D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius (London: Penguin Books, 1970), book V, A:5, 143. Mencius, book V, A:5, 144. Justin Tiwald, “A Right of Rebellion in the Mengzi?,” Dao 7 (2008): 272. Stephen Angle, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity, 2012), 40. See, e.g., John L. Esposito, Tamara Sonn, and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy after the Arab Spring (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 4; Stephan Ortmann, “The Lack of Sovereignty, the Umbrella Movement, and Democratisation in Hong Kong,” Asia Pacific Law Review 24, no. 2 (2016): 108–122. Achen and Bartels, Democracy for Realists, 18. See Morgan, Inventing the People. Grimm, Sovereignty, 73–74. Glen Stazewski, “Rejecting the Myth of Popular Sovereignty and Applying an Agency Model to Direct Democracy,” Vanderbilt Law Review 56 (2003): 399. See, e.g., Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). For examples of China’s experiments in blending democratic and nondemocratic forms of meritocracy, see Chapter 7 by Baogang He and Mark Warren in the present volume. See Daniel A. Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 66–67. See, e.g., Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of Philosophy 68, no. 1 (1971): 5–20; Gerald Dworkin, “The Concept of Autonomy,” in John Christman, ed., The Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 54–62. See Richard Arneson, “Democracy Is Not Intrinsically Just,” in Keith Dowding, Robert E. Goodin, and Carole Pateman, eds., Justice and Democracy: Essays for Brian Barry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 40–58, at 52. For a different view, see Gerald Gaus, “On Two Critics of Justificatory Liberalism: A Response to Wall and Lister,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 9, no. 2 (2010): 177–212, at 179–187.

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63. Here, we largely follow John Rawls’s discussion of self-respect and selfworth. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 155–156. 64. For a discussion of how a person’s sense of self-worth is related to her wellbeing, see Andrew W. Paradise and Michael H. Kernis, “Self-Esteem and Psychological Well-Being: Implications of Fragile Self-Esteem,” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 21, no. 4 (2002): 345–361. 65. In making this point, we assume that Islam is not an unreasonable doctrine. 66. We are not suggesting that An-Na’im’s liberal conception of politics is most suitable for the future development of Muslim societies. There have been reasonable concerns about secular and liberal conceptions of politics for Muslim societies. See Asma Barlas, “Uncrossed Bridges: Islam, Feminism and Secular Democracy,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 39, nos. 4–5 (2013): 417–425.

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7 Authoritarian and Democratic Pathways to Meritocracy in China Baogang He and Mark E. Warren

7.1 introduction Western liberal democracies confront growing crises of legitimation, from policy gridlock and growing inequality to the rise of populists with authoritarian instincts. Some have wondered whether China provides a superior example of good government. China’s remarkable achievements in economic growth, poverty reduction, and rapid development may suggest the secret to its success might lie in the creative combination of older traditions of Chinese thought, particularly Confucian meritocracy, with the organizational apparatus of the modern developmental state, precisely a strong Party-State, a model that arguably found earlier success in Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore.1 Daniel Bell has recently argued that the “China Model” of political meritocracy, suitably refined, offers an appealing alternative to Western electoral democracies.2 Using its authoritarian powers in Confucian ways, he claims, the Chinese Communist Party has been able to ensure merit in the selection of toplevel political leaders and encourage responsiveness to the people, while absorbing and controlling political demand by experimenting with democracy at local levels. In this chapter, we question the theoretical contrast between liberal democracy and political meritocracy that often frames comparisons between the developed democracies and China. Meritocracy, we argue, is not a regime type at all, as Joseph Chan and Franz Mang also argue in

We thank Melissa Williams for the insightful and constructive comments that helped us to refine the arguments in this chapter.

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Chapter 6 of this volume.3 Rather, meritocracy expresses the ideal that officeholders and decision-makers should hold their positions of authority by virtue of their talent, knowledge, character, and judgment. In contrast, concepts of regime types turn on the question of who has the power to select officeholders and to hold them accountable. Today’s polities typically exhibit just two general regime types: authoritarianism, in which elites hold this power; and democracy, in which the power to authorize rulers and hold them to account belongs to the people. In order to conceptually compare China to Western liberal democracies, we should not distinguish between meritocracy and authoritarianism or between meritocracy and democracy but rather between authoritarian meritocracy and democratic meritocracy. As ideal types, each thematizes different conceptions of merit and deploys distinct methods of selection and procedures for institutionalizing meritocratic values, ideas we develop in Section 7.3. In Section 7.4, we develop the distinction between authoritarian and democratic meritocracy. We also note that in practice both Western liberal democracies and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) version of authoritarian rule are mixed regimes that combine democratic practices of elite selection with top-down authoritarian ones. In the case of China, we show how the pressures to maintain a high level of performance (output) legitimacy, measured mainly in economic terms, have generated a political demand for both meritocratic and democratic institutional innovations within a regime that remains authoritarian. Section 7.4 focuses on two of these innovations, highlighting their unusual and distinctive combinations of authoritarian and democratic meritocracy, mostly (but not exclusively) at the local level of governance. The “three ticket” and “public nomination–direct election” systems, which emerged as responses to dysfunctions in local elections, are creative combinations of top-down elite selection and democratic election. These innovations are emerging alongside a wide range of deliberative and consultative practices in China’s governance processes, which serve, in part, to provide elites with the information they need to make better decisions. Many of these innovations, if governed by norms of transparency and public accountability, might be instructive models of democratic meritocracy that could address pathologies of democratic decisionmaking in other contexts. We conclude in Section 7.5 by noting features of Chinese political experimentation that tend to strengthen authoritarianism while

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undermining the meritocratic and democratic elements in the institutional mix. These weaknesses of regime hybridity as it has played out in China, however, should not obscure the genuine innovativeness of its institutional experiments or their potential to inform or inspire new forms of democratic meritocracy. While our chapter is not a direct reflection on comparative political theory, we hope to be practicing one of its many possibilities and genres. Here we draw on the long-standing practice in Western political theory and comparative politics of characterizing political regimes through ideal types. We do so because it offers two kinds of comparative opportunities. One leverages generalization: since Plato, regime typologies have been built around the question of rule – that is, where the power to organize and make collective decisions is located, whether in the one (monarchy), the few (aristocracy), or the many (democracy). Here we work with just two regime types – democracy and authoritarianism – which mark the end points of a continuum from widely dispersed to narrowly concentrated political power. The question that motivates these ideal types generalizes across contexts because it is deeply existential: it focuses the question of who and where power is located to make decisions about how one is to live one’s life, looking forward, together with others. Because of its normative centrality, this question should be asked of any polity, regardless of time or place. In our case, this question allows us to look with skepticism on claims that China is distinctively non-Western, so much so (it is sometimes claimed) that the very categories of democracy and authoritarianism do not apply. Such claims are almost always ideological, justifying what are, in fact, authoritarian concentrations of power that can deeply damage people’s capacities to choose and control their lives, individually and collectively. In this respect, our method intersects with the chapters in this volume that emphasize cross-boundary conversations about normative questions that can pierce the ideological conceits and strategies of those who hold power.4 But, second, while Western regime typologies are too abstract to map directly onto any regime, this is doubly so in the case of China. Here our method aligns with those chapters in this volume that emphasize close attention to specific practices and contexts. When we do, we find that, although regime-type categories help us to sharpen normative questions, the Chinese have devised institutions and practices that fuse the traditions of Confucian meritocracy with both authoritarian and democratic locations of power, depending upon policies, places, and levels of government. We will simply not see these practices if we abstractly impose Western

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regime-type categories. What we find are a number of uniquely Chinese innovations in designing merit-based considerations into decision procedures, as we will document.

7.2 meritocracy versus democracy? In Western political thought, democracy and meritocracy have had an uneasy relationship since Plato cast democracy as the rule of the appetites unchecked by reason and made his case for the rule of philosophers based on their dedication to seeking truth. In today’s developed democracies, institutions are now highly differentiated, so that democratic and meritocratic principles of elite selection coexist. Early justifications of representative democracy rested on the claim that elections would select a “natural aristocracy” from among the citizenry.5 In China, meritocratic ideals are equally ancient, with roots in Confucian thought (also in other schools of thought), which has always counseled that leaders should possess both the knowledge and the virtue appropriate to their positions. Confucian ideals were institutionalized in the imperial examination system, which originated in the Han Dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) and were transformed into a comprehensive system of elite selection down to the local level during the Tang Dynasty (ad 618–907).6 Developing these Confucian ideals in The China Model, Daniel Bell identifies the three qualities of good leaders: they should have high intellectual abilities, good social skills, and moral virtue. These are the qualities of good leaders that, on Bell’s account, the CCP has institutionalized (albeit imperfectly) in their peer ranking and selection systems. Bell’s three criteria nicely identify the kinds of knowledge and character that comprise political merit. He omits, however, a crucial piece of any theory of meritocracy. Merit (which refers to qualities of knowledge and judgment) always interacts with regime (which is about where powers of selection and decision reside and how they are organized). This question is hidden, conceptually speaking, because Bell treats “meritocracy” as the regime type and “democracy” as a modification of this regime type.7 But while “democracy” tells us where power is located, “meritocracy” does not. The conceptual cost is that Bell overlooks the crucial question as to how power relationships can support or undermine merit in governance. Disaggregating the questions of merit and regime type allows us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of authoritarian and democratic systems as pathways to merit in governance. The kind of regime structures the incentives of decision-makers to use their expertise and virtues on

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behalf of those they rule, as well as affecting the sources and kinds of knowledge and judgment that count as meritorious. By distinguishing questions of regime from those of merit, we can develop the concepts of authoritarian meritocracy and democratic meritocracy. With these tools, we analyze the nature and place of merit in China under CCP rule. Our analysis is summarized in Table 7.1. With respect to the question of regime type (columns, Table 7.1), we ask whether powers to select rulers (or authorize rulers) and hold rulers accountable for their decisions are narrowly or widely distributed. The more narrowly distributed, the more authoritarian the regime; the more widely distributed, the more democratic the regime. The location of power tells us something important about two other kinds of question that are central to democratic theory. First, it identifies key incentives that rulers have to attend to the interests and values of those they rule. The more authoritarian, the fewer such incentives rulers will have; the more democratic, the more incentives. All other things being equal, for example, democratic elections for rulers institutionalize incentives to attend to the people. These kinds of incentives are weaker in authoritarian regimes. They are not absent, as even authoritarian rulers require legitimacy in order to function. Moreover, cultures can sometimes provide incentives beyond institutional organizations of power. China’s legacy of Confucian culture directs rulers to attend to the good of the people and to consult with the people when answers to collective concerns are unknown.8 Importantly, Confucian culture and values also permit the people to petition, to protest, and perhaps even to revolt against bad rulers.9 In addition, Maoist China inculcated the “mass line” (qunzhong luxian) into party members, a doctrine that emphasized the wisdom of the people as well as the duties of leaders to consult with them. The second important feature of regime types with respect to merit is that the location of power affects information and communication, always key to organizing collective actions. Authoritarian regimes tend to have poor channels of communication between the people and rulers as they typically suppress or strictly limit the spaces necessary for public opinion to develop and to be expressed. Democratic regimes tend to have multiple pathways for the formation and expression of public opinion: election campaigns, media-rich public spheres, and advocacy organizations, as well as the many deliberative bodies that are designed into democratic institutions. Because regime type affects how communication operates and information circulates, it also affects the bases of judgments

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Weak (concentrated power overrides technical merit)

Weak (concentrated power, weak communication distorts moral judgments)

Weak (few incentives to attend to collective interests; weak communication)

Moral judgment (“virtue”)

Political judgment

Non-constitutional monarchy, dictatorship

Technical knowledge/ merit

Knowledge/ judgment basis for merit

Strong to mixed (examinationbased and peer selection, differentiated merit-based institutions; but power can override merit) Mixed (concentrated power distorts moral judgments, but multiple channels of communication) Mixed (concentrated power can distort political judgments, mitigated by multiple channels of communication)

Authoritarian meritocracy (China: “collective leadership,” professional bureaucracies, some protected knowledgebased institutions)

Regime Type

Strong to mixed (highly differentiated locations of merit; but no meritbased qualifications for elected office; electoral penalties for gross mismanagement) Strong to mixed (strong public spheres highlight moral issues; but publicity incentives can undermine elected leaders’ moral judgment) Strong (electoral incentives for coalition-building and inclusion; electoral and veto-based penalties for misjudgment)

Democratic meritocracy (competitive elections, free speech/ association, protest, professional bureaucracies, protected knowledge-based institutions)

t ab le 7. 1 Support for merit-based governance by regime type

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about merit. Contra Bell, political merit is not a property of individuals for which they can be “selected,” but arises from the interaction of individual traits with political processes, especially the information- and communication-rich processes characteristic of democracies. Finally, although we have simplified the range of regimes with the binary “authoritarian versus democratic,” there are of course many varieties of authoritarian rule, just as there are many kinds of democracy. Classically authoritarian regimes are hereditary monarchies, theocracies, and personal dictatorships without constitutional limits on rule or rule shared with other political entities such as parliaments. China’s model is quite distinct, comprised of one-party rule and collective leadership, combined with a very large party membership (about 90 million as of July, 2019), multiple layers of government, and institutions that separate executive, legislative, judicial, and military functions, all knit together through the CCP. Democratic mechanisms exist within the Chinese regime, including elections and deliberative processes, although mainly at local levels. These structures provide for more communication and internal checks on power than typical of authoritarian regimes. That said, power remains monopolized by the CCP, and President Xi Jinping has been consolidating power in ways not seen since the era of Mao Zedong. The rows in Table 7.1 identify kinds of knowledge and judgment bases for merit and their interactions with regime types. Our distinctions are roughly parallel to Bell’s distinctions between intellectual ability, virtue, and political knowledge.10 We emphasize, however, the extent to which the possession and use of knowledge, particularly good moral and political judgment, depends on communication with other human beings, which must be both protected by and organized into political regimes to have an impact on governance. What we are calling technical knowledge (Table 7.1, row 1) is the kind that is least dependent upon communication with others: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These are the kinds of knowledge best tested by examination, and they are easiest to design into institutions of government. Nonetheless, technical knowledge, and the kinds of merit it reflects, require protection from political and religious interference, as well as means for integrating it into collective decisions. Purely authoritarian regimes (theocracies, monarchies, and dictatorships) tend to view independent inquiries as threats and lack motivations to support any form of technical knowledge that does not directly enhance their power. In contrast, democracies tend to protect technical knowledge by providing

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spaces where it can be generated, such as universities and research organizations, businesses that depend upon technical knowledge for performance, and professional bureaucracies. Elected leaders, particularly populist politicians, may not appreciate these kinds of knowledge-based merit, but, where ignoring expertise produces policy failures that impact electorates, they have some incentives to protect technical merit. China’s “collective leadership” model, system of universities, and examinationbased systems for selecting offices combine with a heavy dependence upon performance legitimacy to favor technical merit. Good moral judgment (Table 7.1, row 2) is more complex. To the degree that good moral judgment is about more than applying received wisdom or religious codes, it depends both upon interaction with others, so as to understand their wants, needs, and perspectives, and upon incentives to act morally. Unlike technical knowledge, good moral judgment is difficult to test by examination, as it is more likely to depend upon discursive interactions with others accompanied by reciprocity and respect, particularly those potentially affected by such judgments. Good moral judgment is unlikely to be found among leaders of purely authoritarian regimes, as concentrated power tends to suppress the voices of those without power, undermines respect and reciprocity, and provides few incentives for leaders to act attentively to others. In authoritarian regimes, opportunities and incentives for corruption abound, usually unchecked by institutional constraints. In contrast, democracies tend to be more robust in underwriting moral judgment, as they usually have strong public spheres that enable moral debate and discourse and sometimes even specialized institutions for deliberation in policy areas that raise moral issues in unsettled areas, such as genomics. They also institutionalize preventive measures against corruption.11 In short, relative to authoritarian regimes, democracies tend to provide the information and communication as well as the incentives necessary for good moral judgment. These strengths, however, can be undermined by strategic electoral incentives, which can motivate partial positions and policies that pander to, and sometimes amplify, constituents’ moral weaknesses, although good electoral system design can mitigate these effects.12 China represents a complex case in these respects. On the one hand, the authoritarian structure of government will tend to weaken the incentives necessary for good moral judgment – evidenced in China’s consistently poor ranking on comparative measures of corruption. It suffers from a weak, highly controlled public sphere, meaning that the voices and perspectives of people not included in the CCP have few protected

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channels of communication. On the other hand, there are more resources for good moral judgment in China than in most authoritarian regimes. Insofar as Chinese political culture is informed by Confucian ethics and the Maoist mass line, leaders and officials have reason to look outward, toward those they affect. Traditions of rightful resistance and petition mean that there is more information about how policies affect people, and more incentives to pay attention, than a purely authoritarian model would predict.13 Democratic and deliberative structures, found mostly at local levels of government, help to provide checks on corruption and information necessary for good moral judgment, enabling otherwise authoritarian institutions to benefit from some of the strengths of democracy.14 Finally, good political judgment (Table 7.1, row 3) follows a similar logic, with the key distinction being that it requires balancing moral reasoning with strategic and instrumental considerations. As with moral judgment, “merit” in leadership is not just an individual quality; rather, institutions need to underwrite and protect expressions of opinions and perspectives of those who are ruled, attend to the constraints and possibilities of science and technology, and create incentives for leaders to attend to these resources. In contemporary, post-conventional, pluralistic contexts, the most important political judgments depend upon the norms that people create and justify to one another. Moreover, knowing the needs and interests of a collectivity depends upon the privileged knowledge that individuals have of their own interests. Knowledge of interests, needs, and perspectives requires not only that people be asked about what they prefer but also that people understand how their preferences relate to those of others. Political judgments that wrap all of these kinds of considerations together count as “meritorious” only to the degree that people recognize, understand, and accept them. Democracies tend to protect these sources of deliberation and judgment and to institutionalize electoral penalties for ignoring them. It is true that elections create incentives for pandering, deception, and other pathologies. We may be tempted to imagine that a good leader, freed of the strategic pressures of elections, would be unencumbered by these pathologies. Yet there are very few examples of autocrats that are both wellinformed and well-motivated. Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew was the exception that proves the rule, and even in Singapore authoritarian meritocracy has produced its own pathologies.15 The rarity of well-motivated autocrats is inherent in authoritarian regimes, which lack not just the incentives for political merit but also the institutionalized conduits for voice and public opinion that make good political judgment possible.

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China departs from a purely authoritarian pattern in some important ways. Although meritorious political leadership is handicapped by authoritarianism and one-party rule, China mitigates the inherent problems with authoritarian rule through collective leadership focused on performance legitimacy and decentralized governance that can be attentive to public demand, often through public consultation and deliberation that seems to result in a distinctively responsive form of authoritarianism.16 In our view, however, the problem for China going forward is evident in Table 7.1: China will need to retain its strengths in selecting for merit in technical knowledge, while democratizing in ways that underwrite merit among leaders in moral and political judgment.

7.3 mixed regimes: institutionally differentiated meritocratic systems Political systems that include merit-based considerations – as do all highperforming political systems – typically distribute them across branches, agencies, and levels of government while protecting merit-based organizations outside of government. The developed democracies are dense with merit-based considerations in both the selection of personnel and processes of governing. As Bell briefly acknowledges, the developed democracies design meritocracy into their administrative and judicial branches.17 The older developed democracies began to separate elected parts of government from judiciaries as early as the eighteenth century, while professional, meritbased administration evolved in the late nineteenth century in forms that protected most staff in ministries and agencies from patronage-based corruption and other political pressures – a dynamic that was driven largely by the performance demands of capitalism and war.18 Even the “political” branches of government – legislatures and elected executives – have professional staff, while elected legislators specialize through their legislative committee assignments. Bureaucratic organizations are, of course, hierarchical and even authoritarian in electoral democracies, on the theory that they should work to execute the directions of elected branches of government. In these arrangements, (bureaucratic) authoritarianism can hobble good moral and political judgment. Remarkably, Max Weber identified these limitations quite explicitly in his 1918 essay, “Parliament and Government in a Reconstructed Germany,” in which he argues that bureaucratic leadership after Bismarck had caused irresponsible drift into World War I, a disaster for Germany.19 This kind of irresponsibility, he argued, is inherent in (authoritarian) bureaucracy precisely because this form of organization

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lacks the kinds of communication and debate necessary for politically meritorious decisions. What was lacking in Germany “was the direction of the state by a politician – not by a political genius . . . not even by a great political talent, but simply by a politician.”20 That is, good political judgment is not an individual quality but rather one produced by the institution of parliamentary democracy. For reasons such as those identified by Weber, the developed democracies not only seek to ensure legislative supremacy over bureaucracy but also increasing use of quasi-democratic (consultative and sometimes deliberative) processes within bureaucracies themselves to introduce good political judgment into administrative rulemaking.21 Judiciaries are also typically protected from political interference and staffed by trained professionals. Political considerations usually combine with merit in high court appointments and top law enforcement positions, but professional qualifications still limit the pools from which appointments are made to those who are at least nominally qualified. Within judiciaries, meritorious decisions depend on elaborate procedures of advocacy and argument. Sometimes the power of judgment rests with juries of lay citizens (particularly in common law jurisdictions), recognizing that even professionals selected for their merit will lack, qua individuals, the information and deliberation they need to make equitable judgments. Merit-based considerations are also divided among levels of government in the developed democracies, with higher levels of government generally more competitive and demanding. Finally, the liberal constitutional structures of the developed democracies protect non-state entities from political interference. Universities, firms, nongovernmental organizations and associations can each define “merit” as necessary for their functions and purposes: seeking and conveying knowledge (universities), making a profit (firms), or pursuing distinctive purposes or causes (NGOs and associations). In contrast, authoritarian states oversee non-state entities, usually prioritizing political loyalty over merit. In short, the developed democracies differentiate multiple domains of collective decision, with different kinds of merit enabled across a variety of domains. In practice, of course, the distributions are not always neat or fully functional. But when the political oversight of elected officials crosses boundaries – say, when there is political inference with judicial due process – we do not call it “democracy” working against “meritocracy” but rather “corruption”22 or “injustice,”23 which count as two kinds of damage to democracy. We find functionally similar differentiations and distributions of meritbased considerations in China. While the established democracies were

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built on processes that began to differentiate domains of merit centuries ago, such processes in China are relatively recent. One of the destructive legacies of Maoism was the extent to which it elevated political loyalty, even fervor, over those merit-based institutions that survived the revolution. The CCP began to reintroduce merit-based processes in the 1980s, no doubt because their performance-based legitimacy depended upon it, particularly with respect to poverty reduction. Within the space of a few decades, the CCP established some predictable property rights to enable profit-oriented development; began to establish some actionable rights for citizens; increased the independence of universities while introducing academic performance metrics; sorted government departments by function; introduced intraparty elections and peer review; began to subject state-owned enterprises to competition; and rehabilitated those features of the Confucian tradition that emphasized merit. The CCP has prioritized merit in leadership selection, which has in turn produced smart and effective economic leadership and management.24 In short, China’s leaders seem to be using their authoritarian powers to establish meritocratic governance,25 which certainly accounts for a good part of China’s impressive economic performance. Most Chinese citizens recognize these achievements, and the regime enjoys markedly higher levels of public trust than most liberal democracies.26 The evidence for meritocratic leadership selection, however, is mixed. One survey finds that 2,500 Chinese officials report greater meritocracy than their counterparts in the United States.27 Another survey, however, found that the United States outperforms China with respect to citizen perceptions of merit in leadership.28 An empirical study of the career of 1,250 top Chinese executives finds that their chance of promotion is likely to be increased through their political connections as well as their administrative experience.29 And yet another study finds that the promotion of higher party ranks was not related to performance at all.30 This said, there are functional reasons to think that the CCP will need to place an increasing premium on considerations of merit – not just technical but also moral and political. China’s rapid economic growth has produced structural changes that are generating new political challenges for governance. These include the pluralization of sources of state revenue, which effectively increases the political bargaining power of those who control the means of production, and the increasing economic value of labor that comes with development, which effectively increases the bargaining powers of those classes whose labor is in demand. These have three important implications for merit-based governance. First, they

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produce functional pressures for governance that is sufficiently competent to maintain a continuing high level of economic performance. Second, they produce a functional demand for the rule of law that is stable and predictable enough to enable and encourage economic entrepreneurship in quasi-market contexts. Third, they lead to functional pressures to manage increasing levels of political complexity, as the CCP cannot control through authoritarian means all of the forces and potential political problems that economic development unleashes.31 These developments have pushed the CCP to experiment with a variety of mixed systems that include elements of authoritarianism, meritocracy, and local democracy, aimed primarily at channeling suppressed popular sentiments and demands, while building capacities to solve daily problems before they grow into mass discontents that might endanger the regime. More recently, however, the Xi regime has been scaling back the democratic dimensions of political experimentation, but it reintroduced some experiments in public nomination again in 2019.32

7.4 mixed models of local democratic meritocracy As the CCP has introduced meritocratic criteria into governance, it has distributed and differentiated locations of merit in ways that are comparable to those that have evolved in the developed democracies. The system remains authoritarian, generating what we are calling an “authoritarian meritocracy” – but one in which democratic elements play a moderate role, potentially pointing toward democratic meritocracy. In the following sections, we describe two kinds of experiments that seek to reconcile the CCP’s authoritarian leadership with both meritocracy and local democracy. 7.4.1 Leader-Selection Systems: The “Three Ticket” and “Public Nomination–Direct Election” Models Under CCP rule, China has used and blended two contrasting systems to select political leaders, one Leninist authoritarian and the other democratic. The Leninist system involves CCP nominations, examinations, and appointments from the top and encompasses most high-level offices. Village elections, institutionalized in the 1990s, select leaders (though usually from within CCP members) through competitions for the votes of village citizens.33 The experiments we discuss here mix these two systems, as indicated in Table 7.2. They respond to problems that arose from direct elections of

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t ab le 7 . 2 Typology of appointment systems Leninist Appointment System Methods

Top-down, organizational nomination

Public Recommendation and Direct Elections Direct Elections

The combination of top-down and bottom-up, public nomination Participants Party Party organization, organization plus ordinary citizens, and elected deputies Process Party nomination, Public nomination, cultural examination, examination, and interviews, party appointment organizational review, votes cast by party committee members Degree of political Very little Limited competition competition

Bottom-up

Voters

Open nomination and competitive elections

Full competition

village-level leaders, as well as part of a more general strategy to undergird the legitimacy of CCP with competent leadership. Village elections brought problems of pandering and voting-based forms of corruption familiar in electoral democracies. Those who aim to gain more votes tend to become politically cowardly, often giving up on good government for fear of hurting or offending voters, and more and more officials attempted to buy votes.34 While officials were usually seeking to increase their legitimacy by increasing both electoral participation and their own vote shares, their tactics were often corrupt and undermined the effectiveness of leadership. Xi Jinping, during the time he was the party secretary of Zhejiang Province before ascending to national office, identified this common problem in an article entitled “Not to Be a Cadre Who Can Win All Votes.”35 Elections also grated against a traditional Chinese principle that officials may not hold a position in their place of origin – a principle justified by merit, but which functioned to ensure that officials’ loyalties would align with the central hierarchy rather than local attachments.36

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To address such issues, Chinese officials have modified local elections by introducing “three-ticket” and “public nomination–direct election” systems, which combine democratic election and official appointment systems. The three-ticket system was invented by local officials in Zhengzhou city and involves a public nomination vote, a quality assessment ballot, and a final competitive election.37 This system applies to all Zhengzhou city cadres above the departmental level and all county-level city cadres above the section level. The first step of the selection process is a democratic recommendation meeting, where the public nominates ten candidates by anonymous ballot. The second step is a quality assessment by an expert panel, which determines the short list of the candidates. A party standing committee (which could be understood as a kind of “electoral college”) then votes for two candidates from the short-listed candidates. Finally, the whole party committee decides the winner through a vote. All three ballots are secret, and the results are not made public.38 The “public nomination–direct election” (gongtuai zhixuan) system has two steps.39 First, public nomination offers citizens an opportunity to nominate candidates for party secretaries of local governments and gives citizens the first opportunity to weigh in on potential candidates. The methods vary, from casting votes to filling in an evaluation form with a scale of scores. The function of this public recommendation is to screen out unpopular leaders who cannot earn public support.40 Second, party members elect the party secretaries of local governments through intraparty elections. In some experiments, there are two rounds of intraparty elections, with ordinary party members casting votes to narrow down a list of candidates, followed by the standing committee of local party organizations (a small group of local elites) holding a final vote. The public nomination–direct election was first tested in Pingchang, in Sichuan province, then in several places in Jiangsu province.41 It has spread from township to city (e.g., in Shenzhen city, the Party Secretary of the Department of Civic Affairs was appointed through public nomination and direct elections in 2009) and slowly to national governmental posts. The system is often used for administrative positions as well. For example, all deputy heads of departments in the Beijing city government must go through this process.42 This experiment has been reproduced across China in all sectors, including for the leaders of cities, counties, townships, universities, schools, and even state-owned enterprises. In contrast, direct elections held for township heads, the first being in Buyun in 1998, have spread to only a few

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other places, as it is regarded by the CCP as being incompatible with the Chinese political system, and thus has not been promoted nationally.43 The “three-ticket” and “public nomination–direct election” systems have expanded popular participation in both nominating and vetoing candidates. In the past, only the Organization Department of the CCP had a right to nominate candidates. Now, citizens also have the power to nominate through a “confidence” or “nomination” vote or to screen out unpopular candidates though evaluation forms. That said, citizens’ votes have varying weights in different forms of experiments and in different places. For example, in intraparty elections of party secretaries at the township level, citizens’ evaluations determine 30 percent of the outcome, competency tests another 30 percent, and the voting of party members 40 percent.44 In Zeguo township, to take another example, the election of the village party secretary involves three different weighting processes: the party members’ recommendation for candidates constitutes 20 percent, villagers’ elections 20 percent, and all-party members’ elections 60 percent.45 But while these systems may seek to balance democratic, meritocratic, and authoritarian principles, in practice they often tip the balance toward authoritarianism. In most processes, the final stage is a decision made by the party, reflecting the long tradition of authoritarian appointment procedures and ensuring CCP control. A system that would balance the three principles and would function more democratically was proposed by Ya’An city party officials in 2000 as follows: first, an exam tests the competent capacities of candidates;46 second, the exam is followed by the CCP’s standing committee’s selection and examination to ensure qualifications and their relevance to the office; and third, a popular vote would be decisive and final. This more democratic kind of proposal, however, has never been implemented. 7.4.2 Merit Generated by Consultative and Deliberative Processes A second set of public consultation experiments directly challenges the elite-focused view of political meritocracy advocated by Bell and is consistent with our view, developed earlier in this chapter, that the merit of officials often depends on the kinds of knowledge and incentives only available through democratic processes.47 As we noted in Section 7.2, Bell views merit as comprised of knowledge, virtues, and social skills possessed by elites. Not surprisingly, and not unlike political elites everywhere, Chinese officials tend to have a high regard for their own merit. But like

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elites everywhere, they are also finding that individual merit, however warranted, does not translate into merit-based moral or political legitimacy. In ways comparable to the developed democracies, Chinese governments are likewise under popular pressure to engage with and listen to citizens. Although citizens’ trust in the CCP remains relatively high, trust in elite competence has been eroding, and there are increasing demands for citizens’ voices to be heard.48 Especially today, political merit can only be built out of judgments that include the values, perspectives, knowledge, and assessment of citizens. We find this democratic conception of meritocracy in a wide number of Chinese local experiments that combine expert discussion and citizen deliberation on specific questions of public policy. Chinese local leaders continue to experiment with processes that include consultative and (often) deliberative elements. In doing so, they are usually seeking political legitimacy, but, because they often include citizen deliberation, they are also inventing new forms of democratic meritocracy. Leaders have used public consultations, often with deliberative qualities, across the country since the late 1990s and in increasing numbers since the early 2000s.49 Are these public consultative and deliberative processes credible for citizens and at the same time likely to result in good government performance? Not surprisingly, the key difficulties of these experiments are most likely to occur when the issues under consideration involve conflicting perspectives and interests – that is, processes that are truly political. Once citizens are asked about their opinions and engaged in deliberative processes, decisions cannot simply be imposed, no matter how individually meritorious the leaders and despite the formal authoritarian powers of party leaders. If citizens are to view decisions as legitimate, decision procedures must themselves carry democratic credentials, even if they occur within a formally authoritarian setting. To identify these latently democratic logics, we need to look inside decision-making processes themselves. Under circumstances of conflict, there are at least five options for decision-making. First, a group might continue their discussion until they reach a consensus. Local officials in Shanghai have often adopted consensus rules strategically: if some citizens can persuade others to adopt certain public policies, officials will avoid being blamed by the people for controversial decisions.50 Nevertheless, deliberating until reaching a consensus is often impossible, either because interests conflict too deeply and the process does not yield plus-sum agreements or because there is not enough time. A consensus rule can

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also damage deliberation, since participants will feel peer pressure to relinquish their opinions and may simply fall silent rather than expressing their views.51 A second option for some kinds of conflicts is to recognize that conflicting interests are intractable and work instead toward a bargain. A bargain can be plus-sum but supported by different reasons and with different interests.52 The third option is simply to vote. Voting, of course, can and should coexist with other devices, including deliberating and bargaining. If deliberation cannot produce unanimous agreement and division persists, then participants should vote.53 In China, sequencing of this kind often comes about inadvertently: local officials can be backed into voting by citizens when they are unable to achieve consensus, which they conduct either formally or though methods such as asking citizens to fill in questionnaires about their preferences.54 A fourth option is to make an authoritative decision that responds to the positions, interests, and arguments expressed in a consultative or deliberative process. To understand this option, we need to distinguish between “authoritarian” and “authoritative.” The former has to do with coercive authority; the latter is about legitimate authority based on some form of process-based virtue, such as impartiality or fairness. Thus, for example, an authority (like a judge) will listen to all sides, consider the evidence, and make a decision that responds to a deliberative process. This kind of authority is consistent with deliberative sources of merit.55 In contrast, an authoritarian process not only is inconsistent with these sources of merit but will tend to undermine them. In some local governments in China, an authoritative decision-maker is called in when there is a dispute after public deliberation. Of course, many local leaders would simply prefer to decide the disputed issue themselves, and they usually have the formal powers to do so. Naked uses of authoritarian powers, however, invite criticism and resistance. Officials thus usually seek to avoid these situations, seen as too costly (including for their own advancement), and so they sometimes opt for a deliberative process instead.56 Fifth, and closely related, is the option of administrative discretion, which can be justifiable in democratic settings in three kinds of ways. One arises in situations in which an authority identifies a problem or issue and then uses administrative authority to constitute a process. Another is that administrative capacities are almost always necessary for decisions to result in collective actions. That is, deliberative and democratic inputs need to be matched with state capacities for public goods to get things

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done.57 Finally, collective decisions will often have externalities that need to be anticipated, and they need to be consistent with higher-level units of decision-making. Administrative discretion can be justified to take such externalities into account and to integrate decisions with other units of decision-making. Nonetheless, administrative discretion is easily abused, which has led China to develop laws that define the scope and limits of administrative discretion.58 As our examples suggest, political experiments of the kind that produce better, more meritorious decisions often involve sequencing familiar devices such as deliberation and voting in novel ways.59 A well-known example is the annual budget process in Zeguo, which begins by organizing a deliberative forum loosely based on the method of Deliberative Polling.60 Half of the participants are randomly selected from Zeguo, while the other half are selected among the elected officials. The resulting body then learns, hears from experts, and deliberates. Participants are polled before and after these processes. The poll results are presented to Zeguo’s local People’s Congress for further debate and deliberation, after which it votes on the resulting proposals. The Zeguo experiment represents an innovative sequencing of well-known mechanisms: expert feasibility studies are filtered through public participation, deliberation, and government consultation, with the final decision being made by Zeguo’s local People’s Congress, which had the choice of either adopting, revising, or rejecting the proposals by citizens. In all processes, while citizens can make suggestions, the party organization takes a leadership role, and the government makes the final decision. Whatever the government decides to do, after deciding it will immediately inform the citizens of its decision and outline its reasoning. While the formal structure remains authoritarian, local leaders can ignore the results of the deliberative process only at the cost of undermining their legitimacy and risking resistance.61 In other cases, administrative discretion both precedes and follows deliberative processes. For example, public discussion in one village in Guangdong over the allocation of the village budget resulted in divisions between different groups of citizens. In response, the local government set up a deliberative forum for them to engage in further deliberation and then used its authority to facilitate a final decision and implement it.62 And in the Zeguo process held in 2005, although the deliberative process resulted in ten top choices for budget priorities, there was a requirement from the city-level administration to build a citywide public road. Local officials had to support this policy even though it was not on the list of people’s choices.63

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More generally, although the CCP encourages local officials to organize public consultations and deliberations, they reject a pure deliberative democracy – that is, processes in which citizens make final decisions about either policy or the selection of representatives. In part, officials do not want to relinquish authority. But in part they face problems that exist in any polity, democracies included: decisions taken on a given issue in one place, one time, and one level of organization will impact other issues, places, times, and levels of organization. In complex polities, the boundaries of demoi are constantly changing, and decisions need to be coordinated within very complex political and organizational environments. At the same time, since local decisions affect other areas, encompassing authorities are needed to weigh complex issues and coordinate with other local governments and people. China’s size, combined with its great wave of internal migration, adds even more organizational complexity. For similar reasons, even democratically organized governments seek to retain enough discretion and authority to consider issues and policies of which citizens may not even be aware, often through boards and commissions whose appointees are selected for their merit, and which work at some remove from democratic processes. Because these kinds of institutions can be captured by special interests or otherwise fail their mandates, the oversight of democratically accountable institutions is important. Such institutions are missing in China. What is evolving in parts of the Chinese polity, however, is a mix of deliberative and consultative processes, voting in locales, voting by CCP deputies, bargaining among interest groups and with social pressure groups, traditional leadership authority, and administrative persuasion. Together, these are forming a complex decision-making regime in which governmental administrative orders combine with bargaining, consultation, deliberation, and voting. In many places, these mixes show signs of being regularized. Even taking the limitations of authoritarian rule into account, many of these experiments combine elements of democracy with considerations of merit, often mediated by deliberative processes. Many of these experiments are quite novel and have potential to travel beyond China’s borders.

7.5 conclusion: the limits of authoritarian meritocracy Even apparently successful mixes of democratic and meritocratic principles in China remain limited by the authoritarian character of the regime.

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China may hold out the promise of new forms of democratic meritocracy, but for the time being the mixes are better characterized as authoritarian meritocracy with some democratic characteristics. It is authoritarian in the sense that what constitutes merit in both leadership selection and policy is ultimately interpreted and decided by CCP leaders. President Xi Jinping has stopped most election-driven experiments since assuming leadership, using his authoritarian powers to enforce his view that elections are nonmeritocratic.64 Xi’s opinion that democracy undermines merit is widespread among the CCP leadership. National-level leadership, in this common CCP view, requires more virtue and competence than democratic elections are likely to produce, and it is more important to appoint people capable of doing the job than it is to democratize leadership selection.65 Such justifications for avoiding democracy fit the model of authoritarian meritocracy. While the Organization Department of the CCP is seeking to become a modern meritocracy that operates something like a very extensive human resources department, its authoritarian elements are often used not to support merit but rather to reward political loyalty (including corrupt relationships) and ideological correctness. These tendencies have been increasing under Xi Jinping’s rule.66 The authoritarian qualities of the regime penetrate down to the local level, undermining democracy even where experiments in democratic meritocracy are most advanced. In short, although democracy and meritocracy can be successfully combined in principle, and although many Chinese experiments seem to point in this direction, the authoritarian features of the Chinese regime tend to override both. The Chinese regime exhibits at least four kinds of contradictions within the authoritarian meritocracy model that may point toward longer-term instabilities and perhaps unviability. First, where meritocratic and democratic features do exist, they are often hidden in an opaque complexity generated by the combination of examinations, popular opinion, and the vote of the party committee members. Such complexity makes it difficult for people to know how decisions are made – and they may conclude, often correctly, that the system is neither fair nor meritocratic. The system is very costly in terms of time, preparation, and process, and it is often subject to manipulation. The complexity in itself helps to maintain power relations.67 The three-ticket system, innovative though it may be, dilutes the influence of direct elections in ways that enable the party leaders to maintain control even in spite of popular opinion. Local officials, for example, can appoint someone as deputy head of township because of

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a higher score in an examination even though they lost the popular vote, suggesting a system that is easily manipulated by elites.68 In other cases, under popular resistance and pressure, local officials have introduced the direct election of party secretaries to reduce conflict between the appointment and election systems. But this level of transparency and directness proved too much for the CCP, which banned direct township-level elections.69 Second, while the weighting systems we discussed in Section 7.4.2 are potentially an innovative way to combine democracy and meritocracy, in practice authoritarianism tends to undermine both. The weighting systems enable the party to select officials while giving the appearance of supporting democracy and merit.70 Third, in the selection of officials, exams are often rigorous, and local experience is a necessary requirement. The democratic evaluation, however, can be manipulated because the exam results are usually not transparent.71 Even at the local level, where democratic mechanisms are more common, the background of authoritarian rule often undermines the processes. Thus, for example, the results of the “public nomination” can be overridden by CCP officials if they so choose.72 Likewise, the civic examination results can be overridden and hidden from the public. In a selection process in Taizhou city in the later 1990s, for example, the release of the results of intra-party votes threatened to damage the reputation of the party secretary as he did not win the highest number of votes; subsequently all results became “internal documents.”73 However much the CCP might justify these practices with the ideals of merit and competence, they would be considered corrupt in any full democracy and in fact often function to hide corrupt relationships within authoritarian hierarchies. Fourth, while recent experiments introduce the consideration of popular opinion as a necessary part of procedures, it is too often selectively used, is only symbolically deliberative, and often serves to support party domination.74 Thus, for example, deliberation often involves unimportant issues while the most important issues are set aside; information is released selectively; or the participants are selected strategically. In summary, much of what makes the current Chinese regime so interesting are the experiments in combining meritocracy and democracy with the authoritarian leadership of the CCP.75 These mixes can be viewed through two models of meritocracy: authoritarian meritocracy and democratic meritocracy. We have argued that authoritarian meritocracy, attractive though it may seem to some Western commentators discouraged with the underperformance of liberal democracies, tends to favor

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authoritarianism more than it does meritocracy. Democratic meritocracy is still a work in progress, but it has theory, history, and performance on its side. Indeed, even though some in the West look with envy at China’s economic performance, Chinese citizens, though still trusting of the CCP’s leadership, are less convinced that leaders owe their positions to merit and often view the lack of democracy as an obstacle to meritocracy. For their part, Chinese leaders are very aware that their legitimacy depends upon performance, and this form of legitimacy drives demands for merit-based leadership. Yet, authoritarianism tends to displace merit, limiting, if not undermining, the CCP’s leadership performance. Beyond predicting how the Chinese regime might develop, can those of us in the developed democracies learn anything from Chinese political development? We have argued against the notion that other countries should be emulating the authoritarian meritocracy model – not only because it presupposes an authoritarian regime (with the many wellknown political pathologies that follow) but also because authoritarianism is a poor pathway to meritocracy, in the democracies as well as in China. But we should pay closer attention to Chinese experiments in democratic meritocracy: although they are currently undermined by authoritarian contexts, they may suggest yet new ways of introducing meritocratic elements into democratic regimes.

notes 1. Stephan Ortmann and Mark R. Thompson. “China and the ‘Singapore Model’.” Journal of Democracy 27, no. 1 (2016): 39–48. 2. Daniel Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 3. See 163–164. 4. As, in quite different ways, the chapters by Tully (2), Jenco (3), Tsutsumibayashi (5), Chan and Mang (6), Williams (8), and Ivison (11) all do. 5. M. Manion, “‘Good Types’ in Authoritarian Elections: The Selectoral Connection in Chinese Local Congresses,” Comparative Political Studies 50, no. 3 (2017): 362–394. 6. Benjamin Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 7. Bell, The China Model, ch. 4. 8. Joseph Chan, “Democracy and Meritocracy: Toward a Confucian Perspective,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34, no. 2 (2006): 179–193. 9. Ibid.; Lianjiang Li and K. O’Brien, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 10. Bell, The China Model, ch. 2.

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11. Mark E. Warren, “What Does Corruption Mean in a Democracy?,” American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 2 (2004): 327–342. 12. Michael Rabinder James, Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004); Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Dorms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012). 13. Diana Fu and Greg Distelhorst, “Grassroots Participation and Repression under Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping,” The China Journal 79 (2018): 100–122. 14. Monica Martinez-Bravo, Gerard Padró I Miquel, Nancy Qian, Yang Yao, “The Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China: Theory and Empirical Evidence on the Autocrat’s Trade-off,” NBER Working Paper No. 24032, www.nber.org/papers/w24032. 15. Kenneth Paul Tan and Benjamin Wong, “The Evolution of Political Legitimacy in Singapore: Electoral Institutions, Governmental Performance, Moral Authority, and Meritocracy,” in Joseph Chan, Doh Chull Shin, and Melissa S. Williams, eds., East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy: Bridging the Empirical-Normative Divide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 135–165. 16. Baogang He and Mark E. Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political Development,” Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 2 (2011): 269–289; Rory Truex, “Consultative Authoritarianism and Its Limits,” Comparative Political Studies 50, no. 3 (2014): 329–361; Beibei Tang, “Deliberation and Governance in Chinese Middle-Class Neighborhoods,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 19, no. 4 (2018): 663–677. 17. Bell, The China Model, 4. 18. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, vol. 2, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 956–1005. 19. Ibid., 1386–1469. 20. Ibid., 1405; italics in original. 21. Mark E. Warren, “Governance-Driven Democratization,” in Steven Griggs, Aletta Norval, and Hendrik Wagenaar, eds., Practices of Freedom: Democracy, Conflict and Participation in Decentred Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 38–59. 22. Warren, “What Does Corruption Mean in a Democracy?” 23. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983). 24. Bell, The China Model, ch. 2. 25. Ye Liu, “Meritocracy and the Gaokao: A Survey Study of Higher Education Selection and Socio-Economic Participation in East China,” British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34, nos. 5–6 (2013): 868–887; He Xian and Jeremy Reynolds, “Bootstraps, Buddies, and Bribes: Perceived Meritocracy in the United States and China,” The Sociological Quarterly 58, no. 4 (2017): 622–647. 26. Edelman, 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report, www.edelman.com /sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2018–10/2018_Edelman_Trust_Barometer_Global_ Report_FEB.pdf, 6.

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27. Margaret Boittin, Greg Distelhorst, and Francis Fukuyama, “Reassessing the Quality of Government in China,” Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series 197 (2016), https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/olsrps/197. 28. Xian and Reynolds, “Bootstraps, Buddies, and Bribes,” 632. 29. Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, Paul Hubbard, Guilong Cai, and Linlin Zhang, “China’s SOE Executives: Drivers of or Obstacles to Reform?,” The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 35, no. 1 (2017): 52–75. 30. Victor Shih, Christopher Adolph, and Mingxing Liu, “Getting Ahead in the Communist Party: Explaining the Advancement of Central Committee Members in China,” American Political Science Review 106, no. 1 (2012): 166–187. 31. Bruce Dickson, Democratization in China and Taiwan: The Adaptability of Leninist Parties (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 32. E.g., Jean C. Oi, Kim Singer Babiarz, Linxiu Zhang, Renfu Luo, and Scott Rozelle, “Shifting Fiscal Control to Limit Cadre Power in China’s Townships and Villages,” The China Quarterly 211 (2012): 649–675; Martinez-Bravo et al., “The Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China.” 33. Baogang He, Rural Democracy in China (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007); Oi et al., “Shifting Fiscal Control”; Martinez-Bravo et al., “The Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China.” 34. He, Interviews A and H; cf. Manion, “‘Good Types’ in Authoritarian Elections”: the view that the “good types” of candidates are selected by voters and the “governing types” are selected by party officials. 35. Jinping Xi, The New Notes from Zhejiang (Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s Daily Press, 2007). 36. He, Rural Democracy in China. 37. Wang Zhang, Three Tickets System Elects Officials (Beijing: Central Party School Press, 2007). 38. Ibid. 39. Wen-Hsuan Tsai and Peng-Hsiang Kao, “Public Nomination and Direct Election in China: An Adaptive Mechanism for Party Recruitment and Regime Perpetuation,” Asian Survey 52, no. 3 (2012): 484–503. 40. He, Interview F. 41. Tsai and Kao, “Public Nomination and Direct Election in China.” 42. He, Interview F. 43. He, Rural Democracy in China, ch. 12. 44. Zhang, Three Tickets System Elects Officials; Jonathan Unger and Anita Chan, “The Internal Politics of an Urban Chinese Work Community: A Case Study of Employee Influence on Decision-Making at a State-Owned Factory,” The China Journal 52 (2004): 1–24. 45. He, Interview H. 46. He, Interview B. 47. Bell, The China Model. 48. Truex, “Consultative Authoritarianism and Its Limits”; Dezhi Tong and Baogang He, “How Democratic Are Chinese Grassroots Deliberations? An Empirical Study of 393 Deliberation Experiments in China,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 19, no. 4 (2018): 630–642.

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49. Baogang He and Stig Thøgersen, “Giving the People a Voice? Experiments with Consultative Authoritarian Institutions in China,” The Journal of Contemporary China 19, no. 66 (2010): 675–692; He and Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation”; Truex, “Consultative Authoritarianism and Its Limits”; Tang, “Deliberation and Governance in Chinese Middle-Class Neighborhoods.” 50. He, Interview F. 51. Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg, The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation, and Institutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). 52. Mark E. Warren and Jane Mansbridge, “Deliberative Negotiation,” in Cathie Jo Martin and Jane Mansbridge, eds., Political Negotiation: A Handbook (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015), 141–96. 53. Robert E. Goodin, Innovating Democracy: Democratic Theory and Practice after the Deliberative Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ch. 6; Jeremy Waldron, “Deliberation, Disagreement, and Voting,” in Harold Hongju Koh and Ronald C. Slye, eds., Deliberative Democracy and Human Rights (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1999), 210–226. 54. He, Interviews A, C, D, and E. 55. Mark E. Warren, “Deliberative Democracy and Authority,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 1 (1996): 46–60. 56. He, Interview F. 57. Warren and Mansbridge, “Deliberative Negotiation.” 58. Yang Yang, “Fundamental Research on the Administrative Discretion Standard,” Beijing Law Review 3 (2012): 128–132. 59. Jon Elster, ed., Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ch. 4; Judith Squires, “Deliberation and Decision Making: Discontinuity in the Two-Track Model,” in Maurizio Passerin d’Entreves, ed., Democracy as Public Deliberation: New Perspectives (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 151. 60. James S. Fishkin, Baogang He, Robert C. Luskin, and Alice Siu, “Deliberative Democracy in an Unlikely Place: Deliberative Polling in China,” British Journal of Political Science 40, no. 2 (2010): 435–448. 61. He and Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation”; Pu Niu and Hendrik Wagenaar, “The Limits of Authoritarian Rule: Policy Making and Deliberation in Urban Village Regeneration in China,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 19, no. 4 (2018): 678–693. 62. Baogang He, “Deliberative Citizenship and Deliberative Governance: A Case Study of One Deliberative Experimental in China,” Citizenship Studies 22, no. 3 (2018): 294–311. 63. Fishkin et al., “Deliberative Democracy in an Unlikely Place.” 64. Oi et al., “Shifting Fiscal Control”; Martinez-Bravo et al., “The Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China.” 65. He, Interview F. 66. Oi et al., “Shifting Fiscal Control”; Fu and Distelhorst, “Grassroots Participation and Repression under Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping”; Martinez-Bravo et al., “The Rise and Fall of Local Elections in China.”

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67. Daniel Drezner, “The Peril and Power of International Regime Complexity,” Perspectives on Politics 7, no. 1 (2009): 65–70. 68. He and Thøgersen, “Giving the People a Voice?” 69. He, Rural Democracy in China. 70. He, Interview F. 71. He, Interviews F, E, and G. 72. He, Interview E. 73. He, Interview G. 74. He and Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation”; Truex, “Consultative Authoritarianism and Its Limits”; Xuan Qin and Baogang He, “Deliberation, Demobilization, and Limited Empowerment: A Survey Study on Participatory Pricing in China,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 19, no. 4 (2018): 694–708. 75. Andrew J. Nathan, “Authoritarian Resilience,” Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (2003): 6–17.

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8 Deparochializing Democratic Theory Melissa S. Williams

8.1 introduction What we are doing when we strive to “deparochialize” political theory turns on how we understand what it is to do political theory more generally. If the practice of political theory is aimed at gaining critical reflexivity in relation to the concepts and frameworks that filter our understanding of the social and political worlds we inhabit, then deparochializing political theory – turning our theoretical gaze toward ideas of politics that arise in cultures different from our own – is a natural extension of this practice. It subsists in the active and intentional disruption of our habits of thought through a deliberate effort to inhabit the modes of thought of culturally, spatially, or temporally distant others, an effort worth exerting even if it must always be incomplete and imperfectly achieved. As Roxanne Euben puts it, linking the concept of theory to the classical Greek concept of theôria as travel in search of knowledge, “theorizing involves examining and making explicit the assumptions and commitments that underlie everyday actions, a practice that at once presupposes and enacts a kind of journey to a perspective of critical distance from daily engagments.”1 For its proponents, this activity, whether performed in the mode of “comparative political theory” or in the mode of encountering our inherited thought traditions anew, is

I am grateful to Joseph Carens, Julian Culp, Nicole Curato, Loubna El Amine, Rainer Forst, Erica Frederiksen, Dorothea Gädeke, Youngmin Kim, Regina Kreide, Annabelle Lever, Jane Mansbridge, Juan Marsiaj, Jaby Mathew, Terry Nardin, Peter Niesen, Muriel Rouyer, Jensen Sass, Stephen Salkever, Yves Sintomer, Matt Walton, Mark Warren, and Alexander Weiß for their feedback on earlier versions of this chapter.

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constitutive of thought itself.2 Thus political theory as a practice of cultivating our capacity for critical reflexivity is a form of Bildung, the education of the self toward thought, as an intrinsic good. As Stephen Salkever argues in Chapter 9 of this volume, there are good reasons to view Bildung as the primary purpose of deparochialization (246). We can also think of political theory as a form of Wissenschaft – that is, a branch of knowledge aimed at generating propositional claims (whether normative or empirical) that have general validity across multiple contexts.3 We can embrace this view of the tasks of theory even if we are deeply skeptical, as it is salutary to be, of claims to universally valid truth in matters of politics. Viewed from this angle, the work of deparochializing political theory serves two important but distinct purposes. First, the study of political thought from diverse cultural contexts serves as a testing ground for the validity of the generalized claims in our existing theoretical frameworks. But this way of understanding the contributions of comparative political theory risks instrumentalizing other cultures of political thought and biasing our study of them, finding in them only those ideas that fit neatly with our preexisting theoretical frames and failing to apprehend thought that deeply challenges or unsettles either our presuppositions or the relations of power that they help sustain. At worst, as James Tully and Leigh Jenco warn, it turns theory into an imperialist project.4 Nonetheless, theory testing through engagement with the political thought of cultural others is an exercise in cultural imperialism only when theorists insulate their presuppositions from being disrupted or overturned by these encounters – in short, when they have failed to achieve critical reflexivity. The second purpose of deparochializing political theory as the quest for generalizable knowledge is to open ourselves to the possibility that the most valid theories for “us” have been generated in cultural contexts different from our own. For Jenco, the most compelling task of deparochializing political theory is to allow ourselves to be disciplined not only by the substance but also by the methods of other theory-generating cultures of knowledge production; in its most radical form, deparochializing political theory does not only decenter our preexisting theoretical frameworks, but recenters another knowledge tradition as the pathway to generalizable truth claims that have validity for us.5 We know this is possible through the example of those who have already done it. As Jenco (Chapter 3) and Ken Tsutsumibayashi (Chapter 5) show in their contributions to this volume, for example, openness to the theoretical knowledge of cultural others is nothing new in Japan, where both Chinese and Western theoretical traditions became constitutive of

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Japanese scholars’ production of new knowledge but did not simply colonize Japanese intellectual culture.6 Yet whether our turn to other cultures of political thought takes the form of disrupting and decentering our existing theoretical frames or replacing them altogether, we cannot begin the wissenschaftlich work of deparochializing political theory without criteria for specifying which sources of political thought are pertinent to our quest for theoretical understanding. For many Japanese and Chinese thinkers in the late nineteenth century, the turn to Western theory was motivated at least in part by the growing reality of Euro-American imperialism: either their societies would modernize, in a way that would equip them to resist Western domination, or they would be colonized.7 More generally, as Andrew March has noted, it is likely that “the search for things the other can teach us will always be a motivated one – a search from a specific place (our present consciousness) for something we can learn.”8 This chapter approaches the task of deparochializing political theory as a motivated search for theoretical insights that can be helpful in addressing a two-pronged challenge that confronts a particular “us” – namely, democratic theorists who seek to understand possible democratic futures under twenty-first-century conditions of globalization. The first prong of the challenge is that the long history of democratic theory in the modern era has been based on the supposition that the most salient site of democratic political order is the territorially bounded sovereign state. Globalization generates collective action problems that exceed the boundaries of states;9 undermines democratic legitimacy within states through its effects on economic inequality, social opportunity, and political polarization; and proliferates transnational institutions that are not democratically accountable. Hence globalization occasions the need to radically rethink our understandings of democracy, including the possibility of forms of democratically legitimate collective action beyond the scale of the state. Over the last couple of decades, a burgeoning theoretical literature has emerged, debating the parameters of democracy in an era of globalization. These debates have crystallized around three main positions – the cosmopolitan, the statist, and the transnationalist10 – without producing convergence on a viable theoretical framework for rethinking democracy in a “postWestphalian” age.11 The second prong of the challenge facing democratic theorists is that, although recent theories of global democratization seek global validity for their theoretical claims, they are developed exclusively from within broadly Euro-American intellectual traditions. Familiar as we are with

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the danger of false universalisms, it seems imperative for democratic theorists to engage with “non-Western” political thought in developing theoretical accounts of democracy at the global scale.12 In short, democratic theory has yet to cultivate a capacity for critical reflexivity about the Western-centeredness of our understandings of democracy. My purpose in this chapter is to sketch a (rather experimental) approach to deparochializing democratic theory by exploring resources in “non-Western” thought and practice for enriching or disrupting contemporary theories of democracy under conditions of globalization.13 This purpose poses some important methodological challenges that are worth addressing up front. 8.1.1 The Problem of Cultural Essentialism There is a danger written into the very notion of “non-Western” thought of essentializing both “the West” and “the Rest,” treating “Western” thought as monolithic and then defining some non-Western “Other” in terms of its difference from what has been constructed as “Western.” This is a problematic tendency, first because there is tremendous diversity within every intellectual tradition that has endured over time. Reducing any tradition to one dominant strand is simply a misrepresentation of its internal plurality. The theoretical reconstruction of any political ideas or practices from a non-Western context should not be taken as “representative” of that context’s ideational culture. Rather, it should be taken only as an interpretation of the ideas and practices of the particular people under study, in their time, even if they represent themselves as the authoritative spokespersons of a civilization, culture, religion, or intellectual tradition. Second, in the twenty-first century we are all subject to the same broad structural features of modernity, including, most importantly, a global order structured by a Westphalian system of territorially bounded states and a globalized capitalist economy. Any political thought or action that addresses itself to twenty-first-century conditions will necessarily address itself to these shared conditions of modernity, whatever deeper historical, cultural, or religious traditions it draws upon in doing so. Even if the structures of modernity originated in Europe, this should not lead us to identify modernity with “the West.”14 To this extent, the project of comparative political theory is a project of exploring “multiple” or “alternative” modernities, sometimes inspired by premodern social and political imaginaries and sometimes not.15

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8.1.2 The Problem of Framing In seeking to engage with political ideas embedded in cultures different from our own, we have to begin from where we are; we have to begin from frames, reference points, problems, or questions that are salient from within our own worldviews. In starting where we are, we are always at risk of biasing our inquiry by assuming that the reference points that are salient for us are also salient for an other. There are two sides to this trap: first, that one looks for what is familiar to oneself, and this lens filters out what does not fit easily with one’s received views; and second, that one fails to give priority to the frames of reference that carry significant salience for the other but find no resonance in one’s own worldview. There is no simple solution to this problem. One must simply make a beginning, while also maintaining a stance of epistemic humility, an openness to the possibility that one has brought unwarranted assumptions or biases to the project of engagement. Nonetheless, one can guard against the problem to a certain degree at the outset by beginning from reference points that carry pivotal importance for the question that animates the inquiry but specifying these as thinly as possible, looking not for direct analogs or translations but instead (following Wittgenstein) for broad “family resemblances” among concepts.16 8.1.3 The Problem of Case Selection The universe of possible sites of engagement with non-Western thought is virtually limitless, and this is a good thing from the standpoint of curiosity-driven research. To paraphrase Hannah Arendt on Walter Benjamin: there is merit in pearl-diving, searching in worlds not our own for insights into ways of being human that are lost or forgotten to us, perhaps awakening us to ways of thinking and being otherwise.17 But matters are a bit different when it comes to problem-driven inquiries of the sort that preoccupy me here: how are we to think about democracy in an age of globalization, when democracy within the boundaries of the territorial state may no longer be adequate to our condition?18 In research of this kind, a further specification of the problem can help to focus one’s search for apposite cases. To begin with, my concern is to identify ways of thinking about democracy in the global era – that is, in the twenty-first century. Second, I am interested in ways of thinking about democracy that are not confined to the Westphalian frame, in which the territorially-bounded state is the most pertinent unit of

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analysis. And third, I am interested in ways of thinking about democracy that have, at least potentially, action-guiding validity for political actors beyond “the West.” 8.1.4 Methodological Choices To address the problem of framing, I begin from existing theoretical accounts of the relationship between globalization and democracy. As already noted, three broad camps have evolved on the question of the future of democracy under conditions of globalization: the cosmopolitan, the statist, and the transnational. I will not go into the details of these debates, but just note that a Westphalian political imaginary – a world made up of territorially bounded sovereign states – provides a common starting point for them. The central question is whether a conception of democracy based on the territorially bounded political communities of the Westphalian state system is adequate to a world in which the decisions and dynamics that most affect people’s lives increasingly cross borders. Statists say yes. Cosmopolitans say no, proposing that what is needed, instead or in addition, is an order of cosmopolitan law institutionalized at the global scale. Transnationalists say no, preferring democratically legitimate procedures and institutions that render agents responsible for the transborder effects of their actions on others. Taking these debates together without trying to settle them, what we can say with confidence is that three scales of politics are of particular importance in thinking through democracy’s global future: the global, the state, and the transnational. These scales of politics provide clear but substantively thin points of reference from which to begin engagement with non-Western views of democracy: clear enough to guide case selection, thin enough to avoid the gravest risks of framing bias in the inquiry. To address the problem of case selection, I begin from the ideas and practices of actually existing political agents in the twenty-first century, acting in contexts outside Europe and North America, whose political action invokes ideas that are rooted in their own historical and cultural position outside “the West.” Looking to actually existing political actors addresses the desideratum that ideas of democracy that have action-guiding validity for non-Western agents are worthy of theoretical engagement and have the potential to decenter Western theoretical frameworks in the way we think about democracy. Like the practitioners of True Way Learning discussed in Youngmin Kim’s Chapter 4 in this volume, these political agents are engaged in significant long-term

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political projects and are not ephemeral appearances on the political stage. Further, I have chosen cases where the concepts and practices by which agents conduct their political projects are plausibly rooted in non-Western political imaginaries that have historical depth and are not simply reducible to or readily translatable into the modern Westphalian political imaginary. In each case, some scholarly work has already been done toward the theoretical reconstruction of the ideas and practices in question, such that they become available for theoretical engagement. Finally, to address the problem of cultural essentialism, I simply underline that I am not claiming that the agents in these cases are authentic or authoritative representatives of the civilizations or cultures from which they draw inspiration. Rather, the relevant questions are whether the ideas and practices that structure their political action (a) invoke the concept “democracy” in some way, (b) are plausibly rooted in cultural resources that lie outside “Western” traditions, and (c) can be plausibly reconstructed into a theoretically coherent account of democracy. It is a separate question whether these constructions are normatively appealing and can survive normative critique, and I do not attempt to settle that question here. Nor do I claim that these cases are the most significant ones for the larger project of deparochializing democratic theory. Rather, my aim is the more modest one of outlining an approach that might, with wider and deeper study than is possible within the scope of a single essay, eventually deliver on that ambitious goal. With these caveats in place, then, I have selected one case for each of the scales of politics that serve as reference points for a cross-cultural engagement over the meaning of democracy in the global era. At the global scale, I examine the case of tianxia theory, rooted in the history of Chinese thought. The concept has been invoked by the government of China to explain its global responsibilities as an emerging major power. But it has also been theoretically reconstructed by Chinese philosopher Zhao Tingyang, who argues that it is a philosophically coherent cosmopolitan ideal. At the scale of the state, I examine the case of deliberative politics in China, actively fostered by the Chinese Communist Party, and articulated theoretically – if paradoxically – as “authoritarian deliberation” by Baogang He (both in his monographs and in collaboration with Mark Warren). At the transnational scale, the transnational peasants’ movement, La Vía Campesina, is organized democratically at its local, national, regional,

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and global scales and has become a major actor in the alter-globalization movement. Walter Mignolo has highlighted this work as an exemplar of “decolonial” practice.

8.2 democracy and the global scale of politics: tianxia theory In his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, Xi Jinping stated, “As an ancient Chinese adage goes, ‘The greatest ideal is to create a world truly shared by all.’ Peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom are common values of all mankind and the lofty goals of the United Nations.”19 Xi went on to highlight the “Chinese dream” of contributing constructively to a wide range of matters of global concern, including climate change and environmental protection, peacekeeping and security, and development aimed at eradicating extreme poverty. Although it would be easy to dismiss Xi’s speech as propaganda aimed at covering over China’s ambitions for regional or perhaps global dominance,20 it would be a mistake to ignore China’s growing visibility on the international stage and its invocation of normative concepts to explain its increasingly bold international initiatives, many of which can be plausibly read as contributions to global public goods.21 In addition to citing China’s contributions to global public goods, China’s discourse surrounding “major power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics” includes frequent reference to the importance of “democratizing international relations,” where “democratize” carries three different meanings. First, it affirms the equal status of individual states as sovereign, regardless of their size.22 A second meaning, expressed in South–South development initiatives, emphasizes the equality of the developing countries with those of the Global North in processes of global governance.23 A third meaning, and the one most relevant to the present inquiry, stresses not the equality of individual states or of developing and developed regions but of the world’s cultures and civilizations. In an address to UNESCO in 2014, Xi stated, “[C]ivilizations are equal, and such equality has made exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations possible. All human civilizations are equal in terms of value.”24 The “Chinese characteristics” that putatively distinguish China’s approach to major power diplomacy link to the “ancient Chinese adage” quoted in Xi’s address to the UN: “The greatest ideal is a world truly shared by all.” This is a quotation from the Confucian text The Book of Rites, in which the phrase translated as “a world truly shared by all” is

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tian xia wei gong. The concept of tianxia is usually translated as “all under Heaven”;25 Joseph Chan translates tian xia wei gong as “a public and common spirit rul[ing] all under the sky.”26 In Confucian tradition, the concept of tianxia served as a standard of judgment for the legitimate authority of political rulers. As Chan argues, “tian xia wei gong does not imply that political authority belongs to the people, but that the social and political order, including the selection of the ruler, should work for the benefit of everyone.”27 In recent years, the concept of tianxia has enjoyed a significant resurgence not only in official discourse but also in Chinese intellectual circles. In particular, the work of Chinese philosopher Zhao Tingyang has played an important role in stimulating wider scholarly and political attention to the possibility that the concept of tianxia offers resources for rethinking the normative requirements of global order. In his 2005 book The All-Under-Heaven System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of a World Institution (in Chinese), and in subsequent articles (some translated into English and relied upon here), Zhao offers a philosophical reconstruction of tianxia as an undertaking aimed at “rethinking China” from a Chinese perspective. “The historical significance of ‘rethinking China,’” Zhao writes, “lies in striving to restore China’s own ability to think, so that China once again begins thinking, reestablishes its own frameworks of thought and fundamental concepts, once again creates its own worldview, values, and methodology, and . . . reflects on China’s future . . . and on China’s role and responsibilities in the world.”28 Affirming that the standard of tianxia was not merely a legitimating device in Chinese dynastic rule but served as a critical standard against which to judge the conduct of actually existing political rulers,29 Zhao argues that tianxia theory as developed through Chinese (especially Confucian and Daoist) thought constitutes a non-Western cosmopolitanism that should be assessed alongside the cosmopolitanism and universalism that emerged from the European Enlightenment. In particular, he contrasts tianxia theory with Kantian universalism and the correlative ideal of world order, that of a federation of republics as outlined in Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” – the source of inspiration for many of what I have called “statist” views of democracy under conditions of globalization. There is an urgent need, Zhao argues, to get beyond Western understandings of global modernity and the Westphalian model of sovereign nationstates on which they are based. The need is urgent not only because of the history of violence and war generated by the anarchic system of states as

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self-interest maximizers but also because of the new worldwide challenges that arise from globalization, including “[t]he financial crisis, . . . the spread of nuclear weapons and terrorism, and the danger of climate change and pollution, [which] are the result of modern times rife with greed, hostility, and exploitation.”30 Because of global interdependence, we now inhabit a single world, and yet the Westphalian understanding of a world of states contains no resources for representing the single world we share. The United Nations aimed at institutionalizing the Westphalian view in its most ambitious form, as a peaceful assembly of all sovereign states. But even a reformed and idealized United Nations, Zhao suggests, would fail to represent the “Oneness” of the world as it is. “The most important political problem today,” Zhao argues, “is not the so-called ‘failed states’ but the failed world, a disordered world of chaos. This is why I maintain that our world is not yet a world, but is still a nonworld . . . Our globe needs a world theory, rather than an international theory, to speak for the world.”31 Although Zhao does not explicitly articulate tianxia theory as an account of global democracy, he implies that it offers a way of thinking about democracy at the global scale in a way that, in contrast to Westphalian models of state-level democracy, does not “enhance imperialist hegemony over the world.”32 Critical of models of democracy based on interest aggregation, he argues that Chinese political philosophy offers an alternative based not on the people’s interests but rather on the “people’s heart” – that is, the judgment of the people as to whether leaders are promoting a common good and hence deserve their support.33 Constructing knowledge of the “people’s heart” as a problem in public choice theory, Zhao returns to “methodological relationism” (as contrasted with methodological individualism) as providing the ideal toward which global order should strive. A relational approach takes as its ethical foundation “universally acceptable and consensual relations,” which are “universal because they always coincide with the conditions of mutual benefit and reciprocal acceptance.”34 A truly global order would aim at establishing relations of mutual benefit and reciprocal respect as a “multiverse of compatibility” between “the East and the West, Confucianism and liberalism, Islamic and Christian beliefs, and so on.”35 In short, Zhao argues for a global institution in which, inter alia, cultural, religious and civilizational differences would be respected in the quest for solutions to global problems that yield benefits for all. Such an order would strive to reconcile “the Western tradition of the law of peoples and human rights” with “the Confucian principle of relational harmony, based on human obligations.”36

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Zhao’s reconstruction of tianxia theory for the twenty-first century is not immune to criticism, of course.37 One line of criticism that does not seem reasonable, however, given the broader corpus of Zhao’s work, is to accuse him of seeking to legitimate expansionist Chinese ambitions for a Pax Sinica, as some have suggested.38 Although we should regard the regime’s invocation of tianxia with a healthy skepticism, the political usage of tianxia theory gives no reason to reject the theory, any more than realpolitik uses of human rights discourse by Western powers should lead us to reject the idea of human rights. Zhao is more vulnerable to criticism when it comes to the institutional implications of his view, which remain largely unspecified despite his talk of a “global institution.” Yet it would be a mistake to suggest it is a weakness of his theory that it does not include a determinate model for global institutions in the way Western theories of cosmopolitan democracy do. To the extent that those theories “elevate the framework of Western liberal democracy from the country/ state/national arena to a planetary scale,”39 their institutional specificity tends to reinforce Zhao’s critique of a “universalism that tries to universalize the others in a way they do not want.”40 Instead, we can look to “family resemblances” between Zhao’s vision of global governance and other recent contributions to the literature on democratization in the global era. These resemblances are strongest in the case of theorists who call for a dialogical or deliberative understanding of global democratization, such as Fred Dallmayr: The point of comparative political theory, in my view, is precisely to move toward a more genuine universalism, and beyond the spurious “universality” traditionally claimed by the Western canon and by some recent intellectual movements . . . This is ultimately a deep defense and justification of global democracy: no one can speak universally for everybody.41

In a different vein, John Dryzek offers an account of global democratization as a process of increasing engagement and contestation between competing “discourses” of politics, of which “civilizational” discourses comprise a subset.42 Although we are a long way from institutionalizing a democratic “representation of discourses” at the global scale, it is not impossible to imagine what this might look like.43 Zhao’s emphasis on intercultural and interreligious exchange as the pathway toward a more legitimate global order resonates quite well with existing dialogic approaches to global democratization, which recognize that the challenge of designing institutional models adequate to culturally pluralistic understandings of global order is not per se a reason to abandon such visions.44

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Putting these things together, there may be resources in a tianxiainflected account of intercivilizational respect and equality to construct an understanding of democracy at the global scale as an exchange between different culturally rooted discourses of moral responsibility for common, human-scale problems. Despite the resonances, however, it would be a mistake to elide the differences between Zhao’s account of tianxia theory and ideals of global democratization that are rooted in deliberative theory. Among the most important features that distinguish tianxia theory’s account of moral responsibility at the global scale is that human obligations to the earth are internal to the conception of the global scale of political and moral responsibility. In contrast, dominant Western theories of democracy tend to be anthropocentric, encompassing ecological concerns only in terms of human interests. There is ambiguity as to whether tianxia theory’s understanding of “All-under-Heaven” as including the earth itself constitutes a transcendental ontology or one that can be expressed in wholly secular terms. As we shall see in the discussion below of La Vía Campesina, this ambiguity concerning the source of moral and political obligations toward nature may link tianxia theory to understandings of democracy rooted in other non-Western cultures, opening up the possibility that a post-Westphalian conception of global democratization must also be “postsecular.”45

8.3 political order and democracy at the scale of the state: authoritarian deliberation Since the late 1980s, China has experimented with new forms of participatory and deliberative politics, beginning with village elections but expanding to “public participation” (deliberative decision-making) in both rural and urban settings at multiple scales of politics. These innovations have been supported not only by local public officials but also by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).46 These deliberative and democratic practices are interwoven with complex institutional structures by which public policy and administrative decisions are made. At the local scale, the institutional devices of participatory and deliberative politics look very similar to comparable devices in established democratic regimes. Yet at the scale of the regime as a whole, it is clear that China is best classified as authoritarian, not democratic, both because of the absence of multiparty electoral competition and significant constraints on civil society and mass mobilization. Baogang He and Mark Warren have devised the paradoxical regime classification of “deliberative authoritarianism” to denote this

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distinctive phenomenon: “an ideal type of regime that combines concentrated power – that is, power not distributed to those affected by collective decisions – with deliberative communication.”47 He and Warren’s principal purpose in isolating this new regime category was to establish both its empirical reality and its conceptual coherence. They make sense of the strategic rationale that might reasonably motivate CCP elites’ decision to go beyond the purely consultative mechanisms familiar from other authoritarian regimes to create robustly inclusive and participatory deliberative practices that have a measurable influence on policy decisions.48 Deliberative practices serve multiple functions even in an authoritarian order: they co-opt dissent; generate information about society and public responses to policy; provide forums for engaging with business in a marketizing economy; increase transparency, hence protecting officials from charges of corruption; and deflect responsibility for the losses imposed by policy onto processes and away from officials. In short, “deliberative processes can generate legitimacy within a context in which ideological sources are fading for the CCP, while development-oriented policies create winners and losers.”49 From the standpoint of democratic theory, authoritarian deliberation is normatively ambiguous. But He has done extensive work on the roots of deliberative politics in the history of Chinese thought and practice and offers a theoretical reconstruction that, he argues, makes normative sense from a broadly Chinese perspective. Deliberative practices in China have both shallow and deep roots in Chinese political culture. The first can be found in mass-line democracy under Mao, which has provided some institutional footholds for decentralized popular decision-making under the new regime of deliberative authoritarianism.50 But even Maoist practice, He argues, was more deeply rooted in older Confucian concepts, including that of minben (“the people as root”). Drawing on ordinary language use, He also highlights the concept of kentan (“sincere heart-toheart discussion”), which comprises part of many of the compound terms that denote deliberative practices and is rooted, He argues, in Confucian thought.51 Tracing the Confucian roots of deliberative politics in China more deeply, He argues that, once we understand these roots, we can also reconstruct an account of deliberation that differs from Western constructions. The “moral codes” embedded in Confucian thought support an understanding of the role of deliberation in good governance that is consonant with the Confucian idea of a hierarchy of virtue, a departure from Western understandings of deliberation as an exchange of reasons between

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equals. “Though elitist,” he claims, “the Confucian tradition took seriously duties to deliberate conflicts, including those concerning the duties of elites to communities, as well as certain procedural dictates.”52 The ethos of Confucian deliberation placed a premium on the public (gong) character of reason-giving, and public-mindedness (as contrasted with self-interest) was a criterion for praiseworthy arguments.53 These norms were embedded in Chinese dynastic institutions through two key institutions: the yanguan (remonstrating office) and the shuyuan (academy; the place where scholarofficials were trained). Although the quality of these institutions as sources for deliberative politics varied over time and across dynasties, He maintains, they constituted important and resilient foundations for the idea that good governance depends on the existence of robust critical (but loyal) feedback on rulers’ judgments. In contrast to Western models of deliberation, figured as the process for popular opinion- and will-formation, the Chinese tradition of deliberation is “designed to improve governance, enhance authority, and generate legitimacy.”54 Significantly, He’s reconstruction of Chinese deliberation highlights the active role of the state in constituting and fostering deliberative practices. Although the state’s role in channeling and steering public deliberation clearly runs counter to understandings of legitimate authority rooted in democratic will,55 it is not necessarily at odds with understandings of legitimate authority based on public reason, including theories of deliberative democracy. “A great lesson from the history of Confucian deliberation is that any successful deliberation must be based on pure reasoning on behalf of the greater public under the Confucian doctrine of 天下为公 (the public own[s] everything under heaven)” – tian xia wei gong.56 Despite its roots in Confucian hierarchy, He suggests that contemporary practices of authoritarian deliberation may eventually become a system of deliberative democracy that strikes a salutary balance between the demands of authority and the quality of governance. His research demonstrates convincingly not only that a fairly robust practice of “authoritarian deliberation” exists in China but also that it is firmly rooted in Chinese culture. This is relevant for an inquiry into democratization in the global era because it challenges statist theorists’ assumption that strengthening democracy in the global age must proceed through the strengthening and spread of democracy at the scale of the state. An absence of Western-style electoral democracy at the national scale does not mean that a state is a democracy-free zone: democracy at the national scale is not a necessary condition of democracy at the local scale. This has institutional implications for our understandings of

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democracy in the global era. Democracy’s spread, and its rootedness in diverse political cultures, may advance through the multiplication and deepening of both democratic and deliberative practices at the local scale of politics. This implies that our theoretical frameworks of democracy in the global era must include not only the global, state, and transnational scales of politics but the local scale as well. The case of authoritarian deliberation poses a further challenge to Western political imaginaries and understandings of political development and democratization,57 in which society is seen as prior to the state as a normative matter (as in Habermas’s view that the state should not play a steering role with respect to civil society), as an empirical matter (in which state structures are read as a product of the constellation of social powers, as through interest- and class-mobilization), and as a matter of history (the modern state emerged as a product of changing modes of economic production and class structures). The Chinese model of state-led democratization at the local scale calls this priority relationship into deep question on all three counts, even at the same time as these practices should not be read as a process of democratization at the scale of the state. Evidence from other developmental states supports this suggestion. Recent work by Anjali Bohlken, for example, shows the active role that political elites have played in strengthening local democracy in India, for the same strategic reasons that appear to drive the process in China: enhancing legitimacy and garnering information to inform policy.58 Whether state-led democratization at the local scale enhances democratic legitimacy (or normative as contrasted with sociological legitimacy) in the political system as a whole remains unclear. Yet these cases underscore the need for a systemic analysis of global democratization, aimed at clarifying the interplay of social forces and institutional structures in different parts of the global system in generating greater or lesser responsiveness to the needs, interests, and commitments of ordinary people.59 The phenomena of deliberative authoritarianism and state-led local democratization clearly must be part of a systemic analysis of democratization in the global era. As He’s normative reconstruction of authoritarian deliberation suggests, however, it would be a mistake to overlook culture in an assessment of the legitimacy gains (if any) from the state-led expansion of deliberative and democratic practices. The conception of political legitimacy that makes normative sense of deliberative authoritarianism in the Chinese context is a hybrid form that mixes elements of Confucian meritocracy, performance legitimacy, and process legitimacy, a complex that might be

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most aptly called “minben legitimacy” to signal its rootedness in Chinese culture.60 Minben legitimacy and prominent Western conceptions of democratic legitimacy overlap on the value of deliberation for political legitimacy, but whether they can (or should) be reconciled in a single overarching normative theory of legitimacy remains unclear.

8.4 democracy on the transnational scale: la vı´ a campesina La Vía Campesina (LVC, “the way of the peasant”) is a transnational peasant movement that began in 1993 from a coalition of movements of small farmers across multiple continents but with particularly strong participation from Latin America. It has now grown to a global movement with dozens if not hundreds of member organizations across more than seventy countries; LVC estimates the number of its individual members at about 200 million. Each of the member organizations is itself a grassroots movement, in which decisions are made deliberatively and democratically. Member organizations are clustered into nine regions of the world, each of which has its own governing body elected by members of constituent organizations, and each of which in turn sends elected delegates to the movement’s International Coordinating Committee. The organization places a premium on egalitarian inclusion in its structures of representation, including gender equity: each region sends two delegates to the ICC, one man and one woman, and achieving gender equity within member and regional organizations is an ongoing commitment of the movement.61 LVC has growing influence on international economic development agendas through resistance to the neoliberal model of development and its adverse impact on land-based communities through the displacement of rural populations, the privatization of land and water, and severe environmental damage. Pushing against the models of industrial agricultural development served well by “food security” discourses in international institutions, the movement has generated alternative discourses of “food sovereignty,” counterposing the idea of a “moral economy” rooted in the health of local social and natural ecologies to the neoliberal “market economy.”62 The “seed sovereignty” movement, which is a strong link between LVC and the similar Navdanya movement in India (led by Vandana Shiva), specifically targets the influence of agroindustrial companies such as Monsanto in the aggressive marketing of patented seeds and their associated chemicals, which disrupts

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peasant practices of seed sharing, displaces ecologically sound traditional farming practices in favor of monocropping, and reduces genetic diversity.63 The movement operates on all scales of politics, from the very local to interactions with state governments to its own transnational political organization.64 Over the last several years, LVC’s influence has also reached the global scale of politics through its work with the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights on the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2018.65 Although the Declaration had earlier won the support of all the BRICS countries (though never the United States or the United Kingdom), this support softened in the final General Assembly vote.66 The model of transnational, multiscalar democracy embodied by LVC is certainly legible through theoretical accounts of transnational democracy rooted in Western political thought. It can be read, for example, as a transnational solidarity network generated by the common structural condition of small farmers under conditions of globalized neoliberal capitalism.67 Or it can be read as an active participant in the discursive democratization of global governance.68 As Michael Menser has argued, the movement can also be taken as evidence of the possibility of participatory democracy on the transnational scale.69 Finally, and importantly, LVC is an example of transscalar democracy – democratic politics that bridges the local, national, transnational, and global scales of politics – through participatory, electoral, and deliberative mechanisms.70 These characterizations of the LVC from within the frames of contemporary theories of transnational democracy all have prima facie validity. At the same time, they fail to capture the practices of identity formation through which the movement mobilizes its members, revalorizes peasant knowledge and experience, and expresses its political vision. One of its most characteristic elements is appeals to mística, a metaphysical/ethical concept embodied in and generated by ritual ceremonies performed at the beginning of meetings and at other important moments. The understandings and practices associated with this idea of the mística have their roots in the Brazilian landless peasant movement but have spread through other parts of LVC and are now manifested in rituals that form part of the opening ceremonies of the International Coordinating Committee.71 Usually, the ceremonies carried out incorporate water, soil, and seeds, expressing the close relationship between peasants and the natural order and asserting this relationship as a moral responsibility that peasants perform for all humanity.72 Originally,

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the rituals performed at international meetings were imported from Latin American contexts, but recent years have seen them translated into the peasant idioms of other cultures. The incorporation of seeds into these ceremonies, including ritual seed exchanges between groups representing different peasant cultures, expresses an intergenerational connection to land in which seed-saving and seed-sharing enables resilient agricultural communities. As the foremost scholar of the movement explains, “Seeds are perhaps peasants’ most precious resource – and in many cases a deeply cultural and sacred resource.”73 By grounding political solidarity in common understandings of intergenerational relationship to the land, which often carry a “sacred” or spiritual dimension, LVC revalorizes diverse forms of peasant knowledge and generates the conditions of possibility for political negotiation and deliberation across diverse languages and cultures. This “diálogo de saberes” – “dialogue among different knowledges and ways of knowing” – is the practice by which the movement is able to generate common agendas, political identities, and strategies despite the profound cultural, structural, and geographical distance between participating organizations.74 The theoretical reconstruction of the characteristic practices of LVC, including those rooted in the spiritual and quasi-spiritual ideas associated with mística and relationship to land, can draw on a number of sources. Some relevant work stresses, like Dallmayr, the importance of intercultural translation but focuses on the centrality of such translation to the construction of transnational solidarities aimed at taming the power of capital in the global era. For Boaventura de Sousa Santos, who (like LVC) stresses the translation of situated knowledges in building such solidarities, “[t]he work of translation is a work of epistemological and democratic imagination, aiming to construct new and plural conceptions of social emancipation upon the ruins of the automatic social emancipation of the modernist project.”75 Further, democracy in the age of globalization, Santos and Leonardo Avritzer argue, requires “democratizing democracy” – that is, including non-Western forms of democratic practice in our accounts of what democracy is. Beginning from an analysis of practices of participatory democracy in the global South, they argue that transculturally valid conceptions of democracy cannot be postulated in advance but can only be constructed through intercultural dialogue, “the practice of argumentation and the argumentation of practice.”76 Framing transnational and translocal networks as processes of “globalization from below” is also a central feature of James Tully’s conception of “diverse civic citizenship” in the global age, as distinguished from the “modern civil citizenship” characteristic of democracy at the scale of the state:

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In contrast to the universalizing rationalities of modern citizenship, diverse citizens employ contextual and comparative genres of reasoning . . . They start from the local languages and negotiated practices of citizens on location and compare and contrast their similarities and dissimilarities with each other from various standpoints, either by engaging in other forms of citizenship or by civic dialogues among diverse citizens.77

Finally, Walter Mignolo’s conception of democracy as a “decolonial option” draws on LVC as one of its key exemplars, alongside Gandhi, Fanon, Mandela, and the Zapatistas. Mignolo figures decolonial practice as that which refuses the concepts and categories characteristic of Western modernity when and as they function to legitimate relations of domination, particularly the domination of formerly colonized peoples. This practice requires “epistemic disobedience” – that is, drawing on sources of knowledge and experience that are not recognized within the frameworks of modern Western rationalism and which in turn can generate practices of protest and civil disobedience aimed at resisting structures of domination.78 Taken together, these theoretical approaches emphasize the epistemic dimensions of democratic practice in a global era, including the practice of negotiating new understandings of democracy through intercultural dialogue.

8.5 conclusions My purpose in this chapter has been to map out a strategy of inquiry aimed at deparochializing democratic theory in the age of globalization by finding points of contact between contemporary debates in the Western literature and contemporary forms of politics that draw on non-Western understandings of the world. After identifying the scales of politics that are constituent elements of contemporary theoretical debates about democracy in the global era, I selected three cases in which contemporary political agents are drawing on ideational resources in non-Western cultures to inform conceptions of democracy at each of these scales: the global, the state, and the transnational. I have further explored, albeit cursorily and based on secondary sources, theoretical reconstructions of the ideas and practices central to these alternative understandings of democracy in the global era. Although my principal purpose here has been to illustrate a method by which democratic theory might engage nonWestern thought in the theory-building enterprise, there are a few tentative conclusions that we can draw from this inquiry. First, each of these cases points us beyond a Westphalian frame in thinking about global democratization.79 Tianxia theory invites us to imagine

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a global order that is neither itself a state nor a system of states but rather a “multiverse of compatibility” among different civilizations, cultures, and religions. Deliberative authoritarianism suggests a pathway toward global democratization in the strengthening of participatory, deliberative, and democratic procedures at the local scale, with or without democracy at the scale of the state. LVC provides an example of a bottom-up practice of transscalar democracy at the local, state, regional, and global scales. Second, two of these cases reveal the importance of bringing the local scale of politics into focus as a necessary element in the analysis of democracy in the global era, adding to the scales of politics that are most visible within existing theoretical accounts of global democratization. The case of deliberative authoritarianism highlights the importance of the local scale within territorially bounded states and raises important questions about the relationship between local participatory democracy and representative democracy, particularly at the scale of the state.80 LVC reveals the translocal dimension of transnational democratic movements, in which structural similarities among geographically dispersed local communities can provide a basis for political mobilization and solidarity and enable multiscalar democratic organization. Third, the cases demonstrate that culture matters in the mobilization of ideas of democracy at the different scales of politics. They also suggest that culture may matter for the substantive content of those ideas. Tianxia cosmopolitanism is substantively different from Kantian cosmopolitanism, with implications for how we should understand democracy at the global scale. Deliberative politics in China appears to be underwritten by a conception of political legitimacy (minben legitimacy) that strikes a different balance between authority, good governance, and democratic responsiveness than what we find in familiar Western conceptions of democratic legitimacy. The political mobilization of peasants (and Indigenous peoples) based on culturally rooted understandings of a spiritual and intergenerational connection to land rests on a different form of political subjectivity from what we find in models of democracy based on the subjectivity of autonomous individuals. Moreover, the performance of this land-based political subjectivity requires forms of “epistemic disobedience,” including the valorization of peasant knowledge and the affirmation of peasants’ capacity for political agency against modernist suppositions that peasants are a disappearing class.81 Fourth, the boundary between tradition and modernity that is presupposed in many Western models of democracy is not empirically accurate or theoretically sustainable. What we find in these cases is the

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mobilization of “traditional” ideas about ethical and political relationship to inform political agency in coming to terms with the structures of modernity that we all inhabit: the system of states, the economic order of capitalism. In each of these cases, we find agents drawing on premodern ideas to generate new forms of engagement with the structures of modernity. This affirms the notion that we should be seeking to understand “multiple” and “alternative” modernities rather than indulging in the familiar framework of tradition vs modernity.82 Fifth, an important feature of this blurring of the boundary between tradition and modernity is the suspension of the secularization thesis of Western modernization theory. In both tianxia theory and in LVC we find invocations of a quasi-transcendental order of meaning – including especially the idea that human beings stand in an ethical relationship to the earth itself – that informs political practice. This suggests that our theoretical frameworks for understanding processes of democratization in the global era must be “postsecular” – that is, they must come to terms with the copresence of transcendent and secular or “immanent” frames in contemporary democratic imaginaries.83 Finally, these studies reinforce the idea that, in thinking about democracy in the global era, we need to think systemically, and in particular we need to analyze the dynamic interaction between ideas about and practices of democracy at different scales of politics. Systemic accounts of democracy are still in their theoretical infancy; these cases reinforce the intuition that a fully adequate account of democracy in the global era must confront the dual challenge of constructing post-Westphalian accounts of democracy and deparochializing democratic theory through deliberate engagement with non-Western ideas and practices of democracy.

notes 1. Roxanne Euben, Journeys to the Other Shore (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 23. Contributors to this volume who offer similar accounts of political theory include Stephen Salkever (“[C]omparative work provides a constructive escape from the powerful presuppositions or ‘endoxa,’ Aristotle’s very useful term for the prevailing opinions within a particular community that provide an indispensible point of departure for the practice of both liberal education and political philosophy” [232]) and Terry Nardin (“Deparochializing political theory through teaching texts from different traditions enables students ‘to challenge the conventional opinions and received beliefs that shape their current mental world – the presuppositions and prejudices that make thinking possible but also limit it’” [268]).

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2. For its critics, valorizing the cultivation of critical reflexivity may itself be a modality of Eurocentrism. See, e.g., Jenco’s contribution to this volume, 62–63. 3. I am grateful to Stephen Salkever for helping me to see that my aim in this chapter is to present an approach to deparochializing political theory that embraces both Bildung and Wissenschaft. 4. Jenco, this volume, 60 (“[T]he idea of providing guidance for culturally different communities and individuals is rightly condemned as imperialist”); Tully, this volume, 44 (Criticizing “the false – imperial colonizing or parochial – way of transposing yourself and your traditional worldview into the shoes of the other and thus arguing that others and their institutions should be made over in your image”). In a similar spirit, Megan Thomas notes the danger that comparative political theory, even among practitioners who reject universalism, may reproduce characteristics of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Orientalist thought, including the pitfalls of intellectual appropriation. Megan Thomas, “Orientalism and Comparative Political Theory,” The Review of Politics 72 (2010): 653–677. Still, Thomas argues, “[c]omparative political theorists, indeed all political theorists, ought to worry less about appropriation as such, and instead ought to attend more specifically to the political consequences of such appropriation, where those exist” (675). 5. Jenco, this volume, and Changing Referents: Learning across Space and Time in China and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 6. I believe that it also makes sense to read Joseph Chan’s philosophical reconstruction of Confucian perfectionism as a translation of Confucian theories of self-cultivation (Confucian Bildung) into theoretical terms that enable Westerners to assess their validity not only for the direct heirs of Confucian cultural traditions but also, more generally, for “us” as inhabitants of twentyfirst-century modernity. Read in this way, Chan’s work performs a double movement that simultaneously decenters Confucian thought (by putting it into conversation with Western liberal thought by using the methodologies characteristic of the latter) and recenters it (by making an argument on behalf of Confucian perfectionism that is legible from within both Anglo-American and Confucian philosophical traditions). Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). 7. For a nuanced treatment of the complex motivations and commitments of Japanese leaders and intellectuals in the early Meiji period, see Watanabe Hiroshi, A History of Japanese Thought, 1600–1901 (Tokyo: International House of Japan, 2012), chs. 18–20. 8. Andrew March, “On the Will to Be Disciplined: Response to Jenco,” Political Theory 43, no. 2 (2015): 234–231. 9. E.g., climate change, nuclear proliferation, and rampant inequality. On the need for democratic theory to address global collective action problems, see Jane Mansbridge, “On the Importance of Getting Things Done,” PS: Political Science and Politics 45, no. 1 (2012): 1–8. 10. Broadly speaking, cosmopolitans argue for an order of cosmopolitan law grounded in universal human rights and institutionalized at the global, state,

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and transnational scales of governance. See, e.g., David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995); Daniele Archibugi, The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Statists argue for a consolidation of democracy at the scale of the state and an interstate order regulated by an order of international law that establishes the equality of states, basic human rights, and interstate peace. See, e.g., Will Kymlicka, “Citizenship in an Era of Globalization: Commentary on Held,” in Politics in the Vernacular (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); David Miller, “Against Global Democracy,” in Keith Breen and Shane O’Neill, eds., After the Nation? Critical Reflections on Nationalism and Postnationalism (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 141–160. Transnationalists point to the forms of transnational governance and power that have emerged during globalization and argue for institutional changes that render them accountable to those who are subject to and affected by them. See, e.g., John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Global Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006); James Bohman, Democracy across Borders: From Dêmos to Dêmoi (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007); Rainer Forst, “Transnational Justice and Non-Domination: A Discourse-Theoretical Approach,” in Barbara Buckinx, Jonathan Trejo-Mathys, and Timothy Waligore, eds., Domination and Global Political Justice: Conceptual, Historical, and Institutional Approaches (New York: Routledge, 2015), 88–110. 11. For a helpful overview of recent debates in the global democracy literature, see Jonathan Kuyper, “Global Democracy,” in Edward N. Zalta, ed., Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), plato.stanford.edu/archive s/spr2016/entries/global-democracy. What I am calling the “statist,” “cosmopolitan,” and “transnationalist” approaches, Kuyper refers to as the “intergovernmental democratic states,” “cosmopolitan democracy,” and “deliberative democracy” models, respectively. 12. As Terry Nardin discusses thoughtfully in his contribution to this volume, using the term “non-Western” to denote the body of thought through which we seek to decenter dominant intellectual traditions is problematic (258–262). Murad Idris also criticizes the identification of “comparative political theory” with the study of “non-Western” thought, which “elide[s] the historicity of ‘the Western’ and the ways in which it has been made in relation to nonEuropeans.” Murad Idris, “Political Theory and the Politics of Comparison,” Political Theory (online first, 2016): 2, https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917166 59812. He argues for keeping a critical analysis of power relations at the center of our identification of the objects of comparison in comparative political theory. Loubna El Amine also criticizes the “East/West” division as a way of carving up bodies of thought for comparative analysis, arguing that a key purpose of comparative political theory is to gain critical distance from our now-globalized modernity. Accordingly, she argues for adopting a “modern/ premodern” distinction in selecting the focal points for comparative analysis. Loubna El Amine, “Beyond East and West: Reorienting Political Theory through the Prism of Modernity,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 1 (2016): 102–120. Although I am sympathetic to these lines of critique, I here cleave to

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Melissa S. Williams the “West/non-West” distinction as an imperfect starting point for this exploration, just because the thought traditions on which contemporary democratic theory draws are so flagrantly and exclusively Euro-American in their origins. My hope is that, as inquiries such as this one multiply and deepen, the distinction will gradually become less salient than the substantive ideas about politics that emerge from study and the ways in which they disrupt dominant or familiar ways of imagining political relationship in the global era. In an earlier work, Mark Warren and I explored the relationship between these same three terms – globalization, democracy, and comparative political theory – but approached them somewhat differently. The account we developed there began from the problematic that globalization has generated new human-scale problems of living-together without at the same time generating the common frames across cultures by which problems can be specified and programs of action agreed upon. Building on pragmatist accounts of communication, we argued that, by generating the resources by which different cultural understandings of politics can be rendered mutually intelligible, comparative political theory contributes to the conditions of possibility for the formation of cross-cultural publics capable of addressing new human-scale problems on terms of egalitarian reciprocity – that is, (more or less) democratically. Melissa S. Williams and Mark E. Warren, “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory,” Political Theory 41, no. 1 (2014): 26–57. What we did not do in that piece was to try to articulate the ways in which attentiveness to non-Western political thought and practice can contribute to the deparochialization of democratic theory itself – that is, the decentering of Western political thought in the way we theorize about democracy. The present exploration is one approach to that (much) broader project. For other approaches, see, e.g., Mark Chou and Emily Beausoleil, “Non-Western Theories of Democracy,” Democratic Theory 2, no. 2 (2015): 1–7. For examples of work that problematizes the common (and Weberian) supposition that modernity is uniquely Western in its origins, see, e.g., Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) (on the emergence of a “public sphere” in Tokugawa Japan); Tongdong Bai, Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 19–29 (on the Zhou-Qin transition in ancient China as analogous to the European transition from medieval feudal structures to a state system in the early modern period). Here I am in strong agreement with El Amine, “Beyond East and West.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1991 [1953]), sec. 67. Hannah Arendt, introduction to Illuminations, by Walter Benjamin, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), 50–51. For a problem-based approach (as contrasted with a model-based approach) to democratic theory, see Mark E. Warren, “A Problem-Based Approach to Democratic Theory,” American Political Science Review 111, no. 1 (2017): 39–53.

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19. Xi Jinping, “Working Together to Forge a New Partnership of Win-Win Cooperation and Create a Community of Shared Future for Mankind,” address to the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly (September 28, 2015), gadebate.un.org/sites/default/files/gastatements/70/70_ZH_en.pdf, 2. 20. As Howard French argues in Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017). 21. On the environmental front, these initiatives include major investments in renewable energies, radical cuts to the import and use of coal, and major financial commitments to the South-South Cooperation Fund on Climate Change. On the peacekeeping front, China has made major commitments of funds, personnel, and training to both UN and African Union peacekeeping operations. In the realm of development, China has recently launched the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, the BRICS Bank, and the “New Silk Road” initiative in Southeast Asia. In all of these initiatives, the normative discourse invoked is of “major power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics,” a phrase that became part of official discourse in the 2012 National Congress of the Communist Party of China. For an overview of “major power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics,” see, e.g., Michael D. Swaine, “Xi Jinping’s Address to the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs: Assessing and Advancing Major Power Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics,” China Leadership Monitor no. 46 (Winter 2015). 22. David Scott, “Soft Language, Soft Imagery and Soft Power in China’s Diplomatic Lexicon,” in Hongying Lai and Yiyi Lu, eds., China’s Soft Power and International Relations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 45–46. 23. China Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs Holds Briefing for Chinese and Foreign Media on President Xi Jinping’s Upcoming Attendance at Seventh BRICS Summit and 15th Meeting of Council of Heads of State of SCO Members,” news release, July 6, 2015, on file with author. See also Yun Sun, “BRICS and China’s Aspirations for a New ‘International Order,’” Up Front (blog), Brookings Institution, March 25, 2013, www .brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2013/03/25-xi-jinping-china-brics-sun. 24. Xi Jinping, Speech at UNESCO Headquarters (March 28, 2014), www .fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1142560.shtml. Xi amplified this point in his 2015 address to the UN. “Each civilization,” he said, “represents the unique vision and contribution of its people, and no civilization is superior to others. Different civilizations should have dialogue and exchanges instead of trying to exclude or replace each other.” “Working Together,” 4. On this third reading of “democratizing international relations,” then, “democracy” entails a dialogue across civilizations in which each is regarded as a bearer of equal value. 25. I am grateful to Binfan Wang for discussions of the concept of tianxia, which is a central theme in his doctoral research on Chinese cosmopolitanism and Western global justice theories at the University of Toronto. 26. Chan, Confucian Perfectionism, 225. 27. Ibid., 226. 28. Zhao Tingyang, The All-Under-Heaven System: An Introduction to the Philosophy of a World Institution [in Chinese] (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu

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29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44.

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Melissa S. Williams chubanshe, 2005), quoted and translated in Stephen Angle, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012), 77. Zhao, “Rethinking Empire from a Chinese Concept ‘All-under-Heaven’ (Tian-xia),” Social Identities 12, no. 1 (2006): 32. Zhao, “The China Dream in Question,” Economic and Political Studies 2, no. 1 (2014): 141. Zhao, “Rethinking Empire,” 39. Zhao, “A Political World Philosophy in Terms of All-under-Heaven (Tian-xia),” Diogenes 56, no. 1 (2009): 5–18. Zhao, “Rethinking Empire,” 31–32. Zhao, “All-Under-Heaven and Methodological Relationism: An Old Story and World Peace,” in Fred Dallmayr and Zhao Tingyang, eds., Contemporary Chinese Political Thought: Debates and Perspectives (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2012), 61. Ibid., 62–63. Ibid., 65; italics in original. For an overview of critiques and a partial defense of Zhao’s view, see Bijun Xu, “Is Zhao’s Tianxia System Misunderstood?,” Tsinghua China Law Review 6 (2013): 95–108. E.g., William A. Callahan, “Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-Hegemonic or a New Hegemony?,” International Studies Review 10, no. 4 (2008): 749–761. Zhao has responded to this line of criticism in “All-Under-Heaven and Methodological Relationism,” and Callahan’s more recent discussions of Zhao have softened this line of interpretation. See China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 51–7. Jan Aart Scholte, “Reinventing Global Democracy,” European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 1 (2014): 3–28. Zhao, “Rethinking Empire,” 37. Fred Dallmayr, “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory,” Perspectives on Politics 2 (2004): 253–254. See, e.g., Dryzek, Deliberative Global Politics; “Democratic Agents of Justice,” Journal of Political Philosophy 23, no. 4 (2015): 361–384; “Global Civil Society: The Progress of Post-Westphalian Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 15 (2012): 101–119; “Global Democratization: Soup, Society or System?,” Ethics & International Affairs 25 (2011): 211–234. John S. Dryzek and Simon Niemeyer, “Discursive Representation,” American Political Science Review 102, no. 4 (2008): 481–493. Laura Valentini makes a similar argument in “No Global Demos, No Global Democracy? A Systematization and Critique,” Perspectives on Politics 12 (2014): 789–807. See, e.g., Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), and “What Does Secularism Mean?,” in Dilemmas and Connections (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Cf. Jürgen Habermas, “A Postsecular World Society? On the Philosophical Significance of Postsecular Consciousness and the Multicultural World Society,” interview with Eduardo Mendieta, trans. Matthias Fritsch, The Immanent Frame (blog), Social Science Research Council, February 3, 2010, tif.ssrc.org/2010/

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47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

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02/03/a-postsecular-world-society. (“The . . . dialectic between tradition and modernity repeats itself today in other parts of the world. There, too, one reaches back to one’s own traditions to confront the challenges of societal modernization, rather than to succumb to them. Against this background, intercultural discourses about the foundations of a more just international order can no longer be conducted one-sidedly, from the perspective of ‘firstborns.’ These discourses must become habitual [sich einspielen] under the symmetrical conditions of mutual perspective-taking if the global players are to finally bring their social-Darwinist power games under control. The West is one participant among others, and all participants must be willing to be enlightened by others about their respective blind spots.”) Baogang He, “Participatory and Deliberative Institutions in China,” in Ethan Leib and Baogang He, eds., The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 133–148; Baogang He and Mark E. Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political Development,” Perspectives on Politics 9 (2011): 269–289; James Fishkin, Baogang He, Robert C. Luskin, and Alice Siu, “Deliberative Democracy in an Unlikely Place: Deliberative Polling in China,” British Journal of Political Science 40 (2010): 435–448. He and Warren, “Authoritarian Deliberation,” 274. Ibid., 279–280. Ibid., 282. Ibid., 276. He, “Participatory and Deliberative Institutions,” 182. He, “Deliberative Culture and Politics: The Persistence of Authoritarian Deliberation in China,” Political Theory 42 (2014): 62. Ibid., 64–65. Ibid., 71. See, e.g., Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 342–355. He, “Deliberative Culture and Politics,” 76. I discuss this theme at greater length in “Reasons to Obey: ‘Multiple Modernities’ and Constructions of Political Legitimacy,” in Joseph Chan, Doh Chull Shin, and Melissa S. Williams, eds., Political Legitimacy in East Asia: Bridging Normative and Empirical Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 25–54. Anjali Thomas Bohlken, Democratization from Above: The Logic of Local Democracy in the Developing World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); see also Alfred Stepan, Juan J. Linz, and Yogendra Yadav, Crafting the State-Nation: India and Other Multi-National Democracies (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). Jane Mansbridge, with James Bohman, Simone Chambers, Thomas Christiano, Archon Fung, John Parkinson, Dennis F. Thompson, and Mark E. Warren, “A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy,” in Jane Mansbridge and John Parkinson, eds., Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); see also Dryzek, “Global Democratization.”

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60. Melissa S. Williams, Joseph Chan, and Doh Chull Shin, “Political Legitimacy in East Asia: Bridging Normative and Political Analysis,” in Joseph Chan, Doh Chull Shin, and Melissa S. Williams, eds., Political Legitimacy in East Asia: Bridging Normative and Political Analysis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 1–24. 61. La Vía Campesina, “What Is La Vía Campesina? The International Peasant’s Voice” (2011), article on file with author; see also generally Annette Aurélie Desmarais, La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2007). 62. María Martínez-Torres and Peter M. Rosset, “La Vía Campesina: The Birth and Evolution of a Transnational Social Movement,” Journal of Peasant Studies 37 (2010): 149–175. For further discussion of the contrasts between “food security” and “food sovereignty” discourses, see Lucy Jarosz, “Comparing Food Security and Food Sovereignty Discourses,” Dialogues in Human Geography 4 (2014): 168–181. 63. Jack Kloppenburg, “Re-Purposing the Master’s Tools: The Open Source Seed Initiative and the Struggle for Seed Sovereignty,” Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (2014): 1225–1246. 64. Michael Menser, “Transnational Participatory Democracy in Action: The Case of La Via Campesina,” Journal of Social Philosophy 39 (2008): 20–41. 65. United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 73/165, Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (New York: United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, 2018), https://undocs.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/RES/73/165. 66. Christophe Golay, Negotiation of a United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (Geneva: Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, 2015), www.geneva-academy.ch/joomlatools-files/docman-files/InBrief5_rig htsofpeasants.pdf. For the final vote on the United Nations General Assembly Resolution (December 17, 2018), see https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/16 56160?ln=en. 67. See Carol Gould, “Transnational Solidarities,” Journal of Social Philosophy 38 (2007): 148–164. 68. Hayley Stevenson and John S. Dryzek, “The Discursive Democratization of Global Climate Governance,” Environmental Politics 21 (2012): 189–210. 69. Menser, “Transnational Participatory Democracy.” 70. Scholte, “Reinventing Global Democracy.” 71. Daniela Issa, “Praxis of Empowerment: Mística and Mobilization in Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement,” Latin American Perspectives 34 (2007): 124–138; María Martínez-Torres and Peter M. Rosset, “Diálogo De Saberes in La Vía Campesina: Food Sovereignty and Agroecology,” Journal of Peasant Studies 41 (2014): 979–997. 72. As a line from one mística summed up the relationship between peasants and the land: “We cultivate the earth and the earth cultivates us.” Hannah Wittman, “Reworking the Metabolic Rift: La Vía Campesina, Agrarian Citizenship, and Food Sovereignty,” Journal of Peasant Studies 36 (2009): 809. 73. Desmarais, La Vía Campesina, 197.

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74. Martinez-Torres and Rosset, “Diálogo de Saberes.” 75. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “The Future of the World Social Forum: The Work of Translation,” Development 48 (2005): 15–22. 76. Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Leonardo Avritzer, “Introduction: Opening up the Canon of Democracy,” in Boaventura de Sousa Santos, ed., Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon (London: Verso, 2005), lxiv. 77. James Tully, On Global Citizenship: James Tully in Dialogue (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 37. 78. Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 79. For an argument that this is a good reason for studying political thought from a variety of traditions, and particularly for studying “premodern” thought, see El Amine, “Beyond East and West.” 80. He examines the implications of authoritarian deliberation for our understandings of the relationship between participatory and representative democracy in “Reconciling Deliberation and Representation: Chinese Challenges to Deliberative Democracy,” Representation 51 (2015): 35–50. This is also a theme explored in Santos and Avritzer, “Introduction: Opening up the Canon of Democracy,” and in Bohlken, Democratization from Above. 81. Although I have not stressed the role of Indigenous peoples in LVC, Indigenous ideas, particularly concerning obligations to the land, have played an important role in the formation of the movement, and there are strong continuities between the logic and practices of political mobilization in LVC and in transnational movements of Indigenous peoples. There are also important parallels between the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Peoples Working in Rural Areas and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 82. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” in Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, ed., Multiple Modernities (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 1–30. 83. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age; Jürgen Habermas, “A Postsecular World Society?” Prasenjit Duara also finds a “traffic between secularism and transcendence” in networked environmental movements in Asia that are responding to the ecological consequences of economic development in their regions and rely, in part, on rhetorics that sacralize nature and appeal to the transcendent as expressed in both Gandhianism and Chinese thought. The Crisis of Global Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), ch. 6.

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9 Teaching Comparative Political Thought Joys, Pitfall, Strategies, Significance Stephen Salkever

9.1 introduction This essay combines two distinct though complementary and intertwined approaches to the questions of how and why to study comparative political thought. I begin with a set of reflections on my experiences teaching such comparative courses to undergraduates. Here, I deal with the joys and the difficulties I have encountered, along with some classroom strategies for enhancing the first and minimizing the second. But as the account of my pedagogical experience proceeds, the chapter inevitably moves to a more abstract level, asking how such courses are best understood and justified as elements of higher education. My major contention here is that comparative courses should not be treated primarily as training in a disciplinary specialty, such as Comparative Philosophy or Comparative Political Theory, but instead as essential features of liberal education in a rapidly (and problematically) globalizing world. Although my argument is that we should focus on liberal education, it is undeniable that these two distinct frameworks or orientations – the liberal education we practice as teachers and the disciplinary inquiry we practice as scholars and theorists – are almost always copresent in contemporary academe, and I conclude with some thoughts on how these two practices or vocations can be performed in ways that reinforce rather than undermine the goals of liberal education.1 Most of us practice both; many of us see them as complementary, at least some of the time. My argument is that complementarity can be achieved so long as undergraduate liberal education is treated as prior in importance as well as sequence, at least in the humanities and humanistic social

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sciences, to specialized disciplinary inquiry. I contend that, in comparative studies especially, scholarship and undergraduate education can and should engage in mutual criticism as well as support but that, in the end, scholarship should be brought before the bar of liberal education, rather than, as is now generally the case in higher education worldwide, vice versa.2 I came to the teaching of comparative political philosophy3 when I was already in midcareer, and my principal work in both teaching and writing is as a specialist in ancient Greek political theory, primarily Plato and Aristotle. I also taught and wrote about later works in the European tradition. Looking back, my experience of teaching what is misleadingly labeled the “Western canon” in political theory was good preparation for comparative work, since as time went on it became clearer to me that Leo Strauss and Alasdair MacIntyre, among others, were correct in arguing that the political philosophy of the modern West was much less a continuation of the philosophizing of Plato and Aristotle than a sharp break with ancient Greek thought. Moreover, modern Western philosophizing, from at least Descartes and Hobbes forward, sets out from presuppositions that are foreign to the Greek texts, suggesting that the moderns (and postmoderns) were not simply philosophizing differently within a shared culture but were operating in a cultural frame quite distinct from the ancients, one that took for granted the centrality of the Christian (and primarily Protestant) view of human being, the authority of modern European natural science as a mode of inquiry, and the primacy of economic achievement, whether capitalist or socialist, as a standard for evaluating the merits of political life. This is not to say that these three elements of the spirit of the modern West are compatible with one another or mutually reinforcing, nor to deny that many of the principal theorists of the modern Western canon make it their business to sharply criticize some or all of these forces (consider Nietzsche and Heidegger). But the theorists of the modern West take as their point of departure a set of questions and perplexities that emerge from a cultural and historical background that would, initially, make no sense at all to Plato or Aristotle – and vice versa.4 But if this is so, how should those of us in the modern West who feel that there is something valuable in the Greek texts treat them relative to our modern cultural and political horizons? I began to think that the most attractive option – the way to avoid either detached antiquarianism or treating the Greeks as primitive modern Westerners – was to treat these texts as ways of escaping, not from reality but from the presuppositions of modern Western theory, by bringing that theory into a kind of imaginary

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cross-cultural and comparative dialogue with ancient Greek political thought.5 In the late 1980s, I had the good fortune to begin teaching undergraduate comparative courses on Chinese and Greek (and later Western) thought with my former Bryn Mawr College colleague Michael Nylan, a leading scholar and teacher in the field of early Chinese literature, religion, and philosophy.6 Since Nylan left Bryn Mawr for U.C. Berkeley, I have continued to teach such courses, with a highly justified degree of anxiety, on my own. In the remainder of the first section of this paper, I reflect on my experience teaching comparative political theory in three stages. The first notes some simple truths about the joys and apparent benefits of teaching comparative political thought. The second stage concerns the traps and snares that lie in wait to undermine our feelings of achievement as teachers and students. The third stage lists some relatively practical suggestions about how these pitfalls might be avoided. The second part of the paper is an attempt to respond to the question posed by David Wong: “Why do comparative philosophy if it’s so hard?” Or, if it is so hard to do well, why do it at all?7 My answer will be that, carefully done, comparative work provides a constructive escape from the powerful presuppositions or endoxa, Aristotle’s very useful term for the prevailing opinions within a particular community that provide an indispensable but also problematic point of departure for the practice of both liberal education and political philosophy. My first sense of the pleasures to be had from studying with care texts from the ancient Chinese tradition, previously unknown to me, might be called theoretical in a not particularly reflective or esoteric way: there is considerable joy in simply getting to know better some important and unfamiliar things, more texts and thoughts and history, acquiring new perspectives on familiar problems and also discovering problems I didn’t know existed, having the experience of understanding (in a more or less subtle way), after considerable hard work, the meaning of material that at first appears incomprehensible and “other.” This experience can have practical benefits as well, perhaps indicating a theoretical underpinning for, in the long run at least, imagining the institutions and practices of a human world that is more peaceful, more just, and more free than the one we have now.8 Such joys and hopes can indeed be transmitted to students and are perhaps the greatest gifts teachers have to pass on in our classrooms. But there are important and more direct practical benefits as well, such as contributing to the project of internationalizing or globalizing the undergraduate curriculum, as Terry Nardin and Duncan Ivison

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discuss in Chapters 10 and 11 in this volume, and to the broader goal of deparochializing not only Western political theory but perhaps even liberal education as such. Along with these benefits, however, it is important to note that comparative or intercultural studies often carry with them a fair amount of unexamined theoretical baggage, including presuppositions about human lives and especially about the character of the links and difficulties that join and separate different groups of human beings into communities or cultures or sets of endoxa9 that are bounded yet changeable and permeable to varying degrees. It cannot be denied that pleasures and moments of self-congratulation may be deceptive and delusional, concealing from us what we are actually doing, both in theory and in practice. Many serious theorists argue that the practice of intercultural political theory may well involve not a process of positive self-transformation but rather one of selfaggrandizement – instead of reaching out to and “conversing” with voices that are productively different from our own, we may simply be constructing an Other to satisfy our heart’s desire, finding things we already believed were there. We may be imagining imaginaries not so different from our own, as Bernard Yack charges in his critique of Charles Taylor’s Modern Social Imaginaries as asserting a kind of pseudo-pluralism.10 And practically, our apparent project of recognizing and respecting differences may in effect constitute an unintended moment of empire, a knowledge claim that is implicitly an assertion of power over the others we claim to recognize and to listen to.11 What can we do about these pitfalls? I suggest three steps in my experience as a teacher of comparative political theory about what we should and should not expect from it: first, some recollections of my own introduction to comparative or intercultural work; second, a proposal that the goal of such courses should be that of encouraging ourselves and our students to become better interpreters of texts and, indirectly, of communities; and, third, some pedagogical suggestions about how to bring this goal about, including some questions to stimulate active and interpretive reading.

9.2 pathways to comparative political philosophy Before I began doing any comparative work, I wondered why my courses labeled Western Political Philosophy by my department needed to be “provincialized” in this way, when other courses were not listed as

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Western Sociology or Western Economics or, for that matter, Western Physics, in spite of the decidedly European origin of their central ideas and methods. Then one day a South Asian student told me she was pleased to find that this course, which read standard European texts, was really “just political philosophy” and not Western political philosophy only. What did she mean by that? I know that she did not mean that the course was in some way transcendentally universal, since I stress the idea that political philosophy always emerges as a response to already existing local historical developments and presuppositions. My guess is that she meant she was pleasantly surprised to find that the course was not a celebration of the superiority of the West but rather a consideration of issues about freedom, justice, etc. that she was already familiar with and eager to discuss. The moral of the story, as I read it, is this: The character of political philosophy as such is problematic, always situated within a particular community or endoxa yet always attempting to push beyond the limits of that community in the direction of a critical or orienting (rather than dispositive or legislative) and ever-provisional universality. Luckily for me, one of the first books I read when I started to teach these courses in the late 1980s was Benjamin Schwartz’s Search for Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West – which persuaded me to treat “cultures” (like China and the West) as changeable unknowns and not as superhuman agents determining the thought and behavior of the individuals who enact the beliefs and practices that constitute a community rather than a random aggregate of human beings: I would suggest that, in dealing with the encounter between the West and any given non-Western society and culture, there can be no escape from immersing ourselves as deeply as possible in the specificities of both worlds simultaneously. We are not dealing with a known and an unknown variable but with two vast, everchanging, highly problematic areas of human experience. We undoubtedly “know” infinitely more about the West, but the West remains as problematic as ever.12

Like Schwartz, my collaborator Michael Nylan and I both considered ourselves specialists in ancient thought (and hence were implicitly comparativists13), not archivists or antiquarians – rather, we studied the ancient texts with an eye to establishing perspectives (theoretical vocabularies that serve as explanatory and evaluative starting points) from which we might consider the meaning and value of our own quite different lives and communities. The point of considering historical “others” was to provide us as students and teachers with a way of stepping outside ourselves and our endoxa, as Aristotle would say. To a large extent, we

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agreed with a point David Wong makes about the relative affinity of ancient Chinese and Greek thought as strangers to the philosophical views prevailing in the modern West: The question of how one ought to live has occupied the center of the Greek and Chinese philosophical traditions. Modern philosophy, and most especially contemporary philosophy, has largely remained silent on what is arguably the first question of philosophy and has focused on the narrower question of what one morally ought to do or what are morally right actions.14

To use a more technical vocabulary, widespread in Western political philosophy at least since Rawls, both ancient traditions, Chinese and Greek, are like one another and sharply distinct from modern Western political theory in that they are “perfectionist.” I do not mean that they insist on utopian moral ideals at the expense of a concern with the best possible lives under imperfect real-world conditions.15 Rather, they are perfectionist in two key theoretical respects: both ancient philosophical traditions treat questions about the human good as prior to questions about human rights (and hence are distinct from Kantian and neo-Kantian Western political theory); and both treat questions about the value of a whole life as prior to questions about the value of a particular action or intention (and hence are distinct from Western utilitarianism).16 Hence one goal of comparative teaching is to provide an opportunity to see ourselves from the outside. As Michel Foucault puts it, “What can the ethics of an intellectual be – I claim this title of intellectual, though, at the present time, it seems to make certain people sick – if not this: to make oneself permanently capable of detaching oneself from oneself (which is the opposite of the attitude of conversion)?”17 It would not be misleading to describe the project of teaching political theory as, in this sense, postmodern and critical in a Straussian and MacIntyrean as well as a Foucauldian way. For Leo Strauss, liberal education is a mode of achieving this Foucauldian goal by the process of constructing a dialogue in which we participate, one that introduces us to a contentious world of thought that at its best has the power to give us a critical purchase on who we are and want to be, producing, in Foucault’s terms, an attitude that is the opposite of that of conversion: Liberal education consists in listening to the conversation among the greatest minds. But here we are confronted with the overwhelming difficulty that this conversation does not take place without our help–that in fact we must bring about that conversation. The greatest minds utter monologues. We must transform their monologues into a dialogue, their “side by side” into a “together.” . . .

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We must then do something which the greatest minds were unable to do. Let us face this difficulty – a difficulty so great that it seems to condemn liberal education as an absurdity. Since the greatest minds contradict one another regarding the most important matters, they compel us to judge of their monologues; we cannot take on trust what any one of them says. On the other hand, we cannot but notice that we are not competent to be judges. . . . Each of us here is compelled to find his bearings by his own powers, however defective they may be.18

Giving in to the temptation to treat any text or tradition as a potential Bible, or to the temptation to treat our academic discipline as having the final say in such matters of meaning and value, will block the chances for liberal education. What our fundamental commitment to such education demands of us is that we read texts both as theorists and as human beings troubled by the question of the best human life, aware that this question can never be answered with finality and certainty. I learned another related lesson when I was teaching a comparative course on my own, from Youngmin Kim, who succeeded Nylan at Bryn Mawr. I asked Kim to come to my class to talk with the students and me about the Analects. He graciously agreed but said that there was one sort of question he would not answer: He would not give “the meaning” of various stories and sections from the Analects. The students were a little taken aback when I told them about the ground rules for the upcoming class, but in the end we had a wonderful session with Kim precisely because of what he refused to do – he forced us all to ask harder and better questions, to propose and then criticize various interpretations, rather than passively listening to discussion-stopping answers from an expert.

9.3 the primacy of texts Such experiences and discussions persuade me that the immediate goal of such comparative courses should be to develop the students’ capacity for the interpretation of texts – not the practice of specialized disciplinary scholarship – and indirectly, though in the end more importantly, to develop the capacity for the interpretation of communities, institutions, and practices. Is this a political or normative goal as well as a theoretical or intellectual one? Yes, though indirectly – it rests on the hope that better interpreters are likely to be, in some hard-to-specify way, better human beings, including better citizens, better able to oppose the deep and powerful human inclination to pseudospeciation, Erik Erikson’s name for the drive to falsely identify human beings different from oneself as members of

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another inferior and yet threatening species, not human beings at all, as in the ancient Greek distinction between non-Greek “barbarians” (barbaroi)19 and Greek-speaking “foreigners” (xenoi).20 One especially lively image of close reading as focused energetic activity rather than as an alternative to such activity – and as a means to character education and good moral judgment rather than as an end in itself – is Walt Whitman’s memorable and stirring statement of the connection between the practices of close interpretive reading and of participatory democratic citizenship: Books are to be call’d for, and supplied, on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half sleep but, in highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast’s struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself, must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay – the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start or frame-work. Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does. That were to make a nation of supple and athletic minds, well train’d, intuitive, used to depend on themselves and not on a few coteries of writers.21

Whitman’s exhortation may be a little too enthusiastic in its devotion to athleticism as a human virtue, but we who want to present reading the texts of deparochialized political thought as an active and transformative practice would do well to keep his words in mind – and, of course, to find the right moments for introducing them to our students’ minds as well. But how can we go about implementing this educational goal in classroom practice? I suggest one step lies in recognizing the need for two apparently antithetical moments or elements in the process of teaching comparative political thought via text interpretation, both involved in the stage-setting work of laying out the historical and cultural endoxic contexts from which these texts emerged, one familiarizing and the other defamiliarizing. To begin with, we need to make the texts less strange, more familiar: What was political life like in the Warring States period in China or in fifth- and fourth-century bc Athens? What were the endoxa, the prevailing opinions, in these societies, the opinions, practices, and ways of life that set the stage for the emergence of the philosophical texts we will be studying? This will have to be superficial and sketchy, and so it is very important to stress both the tentativeness of any such history (of its permanently provisional and revisable character) and the need to return to it constantly as the course proceeds. The second element of this introductory process involves making the texts less familiar and more strange by calling into question prevailing stereotypes about, say, China, the ancient Hellenic world, and the modern

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West that students bring with them to this study, both positive and negative – firmly held stereotypes that lead them to find in the texts things they think they already know are there. If familiarizing tries to make the context less strange, defamiliarizing attempts to make the contexts more strange and difficult to understand. Confucius and Xunzi and Plato and Aristotle are not our contemporaries and must not be read as if they were. They do not share our endoxa, or our imaginaries, or our immediate pasts and futures. On the other hand, they also must not be read as if they either confirmed “our” sense of our own moral and intellectual superiority (as good democratic opponents of various forms of dogmatic despotism) or, at the opposite extreme of the student expectations I have encountered, “our” sense of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of modern Western materialism and individualism. I realize that most good teachers will perform these familiarizing and defamiliarizing moves as a matter of course – my recommendation is simply that we not only be very aware of what we are doing but also share our intentions explicitly with our students: tell students what we are up to and why. These familiarizing and defamiliarizing moments are matters to be opened during the first week of class and repeated at intervals throughout the term. While it is important to avoid laying down the law and unduly limiting “their” imagination in interpreting the texts, teachers should want to tell “them” at the start that the kind of work “they” will be doing in the course is difficult, and “they” can’t treat the texts as bits of information to be absorbed or slotted neatly into the concepts and categories “they” bring to it – or into specialized disciplinary concepts and categories “they” expect teachers to supply. The task here is, in John Furlong’s words, “to diminish those exaggerated and pedagogically tendentious student desires for an Other of their own making.”22 I have used scare quotes around the thirdperson plural pronouns in this paragraph to call attention to the fact that our students are not a uniform and homogeneous mass and that a central element of teaching well is to find out who the students in each class you teach are. This is especially true of comparative theory courses. To do this you have to encourage students to speak and/or write as much as possible about the matters you are discussing – and thus try to lecture as little as possible – but, and this is never simple, you need to be clear that the work in the course calls for a certain kind of rigor and self-discipline, that it is not the case that anything goes. This is the great pedagogical problem we all need to address: How can the activity of text interpretation be characterized in a way that will give students a sense of rigor and discipline without supplying them a misleadingly precise algorithm? I know of no better brief guide

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to how to achieve this purpose than a lightly but essentially ironic piece of advice from Harry Berger, a master of philosophical as well as literary interpretation, about how to “induct” students into the community of interpreters we wish to construct in the classroom: The first and most important move every young citizen of the interpretive community should make is to perform the pledge of allegiance to interpretation, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea for students to learn a little piety along with the move. So I urge all teachers everywhere to insist that their students begin every class by murmuring in unison, and with expression, dutifully and even prayerfully, the two parts of the primal invocation that will prepare all American children to question both church and state: 1. Let there be at least one unacceptable interpretation of any text. 2. Let there be at least two acceptable interpretations of any text.

This little pair of exhortations seems innocuous, but taken together and perused more closely they open up a space between dogmatism and indeterminacy; they establish textual boundaries that can be policed. More important, they establish a contestatory field within which what counts as truth, or as knowledge, or as fact, emerges only through a process of textual perusal and interpretive negotiation. These are fine words, but they don’t mean a thing unless we can agree on the way we use terms like peruse and text, about which more in subsequent paragraphs.23 Berger’s playfulness and irony bring out quite wonderfully the character of such teaching, as well as the need to avoid taking our work either too seriously (as “police”) or not seriously enough. The kind of approach to the texts and contexts that I want to encourage is thus one that avoids my own admittedly stereotypical and criticizable takes on cultural anthropologists (but see Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers, cited in n 20), economists (but see Amartya Sen), and missionaries (both of the older religious kind and of the more recent political variety).24 Beyond that, however, I want to stress my belief that political theorists/philosophers should avoid making a sharp division of labor between historical scholars who examine events and institutions and theorists or philosophers who concern themselves with the interpretation and critique of texts or concepts. This is so much easier to say than to do: the great demand on us is that, to do either history or theory well, we have to be at least familiar with each of the two approaches. For text- or “canon”-centered people like me, this means being able to place texts in a historical context, treating them as a potentially critical response to or interrogation of that context, without reducing their meaning to those

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contexts. In intercultural political philosophy, this means stressing the extent of contestation within a community or culture even more than the extent of the agreement and unity that establishes the borders of that community.25 I agree with a position set out by Melissa Williams and Mark Warren26 on the need to see comparative inquiry as a productive and creative enterprise, rejecting an older approach that tried to catalogue and contrast the presupposed “givens” of particular cultures – though we should be prepared to find that this kind of cataloguing is precisely what all too many undergraduates, even sophisticated ones, want from our comparative courses. What I propose as a less misleading though admittedly less direct path to thinking across endoxic communities is to focus on intracultural contestations (Confucius versus Zhuangzi, Thucydides’ Pericles versus Plato’s Socrates – as well as both versus the mainstream of modern Western political philosophy) along with analysis of the questions that are implicit in these contests – and how the questions, such as the question of the best life,27 take different forms in different times and places. I do assume here – and I think we all must do, in both our theorizing and our teaching – that there are certain quasi-permanent human questions, such as the question of the best life, that need to be asked and answered by each of us as individuals in conversation with others but which cannot be answered universally and with certainty by any universalizing theory or philosophy, no matter how compelling and helpful. What questions, then, should students bring to the texts to help achieve these goals? Here are six suggestions I think are especially valuable in comparative theory courses – as ways of initiating an active and interpretive reading, a reading that turns the words on the page into a voice in a dialogue that is open to our participation. All six direct attention to approaching texts not as a celebration of ideals but as accounts of problems, as problematizing discourses. This approach seems in line with the discursive practice of Confucius,28 Zhuangzi, Plato, and Aristotle (not to mention Arendt and Foucault) – though perhaps not of philosophy understood in the mode of analytic philosophy (as with Rawls and, to a lesser degree, Habermas), whose primary goal is not to problematize but to remove disputes about key normative concepts so that we can move forward to establish the best possible political constitutions and institutions. The six questions I regularly use are as follows: (1) Ask the text not only “What are your ideals or hopes?” but also “What do you fear most about the future of your community?” Of

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course, any sensible person sees more than one danger, but what are the priorities? What causes the dangerous trends you fear? Specific local conditions? Regional or global ones? Universal human qualities? How can these dangers best be met – and to what extent? What measures can be taken to combat these dangers? Change institutions? Policies? Attitudes? Beliefs? What stands in the way of carrying out these measures? Culture? Economy? Local problems? Regional or global ones? Universal human qualities? To what extent can these dangers be averted or overcome? This is the theory and practice problem: Where to place this text and voice on a continuum that runs from utopian moralism to cynicism or fatalism? What are the principal arguments against your position? Why doesn’t everyone agree with you?

There is nothing special about these questions, and others will find better ones to suit particular educational settings. My goal here is only to encourage reflection on how to present the problem of text interpretation in a way that satisfies the aims of Harry Berger’s program quoted earlier. In particular, these six questions, by asking students to place the texts in the context of ongoing conversations with “projected readers” from another time and place, are especially valuable in comparative courses, as a means of avoiding imposing presupposed cultural or temporal stereotypes, categories, and ideals on the texts’ “implied authors,” to use Wayne Booth’s indispensable phrases.29

9.4 comparative teaching and scholarship At the beginning of this chapter, I suggested that any adequate account of how to teach comparative theory courses has to deal with the question of the relation between classroom teaching and the activity of doing comparative theory for a disciplinary or public audience – how should we see the connection between teaching and scholarship? I think these two practices are not the same, that they pull those of us who practice both in different directions, and that, unfortunately, the point of classroom teaching is often regarded as nothing more than preparing students for professional scholarship (and the content of such teaching is too often seen as a watered-down byproduct of our scholarship), rather than as an element of liberal

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education, an education that aims at promoting human flourishing (Aristotle’s eudaimonia), moral and intellectual development30 rather than the acquisition of specialized knowledge. But if this is so, the question of how best to understand the relationship between teaching and scholarship in comparative work remains to be considered. I have the following suggestions to offer concerning the possibility of a dialectically productive relationship between these two activities. To begin with our scholarship, comparative theorizing often seems to involve a potentially harmful resistance to several forms of uncertainty and imprecision. We, like other scholars in the humanities, share an inclination to avoid ambivalence, however appropriate that ambivalence might be.31 Good political theorists in their writing want to stake out a clear position, one that is, as far as possible, not open to critique. There is a powerful desire not to appear weak and wishy-washy. There is a related disinclination to tolerate ambiguity of expression, which results in the tendency to aim at precision and finality above all else, even at the price of inaccuracy.32 Aristotle’s advice in Book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics (1104a) about the need to recognize that different fields of study require different degrees of clarity and certainty, and that the degree of precision of a discourse must vary with the subject matter of that discourse, is often cited but all too rarely taken seriously. But in matters concerning human ways of life, too much precision and clarity is as much a vice as too little. We all recognize the drift toward excessive single-mindedness and precision when dealing with quantitative arguments – but this is surely true of many discursive and nonquantitative theoretical arguments as well, especially since our modern Western academic endoxa often elevate, inappropriately, natural science and its predictive laws as a standard for rigorous inquiry in the humanities. On the other hand, the activity of classroom teaching, as distinct from disciplinary scholarship, tends to be less driven by a felt need for singlemindedness and precision. In teaching, what we come to worry most about, in my experience, is avoiding as best we can certain known pitfalls that get in the way of educating students, such as either pandering to students by telling them what we think they want to hear or laying down the law concerning the true meaning of our texts. We also want to avoid inducing boredom, to stay away from flattery or self-aggrandizement, and to resist oversimplification as well as overcomplication. We want not so much to persuade and convince, as we do when we theorize in print and at professional conferences, as to get students to love what we are doing and to practice it well for themselves – to introduce them to a practice, the

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practice of Harry Berger’s or Walt Whitman’s community of active interpreters. But it is also surely the case that teacherly tentativeness and ambivalence can be overvalued and fetishized. Perhaps the best way to think about the relationship between theory and teaching for those who practice both is to recognize that they are different from each other and to hope that there are productive ways in which these two different approaches to the same subject matter – the one we practice in the study or the conference and the one we practice in the undergraduate classroom – can correct one another, each pointing out and guarding against the characteristic pitfalls of the other.33 If I am right about this, the goal of comparative political theory or philosophy should not be to discover the truth about the world or about human action by taking the best elements of various texts from different traditions and cultures, nor to treat such comparison as the royal Hegelian road to uncovering the truth about the inner character of the cultures from which such philosophizing emerges, but to enrich our own imagination and inquiry into the problems that we confront in our own worlds of thought and action. The goal is improved practical judgment in matters involving action rather than precise theoretical knowledge or wisdom. Probably, such a goal is easier to grasp for professors of comparative literature than for professors of philosophy – and this in turn is a good reason for resisting any tendency to draw a sharp disciplinary distinction between comparative literature, on the one hand, and comparative philosophy or political theory, on the other, a tendency that is likely to be quite powerful today not only in research universities but in small colleges that aspire to be known for research as well as teaching. On the other hand, I do think it is a good idea to maintain a clear sense of the difference between the humanities and the natural sciences. But in stressing the importance of distinguishing between the humanities as a whole and modern science, I am not suggesting that we should build a “two cultures” wall between the two. The best teaching and learning in the humanities and the sciences is informed by an understanding of work done in the other – both suffer (but especially the humanities) insofar as it is presupposed that there is no significant difference between the two.34

9.5 conclusion I conclude with some reflections on the meaning and the prospects of liberal education as I understand it here. One of the terms that has recently become popular as a label for the intellectual virtue that liberal education

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aims to develop is “critical thinking,” which is too often taken to mean the negative ability to unmask and debunk the positive claims contained in the texts we consider. Michael Roth’s critique of this understanding of “critical thinking” as a goal or a virtue is acute: The skill at unmasking error, or simple intellectual one-upmanship, is not totally without value, but we should be wary of creating a class of self-satisfied debunkers – or, to use a currently fashionable word on campus, people who like to “trouble” ideas. In overdeveloping the capacity to show how texts, institutions, or people fail to accomplish what they set out to do, we may be depriving students of the capacity to learn as much as possible from what they study.35

But there is another and older sense of “critical thinking,” located in the modern German tradition of philosophizing about education and the development of judgment as an intellectual virtue, that fits my account of liberal education more closely. Hannah Arendt was one of the most committed and eloquent defenders and practitioners of this kind of education. In rejecting a critic’s claim that political theorists should present themselves as committed political actors in the classroom, Arendt reflected on the nature and the political meaning of her own teaching, rejecting the idea that the teacher’s job is to indoctrinate but still asking herself about what the political consequences of this kind of thought which I try, not to indoctrinate, but to rouse or to awaken in my students, are, in actual politics. . .. And then this notion, that I examine my assumptions, that I think – I hate to use the word because of the Frankfurt School – anyhow, that I think “critically,” and that I don’t let myself get away with repeating the clichés of the public mood [comes into play]. And I would say that any society that has lost respect for this is not in very good shape.36

A central goal of liberal education as I, leaning on Arendt, understand it is to increase both the taste for and the ability to engage in reflexivity: Socrates’ examined life or Aristotle’s prohairetic life, something close to the core of education in both the ancient Greek and ancient Chinese philosophical traditions but much less so from the perspective of the pedagogical and moral endoxa of the modern West.37 Instead of reflexivity, we are now more likely to admire objectivity if we are scientists and commitment if we see ourselves as humanists. Following Arendt, a superb classroom teacher as well as an accomplished theorist/philosopher, I suggest we try to walk a third way, one that understands our study as justified by the extent to which it promotes the dialogic and interpretive goals of liberal education. My contention is that the specialist discipline of comparative political theory or philosophy can and should be central to the recovery of liberal

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education. Why? Because there is considerable overlap between the motives and purposes that drive the two projects, the practice of liberal education on the one hand and the study of comparative political theory on the other. Nonetheless, it is by no means certain that work in comparative political theory will further the aims of liberal education. It will do so if and only if comparative theory takes seriously its role as an aspect of dialogic and interpretive liberal education, and not simply as one more specialized discipline or Wissenschaft among the many that make up the modern research university. But it is not easy to see ourselves as liberal educators, partly because of the lack of clarity about the meaning of liberal education and partly because of the undeniable advantages of disciplinary inquiry. Alasdair MacIntyre is particularly helpful in understanding this. His criticism of the way the modern discipline of philosophy, especially analytic philosophy, obstructs the possibility of thinking about liberal education is essential: The narrowness of a modern philosophical training, like the narrowness of other specialized training, has undeniable advantages. It produces minds focused on certain problem sets, minds that often exhibit admirable conceptual subtlety, that are adept at producing counterexamples to a wide range of theses, that are for the most part rigorous both in theory construction and in criticism. But what is notable is the extent to which and the ways in which, by reason of the constraints that we have identified, philosophical enquiry into and discussion of moral theory is isolated from political and moral practice, both our own everyday practice and that of those who inhabit moral cultures very different from our own. . .. Any conception of moral theory as needing to begin from or even include anthropological and historical studies of moral practice is ruled out and with it any identification of contrasts between the practices of the culture that we here now inhabit and those of cultures of other times and places.38

No matter how successful such a discipline is in its own terms, as liberal education for us in the here and now, it is unsatisfactory, for “we now inhabit a world in which ethical inquiry without a comparative dimension is obviously defective.”39 One final concern. The English expression “liberal education” and the existence of a relatively large number of colleges devoted to the practice of liberal education have emerged historically, over the past two hundred years or so, within the (modern) West, mostly in the United States and to a considerably smaller degree in Europe. Does liberal education therefore represent one more form of Western cultural imperialism? This question has to be taken seriously, and I know of no way to rebut with certainty the charge it states, but there are grounds for hoping that liberal education is

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not guilty. Liberal education as I know it in the United States is no doubt Western (and hence modern), but the practice of this education will, I think, seem very familiar to any culture that has a tradition of close, active, and reflexive reading of carefully selected texts (plural, not singular!), as China surely does, and as the current study of ancient Chinese political thought in East Asia demonstrates. Work in comparative philosophy is, in my view, likely to succeed insofar as it is tied primarily to this project of liberal education, to Bildung rather than Wissenschaft, and not to the widespread project of establishing one more carefully bounded and self-consciously distinctive academic discipline, nor to any immediate political project, whether the refinement and extension of the democratic vision or of some nondemocratic alternative to it. This means thinking of ourselves as teachers first, and scholars and citizens afterwards.40 This is not at all to say that disciplinary specialization and participatory citizenship are not valuable and necessary practices. The case for citizenship is self-evident, and there are critical times and contexts when political life matters most of all. But to treat all times as critical in this sense is a mistake. Similarly, the development of discipline-centered theoretical knowledge about human affairs is, much of the time, instrumental to human flourishing. But it is not a paramount end in itself, rather than a potential contribution to such flourishing. What is called for is a clearer understanding of the complex relationship between disciplinary scholarship and the development of the capacities for human excellence.41 The difficulty is that to do this we need to think against several powerful presuppositions in the Western endoxa, including scientistic positivism and cultural relativism.

notes 1. It is, of course, true that the meaning of the concept “liberal education” is contested and also true that the phrase often occurs as an empty cliché that obscures the importance of these contests over liberal education’s meaning. My own position is close to that of Geoffrey Galt Harpham, What Do You Think, Mr. Ramirez? The American Revolution in Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), though I disagree with Harpham’s claims that such education is essentially American and that it can best be pursued in English departments. As I understand it, the practice of liberal education has three essential elements: interpreting richly ambiguous texts that seem to deal with the most important and most disputed human problems; constructing from these texts voices and dialogues that clarify these problems; and participating in these constructed and ever-expanding dialogues as we live our

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lives. I have also drawn on Michael S. Roth, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). Written by a gifted teacher, Eva Brann, Paradoxes of Education in a Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) is an invaluable cheerfully serious starting point for theorizing about modern liberal education. I think that the natural home of liberal education is in liberal arts colleges and in those structures within universities that imitate the work of such colleges. On the other hand, I do not think there is such a thing as a “liberal art,” and thus I avoid the term “liberal arts education.” Almost any subject, even those in the core humanities, can be and often is taught in a preprofessional or narrowly disciplinary way that undermines the project of liberal education as I understand it. For a discussion of ways in which such liberal education can and does occur outside of schools, see Joel Schlosser, What Would Socrates Do? Self-Examination, Civic Engagement and the Politics of Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). A word on the labels political “thought,” political “theory,” and political “philosophy.” Political thought is useful because it implies an activity than spans a wide variety of genres and disciplines, though it may also mislead by including too much. The other two terms, philosophy and theory, can help to sharpen the focus of our interpretive practice. I prefer philosophy to theory because I think it implies a stress on skeptical and critical questioning of a Platonic and Aristotelian and Confucian kind (as I read them), thus avoiding the legislative or dispositive connotations of the term “theory.” But the meanings of all three terms clearly overlap, and it is wisest to use them interchangeably, as I will do here, though with awareness of the questions about what we are doing that these three descriptors may conceal. For example, it would be much harder to explain the concept of innate human dignity to either Aristotle or Confucius than to explain li (ritual) to the former or psuchê (soul) to the latter. See my “Aristotelian Phronêsis, the Discourse of Human Rights, and Contemporary Global Practice,” POLIS: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought 33, no. 1 (2016): 7–30. See the account of these courses in Salkever and Nylan, “Comparative Political Philosophy and Liberal Education: ‘Looking for Friends in History’,” PS: Political Science & Politics 27 (1994): 238–247, and the comments on the courses by Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), ch. 4. David Wong, “Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, plato.stanford.edu/entries/comparphil-chiwes, accessed August 1, 2014. On comparative political theory as an inquiry that can guide us toward a more just and democratic world, see especially Melissa S. Williams and Mark E. Warren, “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory,” Political Theory 42, no. 1 (2014): 26–57. For Williams and Warren, “[w]hat distinguishes the project of comparative political theory from [other] approaches is . . . its orientation to the study of ideas as a resource for practical reason in the

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Stephen Salkever present, guiding action toward a future we might want to inhabit. By reconstructing the political imaginaries that already operate in the background of our words and deeds, comparative political theory reveals those often forgotten resources and influences that make us who we are as well as what we might become” (48). I prefer Aristotle’s term endoxa, prevailing reputable opinions, to our “culture” in this context, because “culture,” for all its undeniable usefulness, too much implies both unity and permanence. By contrast, the term endoxa refers to the prevailing opinions about fundamental matters within a community, opinions that can be examined in terms of their accuracy and fruitfulness as guides to understanding and acting in the world: “The endoxa are opinions about how things seem that are held by all or by the many or by the wise – that is, by all the wise, or by the many among them, or by the most notable (gnôrimoi) and endoxic (endoxoi, most famous) of them” Topics 100b21ff. The fact that Aristotle identifies a belief as respected does not imply that he finds it true, or even respectable; nevertheless, it is clear that he regards some such opinions as indispensable points of departure for both political life and philosophic inquiry. Bernard Yack, review of Modern Social Imaginaries, by Charles Taylor, Ethics 115 (2005): 629–633. Often, attempts like Taylor’s seem to construe nonWestern cultures as much more like modern Western democracy than they appear to be, leading to efforts to discover what some critics have called “a Kant for every culture.” On the other hand, there are good arguments to the effect that there are overlooked similarities across traditions as well as conscious importations. For nuanced and provocative discussion of these issues, see especially Stephen Angle’s work on conceptual and verbal translations of Western human rights discourse into Chinese political thought: Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012). On these criticisms of the project of comparative political theory, see especially Williams and Warren, “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory,” as well as Leigh Jenco, “‘What Does Heaven Ever Say?’ A Methodscentered Approach to Cross-cultural Engagement,” American Political Science Review 101, no. 4 (November 2007): 741–755, and Andrew F. March, “What Is Comparative Political Theory?,” Review of Politics 71 (2009): 531–565. All of these insightful discussions provide thoughtful and subtle proposals for avoiding the pitfalls they identify; my only reservation about them is that they all focus on comparative political theory as an academic discipline rather than an educational practice. Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 2. On the relatively recent genealogy of the term “the West” in Europe as a nineteenth-century alternative to “Christendom,” see Michael Gillespie, “Liberal Education and the Idea of the West,” in Ralph Hancock, ed., The West and the Liberal Arts (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). Loubna El Amine presents a paradigm-changing argument for incorporating “vertical” (past and present) as well as “horizontal” (cross-cultural)

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comparisons into the practice of comparative political theory in “Beyond East and West: Reorienting Political Theory through the Prism of Modernity,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 1 (2016): 102–120. David B. Wong, “Complexity and Simplicity in Aristotle and Early Daoist Thought,” in R. A. H. King and Dennis Schilling, eds., How Should One Live?: Comparing Ethics in Ancient China and Greco-Roman Antiquity (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 259. See also Alasdair MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Every good reader of Confucius and Zhuangzi, and of Plato and Aristotle, knows that they are not “perfectionist” (or moralistic) in this sense. For Confucius, see Joel Kupperman, “Tradition and Community in the Formation of Character and Self,” in Kwong-loi Shun and David Wong, eds., Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 103–123. Kupperman notes Confucius’s “repeated insistence that he himself has much (in general) to learn from others” and goes on to say, quoting Analects XIV, 32, that for Confucius “[p]erfection is never presented as a realizable goal. It is a hallmark of a gentleman [or exemplary person, junzi] that he ‘grieves at his own incapacities’” (111). An elaboration of this insight underlies the constructive theorizing of Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). Chan puts the matter as follows, using a Rawlsian conception of “perfectionism” against Rawlsian neo-Kantianism: “A political perfectionist approach takes the human good, or so-called conception of the good life, as the basis for evaluating a social and political order. It justifies ‘the right’ by reference to ‘the good,’ to use contemporary philosophical terminology. This approach decouples liberal democratic institutions from those popular liberal philosophical packages that place the right prior to the good and base liberal democratic institutions on fundamental moral rights or principles, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, human rights, and individual sovereignty” (192). For Chan, Confucius provides a better starting point for evaluating modern politics than does modern Western theory. I have made a similar case for the contemporary relevance of Plato and Aristotle in “‘Lopp’d and Bound’: How Liberal Theory Obscures the Goods of Liberal Practices,” in R. Bruce Douglass, Gerald Mara, and Henry Richardson, eds., Liberalism and the Good (New York: Routledge, 1990), 167–202. Michel Foucault, in an interview, “The Concern for Truth,” in Lawrence D. Kritzman, ed., Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984 (New York: Routledge, 1988), 263. Leo Strauss, “What Is Liberal Education?,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 7–8. See also MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity. But on the difficulties and complexity of understanding the meaning of “barbarians” in ancient Greek and ancient Chinese literature, see Michael Nylan, “Talk about ‘Barbarians’ in Antiquity,” Philosophy East and West 62, no. 4 (October 2012): 580–601. Nylan suggests that it is an all-too-tempting modern

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Stephen Salkever Western mistake to treat the views of the Chinese and Greek ancients as primitive rather than as a possible source of self-criticism: “we products of modern nationalist rhetoric come equipped with such impoverished senses of personal identity and worth that we may be much more likely to trade in unthinking excoriations of the Other outside our communities than did members of the governing elite in the distant past” (592). A similar critique of modern interpretations of the ancient Hellenic world is Kostas Vlassopoulos, Greeks and Barbarians (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Erik Erikson, “Pseudospeciation in the Nuclear Age,” Political Psychology 6, no. 2 (1985): 213–217. See Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), on the perhaps surprising growth and strength of this parochializing and horrendously destructive as well as profoundly unjust falsehood in our age of globalization and expanding cosmopolitanism. Walt Whitman, “Democratic Vistas,” in Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, ed. Justin Kaplan (New York: Library of America, 1982), 992–993. John Furlong, “Reenchanting Confucius: A Western-Trained Philosopher Teaches The Analects,” in Jeffrey L. Richey, ed., Teaching Confucianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 194. Harry Berger, Situated Utterances: Texts, Bodies, and Cultural Representations (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 494–495. Berger’s playful seriousness or serious play reminds me of Plato’s Socrates as well as Zhuangzi and, often, Confucius, all of whom think that good teaching must be careful to discourage discipleship. See Salkever and Nylan, “Comparative Political Philosophy and Liberal Education.” Contrast Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power and The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985), with François Jullien, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece, trans. Sophie Hawkes (New York: Zone Books, 2004). Schwartz stresses the permeability of cultural borders, while Jullien treats them as nearly absolute. On the contrast between these two approaches to comparing China and the West, and on the need to take both seriously whichever one you prefer, see my review of Jullien in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, August 17, 2004, bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004–08-17.html. “Ideally, comparative political theory is generative of new discourses”; Williams and Warren, “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory,” 45; italic in original. Bernard Williams famously argues that the question Plato’s Socrates poses in Books 1 (344e, 352d) and 10 (618b–c) of the Republic – “What is the most choiceworthy life for a human being” – is “the best place for moral philosophy to start”: “Philosophy starts from questions that, on any view of it, it can and should ask, about the chances we have of finding out how best to live; in the course of that, it comes to see how it itself may help, with discursive methods of analysis and argument, critical discontent, and an imaginative comparison of possibilities, which are what it most characteristically tries to

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add to our ordinary resources of historical and personal knowledge.” Bernard Williams, “Socrates’ Question,” in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 1–21, at 3. For modern Western political theorists, such as John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, the initial question is much more narrowly framed and much more susceptible of certain and even formulaic (as opposed to discursive) answers. For Habermas, “[I]n general, moral philosophers and political theorists have felt that their task is to provide a convincing substitute for traditional justifications of norms and principles.” Jürgen Habermas, Inclusion of the Other (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 79. Habermas goes on to argue that this question is made more complex by the increasingly “plural” character of the modern world, but that it is nevertheless open to the neo-Kantian solution he provides. I suggest the following as a Confucian reflection on the place of interpretation in the education of a good human being or exemplary person (junzi): “Confucius said, ‘One who does not understand fate (ming) lacks the means to become a gentleman (junzi). One who does not understand ritual (li) lacks the means to take his place. One who does not understand words lacks the means to evaluate others.’” Confucius, Analects, trans. Edward Slingerland (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003), 20:3. One might add 17:2, in the same translation: “By nature (xing) people are similar; they diverge as the result of practice (xi).” Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Geoffrey Harpham puts it thus: “any assessment of meaning must include an account of intention, even if intention can never be determined with perfect accuracy nor precision.” Harpham, What Do You Think, Mr. Ramirez? The American Revolution in Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 149. This is a central element of Harpham’s argument that the practice of text interpretation is essential to the goal of educating democratic citizens. Aristotle’s helpful term for the developed capacity that marks the excellence of humanity as a biological species is prohairesis (Nicomachean Ethics, Book 6, 1139b4–5), a capacity for blending mature emotion (moral virtue) and judgment (practical wisdom) well. On prohairesis, often misleadingly translated as “choice,” see my “Aristotelian Phronêsis,” in MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, 38–39, and especially Jill Frank, A Democracy of Distinction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 32–38. See David Wong, Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), for a defense of “appropriate ambivalence” in the sense used here. This is especially important in comparative political philosophy today. I have discussed the importance of the capabilities framework developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum on the question of precision and accuracy in my “Precision versus Accuracy: The Capabilities Framework as a Challenge to Contemporary Social Science,” The Good Society 9 (1999): 36–40. Sen, as an economist, is especially important for his Aristotelian insistence that an excess of precision can lead to a decrease in accuracy.

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33. I have focused on the undergraduate classroom because I think it is the key space of liberal education, but I believe my point can be extended to the question of graduate instruction. To begin with, graduate teachers and students could recognize that graduate education aims at training good practitioners of both theory and pedagogy, to see that good undergraduate teaching is not simply applied or watered-down theorizing, and to avoid the tendency of the theorists of pedagogy to replace discursive reflection on the meaning of our teaching with precise algorithms derived from the currently expanding project of educational theory. A recent study in line with this view is Leonard Cassuto, The Graduate School Mess: What Caused It and How We Can Fix It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 34. Two excellent resources for thinking through the connections between political theory, philosophy, and the humanities as a whole are the essays by Ruth W. Grant, “Political Theory, Political Science, and Politics,” Political Theory 30, no. 4 (August 2002): 577–595, and by Bernard Williams, “Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline,” in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 180–199. Grant and Williams, in quite different ways, recognize the importance of modern natural and social science but argue that philosophy and political theory and the humanities in general should be understood as distinct from science, something denied, in different ways, by scientifically inclined analytic philosophers and practitioners of the digital humanities, who argue that rigor and disciplinary respectability can be achieved only insofar as the humanities become sciences, as well as by many recent postmodernists, who deny any distinction between the humanities and the sciences. How to draw the line between science and the humanities is the central question. Grant proposes that work in the humanities is distinct from work in the sciences in three ways: it is historical (Grant says “conservative,” but by that she does not mean that work in the humanities is supportive of the political status quo) rather than presentist; it is critical and evaluative rather than value-free and predictive; and it is productive or action-guiding rather than complete in itself. 35. Roth, Beyond the University, 182–183. Roth’s point is reminiscent of Plato’s Socrates’ assertion (Phaedo 89c–90d) that the greatest of evils that can happen to a human being is misology, the hatred of logoi or discourses, that occurs when someone becomes convinced that arguments they have previously accepted are false and concludes from this that all arguments are therefore false. This, for Plato’s Socrates, is an evil because without a willingness to listen and respond to texts we can never live an examined life. 36. “Hannah Arendt on Hannah Arendt,” in Melvyn A. Hill, ed., Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), 301–339, at 309. Arendt’s resistance to the Frankfurt School is based on her view that, while its leaders (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse et al.) stress self-critique, they do so on the basis of overly deterministic theoretical frames, mostly revised versions of Freudian psychoanalysis and/or Marxist historicism. 37. The term “modern West” is a pleonasm. The West has no existence prior to its construction in Western Europe starting in the sixteenth and seventeenth

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centuries. It is a conceptual phenomenon that displaces Christendom, just as Christendom once displaced the ancient Hellenic and Roman worlds. There is nothing, contra Hegel, Marx, and various liberal forms of Western progressivism, necessary or fated about these successive displacements. On the character of “China” as historical entity and as aspirational concept, see Youngmin Kim, A History of Chinese Political Thought (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), 4–5: “In a sense, what has been very much a reality is not China in itself but the quest for political identity under the rubric of China, which binds successive dynasties into an integrated whole.” “The West” is very much like that, except that it is a relatively recent construction, one that attempts to provide itself with a history by describing itself as the successor to the ancient Hellenic world, the ancient Roman world, and European Christendom. Unlike the case of China, none of these earlier European endoxa called themselves the West. Calling Plato and Aristotle “Western” philosophers is thus profoundly misleading, though they are plausibly “preWestern” – that is, they are identified by the constructors of the modern West as members of a culture out of which the West necessarily emerged, an assertion that is, absent historicist assumptions, surely open to question. MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, 71–72. Alasdair MacIntyre, “Questions for Confucians,” in Kwong-loi Shun and David B. Wong, eds., Confucian Ethics: A Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 203–218, at 203. For MacIntyre (as for El Amine), it goes without saying that those comparisons need to be both cultural and temporal. Contrast this account of the goal of teaching with Habermas’s neo-Kantian account of the two things that “professors” do. Undergraduate teaching and the practice of liberal education, unsurprisingly, is not one of them: “Professors are, of course, not only scholars who are concerned with publicpolitical issues from the viewpoint of an academic observer. They are also participating citizens [italics in text]. And on occasion they also take an active part in the political life of their country as intellectuals.” Jürgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion, trans. Ciarin Cronin (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 22. One intriguing and practicable educational reform that might help with us think about this is proposed by Cassuto, The Graduate School Mess, who argues that all graduate students, especially but not only in the humanities, should be required to do coursework in the history of higher education, taught by faculty across the university, and that the goal of this history should be to develop the capacity to articulate an ethic for higher education that includes disciplinary specialization but subordinates that goal to the practice and promotion of liberal education more broadly understood: “The need for a new higher-education ethic is greater than it has been in years – and we’re all part of it. It’s time for us to own our own academic responsibility and teach our way out of the mess we’re in” (238).

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10 Teaching Philosophy and Political Thought in Southeast Asia Terry Nardin

10.1 introduction In this chapter I share some conclusions about deparochializing political theory based on my experience teaching outside the United States – in other words, on the periphery of where much of the writing on comparative political theory has so far been done. My aim is to challenge some common assumptions underlying the project of comparative political theory and to bring out the connection between that project and liberal education in ways that suggest how each might be improved. I’ll begin by contrasting my experience with that described by Stephen Salkever in the preceding chapter. Though our experiences differ, we agree on many things and especially that engaging with texts from different civilizations is important for liberal education. By exposing us to new ideas, including some that may seem not only strange but wrongheaded or incomprehensible, this engagement contributes to the broader understanding and deeper self-understanding that defines the enlightened mind. This does not mean that foreign ideas are superior to or even different from our own, nor that understanding them implies agreement. But without the encounter, how would we know? Although each of us teaches in a liberal arts college, Stephen’s is in the United States and mine is in Singapore. Most of the students at his institution, Bryn Mawr, are Americans; most of those at mine, Yale-NUS, are from Singapore or other countries in Asia. In Singapore, English is the I’m grateful to Melissa Williams, Luke O’Sullivan, Haig Patapan, Bryan Van Norden, Matthew Walker, and Quentin Skinner for helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.

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language of government, education, and much of the media and is widely spoken. But Singaporean society is multicultural: it is religiously as well as ethnically diverse, and most of its inhabitants are multilingual. Though the majority are Chinese, there are substantial Indian and Malay minorities as well as people from other parts of Asia and beyond. One thing an American new to Singapore might notice is that norms of civility and deference differ from those that prevail in the United States. Singaporean students are typically well-prepared and articulate but are also often reserved in interacting with their teachers. For this reason, classroom discussion can be livelier when students are leading it. Faculty learn to take advantage of these differences by giving students more responsibility. In short, the Asian environment can help to deparochialize one’s approach to teaching, wholly apart from the content of what one is teaching. Stephen and I also teach different kinds of courses. Those he mentions are mostly political science electives on ancient Greek and Chinese political thought. Mine is a required course that includes modern as well as ancient works, works from India as well as China and Europe, and works in different areas of philosophy beyond political philosophy. It is one of several courses constituting a common curriculum that accounts for about a third of the credits for the Bachelor of Arts. All students entering the College take this yearlong course – “Philosophy and Political Thought” (hereafter, PPT) – together with required common courses on literature and the arts, social institutions, and quantitative reasoning, and they continue with additional courses on scientific inquiry, modern social thought, and historical inquiry. Teaching political theory in this context means teaching the subject to every student, not just to those who have chosen to study it. All PPT students attend the same weekly lecture. Most of the teaching, however, occurs in biweekly seminars of eighteen students, each led by a member of the teaching team. That team comprises ten or twelve faculty members and includes specialists in many of the traditions and periods on which the course touches. As part of a team, they teach one another as well as their students. This opportunity to learn from colleagues makes it easier to teach things outside one’s area of expertise. But more importantly, it shifts the identity of the university teacher away from being a dispenser of knowledge toward being a participant in a community of learning. It not only narrows the gap between teachers and students, even if just a little, but also enables faculty to encourage students, by their example, to be intellectually adventurous. Though courses in political theory routinely embed the discussion of politics within a broader exploration of philosophical questions, a case

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can be made for reading political texts together with those that on the surface have little to do with politics. From the standpoint of a concern with political thought, this might be seen as wasted time, but the advantage is that there is more intellectual context for the political texts that do get read. The line separating political from other concerns is in any case often hard to discern – a point that Stephen emphasizes in his writing on this subject.1 Most major works of political thought take up questions of logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics in addition to questions about politics. In reading such works, the separation implied by these labels would be hard to maintain even if one wanted to maintain it. But inquiry in a course that is defined as being about politics is fenced off in ways that can hinder those involved from wandering away from political topics. It is easier in that context to overlook parts of a work that appear to be about other matters, such as the discussion of private right in Kant’s Rechtslehre, but that are in fact highly relevant to politics. Treating these works as philosophical encourages us to read them with fewer preconceptions. By taking a more broadly philosophical approach, one is able to read works on education or metaphysics, such as Ibn Tufayl’s philosophical novel Hayy Ibn Yaqzā n or the Categorized Conversations of Zhu Xi, for insight into the worldviews of peoples whose politics one would like to understand.2 Combining the study of political writings with writings on other philosophical topics encourages one to cross intellectual boundaries that can limit the study of political thought.

10.2 the course The first semester of PPT considers works by ancient thinkers in China, the Greek and Roman Mediterranean, and India, with four or five weeks for each civilization. A recent iteration of the course begins with a few passages from the Analects of Kongzi (Confucius) and lengthier selections from works attributed to four other Chinese thinkers of the classical period: Mozi, Mengzi (Mencius), Xunzi, and Zhuangzi.3 It then takes up one or two Platonic dialogues and parts of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, followed by selections from works by several Pythagorean women philosophers, a Stoic text such as the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and something by Epicurus.4 The final weeks are devoted to the Bhagavad Gita, along with passages from commentaries on it, and to a selection of related writings on the concept of identity and the existence of the self.5 Even when their focus is elsewhere, these texts address questions that are considered in classic works on politics. These

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include the relationship between nature and custom, whether there is a moral duty to obey the law, the difference between a political community and other kinds of communities, the best constitution for a state, the nature and circumstances of women, and the tension between collective loyalties and moral duties in waging war. The course continues in its second semester with more recent works that discuss many of the same questions explored in the first: What can we know and how can we know it? How is knowing related to acting and in particular to acting well? What is the relationship of morality to natural or divine order, custom, utility, or reasoning from first principles? What is a state and what is its proper end? What is the relation between governing and the rights of the governed? These questions are explored in a selection of Chinese, Indian, and European writings from the last millennium. Besides the works by Ibn Tufayl and Zhu Xi already mentioned, students read Ś ā ntideva’s Bodhicaryā vatā ra, an eighth-century meditation manual for Buddhist monks, Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, and selections from a seventeenth-century Indian text on inference.6 These works problematize what we mean by thinking or reasoning, inviting students to reflect on deduction and induction, the difference between logic and psychology, and contexts of reasoning such as the rules of fair debate. The course also considers a number of explicitly political works, including Hobbes’s Leviathan; Huang Zongxi’s Waiting for the Dawn, a critical examination of Ming dynasty imperial institutions from the standpoint of a civil servant; Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, with its provocative discussion of the connection between collective and personal independence; and selections from twentieth-century Chinese works that consider ways of reconciling Confucian tradition with European political ideas and institutions. The course ends with Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals and an essay by Hannah Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” that grew out of her reporting on the Eichmann trial.7 The works assigned change from year to year (instead of Hobbes, for example, we might read Locke, Hume, Rousseau, or J. S. Mill, and a sixteenth-century Venetian author, Lucrezia Marinella, was recently added to the syllabus), but those mentioned are illustrative.8 As they study these writings, students are also reading classic and contemporary works of literature, science, and social science in other common curriculum courses. These include two epics, the Rā mā yana and the Odyssey, and works by Herodotus, Sima Qian, Shakespeare, and a variety of modern and contemporary works, including Sonny Liew’s graphic novel sketching a history of Singapore’s one-party state.9

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Many of these works connect with themes considered in PPT and could have been included among its readings. One aim of the common curriculum is to make such connections. Kongzi’s words on the moral importance of precision in language, which students encounter at the beginning of the course, resonate with Arendt’s remarks on the relationship between language and truth in politics that they read at the end.10 Other examples could be provided. Students in the common curriculum courses are especially well placed to make these connections, for, in contrast to their teachers, they participate not just in one or two but in all of them. With this sketch of PPT as background, I’d like to discuss three distinctions that seem less convincing to me now than they did before I started teaching it. These are the distinctions between Western and non-Western political thought, canonical and non-canonical authors or texts, and the comparative and (for want of a better word) non-comparative study of political ideas. These familiar dichotomies are not as simple as they are often taken to be. In fact, because they resolve under examination into complex aggregates of cultural elements, they are not actually dichotomies at all. And without them, familiar assumptions about both political theorizing and liberal education become intellectually bankrupt.

10.3 western vs non-western thought The Western/non-Western distinction has been criticized for privileging the West and throwing everything else into a residual category. One might also object that the identity of the West is itself problematic because of its vast geographical, temporal, and cultural scope (especially if we include the ancient Mediterranean world) as well as the many changes it has undergone. The same might be said about Asia or, within Asia, what is now called India. The political desire to find ancient foundations for present communities, actual or imagined, can result in exaggerating their continuity. But delineating boundaries or specifying criteria of differentiation is, as philosophers know, a problem in specifying the identity of anything. Students in PPT encounter the problem of identity most directly as a question about the existence of an individual self. In one of our texts, King Milinda engages the Buddhist sage Nā gasena on whether a thing (such as the King’s chariot) having parts (such as wheels, axle, frame, and yoke) is an entity distinct from those parts.11 They go on to consider whether the flame of a lamp that burns throughout the night is the same flame at dawn as it was at dusk, whether an adult is the same person as the

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infant that preceded it, and whether a self can persist from one life to another. That there is such a thing as a distinct and identifiable self is challenged in other Buddhist texts that explain what we call the self as a manifestation of the continuity in time of bundles of connected physical and mental events. The deeper ground on which the authors of these texts challenge the idea of personal identity – which is roughly that the existence of everything depends, conceptually as well as causally, on the existence of everything else – applies not only to personal identity but to the identity of anything at all. Students in PPT also engage with spirited refutations of these arguments by thinkers of the Nyā ya (“logic”) school who defend the perceptual and inferential evidence supporting claims that the self exists. And what applies to identity also applies to change. Plutarch mentions the ship of Theseus, the parts of which were replaced one after the other, and asks whether it remained the same ship once every part had been replaced. Similar puzzles appear in Greek thought as early as Heraclitus and are put to political use by Aristotle when he considers whether the identity of a city must be said to change as new citizens are born and old ones depart.12 It would seem, then, that the idea of identity is inherently perplexing and that the identity of a civilization must therefore also be perplexing.13 Another problem with the label “Western” is that it is sometimes a euphemism for “European” that obscures the fact that the rise of the West meant bringing much of the world under the rule of Europeans. If from one angle it looks misleading to identify the societies of Australia, South Africa, or the Americas as European, from another this is indeed what to a certain extent they have become, more in some places, less in others, as a consequence of the suppression of Indigenous cultures and the extermination of Indigenous peoples. There may be good reasons for substituting “Western” for “European,” but in the context of comparative political theory it is perhaps best to acknowledge that the project has been to move beyond thinkers, texts, and problems that are the products of European states or settler colonies and their successors outside geographical Europe. This is for many a political project as well as an intellectual one. Discussions of comparative political thought have therefore considered how to make not only inquiry into the history of political thought but also prescriptive political theorizing less Eurocentric. If our concern is with the history of political thought, the argument is that we should study texts from all parts of the world because they are part of that history. And to do this properly, we need to understand the traditions in which these texts are

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embedded and the vocabularies on which they draw. If, however, our concern is with making prescriptive arguments about politics, we need to grasp the circumstances to which the considerations we identify are supposed to apply, and this means taking account of local concerns. Both concerns have led to arguments for “recentering” political theory away from its presumed Western center, but because this might be taken to imply the existence of a new center – in Asia rather than in Europe, for example – it might be better to speak of “decentering” political theory, which suggests more clearly that there is no primary geographical or cultural location for political theorizing but rather a plurality of locations.14 We can characterize this enterprise as one of deparochializing political theory, but that expression might be taken to imply that European political thinking is somehow more insular, narrow-minded, or illiberal than political thinking in other parts of the world. Indeed, if modernization is partly the result of European ideas and institutions having found their way around the globe, the choice to “parochialize” (or “provincialize”15) Europe – that is, to view its ideas and institutions as local rather than universal – might result in misunderstanding the character of modernity.16 Be that as it may, what these various expressions seek to convey, despite their different connotations, is that political theory should not be confined to European experience or ideas. PPT draws most of its non-European texts from China and India. Students sometimes question the implied principle of selection, asking, for example, why the course does not include works by African or Latin American authors. The implicit answer to this question is that Asian traditions are the right place to begin in Southeast Asia because they are part of the cultural inheritance of people in this region. This, however, does not answer another of their questions, which is why we do not include more specifically Southeast Asian material. These questions are good ones because they invite us to think again about how our texts are selected. There is, of course, no one principle of selection, which is why we not only resist thinking of the course as one built around the study of “great books” but also resist any general statement of why the works we read are especially suitable to be included in the syllabus. We choose texts for a variety of reasons, including, besides intellectual content, their suitability in helping students to become aware of generic conventions (such as aphorism, dialogue, meditation, or demonstration) and to improve their skills in reading, interpretation, analysis, and argument. A perhaps surprising aspect of our tricentric organization is that Islamic thought looks more Western than “Oriental.” At an early stage, the Muslim world extended beyond the Arabian Peninsula to enclose the

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Mediterranean and, like ancient Greece and Rome, contributing to European history. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity can, from one angle, be seen as rival sects within a shared monotheistic system. Medieval Muslim philosophers – including Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, and Averroes – studied Greek philosophy and considered its implications for Islam.17 Ibn Tufayl lived in Muslim Spain. Since there are large Muslim populations in South and Southeast Asia, we are left wondering whether Islam might figure in a course like PPT as Western or Asian.18 Other ways of organizing a course on comparative political thought are possible if one thinks not of places (“The Middle East”) but of peoples (such as “Arabs” or “Iranians”). Michael Oakeshott did this in his lectures at the London School of Economics in the 1960s, giving equal time to the political ideas of four distinguishable peoples: Greeks, Romans, medieval Christians, and Modern Europeans.19 In each case he started with their worldview, moved on to their political practices and institutions, and only then turned to their political theories. Although Greece and Rome are usually treated together as the locus of ancient or classical political thought, Oakeshott goes to some lengths to distinguish them. While acknowledging that Roman intellectual life was shaped by the study of Greek literature and Roman philosophical works were commonly written in Greek, he emphasizes the plurality of the Greek world and the unity of the Roman, the cyclical character of Greek historical understanding and the progressive character of the Roman story starting from a moment of founding and projected into an eternal future. There are other differences, and all can be contested: the point is not that Oakeshott was right but rather that he provoked his students to reconsider the category of classical thought that Europeans of his era did not often question. If one looks beyond Europe, Oakeshott’s scheme provides an illuminating way to approach the political experience and ideas of other peoples: the Chinese, perhaps, but also other historic communities.20 It invites us to question how far the category of people or nation overlaps that of religion: it seems that the biblical Hebrews or the earliest followers of the Prophet were a distinct people, but what about Jews or Muslims in later eras? Christians seem to have become a distinct people as Rome gave way to Christendom and to have ceased to be a people as Christianity spread and diversified. Similar points might be made about Hinduism or Buddhism. Here again we confront problems of identity. If comparative political thought means comparing the ideas of different peoples, one cannot escape the difficult question of how to identify those peoples.

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Certainly, one can no longer be satisfied by the answer that there are only two, Westerners and Others.

10.4 canonical vs noncanonical texts Because a work can be a classic in one literature and unknown in another, a course that draws on several traditions problematizes the distinction between canonical and noncanonical works. Huang Zongxi’s study of the abuses of Ming imperial government, written around the same time as Hobbes’s Leviathan, is likely to escape the attention of students of European political thought but is a Chinese classic. Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzā n, written as a response to Al-Ghazali’s The Incoherence of the Philosophers, investigates themes that resonate with, and may even have influenced, Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding and Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality.21 Though it is a classic of Arabic literature and was known to European philosophers in the age of Orientalism, most readers of these works today are unlikely to have heard of it. A course like PPT challenges conventional ideas about the political theory canon in several ways. First, it makes clear that there is more than one canon. It is helpful here to recall the theological origins of the idea of a canonical text. The Greek Tanakh (the Christian Old Testament) includes books that are not present in the Hebrew. This division is replicated in differences between the Latin Vulgate, recognized by Roman Catholics, and the Protestant version, which is based on the Hebrew and excludes books found only in the Greek (the Apocrypha). Still other books, the Pseudepigrapha, were excluded from both the Greek and the Hebrew canons.22 This conception of a canon has all but disappeared in the field of intellectual history, except as an object of study, though it hangs on in education in the idea that there are works “every educated person should read.” It can be illuminating to learn what these works are in a particular tradition or syllabus. The writings of Mengzi and Zhu Xi do not appear in Eurocentric catalogues of philosophical classics and, in many Anglophone philosophy departments, the history of philosophy still means the history of European philosophy. Despite decades of talk in the field of political theory about getting beyond the familiar instructional canon, the main result until recently has been to revive previously neglected European works. The Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, for example, was in its original conception entirely Eurocentric: largely a collection of canonical European and American provenance that included no works from other traditions.23

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Such exclusions are sometimes defended with the argument that Indian or Chinese philosophy is not really philosophy – that is, philosophy in the European sense. But this looks suspiciously like a rearguard effort to defend the indefensible. Given the diversity of philosophy over many millennia and the importance in Chinese and Indian thought of questions about nature and custom, substance and form, concepts and categories, inference and explanation, virtues and duties, and other recurrent concerns of “real” philosophy, it is implausible to insist, as many still do, that what is called philosophy in Anglo-American philosophy departments is the only way of handling such questions that counts as philosophy. If Chinese and Indian thought are “area studies” rather than philosophy, the same might be said of Anglo-American philosophy.24 As new philosophy departments are established in universities in different parts of the world, one can expect that more attention will be given to philosophical thinking in a diversity of traditions, with the result that philosophy as an academic discipline might eventually become broader and more diverse. As an advocate for globalizing philosophy put it recently, optimistically as well as polemically, “philosophers within the largely Anglophone international academy are beginning to acknowledge . . . that their control over the academy is a fallout from colonialism rather than a reflection of intellectual superiority.”25 The present volume and the literature on which it draws provide evidence of similar stirrings in the field of political theory. A second way that a course like PPT can challenge conventional understandings of the canon is by providing opportunities to reflect on different kinds of discourse within a tradition. Texts may be seen as important and therefore as canonical if they are explanatory rather than merely prescriptive or hortatory, for example. It is their explanatory character and sophistication that makes them “theoretical” and intellectually important. But a text that is not theoretical in this sense might be hugely influential, or it might be interesting for other reasons, such as that it illustrates a certain way of thinking about a question. Intellectual historians sometimes speak of languages of political thought, such as natural law, liberalism, or political realism, that structure debates within a tradition.26 They invite us to pay attention to the vocabularies that distinguish particular languages as well as to what these vocabularies are being used to say. In a way, this is just a more self-conscious and erudite version of the practice of grouping thinkers into “schools.” But when we ask what distinguishes a school of thought or a language of discourse we are again enmeshed in questions of identity. We realize that

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political discussion occurs in different styles and at different levels and that we need to pay attention to the contexts in which the discussion takes place. But we do not confuse this with doing intellectual history because, in teaching novices, our definition of context is relaxed. We teach students to play one text against another as a way of comprehending those texts and assessing the arguments they contain. A course like PPT is not an introduction to philosophy or political theory, in the sense that it is designed to prepare beginning students for advanced work in those fields, but rather an opportunity for students who will go on to study different fields to think about ideas, puzzles, and disagreements that have occupied thinkers in different times and places. Third, reading works of political philosophy along with works in other branches of philosophy reminds us that each branch has its own list of canonical texts and that many texts appear on more than one list. PPT provocatively blurs the line between philosophical and political questions. How do we know that the text we are discussing is a “political” one? The answer is that we don’t, but also that we should not worry too much about it: it is a question we might want students to think about. Studying debates that seem plainly political together with those that appear to be about something other than politics serves this end. Political philosophy is continuous with other branches of philosophy, so even though we can identify different kinds of discourse there are intellectual advantages in not rigidly distinguishing between political and nonpolitical theorizing. Finally, a course like PPT can challenge conventional assumptions about the canon by fostering caution in embracing the moral lessons that canonical works are supposed, in some of the celebratory rhetoric of liberal education, to convey. In PPT, we are teaching questions and arguments, not conclusions. And, like others involved in what is depressingly called “general education,” we are teaching novices to read carefully, to make sound arguments, to write clearly and concisely, and so on through a familiar list of skills that contribute, along with the ideas in connection with which they are practiced, to the character of an educated mind. We want students to acquire certain intellectual virtues, but we must distinguish this from wanting them to share our extraneous moral or political views.

10.5 comparative vs noncomparative political thought A problem with framing the study of political ideas from different cultural traditions as an exercise in comparative inquiry is that the word

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“comparative” has connotations one might prefer not to embrace. One of these is that the purpose of comparison is to generalize and explain. Nineteenth-century scholars assembled information about mythology, religion, law, and government and, with this as a foundation, attempted to build comprehensive theories that could account for the beliefs of different peoples in relation to their economic or social institutions.27 Such inquiries yielded typologies based on empirical classification (on the analogy of “natural history”), but the grand theories they generated were seldom convincing. Comparative politics, as a field within the discipline of political science, emerged during the twentieth century from inquiries of this kind, refining their methods but not questioning the premise that empirical studies could produce scientific generalizations about ideas and their causes. There are still philosophers and social scientists who think that ideas can be explained in this manner, but the program of transforming historical inquiries into scientific ones cannot be said to have advanced significantly beyond its positivist origins. Another approach to comparing ideas is ecumenical and dialogic. As cultivated in religious communities, it aims to foster understanding between adherents of different faiths by uncovering or creating shared beliefs for the sake of doctrinal truth or civil peace.28 Having spread beyond religion, the ecumenical approach has found its way into the literature on comparative ethics and political thought, where it is advocated as a way to identify if not universal at least shared principles. And because the approach is implicitly if not actually dialogic, it is often thought to support a democratic politics. Hence the connection theorists sometimes make between comparative political theory and deliberative democracy.29 One problem with ecumenism, however, is that it looks for similarities rather than differences. This puts it at odds with what should be one of the aims of comparative inquiry, equally important in teaching and research, which is to question beliefs and the presuppositions underlying them by identifying points of disagreement. An advantage of understanding the project of broadening the canon as an exercise in deparochializing political theory rather than a comparative one is that it avoids the commitment to dialogue and shared values that often attends comparative political theorizing. “Nonparochial” theories need not be universal or ecumenical. Deparochializing political theory can mean trying to understand other views, realizing that what some think is universal is in some sense local and granting that the local might have a claim to more generality than is ordinarily acknowledged. In this way, one can use other views to problematize one’s own. It is this

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opportunity to learn from differences, rather than agreed moral conclusions, that we often look for in teaching political theory. An important aim of comparative political thought, as that expression has come to be used, is to study texts from different cultural traditions and therefore to make a wider range of ideas available to political theorists. But we don’t need the word “comparative” for this because reading those works, understanding their ideas, and engaging with their arguments does not necessarily involve comparing them, either with works from one’s own tradition or with one another. An expanded syllabus of political texts does not require explicit comparison across traditions. Conversely, we can compare texts or their arguments within a tradition as well as across traditions. But philosophers or political theorists don’t usually label the former activity “comparative.” This raises the interesting question of why reading English and French novels together counts as “comparative literature” but reading English and French philosophical texts together in a course on modern philosophy is just “philosophy” and not “comparative philosophy.” It would be equally odd to call a conventional course in modern political thought – one that included works by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, and Marx – a course in comparative political thought, even though these authors wrote in different languages and were embedded in different intellectual traditions.30 Reading several texts together, we are likely to compare them with one another. We can even compare the works of a single author with one another, reading Leviathan in the light of De Cive or vice versa, for example, or comparing different editions of Leviathan. We can compare texts across time (ancient, modern), languages (Hindi, Tamil), and ideological discourses (liberal, republican), as well as across civilizations. It is arbitrary to identify comparative political thought with only the last of these. One of the lessons of teaching a course like PPT, which includes works from India and China as well as Europe, is that one can take each work on its own, without imagining oneself to be involved in a comparative project. Understanding is aided by comparison, but it does not require a specific kind of comparison, such as comparison across civilizations. The comparisons we make when reading texts from a civilization other than our own are not necessarily of a different order than those we make in studying texts written within a particular tradition or civilization. The question might be simply: “Here are some similarities or differences – what can we make of them?” If one draws upon texts from a broader archive, it is easier to distance oneself from one’s own way of thinking and perhaps to uncover its hidden premises. And this can lead beyond comparison to

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engagement – to seeing that how other people think could make a difference for one’s own thinking.31 Deparochializing political thought, then, need not involve explicit or systematic comparison. It simply requires reading texts from different authors writing in different traditions, trying to make sense of the questions they are asking, and responding to the answers they come up with. One can read a text in relation to other texts simply as one way, tentative and perhaps soon transcended, of getting a handle on new ideas or arguments. What the experience of teaching PPT has underscored for me is that learning is enriched by bringing a wider range of traditions into the discussion and that the bar to entry is lower than I had imagined. One struggles at first, but having to explain things one barely understands is a great motivator for learning. The enterprise of using ideas in one text to question those of another is especially appropriate in the context of liberal education, where the focus is on appreciating different ways of understanding experience.

10.6 conclusions A course that draws on different traditions indirectly addresses disagreements about canons, contexts, periodization, relevance, translations, and expertise. In doing so, it invites teachers as well as students to improve their understanding of an intellectual inheritance that is neither fixed nor venerated. But it cannot avoid selecting from that inheritance, and PPT does this by drawing on both Asian and European works and presenting them in a roughly chronological order. The course might therefore be seen as emphasizing a distinction between ancient and modern philosophy, at least as one to reflect upon. I agree with Stephen Salkever that, because we inhabit a cultural world that differs from that of the ancient Greeks, thinking about these differences provides a way of identifying and criticizing our assumptions about politics. But even if we think of the ancient Greeks as the ancestors of modernity everywhere, arguing, as some do, that modernity is Western and therefore in its origins Greek, there is an argument for rethinking the distinction between modern and premodern societies, and the character and limits of modern politics, by considering ideas from ancient India and ancient China as well.32 In the context of liberal education, broadening the scope of political theory is important for this reason, not as a way of changing either disciplinary scholarship or political practice. And it has implications for teachers because a broader view of their subject puts them in the role of

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learners. It demands a certain epistemic humility to teach new things. It requires teachers to think outside their professional and intellectual comfort zones. It calls for a disposition that is more tentative, less in need of closure, than that of the research scholar. It makes room for the amateur as well as for the expert while also inviting the amateur to aspire to, and perhaps eventually cultivate, expertise. The need to learn new languages and to acquire knowledge of unfamiliar historical contexts can be barriers to learning. But they are not barriers we should erect against teachers any more than against students. If the goal is to deparochialize political theory, we want teachers as well as students who may know little of intellectual traditions beyond their own to begin finding their way around in them. We want students to be free to approach unfamiliar texts, at least sometimes, in relation to their own problems and concerns, thereby initiating a conversation with the authors of those texts that can enrich their imaginations. We also want them to discern and question the received beliefs that shape their current mental world – the presuppositions and prejudices that make thinking possible but also limit it. When we do this, we deparochialize not just the study of philosophy and political thought but liberal education itself. Another thing I’ve learned, less from teaching PPT than from being in Singapore, is that living outside one’s native country can alter one’s understanding of politics by providing opportunities to see how things can work differently. With that knowledge, one has additional resources for questioning the ideas and institutions of one’s own country. One might wonder whether liberal education, to which studying political thought contributes, looks different in Southeast Asia, where democracy does not have the presumptive legitimacy it has in North America. Liberal education is often defined as education for democratic citizenship. If that rationale doesn’t have the same traction in the region that it might have elsewhere, what alternative rationales do have persuasive force? One answer, I think, is that people in many of these countries value democratic citizenship even if they are not always able to enjoy it, just as there are people with little use for democracy, along with others who are repressed, even in supposedly more democratic countries. Students in Singapore are willing to hear criticism of their government. Limits on political freedom – it might be more accurate to say different limits on the exercise of political freedom – do not affect what or how we teach. As in other countries, the “civics” that students learn in primary and secondary school provides a starting point for the more critical scrutiny of political ideas and arguments that distinguishes university education. Deparochializing political theory, then, can be helped along by

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deparochializing the political theorist, and teaching it in a different country is one way to further that project.

notes 1. Besides Salkever’s contribution to this volume, see Stephen G. Salkever and Michael Nylan, “Comparative Political Philosophy and Liberal Education: ‘Looking for Friends in History’,” PS: Political Science and Politics 27, no. 1 (1994): 238–247. 2. Ibn Tufayl, Hayy Ibn Yaqzā n, trans. Lenn Evan Goodman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Zhu Xi, selections from Categorized Conversations, in Justin Tiwald and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds., Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014), 168–184. Given the Sufi context of the first and the qi/li metaphysics of the second, these works are effective in provoking students to think about what genuine knowledge is and whether it is best acquired through meditation, faith, experience, or scientific inquiry. 3. All are in Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2005). 4. For Plato, we read versions of Meno and Crito in Plato, Five Dialogues, trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), and a brief passage from the Republic on women as guardians (bk. 5: 451c–457c). For Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross, rev. Lesley Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), and the Politics, 2nd ed., trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). Translations of the Pythagorean texts can be found in A History of Women Philosophers, vol. 1, Ancient Women Philosophers, ed. Mary Ellen Waithe (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), chs. 2 and 3. We also read selections from Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays (New York: Modern Library, 2003), and Epicurus, The Epicurus Reader, trans. Brad Inwood and Lloyd P. Gerson (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994). 5. The Bhagavad Gita, trans. Gavin Flood and Charles Martin (New York: W. W. Norton, 2015); Ś ankara, Bhagavad Gī tā Bhā sya, ̣ trans. A. G. K. Warrier (Madras: Ś ri Ramakrishna Math, 1983); Rā mā nuja, Gī tā Bhā sya, trans. ̣ Adidevā nanda (Madras: Ś ri Ramakrishna Math, 1978); Milinda’s Questions, trans. I. B. Horner (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1996); and Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakoś abhā sya, Vā tsyā yana, Nyā ya Bhā ṣya on Nyā yasūtra, and Uddyotakara, Nyā ya Vā rttika, in Matthew T. Kapstein, Reason’s Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001), 347–391. 6. Ś ā ntideva, Bodhicaryā vatā ra, trans. Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy with Selections from the Objections and Replies, 2nd ed., ed. and trans. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017);

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7.

8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

Terry Nardin Annambhatta, Tarkasamgraha or A Primer on Reasoning, selections with commentary, ed. Malcolm Keating (Singapore: Yale-NUS College, 2017). Huang Tsung-Hsi (Huang Zongxi), Waiting for the Dawn: A Plan for the Prince, trans. Wm. Theodore de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Hind Swaraj” and Other Writings, ed. Anthony J. Parel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Hannah Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture,” Social Research 38, no. 3 (1971): 417–446. Lucrezia Marinella, The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men, trans. Anne Dunhill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Sonny Liew, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (New York: Pantheon, 2016). Masha Gessen mentions both Confucius and Arendt in “The Autocrat’s Language,” New York Review of Books, www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/05 /13/the-autocrats-language. Milinda’s Questions, 36–38. Milinda, also known as Menander I, was a Greek ruler of Bactria in Central Asia whose armies conquered northern India around 150 bce and who converted to Buddhism. Politics, bk. 3, ch. 3. Aristotle argued that a city’s constitution (politeia) is its form and its citizens its matter, and that – privileging form over matter – for as long as its constitution persists, the city is the same. Youngmin Kim’s chapter takes up a version of this question – “What is China?” – in relation to writing on the history of Chinese political thought. In her contribution to this volume (see Chapter 3), Leigh Jenco uses the word “recentering” for thinking of political theorizing as going on in multiple and equally important locations rather than in a center in relation to which all else is peripheral – that is, as a synonym for “decentering.” Stephen Angle speaks of what he calls “rooted global philosophy,” by which he means working within a particular tradition while remaining open to ideas from other traditions. Stephen C. Angle, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012), 9. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, new ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Duncan Ivison, in his contribution to this volume (see Chapter 11), discusses alternative conceptions of globalization and what they imply for globalizing the humanities and social sciences curriculum. His conclusion – that engaging with the thought of people living in other times and places is a way of reflecting critically on one’s own beliefs and identity – captures an important criterion of liberal education and one that is more cogent than others that are often put forward, such as that it teaches one to appreciate one’s heritage or to become an effective or ethically responsible global citizen. Joshua Parens and Joseph C. Macfarland, eds., Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 1. According to the Pew Research Center, more than 60 percent of the world’s Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region, with most of the rest living either in

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19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

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the Middle East or Africa; see www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/31/ worlds-muslim-population-more-widespread-than-you-might-think. Michael Oakeshott, Lectures in the History of Political Thought, ed. Terry Nardin and Luke O’Sullivan (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006). The idea of a people, here, is distinct from that of “the people” (in Chinese, Min) as subjects or citizens. On the latter idea in East Asian thought, see Ken Tsutsumibayashi’s Chapter 5 in this volume. G. A. Russell, The “Arabick” Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1994); Samar Attar, The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl’s Influence on Modern Western Thought (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007). Ibn Tufayl, like Hobbes, postulates a distinction between the state of nature and the civil condition, yet the natural situation he imagines is hardly social because there is only one person in it and that person was a wild child, raised by a doe rather than any human being: this invites students to think about whether one can be human without language or about what happens when, as in the story of Robinson Crusoe, a second person enters the state of nature. Samuel Sandmel, The Hebrew Scriptures: An Introduction to Their Literature and Religious Ideas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), 13–17. This important series has now been relaunched to include texts from political traditions around the world. Jay L. Garfield and Bryan W. Van Norden, “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is,” New York Times, The Opinion Pages, May 11, 2016. For a fuller statement of this argument, see Bryan W. Van Norden, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). The argument that philosophy in, say, India or China is not genuine philosophy is all the more puzzling considering that there is no one thing that philosophy has been even if we limit our attention to the West – a point nicely illustrated by Justin E. H. Smith, The Philosopher: A History in Six Types (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). Jonardon Ganeri, “A Manifesto for Re:emergent Philosophy,” Confluence: An Online Journal of World Philosophies 4 (2016): 136, scholarworks.iu.edu /iupjournals/index.php/confluence/article/view/561/66. J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (London: Methuen, 1971); Anthony Pagden, ed., The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). An early example is Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748); a later one, Henry Sumner Maine’s Ancient Law (1861). The ambition to construct a grand cross-cultural synthesis is satirized by George Eliot in Middlemarch in the character of Edward Casaubon, whose perpetually unfinished Key to All Mythologies purported to show how all myths are descended from a common ancient source. The studies of comparative ethics and political thought organized during the past two decades by the Ethikon Institute (ethikon.org) were inspired by the ideals and methods of interfaith dialogue.

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29. “In terms of long-range political vision, comparative political theorizing supports global democratic cooperation over oligarchic or imperial control and dialogical interaction over hegemonic unilateralism and monologue.” Fred Dallmayr, “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 2 (2004): 254. See also Melissa S. Williams and Mark E. Warren, “A Democratic Case for Comparative Political Theory,” Political Theory 42, no. 1 (2014): 26–57. James Tully and Melissa Williams explore the themes of dialogue and deliberative democracy in their respective contributions to this volume. 30. Another way to put this is to say that, because they study texts from different periods and in ways that are sensitive to their cultural contexts, courses on the history of political thought are already comparative. Andrew F. March, “What Is Comparative Political Theory?” Review of Politics 71, no. 4 (2009): 548. 31. Jay L. Garfield, Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 32. One implication of distinguishing between modern and premodern political thought is that, if we define “we” from the standpoint of modernity, “they” are the premoderns rather than those living outside the West. On this point, see Loubna El Amine, “Beyond East and West: Reorienting Political Theory through the Prism of Modernity,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 1 (2016): 102–120. But there is also an argument for continuity between the premodern and modern worlds. See, e.g., the essays in William Bain, ed., The Medieval Foundations of International Relations (New York: Routledge, 2017).

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11 Why Globalize the Curriculum? Duncan Ivison

11.1 introduction Why globalize the curriculum? I want to approach this question both from the perspective of a political theorist and also from that of a dean.1 If that doesn’t cause you to stop reading immediately, then what it means is that I consider not only the underlying questions in political theory but also the ways we might think about curricula in the humanities and social sciences more generally. Let me say immediately that it is now pretty much standard for deans and university presidents to proclaim frequently and loudly that one of the most important ambitions for a truly successful university is to globalize their curriculum and student experience. There is hardly a university strategic plan that does not contain some kind of commitment of this kind. But what does it really mean? I am not so much interested here in the practical issues this raises for faculty and administrators – important as they are – but rather the underlying justifications for why we should globalize our curricula in the first place. Let me first specify what I mean by “globalize.” To globalize a curriculum means at least two things. First, it means to place a course of studies in a wider cultural, historical, political, and geographic context. And second, it means to design a curriculum in such a way that students are not only prepared for lives that will be shaped profoundly by events and processes beyond their immediate borders but also capable of I am grateful to the participants in the original symposium at the University of Victoria where this paper was delivered and especially to Melissa Williams for the invitation to participate and her advice regarding subsequent drafts of this chapter.

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critically reflecting upon their society’s place in the world and the way their actions (both collectively and individually) are bound up with those of others beyond their borders in complex ways. At a very general level then, to globalize a curriculum means to enlarge the frames of reference within which a particular set of topics or course of study – or indeed a canon – is situated, taught, reflected upon, and engaged with. Of course, the concept of “globalization” itself has a specific meaning and history. It is closely linked with processes of modernization and “civilization” that stretch back over many hundreds of years – and very highly contested processes at that. It is also closely linked with more recent discourses of interdependence and the idea of a “shared fate” or common vulnerabilities in light of new global flows and forces. So, as a concept, “globalization” gives rise to a series of particular historical, empirical, and normative resonances. And for this reason any serious attempt to globalize the curriculum – in this general sense – must mean something more than merely expanding the terms of reference within which a topic or canon is set. We might teach Australian or Canadian history now within a more global frame, but that doesn’t mean simply telling the story of Australian colonialism (say) within the wider context of global imperial frameworks. It surely means also placing the very conceptual scheme within which we grasp the meaning of “Australia” or of colonialism into question in various ways. It is this particular idea – or set of ideas – I want to try and explore in more detail in this chapter. We need to presuppose some kind of conceptual scheme within which to locate our conversation about the nature of the question at hand. But if we are genuinely committed to globalizing our curricula, then how do we avoid presupposing exactly that which we are attempting to put into question in the first place? Another related issue I want to consider is whether globalizing a curriculum requires it to become more comparative – especially as between Western and non-Western discourses and traditions or, perhaps more accurately, as between hegemonic and marginalized discourses. In other words, does globalizing the curriculum meaning embracing comparative political theory? In one sense, political theory has always been, at some level, comparative – between different historical epochs, ideologies, methodologies, conceptual schemes, and others. For many years, for example, the idea that the dominant idioms of contemporary normative political theory, and especially liberal political theory, ought to be challenged by and enriched by more marginalized discourses has been at the heart of the “Cambridge School” of the history of political thought. But

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“comparative political theory” has an increasingly specific meaning and an increasingly distinctive set of theoretical and sometimes political commitments.2 Fred Dallmayr, for example, links it to the possibility for a more genuine “universalism,” insofar as it can bring non-Western perspectives to bear on debates about fundamental questions for humanity that have hitherto been missing, thus potentially depriving us of substantial and relevant ethical knowledge.3 More critically, theorists such as James Tully and Roxanne Euben have linked the dominance of Western perspectives in contemporary philosophical debates to the imperial history and structure of global politics.4 Thus, to be unaware of the extent to which “our” perspectives and practices not only exclude those of other cultures and traditions but, in many cases, involve imposing particular normative and practical frameworks upon them – even (perhaps especially) with the best of intentions – is a kind of moral and political failing, and not just an epistemological one. Nothing in this chapter depends on accepting a strong thesis about the relevance and value of comparative political theory as a distinctive subdiscipline in the field. However, ultimately, I believe the justification for taking the history and structure of thinking of non-Western traditions and modes of argument seriously is that they are inevitably addressing fundamental questions about the terms and meaning of social cooperation, an undertaking that is one of the core activities of political theory proper. This means being able to grasp, as far as is possible, the complex nature of those systems of thought and practice – and not simply looking for a Kant in every culture, in Judith Butler’s memorable phrase.5 And it follows that there will likely remain deep moral and normative disagreements and misunderstandings even after extensive engagement, some of which may well be unbridgeable (though that will be a judgment that we may arrive at, not presuppose before setting off). I will argue that there are three potential rationales for globalizing a curriculum. The first involves a kind of negative dialectic. The point of globalizing a curriculum is to challenge students to grasp what is particularly valuable or true about their own culture or civilization. The engagement with the other, in other words, is primarily an exercise of restoring cultural and intellectual confidence in values that are otherwise under attack from the very institutions and people who should be nourishing and defending them. Call this the civilizational rationale. The second rationale has to do with a claim about the purposes of undergraduate education and the need to prepare students for the world in which they will live, which we have already touched upon briefly. Call this the global citizenship

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rationale. The third rationale is a variation on the second but focuses more closely on the nature of the engagement with the other that ought to take place within a curriculum. Here the emphasis is on standing back and putting the very idea of globalizing a curriculum into question in a way that moves the exercise closer to what we might call “deparochializing” or “provincializing” a curriculum. The underlying rationale here might be said to be one that justifies the globalization of our curricula as a means of taking moral disagreement seriously – including what we mean when we refer to the “moral,” as well as the nature of the beliefs and concepts at issue in the encounter between different traditions and worldviews.

11.2 saving the humanities from itself Let me turn to the first rationale, which is essentially a set of arguments for not globalizing the curriculum. In his 2007 lament for the humanities – Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life6 (note the “our” is referring to American universities) – Anthony Kronman spends a considerable amount of time attacking what he sees as the profound danger of the link he draws between diversity, multiculturalism, and “constructivism.” Diversity as a pedagogical value here includes the demand to open up the curriculum to more diverse perspectives and worldviews. In particular, he links this demand in the United States to the history of the civil rights movement and the issue of race. For Kronman, the belief that diversity is a pedagogical value “starts with race and with the claim that race is an important and appropriate criterion for the selection of texts and teaching methods.”7 The underlying rationale has to do with the premise that interpretive judgments are peculiarly responsive to a person’s interests and values. The way we engage with philosophy or literature, therefore, depends on what is of interest and of value to a person, and learning proceeds best when these differences are brought out and conflicts among them made clear. For Kronman, among the dominant determinants to obsess humanities scholars over the last twenty years have been ethnicity, race, and gender. And so, [g]iven the pedagogical value of interpretive diversity and the particularly important role that race, gender and ethnicity play in the formation of a person’s approach to a wide range of interpretive questions, it is educationally . . . imperative . . . that in fields like history and literature teaching materials be chosen . . . with an eye to focusing attention on the ways in which these factors condition a person’s interests and values and hence interpretive points of view.8

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The problem with this approach, argues Kronman, is that ultimately it undermines and weakens the humanities, rather than enlarging and strengthening them. And this is because it becomes interwoven with two other dangerous ideas of our time – multiculturalism and “constructivism” – by which he means relativism. The main reason it does so has to do with the fundamental purpose of a liberal arts education: The humanities give young people the opportunity and encouragement to put themselves – their values and commitments – into a critical perspective. They help students gain some distance, incomplete though it must be, on their younger selves and get some greater traction in the enterprise of living the lives they mean to live and not just those in which they happen by accident to find themselves.9

The more our interests and values are assumed to reflect immutable characteristics we inherit at birth, the less meaningful the pursuit of this freedom is likely to seem. The more a classroom resembles a “gathering of delegates speaking on behalf of the groups they represent,” the less congenial a place it becomes to ask really serious questions about the meaning of life.10 More to the point, embracing radical diversity in the classroom undermines the very possibility of imagining oneself as part of a practice of shared enquiry and common humanity, which are necessary conditions for not just cross-cultural understanding but a “shared investment” in pursuing the deepest and most important questions of value. The belief that interpretive judgments are “fixed” by characteristics like race or gender, and that the purpose of humanities scholarship is to bring these characteristics to light, undermines both of these conditions. Moreover, it is confused, as defenders of the diversity ideal and multiculturalism at the same time expect their students to embrace an underlying conception of political liberalism – of racial and cultural equality and global justice – that either renders all other philosophies presumptively suspect (e.g., Aristotle, Augustine, Calvin) or requires the kind of foundationalist justification eschewed by the easy relativism that is said to follow from the diversity ideal.11 Finally, Kronman sees an even more disturbing tendency in the contemporary humanities. This is the claim that we should think of the ideas and institutions of the West as of no greater value than any other civilization – that there should be a presumptive judgment of equality between the West and other civilizations. Here, Kronman is actually making two kinds of claims that are worth distinguishing. It’s not that there aren’t great works in non-Western civilizations from which we could learn, but, just as in the case of the West, they are connected and form an internally

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continuous conversation that cannot simply be plucked out of context. As a result, the works and ideas of different civilizations can for the most part only be related externally, by setting them up as exhibits for an observer to admire . . . They belong to different worlds of speech, each internally connected but, except in rare and interesting cases, only externally linked to the others. If there is to be a conversation in which these great works meet, and begin to quarrel or agree, it must be a conversation that the observer . . . creates.12

Interestingly, Kronman suggests that the very desire to create such a new conversation is itself somewhat suspect – and not just because it’s hard. The cost of doing so, he argues, is the “nurturance of a responsible connection to the past, which comes only with the experience of being brought into a conversation not of one’s own making.”13 There are a number of fascinating moves in this sentence, but I shall focus on only one for now. Rootedness in an “embodied argument” (to borrow Alasdair MacIntyre’s phrase) is a necessary condition for the kind of free enquiry that matters – that builds on the depth and richness of the tradition that comes before it, to take responsibility for that inheritance and the hardwon truths and insights it brings. So far so good. There is surely nothing in this that isn’t true of other traditions and “embodied arguments.” But Kronman then goes a step further: The emergent global civilization we inhabit today provides the motive for multiculturalism and gives it its plausibility . . . The ideas and institutions that have the greatest prestige in this new global civilization, the ones that have the greatest influence on the individuals and communities striving to join it . . . are all of Western origin . . . The ideals of individual freedom and toleration; of democratic government; of respect for the rights of minorities and for human rights generally; a reliance on markets as a mechanism for the organization of economic life and a recognition of the need for markets to be regulated by a supervenient political authority; a reliance . . . on the methods of bureaucratic administration . . . an acceptance of the truths of modern science . . . all these provide . . . the existing foundations of political, social and economic life and where they do not, they are perceived as aspirational goals towards which everyone has the strongest moral and material reasons to strive.14

The West has done some terrible things in the name of these aspirations, Kronman admits, but this is no reason to impeach their authority, which rests on “transcendent foundations.” Strong multiculturalism and the demand to globalize the curriculum in the sense of decentering or deparochializing the West deny these truths. In denying the priority of the West and its values, teachers of the humanities put themselves at odds with

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what their students – deep down – supposedly already know to be true, given the “experiential and moral worlds” outside the classroom, and thus renders the apparently critical discussion within it one of “self-deception” and “disingenuous pretense.”15 This in turn generates a lack of confidence in the humanities more generally and further distances it from its main task – which is to pursue the “deepest questions,” amongst which is the question of what living is for. It might seem tiresome to summarize what seem like deeply implausible arguments about the state of the humanities today. But Kronman’s argument is one that we find increasingly prominent in the public cultures of Canada, the United States, and Australia around debates concerning the globalization of curricula. It boils down to something like this: if globalizing the curriculum means embracing diversity as a pedagogical value, multiculturalism as a political ideal, and “constructivism” as a justificatory framework, then it means nothing less than the abandonment of Western civilization as we (ought) to know it. However, for now, let me point to at least two major problems with this analysis. First, there is obviously a deep problem with the way Kronman links diversity, multiculturalism, and relativism into a kind of seamless whole. This ignores the vast literature in contemporary political theory over the past twenty years that has provided a rich array of different justifications of diversity and multiculturalism that do not rely on the philosophical moves Kronman laments. The claim that multiculturalism, for example, leads necessarily to relativism, that it entails locking individuals into ethnic and racial identities, is simply false.16 No project that seeks to globalize the curriculum in which diversity is indeed taken as a pedagogical value need accept the premises (or conclusions) that Kronman asserts flow from engaging with diversity and multiculturalism in the classroom. More important, however, is what we might call the sheer complacency of Kronman’s account of the relation between the cultural and political power of the West and the social, political, and economic costs that have resulted in the course of its development over the past 400 years or more. The material inequalities imposed by colonization were justified by and helped entrench attitudes of civilizational superiority and condescension that rendered non-Western peoples subordinate and reduced their own internal diversity to monocultural stereotypes. Even when this reduction was not necessarily informed by a sense of civilizational superiority, it locked “the Orient” or Indigenous peoples into a kind of exotic gallery at which “we,” in the West, were meant to gaze in wonder. What is crucial

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about these aspects of the development of the West, to speak very generally, is that they feature prominently – always in complex ways, and often in a critical vein – within many of the canonical texts that inform the very conversation Kronman is so concerned to preserve. The very idea of a canon, after all, locates these texts in a particular field of relations of power that is important to understand and place in appropriate literary, historical, cultural, and social contexts – something that the pioneering work of a wide range of scholars from the mid- to late-twentieth century has done, including Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Carole Pateman, and Quentin Skinner, among others. Grasping the complex relations between canonical texts and the various contexts in which they were written, deployed, responded to, and written over is essential to this tradition of work and, I would argue, to the practice of the humanities more generally. Whatever else globalizing our curricula might mean, it surely involves trying to make sense of these features of the canonical texts we place at the center of our curricula. I should say immediately that it doesn’t follow that context is everything, pace Kronman. One of the deep lessons we learn from the contextualist turn in both the history of political thought and philosophy is that context does not in itself dissolve conceptual problems away or render philosophy redundant (despite what some enthusiastic Wittgensteinians might say). But it does loosen the reifications and rigidities of extant theoretical traditions, opening the way, potentially, for conceptual and theoretical innovation.

11.3 global citizenship The second rationale for globalizing the curriculum is what I shall call the global citizenship rationale. It is perhaps the most common that we find among university presidents and deans, and not only amongst this particular caste. The basic idea here is that since universities are in the business of educating the young, and also preparing them for productive careers beyond the university, providing them with the skills to navigate our increasingly globalized world requires a more globalized curriculum. Such a concern is sometimes framed in terms of the sheer ignorance of the young about the world they live in. Apparently, young people in the United States between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four have the least amount of general knowledge about geography and international matters as compared with their counterparts in other countries in just about every pertinent survey. At this level of generality, it probably shouldn’t be that surprising that young Americans display such characteristics (and the

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same studies show that Canadian and Australian students are not much better), especially given the role the United States continues to play as a global superpower. Living so close to the center of social and economic power generates its share of cultural and historical blind spots, however much America’s hegemonic status may be faltering. As a practical problem of helping young people navigate a world that will be even more diverse and multicultural than ever before, this rationale tends to produce perfectly sensible, though perhaps rather banal, prescriptions. Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard University, summarizes it very well: “Colleges have the responsibility to try and remove such ignorance and prepare their students adequately for lives increasingly affected by events beyond their borders . . . [They] must be prepared to work effectively in and with foreign countries and cultures,” as well as think critically about their country’s role in global affairs.17 This not only helps students understand other places but also provides a comparative, critical perspective to their own. And so universities ought to compel their students to spend more time on exchange in different countries, study a language other than English, learn more about international relations, more about the customs and cultures of other nations, more about different social and political systems, more about the world’s great religions, more about their country’s role in global affairs – and generally take more courses with the word “global” in the title.

The global citizenship rationale has also been framed in a more philosophical way. Martha Nussbaum, for example, has justified cosmopolitan education as part of what it means to cultivate the appropriate sense of “humanity” at the heart of a truly liberal arts education. She describes a mythical student named Anna, a graduate of a large state university in the Midwest of the United States, and summarizes what she thinks she ought to know, having taken up a new assignment in Beijing, twelve years after graduation: She needs to know how Chinese people think about work (and not to assume there is just one way); she needs to know how cooperative networks are formed, and what misunderstandings might arise in interaction between Chinese and American workers. Knowledge of recent Chinese history is important, since the disruptions of the Cultural Revolution still shape workers’ attitudes. Anna also needs to consider her response to the recent policy of urging women to return to the home, and the associated practices of laying off women first. This means she should know something about Chinese gender relations, both in the Confucian tradition and more recently . . . She certainly needs a more general view of human rights, and about to what extent it is either legitimate or wise to criticize another nation’s way of life . . . It will also mean being able to keep her bearings even when she knows that the society around her will not accept her view . . . The real-life

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Anna had only a small part of this preparation . . . for the shock of discovering that other places treated as natural what she found strange, and as strange what she found natural. Her imaginative capacity to enter into the lives of people of other nations had been blunted by lack of practice.18

Of course, it can’t be that any university course or degree could fully prepare Anna with all the knowledge and nous that Nussbaum describes here. How would Anna have known she would end up in China anyway? And maybe she’ll only be there for a couple of more years and move on to Mumbai. Still, like Bok, Nussbaum thinks there are some practical things universities should do: students should be compelled to gain some understanding of the major world religions; they should study at least one nonWestern culture “in some depth”; they should master a foreign language to a level of proficiency that enables them to read a newspaper or watch television in that language; and American students, in particular, should understand the achievements and sufferings of African-Americans. Anyone who teaches and works at a university understands just how difficult it would be to design a curriculum that did all of these things, as well as accommodate the other elements of a liberal arts curriculum we normally aspire to include. To be fair, Nussbaum spends some time exploring the different ways in which a curriculum can be globalized in the appropriate way, ranging from specific sets of electives, to fully integrated global or multicultural programs, team-taught by groups of faculty drawn from different disciplines.19 There are many examples at my own university (and no doubt yours) that go some way in trying to provide that kind of experience for students. But it is a difficult thing to deliver at the scale required for large public universities, at least, and requires skills on the part of academic faculty that are sometimes hard to find. But my main interest is more in the underlying rationale for what Nussbaum refers to as the “classical defence” of a liberal education, which includes this call for the globalization of the curriculum. Her key claim is that there is a need for the cultivation of “empathetic interpretation” on the part of students. The argument goes something like this: People from diverse backgrounds can often struggle to recognize each other as fellow citizens in the community of reason. This is in part because the claims that people make and the actions informed by those claims, rest on intentions, motivations, and commitments shaped in light of particular cultural, historical, social, and political contexts. To understand these intentions and motivations requires work. It requires the “would-be world citizen” to become a “sensitive and empathetic interpreter” and to cultivate their capacity for “sympathetic imagination.”20

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There is a question here about exactly what kind of curriculum would promote the kind of empathetic and sympathetic interpretation Nussbaum is calling for. It might well be one that is globalized, in the sense of being inclusive of non-Western texts and sources, but it might well be one that sticks very closely to the existing Western canon. For there are all kinds of ways in which elements of that canon that could arguably promote sympathetic and empathetic interpretation, even if they do not engage directly with non-Western texts. Although Nussbaum seems to suggest that nonWestern texts are necessary for cultivating empathetic understanding – and her writings on Tagore are one practical example – at the same time she also seems to move in a very different direction. Nussbaum links what she calls the Stoic origins of the one “truly great and truly common” form of cosmopolitanism to fundamental moral values of justice – which she traces from the Stoics through to Paine, Kant, Smith, Emerson, and Thoreau and as structurally analogous to what we find in Tagore, who sought to meld Bengali and Western cosmopolitanism. The Greek and Roman origins of cosmopolitanism are “essential resources for democratic citizenship,”21 argues Nussbaum, and should be at the core of today’s higher education. But how empathetic or sympathetic can this mode of interpretation be if it starts from the particular set of normative commitments described by Nussbaum? On the one hand, you might think that the ideal of democratic citizenship she describes is true, and thus truth is on the side of the liberal and secular ideal within which it is framed, and that a full grasp of that ideal provides philosophical proof against “fundamental commitments” that are in opposition to or in tension with those liberal values. However comforting – and however much many of those liberal cosmopolitan values might be ones I share – this gets us nowhere. There is no philosophical argument, on its own, that can establish their superiority or objectivity over those who reject them such that they are compelled to accept them as true. The whole point of democratic citizenship is to find a way to cooperate when the grounds for agreement based on fundamental commitments – at least in the first instance – is absent. I have three concerns with Nussbaum’s account. First, she presupposes an enormous amount of what has to be established in genuine dialogue with others. If the rationale for globalizing the curriculum is to identify those texts and traditions that will conform to what we already know to be the best account of cosmopolitan citizenship, then it’s not clear how much work empathetic interpretation is really doing. Second, and relatedly, it isn’t clear exactly how Nussbaum thinks reading and engaging with non-Western texts, for example, actually cultivates empathetic

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interpretation or sympathetic imagination. One could argue that the skills and disposition to read empathetically can be developed in a range of ways that don’t involve reading Tagore or Iqbal. It’s not that Nussbaum’s mythical “Anna” shouldn’t have been required to read more Chinese history or feminist theory, or learn a bit of Mandarin as an undergraduate, but rather that a liberal arts curriculum should give her the skills to keep learning long after she leaves university. She should have the foundational skills, in other words, and a breadth of learning that allow her to adapt to new circumstances, as well as possessing the critical skills to question some of her basic preconceptions about China, gender relations, and the justification of human rights she now finds herself having to think about. Finally, we might wonder how any curriculum could actually deliver what Anna seems to need: Nussbaum explores various models across a range of public and private universities, but all of them struggle with striking the right balance between avoiding the worst kind of “sampling” of world cultures that offers only a thin veneer of comparative study and the attempt to truly globalize their curricula, which requires enormous work on the part of faculty and staff. At the end, she seems to suggest that perhaps the best we can do is require students to study at least one country in some depth, in such a way as to highlight common misconceptions and parochialisms that many people have when they first encounter another culture or society.

11.4 taking moral disagreement seriously The final rationale for globalizing the curriculum hinges on the idea of taking moral disagreement seriously. It too places an emphasis on the need to cultivate empathetic interpretation and sympathetic imagination, but it also seeks to put some of the very terms that frame discussions like Nussbaum’s into critical perspective. So by “moral disagreement” here I don’t presuppose what we mean by the “moral” – it might well include the kinds of things moral philosophers in Western philosophy tend to be concerned about (the conflict between rights and duties; between impartiality and partiality; between different conceptions of the good, etc.), but it could include other things as well. Different traditions of political thought, for example, will situate what we think of the “moral” in different ways, against a background of particular discourses and frameworks, and part of the task is to understand both within and across traditions how this shapes moral and political claims. Importantly, as I mentioned in Section 11.2, traditions are also differentially situated in

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relation to each other as a result of historical and geopolitical forces. This returns us to a point I made in our discussion of Kronman. The forces of globalization and modernization have shaped the world’s traditions in complex ways, such that it is difficult to talk about there being a single response to modernization or a single mode of moral and political thinking that all people everywhere are becoming oriented toward. And so, wherever people are reflecting on the nature of those practices acting on them – whether forms of political rule, clerical rule, social and cultural conventions and norms, transnational forces, etc. – there will be different ways of understanding those forces and the various practical and theoretical responses to them. This will inevitably broaden the range of “texts” that we might think of as relevant in coming to grips with a particular disagreement or engagement between holders of different worldviews or in the study of moral and political thought more generally. By taking moral disagreement seriously, I mean at least three things. First, that we are oriented in such a way that we don’t simply reduce differences between traditions to an easy relativism, which drains the relevance of engagement and disagreement in the first place. Second, and at the other extreme perhaps, that we don’t reduce difference to reified civilizational claims that are impervious to critical reflection, contestation, and engagement and that make individuals and groups seemingly prisoners of various “scripts” of modernity (and anti-modernity). And third, that we come at these differences and disagreements wherever possible through direct engagement with the relevant traditions within which and against which the various conceptual moves and claims are played out. In other words, that not all disagreement (and indeed conflict) between different peoples or traditions is reducible to unrevisable cultural, moral, or religious features; but nor that all such conflict is essentially political and economic in form – that all disagreements can best be explained as a manifestation of capitalism, on the one hand, or anticolonial resentment and resistance on the other. No reductionism in either direction. The kind of orientation I am describing here can be found in the work of Bernard Williams. Williams famously criticized what he called “Ethical theory” – by which he meant comprehensive ethical theories such as utilitarianism or Kantianism – for suggesting that there are moral principles that could be justified in ways that stood entirely outside of someone’s fundamental projects or commitments and indeed could be called upon to adjudicate between them.22 But even for Williams, that didn’t mean those fundamental commitments were impervious to critical reflection. We can hold on to the idea of there being fundamental commitments, rooted in

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complex traditions, but it doesn’t follow they are literally impossible to give up or change. The point is to understand the extent to which there would be a genuine cost to the believer or member of that group in giving those commitments up – as putting into question some crucial aspect of who they imagine themselves to be. People can indeed reflect critically on these commitments and reason about them to varying extents. One of the points of taking moral disagreement seriously is to try and understand the nature of these kinds of commitments from the perspective of the agents themselves, rather than assume either that history makes one kind of outcome inevitable or that there is nothing more to be said about it. But it is also to be willing to put one’s own perspective and identity into question: to be willing to reflect critically on the analogous commitments or beliefs within one’s own tradition that might be thrown into relief through a deep engagement with others. This returns us to the question at hand: How could one cultivate such a disposition in students and the citizens they are and will become? Does globalizing the curriculum have a role to play in cultivating such a disposition? If the logic of the rationale I am exploring in this section seems to lead to a case for broadening the curriculum in such a way that students can begin to learn to take moral disagreement seriously, then what kind of approach should we take? In reflecting on this question I found myself returning to the last pages of Charles Taylor’s nowfamous essay on the “The Politics of Recognition.”23 Toward the end of that essay, he addresses the question of what his overall analysis of the demand for recognition – which he interprets in relation to the “politics of equal dignity” – means for education. The demand for equal recognition here is translated into a demand for the recognition of the equal value of other cultures: not merely to allow them to survive, or for their survival to count as an appropriate political goal on the part of communities, but to acknowledge their equal worth and thus justify a radical reshaping of university and school curricula.24 On the one hand, this is justified along the lines similar to other demands for equal recognition. Enlarging and changing the curriculum is essential in order to give due recognition to the previously excluded as a means of redressing the harm caused by nonrecognition and misrecognition. The underlying premise of this argument, Taylor argues, is that we owe equal respect to all cultures. The reproach to the designers of traditional curricula is that “the judgments of worth on which these latter were supposedly based were in fact corrupt, were marred by narrowness or insensitivity or . . . a desire to downgrade the excluded.”25 Absent these distorting factors, true judgments of value of

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different works would place all cultures (or at least, those that have “animated whole societies over some considerable stretch of time”26) more or less on equal footing. In his usual thoughtful way, Taylor notes that although there is “something valid in this presumption,” it is by no means unproblematic. It constitutes a kind of “leap of faith.”27 The validity of the claim has to be demonstrated in the actual study of the culture, here invoked in terms of Taylor’s well-known account of the development of new languages or “vocabularies” of comparison through which to articulate these contrasts. Unless something like this happens, the preemptive demand for judgments of worth can become paradoxically homogenizing. It implies we already have the standards to make the judgments, when in fact the formation of those judgments is work still to be done. And it is hard work indeed. So, in the end, Taylor grounds the presumption of equal worth in a general claim that cultures that have provided a horizon of meaning for large numbers of human beings over a long period of time are “almost certain to have something that deserves our admiration and respect.”28 I believe something like this presumption is part of what it means to take disagreement seriously. However, there are a number of dangers with this approach, which I want to note before concluding. The first danger, as Taylor well knows, is that resting the grounds for equal respect of cultures on the basis that they will contain things that deserve our admiration and respect can slide into a kind of preemptive contempt for those that apparently are unlikely to provide such a payoff. One move to guard against this is to say we owe this kind of respect as a matter of right, but this simply begs the question. On what grounds are they owed this right? And is it a kind of claim best expressed in the language of rights to begin with? Who is the corresponding holder of the appropriate duties, and in what sense are they enforceable? Another move is to say that since “our” community is one in which many different peoples and cultures reside (whether by “our” we mean a particular political community or some kind of global cosmopolitan community), there is no need to base respect for Indigenous or Islamic cultures, for instance, on the claim that they will inevitably have something important to teach us. The fact that they are part of “us” means that to not extend such respect is to directly harm them in various ways.29 This raises important questions about the nature of identity and cosmopolitan value that I do not have the space to consider here. However, it is important that whatever else globalizing the curriculum might mean, it should not encourage complacency about who “we” are when we invoke conceptions of political community, either on the part of

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our own society or those with whom we are apparently trying to engage or understand. And this leads to a third danger: if we ground the rationale for globalizing our curricula mainly on what we think “others” have to teach “us,” then we risk falling into some of the quandaries we have explored in this chapter. First, we risk orienting ourselves to focus on looking for what we already take to be valuable in other cultures. We can’t help but be oriented by our own values, beliefs, and traditions in these contexts, but the danger is that they become reified as opposed to challenged and stretched by our encounter with the complexity of different traditions. Second, we risk complacency about the epistemological and normative reach of our values across different cultures, as well as about their history and practical manifestation on the ground. The only real safeguard against these dangers is to ensure, that whenever we are making claims about “our” values or “their” beliefs, we are also paying close attention to the historical and practical contexts within which those beliefs and values manifest themselves and become motivating. Joseph Carens has argued that although it is a truism that values and principles are always mediated by social and political institutions, sometimes certain groups get all the mediation and very little of the principle.30 This doesn’t mean abandoning concept making and the justification of principles as a worthy object of philosophical and theoretical activity. But it does mean always appreciating the extent to which those activities always occur in historical and institutional contexts. It might not be that our belief in any particular set of values is undermined in doing so. However, grasping the ways in which values do “work” in the world can shape and reframe our understanding and justification of them in various ways. The challenge then is to think about how our curricula in political theory – and in the humanities more generally – might help, practically, to engender an orientation that takes moral disagreement as seriously as the traditions within which the different interlocutors are embedded.

notes 1. At the time of writing, I was Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. 2. For a trenchant discussion to which I am indebted, see Andrew March, “What Is Comparative Political Theory?,” Review of Politics 71, no. 4 (2009): 531–565.

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3. Fred Dallmayr, “Beyond Monologue: For a Comparative Political Theory,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 2 (2004): 249–257. 4. Roxanne Euben, “Contingent Borders, Syncretic Perspectives: Globalization, Political Theory, and Islamizing Knowledge,” International Studies Review 4, no. 1 (2002): 23–48; James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, vol. 2, Imperialism and Civic Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 5. Judith Butler, “Universality in Culture,” in Martha C. Nussbaum with respondents, For Love of Country, ed. Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 52. See also Leigh Jenco, “Histories of Thought and Comparative Political Theory: The Curious Thesis of the ‘Chinese Origins of Western Knowledge,’ 1860–1895,” Political Theory 42, no. 6 (2014): 658–681. 6. Anthony Kronman, Education’s End: Why Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). 7. Ibid., 149. 8. Ibid., 143. 9. Ibid., 147. 10. Ibid., 151. 11. For a more recent version of this kind of argument, this time from the left, see Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics (New York: Harper, 2017). 12. Kronman, Education’s End, 168. 13. Ibid., 169. 14. Ibid., 173. 15. Ibid., 178–179. 16. For an excellent collection of essays that addresses these claims in depth, see Anthony Laden and David Owen, eds., Multiculturalism and Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); see also Duncan Ivison, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to Multiculturalism (New York: Routledge, 2010). 17. Derek Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 226. 18. Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 50–51. 19. Ibid., 66ff. 20. Ibid., 63. 21. Ibid., 53. 22. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986); and, more recently, In the Beginning Was the Deed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Akeel Bilgrami has drawn interestingly on Williams’s work when discussing related issues in “What Is a Muslim? Fundamental Commitment and Cultural Identity,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 4 (1992): 826–828. 23. Charles Taylor et al., Multiculturalism and the “The Politics of Recognition” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 24. Ibid., 64ff. 25. Ibid., 66.

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290 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Duncan Ivison Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 72. See Susan Wolf’s commentary in ibid., 80–82. See Joseph Carens, Culture, Citizenship, and Community: A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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Index

Introductory Note References such as ‘178–179’ indicate (not necessarily continuous) discussion of a topic across a range of pages. Wherever possible in the case of topics with many references, these have either been divided into sub-topics or only the most significant discussions of the topic are listed. Because the entire work is about ‘deparochialization’, the use of this term (and certain others which occur constantly throughout the book) as an entry point has been minimized. Information will be found under the corresponding detailed topics. ability, 47–48, 51, 66, 158, 209, 244 academic conventions, 64, 123 academic disciplines, 2, 18, 76, 85–86, 236, 246, 263 action-guiding validity, 206 active participation, 108, 131, 156 activism, 102, 114 adaptations, innovative, 129, 133 administrative discretion, 191–192 admiration, 133–134, 287 agents, 125, 149, 206–207, 221, 286 collective, 28, 149 rational autonomous, 166, 167 ahistorical approaches, 94 Al-Ghazali, 261, 262 allegiances, 138, 141, 239 alternative modernities, 204, 221 alternatives, 64–65, 67, 85, 86, 114 ambiguity, 212, 242 ambitions, 62, 65, 66–68, 70–71, 106, 208, 211, 273 ambivalence, 242–243 Analects, 236, 256

analytic philosophy, 13, 80, 84, 152, 240, 245 ancestors, 80, 267 ancient Greeks, 17, 140, 231–232, 244, 255, 267 ancient thought, 6, 13, 17–18, 132, 231, 234 Angle, Stephen C., 9, 79, 160 Anglophone academia, 67, 69, 79–80, 82, 85, 263 An-Na’im, Abdullahi Ahmed, 155–156, 168 anthropologists, 35, 38, 41, 63, 80, 239 anti-West sentiments, 136–138 appointments, 184, 186–188, 195 Arabs, 79, 261 arbitrariness, 153–154 area studies, 77–78, 82, 263 Arendt, Hannah, 30, 36, 205, 240, 244, 257–258 aristocracy, 99, 101, 154, 176–177 Aristotle, 33, 231–232, 234, 238, 240–242, 244, 256, 259 aspirations, 8, 278 assets, 106, 114

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292

Index

associations, 26, 66, 102, 105, 111, 113, 179, 184 assumptions, 66–67, 68–69, 70, 83, 85, 104, 107, 244, 254 attitudes, 44, 136, 140, 142, 235, 241, 279, 281 audiences, 63–65, 66, 71, 72, 77–78, 80, 82, 84–86 Australia, 259, 274, 279, 281 authoritarian deliberation, 15, 207, 212–216 authoritarian meritocracy, 16, 175, 178–179, 182, 186 limits, 193–196 model, 194, 196 authoritarian powers, 174, 185, 190, 191, 194 authoritarian regimes, 16, 178–182, 196, 213 authoritarian rule, 15, 30, 156, 161, 175, 180, 183, 193, 195 authoritarianism, 4, 15, 115, 175, 176, 183, 186, 189, 196 deliberative, 212–213, 215, 220 authority, 99, 100, 102, 154, 156, 157, 160–161, 191–193, 214, 220 legitimate, 10, 14, 150, 153, 157, 160, 165, 191, 209, 214 moral, 100, 154 political, see political authority. sovereign, 149, 154 ultimate source of, 160, 169 autocracy, 93, 101, 107, 182 autonomy, 107, 112 moral, 108 balance, 163, 189, 220, 284 ballots, 162–163, 188 barbarians, 133, 139, 140, 237 being-in-the-world-with-others, 44, 46 beliefs, 83–84, 166, 239–241, 265, 268, 276–277, 286, 288 Christian, 138, 210 Bell, Daniel, 15, 174, 177, 180, 183, 189 benefits, 27, 99, 105, 152, 159, 182, 209, 210, 232, 233 practical, 232 bent twig reactions, 13, 122, 138, 139–140, 142 Berger, Harry, 239, 241, 243 Boas, Franz, 29, 41–42, 43, 45

Bohman, James, 11, 112 Bok, Derek, 281, 282 Book of Rites, 158–159, 208 borders, 70, 193, 206, 240, 273–274, 281 boundaries, 9, 11, 78, 85, 96, 193, 203, 205, 220–221 Bryn Mawr College, 232, 236, 254 Buddhism, 9, 81, 82, 95, 120, 261 bureaucracy, 10, 97–99, 106, 113, 183–184 professional, 179, 181 state, 10, 99, 102, 106, 112 Burma, 80–81 Canada, 4, 6, 41, 45, 279 canonical texts, 63, 79, 258, 262–264, 280 canons, 2, 5, 62, 63, 262, 263–264, 265, 267, 274 Hebrew, 262 political theory, 127, 262 Western, 20, 211, 231 capacity, 18–19, 20, 105, 106, 108, 112–113, 202, 204, 236, 244 rational autonomous, 166, 167 capitalism, 45, 136, 183, 204, 217, 221, 285 case selection, 205–206 casting votes, 188 CCP (Chinese Communist Party), 114, 174–175, 177, 178, 180, 181, 185–187, 189–190, 193–195, 207, 212–213 rule, 178, 186 central government, 99, 101, 104, 106, 111, 112–115 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 62, 69, 84 characteristics, democratic, 16, 194 Chen Kuan-hsing, 78, 85 China, 15–16, 74–75, 106, 120, 128–131, 132–134, 174–179, 181–183, 184–186, 191–192, 193–194, 207–208, 212–215 meritocracy, 174–196 China Model, 15, 174, 177 Chinese Communist Party, see CCP. Chinese officials, 185, 188, 189 Chinese philosophy, 70–71, 74, 107, 207, 209, 263 Chinese scholars, 73–74, 77, 80, 158 Chinese thought, 12, 70–71, 75, 77, 84, 174 history of, 70, 207, 213 traditional, 70–71

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Index choice, 152–154, 160, 161, 192, 260 people’s, 161, 192 Christian beliefs, 138, 210 Christianity, 94, 136–138, 261 Christians, 137, 140, 231, 261 circulation of knowledge, 62, 72 cities, 132, 188, 195, 259 citizens, 16, 32, 105–106, 108, 112–113, 129, 165–168, 184–185, 188–191, 192–193, 219 Muslim, 165–167, 168–169 citizenship, 7, 109, 219, 246 active, 99 democratic, 237, 268, 283 civil liberties, 14, 165, 167–169 civil service, 94 examinations, 10, 97–99, 101, 195 civil society, 212, 215 civilizations, 134, 207, 208, 254, 256, 266, 274, 275, 277–278 classroom teaching, 241, 242 classrooms, 232, 239, 243, 244, 277, 279 climate change, 27, 208, 210 collective actions, 100, 113, 114, 178, 191, 203 collective decisions, 176, 180, 184, 192, 213 collective identity, 9, 95 collective leadership, 179, 180, 181, 183 colleges, 19, 243, 245, 255, 276, 281 colonial domination, 62, 138 colonialism, 6, 20, 60, 64, 67, 69, 263, 274 settler, 6, 45 comfort zones, 4, 13, 21, 151, 268 commonality, human, 108–109 communication, 26, 45, 65, 178–182, 184, 213 communities, 36, 38, 67, 81, 233–234, 236, 239–240, 255, 257, 286–287 academic, 76, 78 foreign, 84, 123 knowledge, 10, 72, 74, 81, 83, 124 local, 78, 81, 112–113, 114, 220 new, 82 political, 73, 109, 115, 130, 257, 287 scholarly, 63, 74, 78, 83, 85, 124 comparative courses, 230, 232, 236, 238, 240–241 comparative dialogues, 36, 41, 232 comparative literature, 243, 266 comparative philosophy, 2, 38, 230, 232, 243, 246, 266

293

comparative political theory (CPT), 1–2, 3, 5–6, 11–12, 18–19, 60, 61, 83, 93–94, 95–98, 121–123, 125–127, 151, 230, 232, 237, 244–245, 259, 261, 266, 274–275 future, 60–64 theory or thought, 122–126 comparative political thought, 83, 230, 232, 237, 259, 261, 266 clarification, 25–26 dialogue approach to, 25–51 teaching, 230–246 theory or thought, 122–126 v non-comparative, 264–267 compassion, 43–44, 46, 158–159 competence, 157, 165, 194, 195 competition, 185, 186–187 competitive elections, 179, 187–188 complacency, 165, 169, 279, 287–288 complex societies, 16, 45 concentrated power, 179, 181, 213 conferences, 3, 38, 79, 242–243 conflict resolution, 37, 45 conflicts, 30, 40, 45, 99, 102, 106, 190–191, 195, 284–285 Confucian deliberation, 214 Confucian heritage, 14, 150, 151, 161, 163, 164–165 Confucian ideals, 15–16, 177 Confucian ideas, 13, 97, 132, 136, 152, 213 Confucian meritocracy, 15, 174, 176, 215 Confucian rituals, 61 Confucian thought, 13, 97, 135, 151, 161, 177, 213 Confucian tradition, 10, 94, 107, 115, 116, 209, 214 Confucianism, 9, 69, 75, 79–80, 93–98, 107, 114–115, 130–132, 157–158, 164 and popular sovereignty, 157–161 as political doctrine for Confucian heritage societies, 161–165 Confucius, 94, 98, 130, 238, 240, 256, 258 consensus, 50, 65, 95, 190–191 constitutional democracy, 153, 163 constitutionalism, 61, 127, 156 constitutions, 135, 153, 154, 257 constructive escape, 18, 232 constructivism, 276–277, 279 consultation, 15, 100, 103, 156, 193 public, 183, 189–190, 193

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Index

contestation, 48, 79, 113, 142, 211, 240, 285 contexts, 7–8, 33–34, 38–39, 42–43, 47–49, 69–70, 72, 122, 175–176, 238, 239–240, 255–257, 280 cultural, 62, 70, 202, 237 historical, 10, 50, 69, 94, 97, 239, 268 local, 69, 71, 74, 85, 139 non-Western, 17, 86, 151, 204 contingencies, 64, 66 continuities, 11, 17, 258–259 control, 100, 176, 185–186, 194, 263 popular, 150, 163 conventions, 2, 37, 71, 154, 260 academic, 64, 123 cultural, 285 convergence, 37, 61, 65, 113, 126, 203 convictions, 7, 136, 151, 156, 165 corruption, 181–182, 183, 184, 187, 194, 195, 213 cosmic order, 105, 158 cosmopolitanism, 17, 46, 65, 110, 209, 220, 283 courage, 32, 36, 38, 41 of truthfulness, 36, 39, 46–47 courses, 230, 232, 233–234, 255, 281 comparative, 230, 232, 236, 238, 240–241 CPT, see comparative political theory. crises, 7, 8, 15, 28, 30, 133, 174, 210 critical perspective, 277, 281, 284 critical reflexivity, 18, 201–202, 204 critical thinking, 244 cross-cultural engagement, 2, 64, 83, 207 cultural contexts, 62, 70, 202, 237 cultural differences, 62, 65–66 cultural essentialism, 19, 204, 207 cultural traditions, 11, 95, 264–266 cultures, 11, 18, 75–76, 140–141, 204–205, 218, 220, 233–234, 240–241, 243, 245–246, 275, 286–288 non-Western, 212, 219, 282 political, 98, 100, 107, 113, 150, 163–164, 182, 213, 215 of political thought, 202, 203 curricula, 5, 20, 97, 273–274 globalization, 273–288 Dallmayr, Fred, 2, 62, 64–65, 125, 211, 218, 275 deans, 273, 280

decentering, 20, 26, 123–124, 125–128, 202–203, 206 decentralized republic of virtue, 11, 93–116 deception, 163, 182 decision makers, 175, 177 decisions, 104, 105, 109, 176, 177–178, 189–193, 194, 213, 216 collective, 176, 180, 184, 192, 213 meritorious, 184, 192 decolonization, 28, 31–32, 50 deep listening, 7, 27, 39–41, 43–44, 46, 124 defensiveness, 36, 40 deistic notions, 157, 161 deliberation, 46, 101, 181, 182–183, 184, 191–193, 195, 216, 218 authoritarian, 15, 207, 212–216 Confucian, 214 public, 191, 214 deliberative authoritarianism, 212–213, 215, 220 deliberative democracy, 193, 214, 265 deliberative politics, 207, 212–214, 220 deliberative processes, 180, 189–193, 213 democracy, 15–17, 140–142, 156, 163–165, 174–175, 176–177, 180–182, 184, 193–196, 203–204, 205–208, 214–215, 218–221 constitutional, 153, 163 deliberative, 193, 214, 265 developed, 174, 177, 183–184, 186, 190, 196 electoral, 183, 187 global, 17, 210, 211 and global scale of politics, 208–212 liberal, 107, 155–156, 158, 174, 185, 195 local, 186, 215, 220 models of, 210, 220 participatory, 15, 115, 217, 218 and political order at state scale, 212–216 representative, 177, 220 on transnational scale, 216–219 understandings of, 203–204, 212, 214, 219 v meritocracy, 177–193 democratic characteristics, 16, 194 democratic citizenship, 237, 268, 283 democratic elections, 175, 178, 188, 194 democratic equality, 17 democratic government, 152–153, 162, 278 democratic institutions, 16, 178

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Index democratic legitimacy, 149, 203, 215–216, 220 democratic meritocracy, 16, 175–176, 178–179, 186, 190, 194, 195–196 democratic politics, 17, 164, 217, 265 democratic practices, 156–157, 175, 212, 215, 218–219 democratic regimes, 16, 162, 178, 196, 212 democratic theorists, 78, 203–204 democratic theory, 6, 17, 107, 115, 178 deparochialization, 201–221 democratization, 14, 28, 132, 165, 167–169, 211, 214–215, 221 global, 203, 211–212, 215, 219–220 state-led, 17, 215 deparochializing political theory, see Introductory Note and detailed entries. despotism, 93–94, 100, 107, 111, 112, 238 destabilizing the local, 64–67 developed democracies, 174, 177, 183–184, 186, 190, 196 development, 2, 3, 30, 32, 130, 131, 185–186, 208, 246, 279–280 economic, 102, 186 political, 16, 151, 164, 196, 215 developmental state modern, 15, 174 dialogical approaches, 65, 124, 211 dialogical relationships, 31, 37, 47 dialogues, 7–8, 26–31, 32–33, 35–38, 39–47, 49–51, 62, 122–123, 140–141, 235 comparative, 36, 41, 232 false, 7, 28–29, 31, 36, 40 genuine, see genuine dialogues. global, 26, 28, 29, 38 intercultural, 11, 123, 139–140, 142, 218–219 participation in, 39, 40–42, 47 Platonic, 32, 256 of reciprocal elucidation, 48–51 translation, 46, 48–49 dictatorships, 179, 180 differentiated locations of merit, 179, 186 diffusion, 11, 35, 45 diplomacy, power, 208 direct elections, 187 directionality of influence, 121, 126, 128–129, 135, 136–137

295

disagreements, 4, 48, 51, 126, 264, 265, 267, 287 moral, 20, 276, 284–286, 288 disciplinary categories, 64, 84 disciplinary inquiry, 230–231, 245 disciplinary scholarship, 236, 242, 246, 267 disciplines, 1–3, 6, 9, 61–62, 72–73, 76, 80, 83, 86 new, 74, 82 disclosure, 29, 35, 39, 49 discourse, 65, 79, 83, 86, 129, 181, 211, 216, 242, 263–264 localized, 68, 72 discretion, 193 administrative, 191–192 discrimination, 136–137, 159 disobedience, epistemic, 219, 220 disputes, 19, 39, 84, 191, 240 dissimilarities, 43, 46, 47, 49–50, 219 diversity, 11, 19, 50, 111, 204, 263, 276–277, 279 awareness, 43, 48 internal, 68, 279 divine sovereignty, 14, 156, 165–168 divisions, 78, 126, 128, 191, 192, 239, 262 dominance, 26, 34, 69, 123, 275 dominant traditions, 28, 32, 44 drive, ethical, 122–123 Dryzek, John, 211 duties, 130, 178, 214, 263, 284, 287 economic development, 102, 186 economic performance, 185–186, 196 economy, 16, 103, 136, 241 education, 5, 6, 75, 242, 244, 246, 255, 256, 268 higher, 34, 230–231, 283 liberal, 18–19, 230–231, 232–233, 235–236, 241, 243–254, 258, 264, 267–268, 282 undergraduate, 231, 275 Eisenstadt, Shmuel, 12, 121, 126, 133 El Amine, Loubna, 61, 121, 126–128 elected leaders, 179, 181 elections, 156, 177, 180, 182, 187, 189, 194 competitive, 179, 187–188 democratic, 175, 178, 188, 194 direct, 187 intra-party, 185, 188–189 local, 175, 188

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Index

elections (cont.) public nomination-direct, 175, 186, 188–189 village, 186–187, 212 electoral incentives, 179, 181 elites, 99, 102, 103–104, 106, 131, 134, 138, 175, 189–190 local, 106, 188 political, 16, 163, 189, 215 selection, 175, 177 elucidation, reciprocal, see reciprocal elucidation. emotions, 40, 41, 44 empathetic imaginary transposition, 42–43, 124 empathetic interpretation, 20, 282–284 empathy, 41–44, 46 emperor-centered hierarchical state, 11, 112 emperors, 10, 98–101, 103, 105, 109, 112, 130, 138, 164 endoxa, 18, 232–234, 237–238, 242, 244 engagement, 4, 7, 20–21, 26–28, 30–31, 202, 205–206, 275–276, 285 cross-cultural, 2, 64, 83, 207 in genuine dialogues among traditions, 26–27 scholarly, 9, 125, 128 theoretical, 206–207 transformative, 25, 123 Enlightenment republicanism, 11, 110 environmental damage, 7, 27, 216 epistemic disobedience, 219, 220 epistemic humility, 205, 268 epistemic justice, 34, 38 epistemology, 81, 256 equality, 10, 208, 212, 277 democratic, 17 gender, 128, 134, 140 political, 107, 108, 158 theoretical, 108 equity, gender, 216 escape, 1, 234, 261–262 constructive, 18, 232 essentialism, 85 cultural, 19, 204, 207 ethical drive, 122–123 ethical orientations, 44 ethical practices, 26–27, 31, 40–41, 124 ethical traditions, 76, 96, 115 ethics, 13, 17, 70, 169, 235, 256 ethnicity, 45, 82, 127, 276

ethnocentrism, 71, 82 Euben, Roxanne, 2, 65, 66–67, 125, 201, 275 Eurocentrism, 60, 62, 63–65, 67, 71, 79, 84–85 European civilization, 133–134, 136–137 European ideas, 12, 137, 260 European thought, 9, 19, 62, 67, 84, 262 Europeanized categories, 65, 67, 69, 84 Euro-West, 129, 133–135, 136–138 examinations, civil service, 10, 97–99, 101, 195 exegetical scholarship, 73, 98 exercise of power, 44, 149, 163 expansion, 7, 29, 99, 102–103, 215 experience, 42–43, 217, 219, 232–233, 242, 254, 278, 282 of teaching, 19, 231–232, 254, 267 experiments, 15, 19, 176, 186–189, 190, 193–194, 195 expertise, 3, 4, 6, 16, 19, 73, 177, 181, 255, 267–268 experts, 3–4, 83, 151, 192, 236, 268 extra-constitutional acts, 153, 155, 156 false dialogues, 7, 28–29, 31, 36, 40 family resemblances, 34, 47, 49, 50, 94, 108, 205, 211 Far Eastern Province, see Japan, as Far Eastern Province. farmers, 132, 216, 217 favoritism, 159 feminism, 63, 123, 284 finality, 153–154, 158, 236, 242 flow of ideas, 12 foreign communities, 84, 123 foreign ideas, 120, 133, 139, 254 foreign languages, 79, 282 frameworks, 2, 16, 139, 141, 153, 209, 211 theoretical, 16, 202–203, 215, 221 framing, 205–206, 264 Freeden, Michael, 12, 83, 122–123 freedom, 32, 49–50, 101, 107–108, 110, 134, 208, 234, 268, 277–278 Fukuzawa Yukichi, 134–135 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 28, 36, 50, 65, 75 gender, 45, 276–277 equality, 128, 134, 140 equity, 216 general knowledge, 32, 83, 280

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Index generalizability, 68, 85, 121, 202 generalizations, 32–33, 36, 63, 126, 176, 265 genres, 19, 31, 33–34, 35, 40, 73–74, 176, 219 genuine dialogues, 7–8, 26–31, 33, 35, 36–37, 39–42, 123, 124, 139, 141 engagement in, 26–27 obstacles to, 27–31 Germany, 41, 137, 139, 183–184 gift-reciprocity, 39, 51 global citizenship rationale, 20, 275, 280–284 global democratization, 203, 211–212, 215, 219–220 global dialogues, 26, 28, 29, 38 global era, 5, 17, 205, 207, 211, 214–215, 218–221 global governance, 11, 45, 208, 211, 217 global justice, 34–35, 277 global modernity, 7, 68, 125, 209 global order, 5, 7, 204, 209–211, 220 global public goods, 208 globalization, 5, 7–8, 20, 26–27, 203, 205–206, 218–219, 273–274, 275, 276, 278–280, 283–284, 287–288 conditions of, 204, 206, 209 of curricula, 273–288 forces of, 125, 285 globalized world, 20, 84–85, 93, 123, 125, 280 God, 136, 155–157, 160, 165 Godrej Farah, 66 good governance, 10, 151, 162, 163, 165, 213–214, 220 good moral judgment, 181–182, 237 governance, 111, 113, 155, 159, 175, 177, 180, 185–186 global, 11, 45, 208, 211, 217 good, 10, 151, 162, 163, 165, 213–214, 220 merit-based, 179, 185 meritocratic, 164, 185 meritorious, 163–164 quality of, 164, 214 government, 99, 101, 103, 110, 112–114, 116, 180, 181–182, 183–184, 192 democratic, 152–153, 162, 278 good, 174, 187 levels of, 176, 183–184 local, 111, 188, 191, 193

297

grammar, 31, 63, 83 Greek, 32, 231–232, 235, 261–262 texts, 231 Greeks ancient, 17, 140, 231–232, 244, 255, 267 guoshi, 10, 99 Habermas, J., 44, 139, 215, 240 Hallaq, Wael, 155–156 harmony, 79, 158–159, 210 hate, 138, 244 Hayy Ibn Yaqzā n, 256, 262 heaven, 14, 104, 157, 159–161, 214 mandate of, 130 Hebrew canon, 262 hereditary monarchies, 164, 180 heritage, Confucian, 14, 150, 151, 161, 163, 164–165 hermeneutics, 38, 66, 70 hierarchical states, 110, 113 emperor-centered, 11, 112 higher education, 34, 230–231, 283 Hirakawa, Sukehiro, 133–134 historians, 82, 95, 263 historical context, 10, 50, 69, 94, 97, 239, 268 historical inquiries, 96, 255, 265 historical perspective, 97, 108, 120 history, 5–6, 9, 11–13, 72, 74, 214–215, 237, 262, 274, 276 intellectual, 262, 264 of political thought, 3, 6, 259, 262, 274, 280 Hobbes, T., 231, 257, 262, 266 homogenizing universalism, 60, 85 Hong Kong, 6, 80, 158, 162 Huang Zongxi, 257, 262 human commonality, 108–109 human nature, 97, 107 human rights, 45, 49, 140–142, 210–211, 278, 281, 284 discourse, 13, 211 humanity, 97, 108, 137, 217, 275, 277, 281 humility, epistemic, 205, 268 Hummel, Arthur, 74 Ibn Tufayl, 256–257, 261, 262 ideals, 80, 107, 195, 212, 240–241, 278 Confucian, 15–16, 177 ideas, foreign, 120, 133, 139, 254 ideational resources, 11, 18, 108, 142, 219

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identity, 12, 14, 36, 140–141, 149, 255–256, 258–259, 261, 263, 286 collective, 9, 95 local, 114 personal, 259 ideologies, 164–165, 274 imaginaries, political, 128, 204, 206–207 imaginary transposition, empathetic, 42–43, 124 impartiality, 159–160, 191, 284 imperial China, late, 10, 98, 102, 104, 106, 113, 116, 131 imperial state, 10, 113 inaction, 34, 122 incentives, 76, 177–178, 181–182, 189 inclusion, 1, 17, 36, 60, 63–65, 66–67, 179 independence, 133, 185 personal, 134, 257 indeterminacy, 35, 239 India, 1, 19, 83, 215, 216, 255, 256, 258, 260, 266–267 indigenization, 62, 68–70, 71–72, 75, 136 Indigenous peoples, 7, 20, 40, 43, 220, 259, 279 inequality, 7, 27, 36, 45, 108, 174, 203, 262 influence, directionality of, 121, 126, 128–129, 135, 136–137 information, 175, 178–180, 181–182, 184, 195, 213, 238, 265 inheritance, 267, 278 intellectual, 19, 267 injustices, 6, 17, 27, 35, 36–37, 42, 43–44, 125, 184 innovations, 15, 16, 97, 120, 129–130, 133, 175, 212 theoretical, 9, 280 institutionally differentiated meritocratic systems, 183–186 institutions, 12, 13–14, 33, 34, 44–45, 180, 193, 239–240, 260, 277–278 democratic, 16, 178 merit-based, 179, 185 modern, 128, 134 political, 10, 15, 162, 288 social, 255, 265 intellectual history, 262, 264 intellectual inheritance, 19, 267 intellectuals, 8, 101, 111, 114–115, 133–134, 136, 137–138 intentionality, 158, 161 intentions, 3, 124, 235, 238, 275, 282

interactions, 29–30, 33, 37, 41, 112, 140–141, 180–181, 217, 281 intercultural dialogue, 11, 123, 139–140, 142, 218–219 interdependence/interdependency, 39, 41, 43, 80, 210, 274 interest groups, 163, 193 international relations, 30, 208, 281 interpretation, 48, 50, 158, 160–161, 236, 237–239, 241 empathetic, 20, 282–284 interpreters, 28, 233, 236, 239, 243, 282 intra-party elections, 185, 188–189 Islam, 14, 83, 150–151, 155–157, 162, 165–166, 168, 261 see also Muslims. and popular sovereignty, 154–157, 165–168 Islamic political thought, 2, 151 Islamic scholars, 155–156, 157 Islamic thought, 1, 6, 13–14, 260 Japan, 4, 12, 69, 74–75, 77, 120, 128–131, 132–135, 136–139, 202 bent twig and ownership claims, 138–142 as Far Eastern Province, 12, 120–142 Meiji period, 12, 74–75 modernization and love-hate relationship with the West, 121, 133–138 Japanese scholars, 75, 203 Jordt, Ingrid, 9, 80–81, 86 judgment moral, see moral judgments. mutual, 25, 48–49, 51 judiciaries, 183–184 jurists, 152, 155, 157 justice, 29, 32, 42, 51, 135, 152, 167, 208, 234, 283 epistemic, 34, 38 global, 34–35, 277 social, 17 transitional, 28 Kant, Immanuel, 108–110, 209, 275, 283 Kantian republicanism, 10, 108, 110 ken-ri, 135 Khomeini, Ruhollah, 157 Koh Hee-Tak, 131 knowledge, 8–9, 63–65, 66–67, 68, 74, 77–78, 85–86, 128–130, 133–134, 177–179, 180, 189–190, 268

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Index circulation of, 62, 72 claims, 2, 72, 233 communities, 10, 72, 74, 81, 83, 124 general, 32, 83, 280 local, 69, 121, 124–125, 135 new, 74, 203 organization, 70, 74, 79 peasant, 217–218, 220 production, 66–67, 68, 77, 78, 80–81, 82, 85, 128–129, 133, 139–140 situated, 124, 218 sources, 66, 219 technical, 180–181, 183 theoretical, 69, 202, 243 knowledge-based institutions protected, 179 kokumin, 129, 132 Kongzi, see Confucius. Korea, 12, 74, 77, 120, 128–131, 132 Kronman, Anthony, 276–279, 285 La Vía Campesina, see LVC. labels, 70, 139, 243, 256, 259, 266 laity, 80–81 languages, 30, 32–33, 38, 39, 45, 48–49, 65–66, 86, 258, 266 foreign, 79, 282 political, 104, 130, 135 of political thought, 45, 48–49, 263 late imperial China, 10, 98, 102, 104, 106, 113, 116, 131 laws, 109–110, 153–154, 156–157, 162, 167, 168, 238, 242 leaders, 161, 163, 177, 178, 181–183, 186, 188, 190 elected, 179, 181 local, 187, 190, 191–192 political, 80, 132, 161, 174, 186 leader-selection systems, 186–189 leadership, 102, 112, 163, 182, 185, 187, 194 collective, 179, 180, 181, 183 selection, 185, 194 learning, 49, 73, 76, 79, 243, 255, 267–268, 276, 284 Lee Kuan Yew, 15, 174, 182 legitimacy, 14–15, 132, 153–155, 161, 169, 175, 187, 196, 213, 214 authoritative, 154 democratic, 149, 203, 215–216, 220 minben, 216, 220

299

moral, 155 performance, 181, 183, 185, 215 political, 15, 80, 154, 164, 190, 215–216, 220 legitimate authority, 10, 14, 150, 153, 157, 160, 165, 191, 209, 214 legitimation, 174, 209 Leviathan, 266 liberal arts curriculum, 282, 284 liberal democracy, 107, 155–156, 158, 174, 185, 195 liberal education, 18–19, 230–231, 232–233, 235–236, 241, 243–254, 258, 264, 267–268, 282 liberalism, 11, 107, 210, 263, 277 liberty, 29, 135, 152 Liew, Sonny, 257 lifeworlds, 32, 37, 42, 43, 49, 51 listening, 39, 235–236 deep, 7, 27, 39–41, 43–44, 46, 124 fast-time, 45 literati, 10, 94, 100–102, 109, 111, 112–114, 131 literature, 72, 74–75, 211, 255, 257, 262–263, 265, 276, 279 comparative, 243, 266 local destabilizing the, 64–67 new centers for the, 67–75 local communities, 78, 81, 112–113, 114, 220 local contexts, 69, 71, 74, 85, 139 local democracy, 186, 215, 220 local democratic meritocracy, mixed models, 186–193 local elections, 175, 188 local elites, 106, 188 local governments, 111, 188, 191, 193 local identity, 114 local knowledge, 69, 121, 124–125, 135 local leaders, 187, 190, 191–192 local officials, 103, 188, 191, 192–193, 194–195 local scale, 10, 212, 214–215, 220 local voluntarism, 101, 104, 113, 116 locality, 62, 68, 70–72 mobile, 60, 72, 81–82, 124–125 localized discourses, 68, 72 Locke, John, 257, 262, 266

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love-hate relationships, 121, 133–134, 136 LVC (La Vía Campesina), 17, 207, 212, 216–219, 220, 221 Machiavelli, N., 111, 266 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 231, 235, 245, 278 Madisonianism, 11, 108, 111–112 mandate of heaven, 130 manipulation, 40, 132, 163, 194 Mao Zedong, 180, 213 Maoism, 178, 182, 185, 213 March, Andrew, 76, 96, 121, 157, 203 meaning-in-use, 32, 38, 48 meditation, 7, 40–41, 43, 80–81, 256–257, 260 Meiji period, 12, 74–75 Mencius (Mengzi), 18, 160, 256, 262 merit, 15–16, 163–164, 169–175, 177–180, 182–183, 184–185, 189, 191, 193–196 differentiated locations of, 179, 186 generated by consultative and deliberative processes, 189–193 political, 177, 180, 182, 190 technical, 179, 181 merit-based governance, 179, 185 merit-based institutions, 179, 185 meritocracy authoritarian and democratic pathways to, 174–196 authoritarian, see authoritarian meritocracy. in China, 174–196 Confucian, 15, 174, 176, 215 democratic, 16, 175–176, 178–179, 186, 190, 194, 195–196 institutionally differentiated meritocratic systems, 183–186 local democratic, 186–193 political, 15, 107, 163–164, 174, 189 v democracy, 177–193 meritocratic governance, 164, 185 meritorious governance, 163–164 metaphysical republic, 10, 105–106, 108, 112–113 metaphysics, 70, 256 methodologies, 61, 127, 152, 209, 274 Mignolo, Walter, 208, 219 Mill, J. S., 135, 257, 266

Min, 12, 121, 128–133 minben legitimacy, 216, 220 minbon principle, 131 Ming, 75, 114, 116, 257, 262 ministers, 99–100, 135, 164 minzoku, 129, 132 mismanagement, 105, 179 mixed models of local democratic meritocracy, 186–193 mobile locality, 72, 81–82, 124–125 mobility, 71, 121, 125, 130, 135 mobilization, 212, 215, 220–221 modern developmental state, 15, 174 modern philosophy, 235, 266, 267 modern state, 15, 61, 127, 138, 155, 174, 215 modernities, alternative, 204, 221 modernity, 12–13, 61, 62, 121, 125–128, 133, 204, 220–221, 267 forces of, 121, 125–126 global, 7, 68, 125, 209 globalized, 18, 20 multiple, 12, 126, 133, 136 now-globalized, 1, 7, 13 shared conditions of, 125, 139, 141, 204 structures of, 204, 221 weight and directionality, 126–128 modernization, 27, 29, 33, 120, 126, 128, 132–134, 138, 285 monarchs, 99, 100, 103, 106, 154, 161 monarchy, 100, 103–104, 164, 176, 180 hereditary, 164, 180 moral autonomy, 108 moral disagreement, 20, 276, 284–288 moral judgments, 16, 179, 181–182 good, 181–182, 237 moral legitimacy, 155 moral principles, 26–27, 285 moral responsibility, 212, 217 moral standards, 25–27 morality, 101, 135, 154, 155, 161, 257 personal, 10, 101–102 motivations, 1, 7, 43, 67, 180, 282 multiculturalism, 20, 61, 138, 276–279 multiple modernities, 12, 126, 133, 136 Muslim citizens, 165–167, 168–169 Muslim societies, 14, 155–157, 165–168 Muslims, see also Islam, 14, 155–157, 165, 166–168, 261 mutual judgment, 25, 48–49, 51

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Index mutual understanding, 25–26, 31, 36, 38–39, 40–41, 42–44, 47–51, 141–142 myths, 14, 149–150, 162, 163 Nakae Chomin, 134, 136 nationalism, 78, 136–137, 138–139, 163 natural law, 154, 263 natural order, 161, 217 natural sciences, 231, 242, 243 negotiations, 31, 46, 65, 100, 218, 239 Nehru, Pandit Jawaharlal, 139 Neo-Confucian orientations, 70, 79 neologisms, 4, 12, 94, 129, 135 new communities, 82 new cosmopolitan thought, 68–69, 70, 76 new disciplines, 74, 82 Nicomachean Ethics, 242, 256 Nietzsche, F., 30, 45, 48, 231, 257 Nitobe Inazo, 136, 137 nonattachment, 7, 39, 40–41, 42–43, 47, 141 non-canonical texts, 262–264 non-comparative political thought, 264–267 non-democratic measures, 163, 169 non-Euro-Western traditions, 20, 123, 125, 126, 128, 130, 275 non-Western contexts, 17, 86, 151, 204 non-Western cultures, 212, 219, 282 non-Western perspectives, 66, 275 non-Western political thought, 2–3, 204, 258 non-Western texts, 66, 283 non-Western thought, 1, 3, 4, 6, 19, 20, 67–69, 204, 205, 258–262 normative theories, 60, 109, 216, 274 norms, 29–30, 38, 44, 63, 175, 182, 214, 255, 285 Northern Song, 10, 98–99, 101, 102–104 Nussbaum, Martha, 281–284 nyanzin, 80–82 Nylan, Michael, 17–18, 94, 232, 234, 236 Oakeshott, Michael, 261 objectivity, 244, 283 obstacles to deparochialization, 27–31 office-holders, 16, 175 officials, 100, 102, 105–106, 109, 187, 189–190, 191, 193, 195

301

Chinese, 185, 188, 189 local, 103, 188, 191, 192–193, 194–195 selection, 162, 195 one-party rule, 180, 183, 257 openness, 26, 38–41, 43, 202, 205 oppression, 32, 40, 49, 107, 127 ordinary people, 134, 138, 215 otherness, 26, 66 outsiders, 73, 76–77, 86 ownership claims, 13, 121, 138, 140–142 pan-Asianism, 136 Parekh, Bhikhu, 2, 65, 125 Parel, Anthony, 2 parochialism, 19, 44, 63, 85, 284 parochiality of political theory, 31–35 participation, 4, 10, 39, 46, 47, 51, 102, 108–109, 113, 240 active, 108, 131, 156 in dialogue, 39, 40–42, 47 political, 108, 111, 113, 116, 130, 134, 162 public, 132, 192, 212 participatory democracy, 15, 115, 217, 218 partners, 42, 46–47, 100 party members, 178, 188–189 party secretaries, 187–189, 195 peace, 30, 40, 110, 208 peasant knowledge, 217–218, 220 peasants, 216–218, 220 pedagogical value, 276, 279 perfectionism, 13–14, 95, 107, 161, 235 perfectionist philosophy, 14, 161 performance, 160, 175, 181, 185, 196, 220 economic, 185–186, 196 legitimacy, 181, 183, 185, 215 personal identity, 259 personal independence, 134, 257 personal morality, 10, 101–102 petitions, 178, 182 philosophers, 69, 166, 177, 239, 258, 262–263, 265–266 philosophy, 25–26, 70–71, 74–75, 79–80, 240, 243, 244–245, 255, 262–264, 276–277, 280 analytic, 13, 80, 84, 152, 240, 245 Chinese, 70–71, 74, 107, 207, 209, 263

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philosophy (cont.) comparative, 2, 38, 230, 232, 243, 246, 266 modern, 235, 266, 267 teaching, 254–268 Plato, 33, 122, 176–177, 231, 238, 240 Platonic dialogues, 32, 256 plurality, 9, 21, 204, 260, 261 policies, 28, 162, 168, 176, 181–182, 192–194, 213 political authority, 10–11, 81, 110, 112, 151, 152, 157–159 source of, 14, 149, 161 political communities, 73, 109, 115, 130, 257, 287 political culture, 98, 100, 107, 113, 150, 163–164, 182, 213, 215 political development, 16, 151, 164, 196, 215 political elites, 16, 163, 189, 215 political equality, 107, 108, 158 political imaginaries, 128, 204, 206–207 political institutions, 10, 15, 162, 288 political languages, 104, 130, 135 political leaders, 80, 132, 161, 174, 186 political legitimacy, 15, 80, 154, 164, 190, 215–216, 220 political merit, 177, 180, 182, 190 political meritocracy, 15, 107, 163–164, 174, 189 political order, 11, 14, 16, 103, 108, 110–111, 112, 161 and democracy at state scale, 212–216 political participation, 108, 111, 113, 116, 130, 134, 162 political philosophy, 2, 13, 18–19, 210, 231, 232, 234, 240, 255, 264 political subjectivity, 220 political theorists, 1–2, 3, 6, 16, 19–20, 79, 81, 266, 269–273 comparative, 60, 63, 65, 69, 75, 95, 123, 141 political theory, see also Introductory Note. canon, 127, 262 contemporary, 4, 70, 151, 279 parochiality, 31–35 recentered, 64, 72, 79–82, 84, 123 recentering of, 64, 72, 75–79, 82 Western, 32, 34, 35, 38–39, 140, 142, 233, 235

political thought, 2, 5, 7–8, 9–10, 25, 33–35, 37, 38–39, 48–50, 94, 121–122, 202–203, 246–256, 267–268 comparative, see comparative political thought. cultures of, 202, 203 history of, 3, 6, 259, 262, 274, 280 Islamic, 2, 151 non-Western, 2–3, 204, 258 teaching, 254–269 traditions, 26, 27–28, 30, 33, 35–37, 42, 48 Western, 11, 177, 217 politics, 17, 25–27, 33, 48, 83, 97–99, 151, 155–156, 162–163, 201–202, 211–212, 217, 255–258 deliberative, 207, 212–214, 220 democratic, 17, 164, 217, 265 scales of, 17, 206–207, 217, 219–221 polities, 99, 104, 105, 112, 113, 175, 176, 193 popular control, 150, 163 popular opinion, 194–195, 214 popular sovereignty, 5, 13–14, 130, 131, 149–169 Confucian reservations, 157–161 doctrine/idea of, 14, 149–150, 151, 152, 154–155, 158, 160, 161–163, 166–167 doubts, 152–154 Islamic reservations, 154–157 myth, 163 as political doctrine for a Muslim society, 165–168 as political doctrine for Confucian heritage societies, 161–165 power, 15–16, 32–33, 77–78, 113, 162, 164, 175, 176, 177–178, 180–181, 233–234, 235–236 authoritarian, 174, 185, 190, 191, 194 concentrated, 179, 181, 213 disparities, 60, 125 exercise of, 44, 149, 163 social, 7, 215 state, 101, 113, 168 power diplomacy, 208 power relations, 4–6, 20, 65, 194, 202, 280 practical benefits, 232 PRC (People’s Republic of China), 94, 114–115, 116

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Index presumptions, 34, 83, 96, 122, 126, 164, 287 presuppositions, 16, 19, 35, 43, 202, 231–234, 246, 265, 268 protected knowledge-based institutions, 179 public consultations, 183, 189–190, 193 public deliberation, 191, 214 public goods, global, 208 public interest, 105, 108–109 public nomination, 186–188, 195 public nomination-direct elections, 175, 186, 188–189 public opinion, 162, 178, 182 public participation, 132, 192, 212 Qur’an, 155, 157 race, 45, 276–277 rational autonomous agents, 166, 167 rational autonomous capacity, 166, 167 rationality, 154, 166 reactions, bent twig, 13, 122, 138, 139–140, 142 recentered political theory, 64, 72, 79–82, 84, 123 recentering, 63, 64, 77, 78–79, 80–81, 84, 124, 125, 126 receptivity, 26, 39–41 reciprocal elucidation, 7, 39, 41, 44–45, 46, 48, 123, 124 dialogues of, 48–51 reconstruction, 93, 95, 107, 214 theoretical, 94, 97, 204, 207, 213, 218, 219 reflexivity, critical, 18, 201–202, 204 regime types, 15–16, 164, 174–175, 176, 177–180 regions, 98, 102, 127, 129, 140, 151, 216 relationships, 40, 73, 75, 77, 107, 159, 217–218, 242, 243, 257–258 complex, 33, 34, 45, 246 love-hate, 121, 133–134, 136 relativism, 20, 41, 85, 277, 279, 285 religion, 127, 166, 204, 220, 232, 261, 265, 281 representation, 29, 49, 216 representative democracy, 177, 220 republic of virtue, decentralized, 11, 93–116 republican ethos, 115 Northern Song, 98–101

303

Southern Song Song, 101–106 republican spirit, 100, 102–104 republicanism, 4, 115 in different contexts, 107–115 enlightenment, 11 Kantian, 10, 108, 110 research, 39, 70, 71, 74–76, 79–80, 82, 205 resemblances, family, 34, 47, 49, 50, 94, 108, 205, 211 resources, 6–7, 64, 66, 70, 71, 81, 114, 182, 209–210, 212 ideational, 11, 18, 108, 142, 219 responsibility, 104, 164–165, 169, 209, 255, 278, 281 moral, 212, 217 responsiveness, 15, 69, 174, 215, 220 rights, 109, 110, 127, 135, 278, 284, 287 risk, 3, 5, 11, 82, 85, 86, 97 rituals, 102, 127, 164, 217–218 Confucian, 61 Rome, 261 rootedness, 65, 68, 215, 216, 278 rulers, 99–100, 103, 113–114, 155, 157, 159–160, 175, 178, 209 sagehood, 9, 79, 82, 102, 103, 105 scales of politics, 17, 206–207, 217, 219–221 scholarly communities, 63, 74, 78, 83, 85, 124 scholarly engagement, 9, 125, 128 scholar-officials, 10, 99, 214 scholars, 2–3, 5–6, 17, 61, 69–70, 76–78, 79, 81–83, 96–97, 107, 151, 154–156, 158 Chinese, 73–74, 77, 80, 158 Islamic, 155–156, 157 scholarship, 2, 5, 6, 72–73, 74–76, 78, 81, 231, 241–242 disciplinary, 236, 242, 246, 267 exegetical, 73, 98 secondary explanations, 29–30, 37 selection, 174–175, 177, 183, 193, 209, 256–257, 260, 276 elites, 175, 177 leaders, 186–189 processes, 188, 195 self, 4, 7, 37, 40, 80, 104, 202, 256, 259 self-aggrandizement, 165, 233, 242

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Index

self-awareness, 29, 33 self-critique, 68, 78 self-deception, 28, 279 self-governance, 108, 156 self-identity, 64, 167, 168 self-interest, 111, 210, 214 self-reflection, 18, 66, 128 self-reflexivity, 62, 83 self-respect, 165–169 self-righteousness, 165, 169 self-rule, 111, 153 collective, 11 self-transformation, 8, 233 self-understandings, 18, 20, 27, 31, 39, 42, 254 settler colonialism, 6, 45 Shari’a, 155, 156 shenpa, 40–41, 43 Shintoism, 138 Singapore, 5, 15, 19, 182, 254–255, 257, 268 Sinology, 62, 68, 72, 74–75, 77, 82 situated knowledge, 124, 218 social justice, 17 social relations, 8, 12, 134 social sciences, 69, 81–82, 230, 257, 273 societies, 5, 76–77, 103–105, 113, 158, 159, 163–165, 166, 287, 288 complex, 16, 45 local, 104, 114 Muslim, 14, 155–157, 165–168 sociohistorical context, 18, 101 sociology, 61, 63, 102 Socrates, 32, 44, 240, 244 solidarities, 131, 217–218, 220 Song Northern, 10, 98–99, 101, 102–104 Southern, 10, 93–116 Southeast Asia, 254–268 Southern Song, 10, 93–116 sovereign states, 210 bounded, 1, 7, 203, 206 territorially bounded, 1, 7, 203, 206 sovereignty, 14, 149, 155, 158 divine, 14, 156, 165–168 food, 216 popular, see popular sovereignty. space, 18, 29, 36, 43, 49, 178–181, 185 standards, 49, 72, 73–74, 84, 287

moral, 25–27 state, modern, 15, 61, 127, 138, 155, 174, 215 state bureaucracy, 10, 99, 102, 106, 112 state power, 101, 113, 168 state-led democratization, 17, 215 state-owned enterprises, 185, 188 state-society relations, 104, 113 Strauss, Leo, 231, 235 students, 5, 19–20, 26, 232–233, 236–237, 238–239, 254–255, 257–259, 260–262, 264, 267–273, 281, 282 subjectivity, 12, 45, 220 political, 220 subordination, 27, 29 supremacy, 111, 153–154, 158, 184 syllabi, 1, 257, 260, 262 Taylor, Charles, 65, 67, 138, 233, 286–287 teachers, 230, 232, 233, 234, 238–239, 244, 246, 255, 258, 267–268 teaching, 5, 38–39, 230–232, 235–236, 237–239, 240–244, 255, 265–266, 268–269 classroom, 241, 242 comparative, 18, 235 experience of, 19, 231–232, 254, 267 territorially bounded sovereign states, 1, 7, 203, 206 texts, 20–21, 35, 46, 47–48, 65–66, 86, 231–233, 236–241, 242–244, 258–260, 263–264, 266–268 canonical, 63, 79, 258, 262–264, 280 non-Western, 66, 283 theocracies, 168, 180 theoretical engagement, 206–207 theoretical frameworks, 16, 202–203, 215, 221 Western, 140, 206 theoretical innovation, 9, 280 theoretical knowledge, 69, 202, 243 theoretical reconstruction, 94, 97, 204, 207, 213, 218, 219 theorists, 65, 66, 76, 79, 230–231, 233, 236, 239 democratic, 78, 203–204 theorizations, 61, 72, 82, 84

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Index theory production, 63–64, 123 thought comparative political, see comparative political thought. Islamic, 1, 6, 13–14, 260 non-Western, 1, 3, 4, 6, 19, 20, 67–69, 204, 205 Political, see political thought. schools of, 75, 78, 115, 177, 263 traditions, 1, 3, 6, 9, 13, 17, 19, 77, 82 Western, 2–3, 66, 125, 204 tianxia theory, 17, 208–212, 219, 221 tianxia weigong, 158–159 toleration, 11, 17, 20, 278 traditions, 7–8, 13–14, 26–30, 31–34, 35–39, 44–45, 49–50, 95–97, 262–263, 266, 267, 274–276, 283–286 Confucian, 10, 94, 107, 115, 116, 209, 214 cultural, 11, 95, 264–266 dominant, 28, 32, 44 ethical, 76, 96, 115 grounding in practices and places, 37–39 non-Euro-Western, 20, 123, 125, 126, 128, 130, 275 of political thought, 26, 27–28, 30, 33, 35, 36, 42, 48 thought, 1, 3, 6, 9, 13, 17, 19, 77, 82 Western, 8–9, 20, 26, 28, 44, 50, 66, 207, 210 training, 13, 69, 76–78, 81, 86, 164, 230 transformations, 1–2, 7, 13, 17, 45, 128, 131 transformative engagement, 25, 123 transitional justice, 28 translation, 43, 45–46, 48–50, 79, 84–85, 135, 218 dialogical work of, 46, 48 dialogues, 46, 48–49 translators, 45, 135 True Way Learning (TWL), 10–11, 93–116, 206 in historical context, 97–106 practitioners, 10, 101–105, 113 trust, 163, 190, 236 mutual, 30 public, 185

305

truth, 18, 26, 47, 202, 239, 243, 258 truthfulness courage of, 36, 39, 46–47 TWL, see True Way Learning. undergraduates, 2, 230–231, 240, 275, 284 understanding, mutual, 25–26, 31, 36, 38–39, 40–41, 42–44, 47–51, 141–142 United Nations, 38, 208, 210, 217 United States, 41, 45, 137–138, 185, 245–255, 276, 279, 280–281 unity, 9, 104, 240, 261 universal validity, 18, 33, 122, 125, 150 universalism, 62, 68, 209, 211, 275 homogenizing, 60, 85 universality, 18, 30, 211, 234 universalizing ambitions, 65, 66, 68, 70 universities, 181, 184–185, 188, 273, 276, 280–281, 282, 284, 286 validity, 107, 202, 287 action-guiding, 206 universal, 18, 33, 122, 125, 150 values, 70–71, 141, 161, 178, 208–209, 234–235, 236, 275–277, 278, 288 pedagogical, 276, 279 Vía Campesina, see LVC. village elections, 186–187, 212 virtue, 10–11, 35–36, 46–47, 99, 100, 163, 165, 175, 177–179, 243–244 vocabularies, 34–35, 122, 234, 260, 263, 287 voluntarism, local, 101, 104, 113, 116 votes, 186–189, 191–192, 194–195 casting, 188 popular, 189, 195 Wang Anshi, 99, 100–101 Watanabe Hiroshi, 130, 138 Western canon, 20, 211, 231 Western civilization, 20, 133, 140, 279 Western political theory, 32, 34, 35, 38–39, 140, 142, 233, 235 Western theoretical frameworks, 140, 206 Western thought, 2–3, 66, 125, 204, 258–262

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Western traditions, 8–9, 20, 26, 28, 44, 50, 66, 207, 210 Westphalian state system, 206, 210 Wissenschaft, 202, 203, 245–246 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 32, 34, 47–48, 50, 141, 205 worldviews, 46, 49, 141, 166–167, 205, 209, 256, 261, 276

Xi Jinping, 180, 187, 194, 208 Zeguo, 192 Zhao Tingyang, 207, 209–211 Zhu Xi, 82, 101, 103, 112, 256–257, 262 Zhuangzi, 240, 256

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