ABSTRACT Kongzi, Rawls, and the Sense of Justice in the Analects Erin M. Cline, M.A. Mentor: Robert M. Baird, Ph.D. This dissertation is a comparative study of the philosophy of John Rawls and the Confucian Analects regarding the idea of a sense of justice. The first aim of this work is to correct a view that has been advanced by several scholars of Chinese and comparative philosophy, namely, that the absence of terms such as “justice” in classical Chinese indicates that classical Chinese texts are not concerned with questions of justice, and that classical Confucian philosophers were not interested in the ideas that are the focus of modern Western political philosophy. Against these claims, I argue that there are deep and important areas of agreement between the understanding of a sense of justice in the Analects and John Rawls’s account of a sense of justice. I show that on both views, a sense of justice is cultivated first within the context of parent-child relationships and then within communities, finally emerging as a fully developed moral sense that informs the capacity to feel and act in certain ways toward other members of society. The second aim of this study is to show how comparative work can help us to understand more fully and accurately the features of two or more views. I argue that studying the idea of a sense of justice in the Analects alongside a Rawlsian sense of justice highlights some important dimensions of Rawls’s work that have been neglected, including the role he assigns to the family and the community in his account of how citizens cultivate a sense of justice. I also argue that Rawls’s discussions of moral psychology and the development of a sense of justice provide readers with a model for understanding the role that moral capacities can play in political philosophy. Rawls’s account helps readers to see how an appreciation for justice can be expressed in a text like the Analects , even though there is not a fully developed theory of justice or a single term that consistently designates “justice.” Copyright © 2006 by Erin M. Cline All rights reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vi DEDICATION x CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 1 I. Why Comparative Philosophy? II. Three Challenges for the Comparative Philosopher III. Outline of Chapters and Textual Matters CHAPTER TWO: Human Rights, “Justice,” and Confucianism 58 I. The Concept of Rights in Confucianism II. Roles, Rights, and Two Misrepresentations of Rawls III. The Distinction Between Terms and Concepts IV. Justice in Confucianism CHAPTER THREE: The Sense of Justice in Rawls 123 I. Political Liberalism and the Concept of Justice II. Rawls and the Sense of Justice III. The Cultivation of Justice in Rawls IV. Stability for the Right Reasons CHAPTER FOUR: The Sense of Justice in the Analects 188 I. The Cultivation of the Virtues in the Analects II. Kongzi and the Sense of Justice iii III. Justice without “Justice” in the Analects CHAPTER FIVE: Two Senses of Justice 261 I. Comparing Senses of Justice II. Justice and Self-Cultivation in Rawls III. Political Philosophy in the Analects CHAPTER SIX: Conclusion 317 GLOSSARY OF CHINESE TERMS AND CONCEPTS 325 BIBLIOGRAPHY 329 iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CP John Rawls. Collected Papers , ed. Samuel Freeman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. JF John Rawls. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement , ed. Erin Kelly. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. LP John Rawls. The Law of Peoples . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. PL John Rawls. Political Liberalism . New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, 1996. TJ John Rawls. A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition . Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many people I would like to thank for helping to make this work possible and for helping to improve its quality. First, on a personal note, I want to thank my brother Kelly and his wife Jamie, for their encouragement and belief in the importance of my work, and for the gift of beautiful Alma, who was born while I was writing the last chapter of my dissertation. I also want to thank my friend Anna Talley for the phone calls and emails of support at all the right times, and for going all the way to Providence with me. My friend Christina Cagliostro and her family supported me in the midst of weddings and births, and to them I am forever grateful for the reminder that relationships always make life richer. I have journeyed far and wide in my study of philosophy since I took my first course in philosophy at Belmont University, but the things I learned there are continually a part of my work. My thanks to Ginger Osborn, who taught me to stand up when I answer questions, and Mike Awalt, who helped me find my way to Baylor. Thanks to my former classmate from Belmont, Kevin Coyne, for providing inspiring country music analogies when they were most needed, and for supplying me with great dissertation- writing music. I owe a very special debt of gratitude to my first teacher of philosophy, Ronnie Littlejohn. My ideas for this dissertation initially began to develop in conversation with him, and his guiding influence throughout my undergraduate and graduate career has played a critical role in my life. It is with deep gratitude and respect that I call him my teacher, colleague, and friend. vi I want to express my gratitude to Donna Praesel in the philosophy department at Baylor University for her friendship and for fixing a flat tire and numerous other things on numerous occasions. I wish to express my thanks to the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University for hosting me as a Visiting Scholar while I was writing my dissertation. I especially would like to thank Hal Roth for taking me on as one of his students, for teaching me about everything from textual history to critical first-person investigation, and most importantly, for his friendship and encouragement. I am also grateful to T.C. (Jack) Kline III and Eric Hutton for the inspiration, encouragement, and criticism they have given me during my time as a graduate student and for ongoing conversations about this project. Dr. Carl Vaught’s signature should have graced one of the first pages of my dissertation alongside the names you see below. He was one of the reasons I came to Baylor, and although I already knew he was a brilliant scholar, I was completely unprepared for the way he would transform my way of thinking about philosophy. Although he didn’t call himself a comparative philosopher, I believe he was one at heart, because I know no one who better understood the significance of continuity and discontinuity. Although he did not live to see me complete my dissertation, his words and insights live on in many of the words I have written on these pages. I would like to express my gratitude to my committee members. Lenore Wright provided insightful comments on the dissertation and encouraged me throughout the revision process. Stuart Rosenbaum has seen me through my entire graduate career and has supported me one hundred percent every step of the way. Although I suspect that he vii is a bit disappointed that I did not become a Deweyan, it is a mark of his character that he takes genuine pleasure in my work in Chinese philosophy. I have been fortunate to have extraordinary mentors throughout the course of my study of Chinese philosophy. Henry Rosemont, Jr. took me under his wing from the time I was an undergraduate, an extraordinary gesture on the part of such an accomplished scholar. It is because of him that I came to study at Brown—an experience that turned out to be of utmost importance in my intellectual and personal life. Under his guidance, I first came to understand what it means to see the world in a Confucian way, and my life has become much richer as a result. P.J. Ivanhoe has provided constant support and mentoring since I began graduate school. He spent countless hours reading and commenting on my work, and responding patiently and constructively to the questions I peppered him with via email and in person during my year in the northeast. True to Confucian form, he knows precisely how and when to hold up one corner of a problem, but also understands that a student needs a teacher to return to with the other three. My committee chairman, Bob Baird, has been the embodiment of what a Ph.D. student’s mentor should be. Under his tutelage I came to love the work of John Rawls, and by watching him begin to undertake the study of the classical Chinese philosophical tradition for the first time in his career at age sixty-five, I learned what it means to have the heart-mind of a scholar. He has one of the sharpest philosophical eyes I have ever seen, but he is also one of the most humane, compassionate, and fair-minded human beings I have ever known. He and his wife Alice have supported me in many ways since my arrival at Baylor, and from watching them I have developed a deep appreciation for the spirit of the Baird, Cheavens, and Dawson families, which has breathed life into the viii Baylor community for generations. Because of my relationship with them, I will carry this spirit with me wherever I go. The greatest surprise and the greatest joy of the past two years was the beginning of my partnership with my husband, Michael R.