User:MathisBitton/Confucianism

子曰：有教無類.

The Master said: "In teaching, there should be no distinction of classes."

— Analects 15.39 (Legge translation).

Although Confucius claimed that he never invented anything but was only transmitting ancient knowledge (Analects 7.1), he did produce a number of new ideas. Many European and American admirers such as Voltaire and Herrlee G. Creel point to the revolutionary idea of replacing nobility of blood with nobility of virtue. Jūnzǐ (君子, lit. "lord's child"), which originally signified the younger, non-inheriting, offspring of a noble, became, in Confucius's work, an epithet having much the same meaning and evolution as the English "gentleman."

A virtuous commoner who cultivates his qualities may be a "gentleman", while a shameless son of the king is only a "small man." That Confucius admitted students of different classes as disciples is a clear demonstration that he fought against the feudal structures that defined pre-imperial Chinese society.

Another new idea, that of meritocracy, led to the introduction of the imperial examination system in China. This system allowed anyone who passed an examination to become a government officer, a position which would bring wealth and honour to the whole family. The Chinese imperial examination system started in the Sui dynasty. Over the following centuries the system grew until finally almost anyone who wished to become an official had to prove his worth by passing a set of written government examinations.

Contemporary Theories of Confucian political meritocracy

Confucian political meritocracy is not merely a historical phenomenon. The practice of meritocracy still exists across China and East Asia today, and a wide range of contemporary intellectuals — from Daniel Bell to Tongdong Bai, Joseph Chan, and Jiang Qing — defend political meritocracy as a viable alternative to liberal democracy.

In Just Hierarchy, Daniel Bell and Wang Pei argue that hierarchies are inevitable. Faced with ever-increasing complexity at scale, modern societies must build hierarchies to coordinate collective action and tackle long-term problems such as climate change. In this context, we need not — and should not — want to flatten hierarchies as much as possible. We ought to ask what makes political hierarchies just and use these criteria to decide the institutions that deserve preservation, those that require reform, and those that need radical transformation. They call this approach “progressive conservatism,” a term that reflects the ambiguous place of the Confucian tradition within the Left-Right dichotomy.

Bell and Wang propose two justifications for political hierarchies that do not depend on a “one person, one vote” system. First is raw efficiency, which may require centralized rule in the hands of the competent few. Second, and most important, is serving the interests of the people (and the common good more broadly). In Against Political Equality, Tongdong Bai complements this account by using a proto-Rawlsian “political difference principle.” Just as Rawls claims that economic inequality is justified so long as it benefits those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, so Bai argues that political equality is justified so long as it benefits those materially worse off.

Bell, Wang, and Bai all criticize liberal democracy to argue that government by the people may not be government for the people in any meaningful sense of the term. They argue that voters tend to act in irrational, tribal, short-termist ways; they are vulnerable to populism and struggle to account for the interests of future generations. In other words, at a minimum, democracy needs Confucian meritocratic checks.

In The China Model, Bell argues that Confucian political meritocracy provides—and has provided—a blueprint for China’s development. For Bell, the ideal according to which China should reform itself (and has reformed itself) follows a simple structure: Aspiring rulers first pass hyper-selective examinations, then have to rule well at the local level to be promoted to positions as the provincial level, then have to excel at the provincial level to access positions at the national level, and so on. This system aligns with what Harvard historian James Hankins calls “virtue politics,” or the idea that we should build institutions to select the most competent and virtuous rulers — as opposed to institutions concerned first and foremost with limiting the power of rulers.

While contemporary defenders of Confucian political meritocracy all accept this broad frame, they disagree with each other on three main questions: institutional design, the means by which meritocrats are promoted, and the compatibility of Confucian political meritocracy with liberalism.

Institutional Design

Bell and Wang favour a system in which officials at the local level are democratically elected and higher-level officials are promoted by peers. As Bell puts it, he defends “democracy at the bottom, experimentation in the middle, and meritocracy at the top.” Bell and Wang argue that this combination conserves the main advantages of democracy -- involving the people in public affairs at the local, strengthening the legitimacy of the system, forcing some degree of direct accountability, etc. -- while preserving the broader meritocratic character of the regime.

Jiang Qing, by contrast, imagines a tricameral government with one chamber selected by the people (the House of the Commoners 庶民院), one chamber composed of Confucian meritocrats selected via examination and gradual promotion (the House of Confucian Tradition 通儒院), and one body made up of descendants of Confucius himself (The House of National Essence 国体院). Jiang’s aim is to construct a legitimacy that will go beyond what he sees as the atomistic, individualist, and utilitarian ethos of modern democracies and ground authority is something sacred and traditional. While Jiang’s model is considerably closer to an ideal theory than Bell’s proposals, it represents a more traditionalist alternative.

Tongdong Bai presents an in-between by proposing a two-tiered bicameral system. At the local level, as with Bell, Bai advocates Deweyan participatory democracy. At the national level, Bai proposes two chambers: one of meritocrats (selected by examination, by examination and promotion, from leaders in certain professional fields, etc.), and one of representatives elected by the people. While the lower house does not have any legislative power per se, it acts as a popular accountability mechanism by championing the people and putting pressure on the upper house. More generally, Bai argues that his model marries the best of meritocracy and democracy. Following Dewey’s account of democracy as a way of life, he points to the participatory features of his local model: citizens still get to have a democratic lifestyle, participate in political affairs, and be educated as “democratic men.” Similarly, the lower house allows citizens to be represented, have a voice in public affairs (albeit a weak one), and ensure accountability. Meanwhile, the meritocratic house preserves competence, statesmanship, and Confucian virtues.

The Promotion System

Defenders of Confucian political meritocracy all champion a system in which rulers are selected on the basis of intellect, social skills, and virtue. Bell proposes a model wherein aspiring meritocrats take hyper-selective exams and prove themselves at the local levels of government before reaching the higher levels of government, where they hold more centralized power. In his account, the exams select for intellect and other virtues — for instance, the ability to argue three different viewpoints on a contentious issue may indicate a certain degree of openness. Tongdong Bai’s approach incorporates different ways to select members of the meritocratic house, from exams to performance in various fields — business, science, administration, and so on. In every case, Confucian meritocrats draw on China’s extensive history of meritocratic administration to outline the pros and cons of competing methods of selection.

For those who, like Bell, defend a model in which performance at the local levels of government determines future promotion, an important question is how the system judges who “performs best.” In other words, while examinations may ensure that early-career officials are competent and educated, how do we thereafter ensure that only those who rule well get promoted? The literature opposes those who prefer evaluation by peers to evaluation by superiors, with some thinkers including quasi-democratic selection mechanisms along the way. In the case of Bell and Wang, they favour a system in which officials at the local level are democratically elected and higher-level officials are promoted by peers. They argue that this combination conserves the main advantages of democracy — involving the people in public affairs, strengthening the legitimacy of the system, etc. — while preserving the broader meritocratic character of the regime. Because they believe that promotion should depend upon peer evaluations only, Bell and Wang argue against transparency — i.e. the public should not know how officials are selected, since ordinary people are in no position to judge officials beyond the local level. Others, like Jiang Qing, defend a model in which superiors decide who gets promoted; this method is in line with more traditionalist strands of Confucian political thought, which place a greater emphasis on strict hierarchies and epistemic paternalism — that is, the idea that older and more experienced people know more.

Compatibility with Liberalism and Democracy, and Critique of Political Meritocracy

Another key question is whether Confucian political thought is compatible with liberalism. Tongdong Bai, for instance, argues that while Confucian political thought departs from the “one person, one vote” model, it can conserve many of the essential characteristics of liberalism, such as freedom of speech and individual rights. In fact, bot Daniel Bell and Tongdong Bai hold that Confucian political meritocracy can tackle challenges that liberalism wants to tackle, but cannot by itself. At the cultural level, for instance, Confucianism, its institutions, and its rituals offer bulwarks against atomization and individualism. At the political level, the non-democratic side of political meritocracy is — for Bell and Bai — more efficient at addressing long-term questions such as climate change, in part because the meritocrats do not have to worry about the whims of public opinion.

Joseph Chan defends the compatibility of Confucianism with both liberalism and democracy. In his book Confucian Perfectionism, he argues that Confucians can embrace both democracy and liberalism on instrumental grounds; that is, while liberal democracy may not be valuable for its own sake, its institutions remains valuable — particularly when combined with a broadly Confucian culture — to serve Confucian ends and inculcate Confucian virtues.

Other Confucians have criticized Confucian meritocrats à la Bell for their rejection of democracy. For them, Confucianism does not have to be premised on the assumption that meritorious, virtuous political leadership is inherently incompatible with popular sovereignty, political equality and the right to political participation (Hall and Ames 1999; Kim 2014; Tan 2003). These thinkers accuse the meritocrats of overestimating the flaws of democracy, mistaking temporary flaws for permanent and inherent features, and underestimating the challenges that the construction of a true political meritocracy poses in practice — including those faced by contemporary China and Singapore. Franz Mang claims that, when decoupled from democracy, meritocracy tends to deteriorate into an oppressive regime under putatively “meritorious” but actually “authoritarian” rulers; Mang accuses Bell’s China model of being self-defeating, as — Mang claims — the CCP’s authoritarian modes of engagement with the dissenting voices illustrate. Baogang He and Mark Warren add that we should understand “meritocracy” as a concept describing a regime’s character rather than its type, which is determined by distribution of political power — on their view, we can build democratic institutions which are meritocratic insofar as they favour competence.

Roy Tseng, drawing on the New Confucians of the twentieth century, argues that Confucianism and liberal democracy can enter into a dialectical process, in which liberal rights and voting rights are rethought into resolutely modern, but nonetheless Confucian ways of life. This synthesis, blending Confucians rituals and institutions with a broader liberal democratic frame, is distinct from both Western-style liberalism — which, for Tseng, suffers from excessive individualism and a lack of moral vision — and from traditional Confucianism — which, for Tseng, has historically suffered from rigid hierarchies and sclerotic elites. Against defenders of political meritocracy, Tseng claims that the fusion of Confucian and democratic institutions can conserve the best of both worlds, producing a more communal democracy which draws on a rich ethical tradition, addresses abuses of power, and combines popular accountability with a clear attention to the cultivation of virtue in elites.