Abstract

After reading Professor El Amine’s response to my review of her Classical Confucian Political Thought, I realize we are not as far apart on many issues as it appeared. Nevertheless, some areas of substantive disagreement remain. I will take the opportunity to highlight a couple of these. One is whether the good qualities expected of the common people should be properly considered virtues, that is, whether they are different in kind from the virtues that mark a superior man or even potentially a sage. This is especially relevant because it bears on the question of whether “political order, not moral edification, is the end” of the moral education that we agree is part of government’s role....