尤物视频

Justin Tiwald, University of Hong Kong :: The Confucian Debate on Virtue Politics
Friday April 25, 2025

Abstract: Scholars nowadays say that Confucianism endorses “virtue politics.” A rough characterization of virtue politics is this: when a government succeeds in governing well, this is due mostly or most fundamentally to the good character of its leaders, and not to its institutional rules or procedures. Accordingly, if we want to improve governance in a non-ideal state, we should work primarily on improving the character of the leaders and treat institutional design or improvement as a secondary matter. In point of fact, this general claim about governance and good character was a contentious one, and many Confucian philosophers argued against it. The claim itself is also ambiguous and susceptible of multiple interpretations, only some of which were disputed. My presentation will attempt to reconstruct and clarify the Confucian debate, using Xunzi 荀子 and Zhu Xi 朱熹 as influential representatives of what I will call the “virtue-centered” position, and using Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 as a sophisticated defender of the “institutionalist” position. 

This presentation will address three questions: (1) given that the rough characterization of virtue politics is ambiguous, what are the specific and meaningful points of contention between virtue-centrism and institutionalism? (2) what are the important Confucian arguments for virtue-centrism? (3) what are the important Confucian arguments for institutionalism? I will approach all three questions by closely analyzing competing views about Xunzi’s famous claim “there are people who create order, but no institutional rules that create order” (有治人，无治法).