Encountering China Encountering China Michael Sandel and Chinese Philosophy Edited by Michael J. Sandel and Paul J. D’Ambrosio Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts London, England 2018 Copyright © 2018 by Michael J. Sandel and Paul J. D’Ambrosio Foreword © 2014, 2018 by Evan Osnos. Portions of this essay were first published in Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux / London: The Bodley Head, 2014), © Evan Osnos 2014. Reproduced by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, and by permission of The Random House Group Ltd, United Kingdom. Essays 1–6 and 8–9 © 2018 by their respective authors All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca First printing Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Sandel, Michael J., editor. | D’Ambrosio, Paul J., editor. Title: Encountering China : Michael Sandel and Chinese philosophy / edited by Michael J. Sandel and Paul J. D’Ambrosio. Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017024155 | ISBN 9780674976146 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Sandel, Michael J. | Capitalism— Moral and ethical aspects— China. | Confucian ethics— China. | Taoist ethics— China. | Mixed economy— China. | Communitarianism— China. Classification: LCC BJ1289.3 .E53 2018 | DDC 170.951— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2017024155 Jacket design: Graciela Galup Jacket art: ©De Agostini Picture Library / W. Buss / Bridgeman Images Contents Foreword: China’s Encounter with Michael Sandel | Evan Osnos vii I. Justice, Harmony, and Community 1. Community without Harmony? A Confucian Critique of Michael Sandel Chenyang Li 3 2. Individual, Family, Community, and Beyond: Some Confucian Reflections on Themes in Sandel’s Justice Tongdong Bai 19 3. Justice as a Virtue, Justice according to Virtues, and / or Justice of Virtues: A Confucian Amendment to Michael Sandel’s Idea of Justice Y ong Huang 29 II. Civic Virtue and Moral Education 4. Sandel’s Ideas on Civic Virtue Zhu Huiling 69 5. Sandel’s Democracy’s Discontent from a Confucian Perspective Chen Lai 81 III. Pluralism and Perfection: Sandel and the Daoist Tradition 6. Gender, Moral Disagreements, and Freedom: Sandel’s Politics of Common Good in Chinese Contexts Robin R. Wang 99 7. Satisfaction, Genuine Pretending, and Perfection: Sandel’s The Case against Perfection and Daoism Paul J. D’Ambrosio 123 vi Contents IV. Conceptions of the Person: Sandel and the Confucian Tradition 8. Theorizing the “Person” in Confucian Ethics Roger T. Ames 159 9. How to Think about Morality without Moral Agents Henry Rosemont Jr. 197 10. A Sandelian Response to Confucian Role Ethics Paul J. D’Ambrosio 228 V. Reply by Michael Sandel 11. Learning from Chinese Philosophy Michael J. Sandel 245 Contributors 281 Acknowl edgments 287 Index 289 Foreword China’s Encounter with Michael Sandel EVAN OSNOS One night in December 2012, I was on the campus of Xiamen Univer- sity, on China’s southeastern coast, when students massed outside the auditorium— far more of them than the building could h andle. I stood inside the doors and watched a growing throng of young, flushed faces on the other side of the glass. Security guards appealed to the crowd to keep calm. The president of the university had phoned the organizers of that eve ning’s event and cautioned them not to lose control. The object of such fervent anticipation— a figure who had acquired a level of popularity in China “usually reserved for Hollywood movie stars and NBA players,” as the China Daily put it— was a soft- spoken Minnesota native named Michael J. Sandel. At Harvard, where Sandel is a professor of po liti cal philosophy, he taught a popu lar course called “Justice,” which introduced students to the pillars of Western thought: Aristotle, Kant, Rawls, and others. He framed their theories of moral decisionmaking in real- world dilemmas. Is torture ever justified? Would you steal a drug that your child needs to survive? The classes had been filmed for an American public tele vi sion series and put on- line. As they began to circulate in China, Chinese volunteers came for- ward to provide subtitles, and within two years Sandel had acquired an astonishing level of celebrity. China Newsweek magazine named him the “most influential foreign figure” of 2010. Yingyi Qian, the dean of the School of Economics and Manage- ment at Tsing hua University, told me, “Sandel’s approach to moral