Reconstructionist Confucianism

• Beyond Individualism: Familism as the Key to Virtuous Social Structure.- Confucian Morality: Why It Is in Tension with Contemporary Western Moral Commitments.- Virtue, Ren, and Familial Roles: Deflating Concerns with Individual Rights and Equality.- A Family-Oriented Civil Society: Treating People as Unequals.- Virtue as a Way of Life: Social Justice Reconsidered.- Virtue as the True Character of Social Obligations: Why Rawlsian Social Justice is Vicious.- Giving Priority to Virtue Over Justice and Rebuilding Chinese Health Care Principles.- Which Care? Whose Responsibility? And Why family? Filial Piety and Long Term Care for the Elderly.- The Market, the Goodness of Profit, and the Proper Character of Chinese Public Policy.- Towards a Directed, Benevolent Market Polity: Looking Beyond Social Democratic Approaches to Health Care.- How Egalitarianism Corrupted Chinese Medicine: Recovering the Synergy of the Pursuit of Virtue and Profit.- Honor, Shame, and the Pursuit of Excellence: Towards a Confucian Business Ethics.- Human Dominion Over Nature: Following the Sages.- Rites, not Rights: Towards a Richer Vision of the Human Condition.- Rites as the Foundations of Human Civilization: Rethinking the Role of the Confucian Li.- How Should We Solve Moral Dissensus? Liberals and Libertarians Have It All Wrong.- Appeal to Rites and Personhood.- Restoring the Confucian Personality and Filling the Moral Vaccum in Contemporary China.

From the reviews: "Fan Ruiping's courageous book addresses the question of what should replace communism in China. He defends a Confucian morality that sharply contrasts with liberal individualism and draws implications for concrete issues like morality in business and health-care reform. The book is both provocative and plausible, and it is a must-read for anybody concerned about China's future. And perhaps it will inspire liberals to question their own commitments." (Daniel A. Bell, Tsinghua University) "This is an important volume in contemporary philosophical thought, deeply and creatively rooted in Confucian scholarship. It is the only major attempt in English to capture Confucian thought that does not distort that thought through background Western philosophical assumptions and commitments. Fan's work will have an enduring impact. In a world in which no one can ignore contemporary Chinese thought, this volume is essential reading." (Nicholas Capaldi, Loyola University New Orleans) "In recent years, Ruiping Fan has emerged as a strong voice for Confucianism. In this remarkable book on Reconstructionist Confucianism, Fan reclaims and articulates moral resources from the Confucian tradition to meet contemporary moral as well as public policy challenges. Unlike some new-Confucians who either shy away from perceived weaknesses of Confucianism or attempt to dig with a magnifying glass for Confucian values that resonate with modern Western ethics, Fan unapologetically defends a version of Confucian family-oriented favoritism in the face of Western individual-based, universalistic morality, and vigorously argues for a robust Confucian ethic in contemporary society. Fan's position is serious, coherent, and well-grounded. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning Confucian philosophy in its unwatered-down form." (Chenyang Li, author of The Tao Encounters the West) "This study in Confucian thought is a ground-breaking and creative work in philosophy that succeeds in bringing the substantive resources of Confucian moral and political thought to bear on the challenges facing contemporary China, indeed the world today. It is an innovative and engaging work in moral and political philosophy of interest not just to those engaged in Confucian or Chinese studies, but to anyone wishing to understand our contemporary cultural context." (David Solomon, Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame)