How do Confucians respond when their rituals fail? This basic question drives Michael Ing's book on Confucian ethics in the Liji (Record of Ritual). Ing argues that, according to the authors and redactors of the Liji, some rituals failed because they were performed incorrectly due to lack of proper knowledge or correct inner sentiments. A ritual could fail, according to the Liji, because it lacked efficacy; a correctly executed ritual that worked when performed by the ancient sage kings was not properly suited to the conditions in which it was performed in later times. The recognition in the Liji that rituals were not unchanging paradigms for correct human conduct produced a sense of anxiety among ritual agents who, like Confucius, had mastered the ancient rites but who should have realized that the script needed to be altered to suit current circumstances. The Liji represents some ritual failures as preventable by means of changes to the script, but represents other ritual failures as unpreventable because those who performed them “correctly” were not in control of all of the factors that affected the outcome. For example, the untimely death of a key figure prevented successful completion of a ritual, or certain simultaneous rituals were at odds with one another.

And still other rituals failed for reasons that were not clear even to Confucius. Ing takes this underlying ambiguity toward the causes of ritual failure in the Liji as a key to understanding the complexity of Confucian ritual theory that much current scholarship on Confucian ethics has yet to confront. Ritual agents in the Liji faced a bewildering world of choices, such as whether to follow or modify an ancient rite. In a compelling examination of the “Liyun” chapter of the Liji, Ing recounts the primitive utopia of the age of the Grand Unity when the Great Way prevailed and people lived simple lives in an undifferentiated society and everyone was properly cared for. As society grew more complex, social distinctions formed and people came to fend for themselves and their families, so the sages formulated rituals to control people's desires, which produced human civilization of the age of Modest Prosperity. The paradox of Modest Prosperity, Ing says, lies in the simultaneous decline of the Great Way and the growth of human prosperity and rituals regarded as synonymous with high civilization. Ritual became an object of conscious critical reflection during Modest Prosperity, as did a new conception of “self,” the object of moral cultivation. Modest Prosperity was at once fundamentally separated from Grand Unity and yet people were free to return to that era of simplicity but chose not to. Anxiety over the unknowable causes of dysfunctional ritual during Modest Prosperity signaled by Confucius's inability to explain why his parents’ grave collapsed (the subject of an outstanding chapter, “The Ancients Did Not Fix Their Graves”) induced a tragic consciousness of separation from the Great Dao that left ritual agents unsure about what to do even as they were responsible for making correct choices.

Ing addresses the concerns of three kinds of readers, whom he engages in methodologically distinct ways. His primary interlocutors are contemporary ethical philosophers ranging from Roger Ames and David Hall to virtue ethics thinkers exemplified by Philip Ivanhoe, whose work, in spite of the range of their methods, revolves around the elaboration of moral agency in the context of Confucian self-cultivation. Roughly the first third of the book is a critical summary of recent work on Confucianism and philosophical ethics. Ing engages these interlocutors by employing their own analytic methodologies of precise delineation of specific questions formulated in logical propositions, yet he does so to arrive at the decidedly unanalytic conclusion that the Liji is open to the possibility of irreconcilable ambiguity. Ing also engages textual scholars of Confucianism where he examines what the Liji says about specific rituals, primarily mourning and burial rites, which the text categorizes as inauspicious rites. Contemporary philosophical debates recede, and Ing's analysis focuses on ancient Confucian concerns of reverence and piety, on what classical commentators assert that Confucius meant, and on details of ritual practice. Finally, Ing briefly engages ritual studies scholars to consider how the Liji’s tragic theory of ritual contributes to questions of ritual efficacy and the necessity for practice to confront changing circumstances.

The Dysfunction of Ritual is a provocative and at times bold book that establishes the importance of the Liji in our understanding of Confucianism. Ing complicates philosophical scholarship on Confucianism that tends to focus on the Analects, Mencius, and Xunzi by introducing Confucius's anxiety over a tragic world of ambiguity. By seriously reflecting on what the Liji says about mourning and burial practices, Ing grounds Confucianism on concrete concerns that played an important role in Confucian ritual theory. By taking seriously a text that historically most Confucians have themselves regarded with the utmost seriousness, Ing produces a richly textured and historically inflected understanding of Confucianism.