Roger Ames's newest book, Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, seeks to understand Confucian ethics, quite literally, on its own terms. Ames explores in detail central concepts in Confucian ethics, building through this vocabulary a rich and nuanced understanding of Confucianism. In the opening chapter, which provides a discussion of Chinese and Western philosophy in a comparative context, Ames states what I initially took to be his central thesis:

This is a fascinating claim. Might we really be entering an era in which “a creative fusion of Confucianism with other narratives will follow behind the rise of China as a contemporary economic and political force” (p. 4)? If so, what might this fusion look like? In the United States, for example, might our own narratives be shaped through encounters and engagement with Confucianism?

However, Ames does not really defend the prediction that such a fusion will occur or explain its occurrence; instead, he works to make vivid the philosophical assets of Confucianism, perhaps in service of that fusion. Thus, the main work of Confucian Role Ethics, and the focus of chapters 2 through 5, is to “appreciate” Confucianism through careful attention to its central concepts, to situate Confucian ethics within a broader cosmological context, to defend Confucian role ethics, and to argue that Confucianism offers a kind of immanent religiosity realizable through human relationships and the “enchantment” of human life. The epilogue returns to questions raised early in the book regarding Confucianism's relevance today. These concluding reflections address both the promise and the limitations of Confucianism. In regard to the latter, Ames argues that because Confucianism emphasizes the personal and relational dimensions of moral life, it may be prone to parochialism. Confucianism thus needs to cultivate the conceptual resources needed to engage ethically with “strangers.”

The book, overall, is thorough and effective, and the attention to philology in the interpretation of key Confucian concepts is helpful. In chapter 2, Ames brings to the foreground the importance of the Yijing (Book of Changes) and traditional Chinese medicine in providing the cosmological context for Confucian relational ethics. Here we see vividly how deep differences in worldview inform traditional Chinese and Western thought: the Chinese tradition emphasizes processes and relations, while Western philosophy has centered on a static ontology of independent “things.” In chapters 3 and 4, Ames develops and ably defends the claim that relationships are not only central to Chinese cosmology but also lie at the heart of Confucian ethics. The Confucian self is constituted by its relationships, and in relationships we find both the source of life's meaning and the root of moral obligation. There are many places throughout the book where Ames captures key Confucian insights in elegant prose: “In a Confucian world, there is a very real sense in which the disintegrative conduct of rude, thoughtless, and shameless persons is the ultimate source of immorality” (p. 235). Finally, the discussion of Confucian spirituality in chapter 5 is fascinating and provides a compelling alternative to theistic religious perspectives.

There is much to be gained by reading this book, but the text at times feels slightly disjointed. For example, although both the introduction and the epilogue address crucial questions regarding the relationship between Confucianism and other philosophical perspectives, these questions fade from view in the central chapters, which focus on the details of Confucianism itself (even if Ames draws on a range of Western philosophers—including Aristotle, Plato, Dewey, Rorty, and Whitehead—for cross-cultural analogies). Moreover, the book's audience is not always clear. In an otherwise accessible introduction appropriate to a philosophically informed general reader, we encounter a lengthy discussion of a book by Michael Puett that criticizes Ames's earlier work with David Hall. Such excursions detract from the broad relevance of the text and raise questions about its aim. I found myself wondering at times: Is the central goal of the book to argue for the contemporary, cross-cultural relevance of Confucian role ethics, or to provide a careful account of Confucian ethics whose appeal and relevance are self-evident?

To understand fully the potential for a fruitful exchange between Confucian and non-Confucian moral perspectives, one must of course have a thorough understanding of the Confucian tradition, and Ames clearly gives us that. Even if one could quibble with details of the interpretation, the book unquestionably provides a careful account of key elements in a Confucian ethical outlook. Yet I wanted to hear more about the prospects and possibilities for the fusion forecast early in the book. Ames provocatively suggests the possibility of a “Confucianism-inspired democracy,” but the details of that vision, it seems, await elaboration in a future book, or perhaps—if Ames's prediction is correct—in the unfolding of Chinese and global politics in the years to come.