P1: The Valuable Confucian Way of Life

P1 stipulates that a collective way of life among the citizens in East Asian societies of the Confucian heritage (Confucian citizens hereafter) is distinctly different from a characteristically liberal way of life, and Confucian citizens value their own way of living even when their formal political institutions are more or less liberal democratic. Consider the following statement made by a Korean political scientist a decade after South Korea's democratization.

When non-Western people are trying to transform authoritarian regimes into democratic ones, they rarely reflect upon the kind of democracy that they would have after their painstaking struggles. In most cases, their future is unpredictable and almost everything depends on political contingency. In such circumstances, all they can hope for is that their struggles succeed, culminating in regime change. This is true not only of mass ascendant democratization of the kind South Koreans and Taiwanese experienced, in which citizens themselves were major agents to the regime change, but also of other forms of democratic transitions in which political elites play more substantial roles. The question of “what kind of democracy?” becomes important only after a successful regime change which political scientists call “democratization” and it is at this “consolidation” stage that scholars and citizens begin to wrestle with the new mode of collective life that they want to have under democratic institutions (Diamond and Plattner Reference Diamond and Plattner2001).

Since democratic institutions that have been (fully) introduced are characteristically liberal and the liberal rights discourse is almost unfailingly affiliated with democratic institutions and practices that now ought to be “the only game in town” (Linz and Stepan Reference Linz and Stepan1996, 5), the question generally revolves around whether democratization should be a liberal democratization in which there should be a congruence between liberal democratic institutions and liberal public reasons and civilities, or if it is possible (or even desirable) to develop an indigenous mode of democracy whose democratic institutional structures operate on public reason and civilities informed by local culture. The statement quoted above reveals that the latter path was the case with South Koreans, and I argue that it is the most desirable way to conceive of democracy in a nonliberal context. For only then can there be congruence between the people's collective self-identity (as Confucian) and their democratic self-government so that people can be democratic without transforming themselves into (Western-style) liberals, which they never anticipated during their democratic struggles. As Chaibong Hahm observes, “[a]lthough the vocabulary used by all sides in Korean politics today are couched in liberal democratic concepts and theories, the logic which undergirds the actual practice of politics derives from the traditional Confucian political discourse” (Hahm Reference Hahm1997, 66). I call this type of democracy a Confucian democracy.

Now, if we revisit the philosophical debate between political liberals (particularly political liberal antiperfectionists like Rawls) and comprehensive liberals (particularly comprehensive liberal perfectionists like Raz) from the standpoint of the actual political experience of democratizing East Asia, it is clear that both forms of liberalism are substantively liberal, which have little cultural resonance with ordinary East Asian citizens—“Confucian citizens” as I call them. Even the efforts to implement political liberalism a la Rawls or Habermas (usually made by local political theorists trained in the West) are perceived as futile attempts to achieve congruence between democratic institutions and liberal culture. For Confucian citizens, the public reason that gets emphasized is hardly neutral because it is always liberal public reason that they are encouraged to embrace and embody.

Thus understood, the perfectionist values of the Confucian way of life are most intelligible and self-consciously recognized when Confucian citizens are under staggering pressure to transform themselves into liberals. The normative vision of public reason Confucianism is enacted when citizens of East Asia reclaim, albeit with considerable modification under democratic institutions, their valued way of life, and try to be reasonable with one another, those with whom they share political power.

P2: The Confucian Habits of the Heart in a Pluralist Society

As noted, recent Confucian political theory has been sought as a pluralist correction to the global hegemony of Western-style liberal democracy. Yet, when Confucian political theorists construct their normative political theories, they tend to assume that the East Asian society of their interest is the Confucian society in a culturally monistic sense. Most notably, Jiang Qing (Reference Jiang, Bell and Fan2012) presents a political theory of Confucian constitutionalism which can make sense only if the contemporary Chinese state has Confucianism as its state religion and its citizens are all comprehensively committed to religious Confucianism.

By terms like “Confucian citizens” or “the Confucian way of life” I do not mean that contemporary East Asian societies are Confucian in an institutionally guided, culturally monolithic, or philosophically monistic sense. Contemporary East Asian societies, especially those that have been democratized, are characterized by vibrant civil societies that are internally diverse. People there are increasingly pluralist and multicultural, subscribing to different moral and religious doctrines. For instance, even among South Koreans, the most Confucian historically (Deuchler Reference Deuchler1992) as well as to this day (Tu Reference Tu, Marty and Appleby1991, 761), albeit arguably, only a negligible number of people are self-consciously identifying Confucianism (i.e., religious Confucianism) as their personal value system.Footnote ¹⁴

Given increasing value pluralization in East Asia's historically Confucian societies, what is truly remarkable is that they still remain deeply Confucian in terms of their ways of thinking and living especially when others, particularly family members, are involved. According to survey research on the value orientation of the liberal-minded middle class, mostly Western-style educated, Korean citizens, approximately 80% responded that South Korea's rapid economic development, democratization, and liberal individualization notwithstanding, their value system has been helplessly impoverished. In addition, over 90% agreed that the reinvigoration of Confucian values such as filial piety (xiao 孝), respect for elders (jinglao 敬老), the principle of the mean (zhongyong 中庸), and people-centrism (minben 民本) is critical to restoring the Koreans’ collective value system and social norms (Han and Eun Reference Han and Eun1999). Various statistical research conducted more recently (Bae and Park Reference Bae and Park2013; Ryu Reference Ryu2007; Shin Reference Shin2012;) consistently attest to the fact that Koreans (and other East Asians), despite their liberal individualization and diversification in terms of moral and/or religious value, are simultaneously committed to core Confucian values, most notably filial piety, respect for elders, and ritual propriety (li 禮). All the more surprising, social scientists in the East Asian region and beyond are increasingly persuaded that the cultural locomotive underlying Korean and Taiwanese democratization is Confucian values, with which the democratic activists there rarely, if ever, self-consciously associate their political actions (Fetzer and Soper Reference Fetzer and Soper2013; Hahm Reference Hahm2004; Helgesen Reference Helgesen1998; Lee Reference Lee2007; Na Reference Na, Na, Park and Cho2014).

The key is that Confucianism in contemporary East Asia is “hardly visible on the surface and rarely manifests itself in any organization or institution. It survives only at the most basic level of the popular consciousness and in the routines of daily life” (Koh Reference Koh and Wei-ming1996, 194). I believe the following statement by Byung-ik Koh is generally true for East Asians who still adhere to Confucianism as their habits of the heart:

As a normative political theory, public reason Confucianism finds nothing regrettable about the reality of pluralism in East Asia in which Confucianism no longer enjoys the status of state ideology or doctrinal orthodoxy. In this regard, it is not analogous to religious or philosophical Confucianism; nor is it a comprehensive doctrine in any strong sense if we define comprehensive doctrine in terms of mutual incommensurability. Nevertheless, the Confucianism in public reason Confucianism holds substantively Confucian perfectionist values that give the East Asian people a Confucian public character. And this publicly intelligible Confucianism binds citizens horizontally as equal members of one political community, notwithstanding their internal differences and moral disagreements. Public reason Confucianism recognizes the East Asian people as Confucian citizens only in this sense. Since Confucianism here is a publicly intelligible ethical value, even though it is not tightly rooted in philosophical or religious Confucian doctrines, it is still a set of comprehensive ideas and values (in a weak sense). Thus understood, public reason Confucianism is a type of comprehensive Confucian perfectionism.

P3: Public Equality

Public reason Confucianism is qualitatively different from the traditional Confucianism practiced by East Asians in premodern periods and from the version some traditionalists in the region still cling to, a Confucianism that is heavily patriarchal, androcentric, and hierarchical.Footnote ¹⁵ Though public reason Confucianism has no ambition of transforming traditionalist Confucians into so-called “modern citizens,” it is a modern normative political theory and a vision that treats every member of the political community as equal citizens.

This feature of public reason Confucianism is directly related to qualified endorsement of state paternalism in the societal context of value pluralism. Though traditional Confucianism endorses state paternalism, I differentiate between two kinds of state paternalism—state paternalism aimed at protecting the physical well-being of citizens (e.g., preventing and treating drug addiction) and state value paternalism that aspires to harmonize different, often conflicting, moral interests of citizens. While embracing the former kind of state paternalism with some caution, public reason Confucianism completely rejects state value paternalism and its pretense to have the transcendental eyes of a sage. Under the fact of value pluralism, every citizen is loaded with the burdens of judgment, which means that no one, including political elites, can claim to know one's moral interest better than he or she does. For instance, it is question-begging, nearly nonsensical, for a group of political elites to claim that a particular moral position in the abortion debate should be preferred because it serves the putative common good better. Since plurality in opinions and the resulting moral disagreement give rise to so-called the circumstances of modern (democratic) politics (Barber Reference Barber1984; Waldron Reference Waldron1999), it is extremely difficult to identify an independent moral and epistemic standard to adjudicate, let alone harmonize, moral disagreements among the citizens, each of whom demands to be seen and treated by others as rational and wants his/her moral judgment to be respected, even when some find it objectionable. Therefore, public reason Confucianism derives the moral value of public equality from equal public standing of the people qua citizens under the societal condition of value pluralism.

The value of public equality can be vindicated from another angle. One of the distinctive features of Confucianism as a political tradition is that it never envisioned an alternative mode of political regime other than a one-man monarchy. Even Mencius, who had strong faith in moral equality in terms of the good human nature and a person's capacity for moral development, never considered the possibility of any other form of government. In short, he was never a champion of political equality, not to mention democratic government; for him the only legitimate political relationship was that between the ruler and the ministers. Mencius argued that the monarch is given by Heaven a moral right to rule the people who vicariously reveal the will of Heaven. The ruler has immense moral responsibility to take care of the moral and material well-being of the people, but Mencius did not fail to note, it is only to Heaven that he is ultimately accountable because Heaven (or its delegates) alone can rightfully depose him from the throne (Tiwald Reference Tiwald2008).

None of the contemporary East Asian societies have a one-man monarchy, on which traditional Confucian political theory and practice were predicated, and the complete abolition of it drives us to rethink the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, and more importantly, the relationship among ordinary people who are now citizens. In our “republican” age where there is no “son of Heaven” or other delegates of Heaven, the right to rule should ultimately go to the people whose dis/content with the incumbent ruler or government represents the will of Heaven, according to traditional Confucian political discourse.Footnote ¹⁶ That is, in our politically post-Heaven era, the most important political institution is citizenship, making the relationship between the ruler and the ruled of secondary importance and into that of (democratic) political accountability.

Under pluralistic societal conditions, citizenship understood as an equal share of political power can be exercised meaningfully only if each citizen's moral interest is equally respected. Equal share of political power and equal respect of moral interest together establish the moral value of public equality. One of the central values integral to public reason Confucianism is gender equality because it tracks perhaps the most important feature of both public equality and common citizenship.

P4: Democratic Pluralism

P3 establishes public equality as a value intrinsic to public reason Confucianism. It is important to note that although public reason Confucianism is qualitatively different from traditional Confucianism, which rejects, among others, the moral value of gender equality, it does not aim to transform traditional Confucians or those who belong to particular cultural or religious groups into what social scientists call “modern individuals” (Gellner Reference Gellner1996; Inkeles Reference Inkeles1969). Not only is public reason Confucianism compatible with a plurality of lifestyles in civil society but it further protects various freedoms—religious freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, and freedom of association, to name just a few—which are indispensable to the survival and flourishing of various groups and associations, by making them constitutional rights. In this regard, public reason Confucianism is starkly opposed to Jiang Qing's Confucian constitutionalism. Consider the following statement by Jiang:

As Joseph Chan (Reference Chan, Bell and Fan2012) rightly notes, Jiang's Confucian perfectionism is extreme. Given the compulsory nature of the state, it is difficult to understand how Jiang's ideal Confucian regime can accommodate, as it wishes (Jiang Reference Jiang, Bell and Fan2012, 41), values, ideas, and lifestyles that do not perfectly cohere with the hierarchical superiority of Confucianism which he now wants to make the state religion. Public reason Confucianism has no desire to reinstate Confucianism as official state ideology. That said, public reason Confucianism also does not pretend to be neutral to all kinds of ideals, values, lifestyles. In fact, insomuch as public reason Confucianism is recognized by Confucian citizens as “Confucian,” it is not completely severed from traditional Confucianism. It is for this reason that public reason Confucianism is a kind of comprehensive doctrine, if we understand the term somewhat loosely.

What differentiates public reason Confucianism from traditional Confucianism is its ambition to have, maintain, and reproduce one political community with a distinctive public culture that can accommodate different moral interests as far as possible within the constitutional limits set by Confucian public reason. Thus, public reason Confucianism aims to promote certain Confucian values such as filial piety and ritual propriety but it does not embrace other Confucian values cherished by traditionalist or religious Confucians as public values applicable to all members of the political community because such values are only relevant to a small number of self-claimed Confucians who still adhere to their traditional Confucian way of life. At the same time, under public reason Confucianism, traditional Confucians (for instance, members of the clan organizations in Korea) can continue their traditional way of life by resorting to their constitutional right to freedom of association.

Even if the conceptual distinction between public reason Confucianism, which is primarily concerned with the democratic citizens’ public way of life, and traditional Confucianism, as practiced in East Asia in accordance with a certain doctrinal line, is accepted, a practical difficulty remains: what if a community of Confucian traditionalists persists in the kind of gender inequality that is part of their comprehensive doctrine? Is there a principled position that public reason Confucianism can take with regard to such a community? A recent legal case in Korea may be helpful here. A group of married-daughters (i.e., daughters married to other clans), belonging to two different clan organizations, which operate strictly on the traditional (Neo-) Confucian ritual precepts and moral principles (particularly those articulated in Zhu Xi's Family Ritual [Jiali 家禮]),Footnote ¹⁷ appealed to the Korean Supreme Court, when after sale of the clans’ land, the organizations offered the plaintiffs, who they considered belonging to their husbands’ clans upon marriage, a relatively small amount of money, not in terms of dividends which are only given to “formal members” (i.e., the clans’ sons) but in terms of “inheritance.” Initially, the clan organizations refused to offer the plaintiffs any compensation because they were not considered formal members. In the lawsuit regarding membership of the clan organizations, the Court sided with the married daughters, declaring equal membership between men (sons) and women (daughters) within the Confucian clan organizations.

Although public reason Confucianism agrees with the Court's decision, which while based on typical liberal jurisprudence promoting human dignity and gender equality also recognizes and leaves unchallenged the basic structure of traditional Confucian clan organization, it supports a different legal reasoning. First, from the perspective of public reason Confucianism, unequal clan membership ought to be rectified because it discriminates against women with no compelling Confucian justification. Originally, the reason for the Korean people to form clan organizations was to worship their ancestors by expressing their filial piety to them in a ritually proper manner. Therefore if male descendants automatically gain clan membership, there should be no barrier for the female descendants, married or unmarried, to become members simply by virtue of their filial piety to their ancestors. Moreover, unequal membership fundamentally deprives female descendants of the right to participate in Confucian rites and ceremonies, all associated with the supreme universal virtue of filial piety, thereby preventing them from enjoying the same property as well as legal and social rights that male members have. Here the point is not so much whether or not archaic Confucian precepts and values should be replaced by modern progressive liberal values but how to negotiate rites with rights by working out Confucian values and norms. We can call this type of moral reasoning exercised in various public arenas—in courts, legislatures, assemblies as well as in civil societies—in a Confucian society Confucian public reasoning.

That said, however, public reason Confucianism does not find problematic all gendered roles and ritual practices performed by both male and female members of the clan organizations in the capacities of sons and daughters, as long as they are conducted voluntarily and without serious injury to the female members’ public standing as equal citizens. Deferential relationships and moderate inequalities between senior and junior members and between male and female members within Confucian organizations and (extended) families are largely compatible with public reason Confucianism, which is concerned with the citizenry's public equality. In this regard, public reason Confucianism has no ambition to democratize all social relationships, nor does it desire to regulate the internal affairs of private associations as long as they are legitimately formed and operate on a voluntary basis.

Back to our question: what would public reason Confucianism do with regard to a community persisting in gender inequality in accordance with its comprehensive doctrine? The answer is that public reason Confucianism would only attempt to regulate and rectify gender inequality that degrades women's public standing and rights but leaves the other inequalities to be resolved by members themselves. In any event, what constitutes injury to women's “public” standing should be determined not by some putative universal liberal principle but in light of Confucian public reason.

P5: Confucian Public Reason

Confucian public reason refers to the reason of Confucian democratic citizens. It is what citizens in a Confucian democratic society share and appeal to when they are participating in public deliberation and making public judgments. It is a concept as well as a practice that is conceivable only if the idea of Confucian citizens as a self-governing people in a Confucian society is possible. As P1 and P2 stipulate, as a normative political theory public reason Confucianism is founded on the existence of self-governing Confucian citizens. Again, an example can be helpful in understanding what Confucian public reason means practically.

Since the establishment of the Civil Code in 1958, Korean liberal feminists have struggled to abolish the family-head system stipulated in it, which was also justified with reference to Zhu Xi's ritual theory, because it has systematically discriminated against women by, among other things, legally placing them merely as a member of the family headed typically by a father or a husband (if married), banning them from becoming the head of the family, even when they were the eldest members within the family, and preventing the child of a divorced woman remarrying another man, who is under the mother's custody, from adopting his or her stepfather's surname, thereby making him or her the target of social stigma (Yang Reference Yang2006). In their earlier struggles with conservative Confucian traditionalists who valorized the Confucian-style family-head system as the backbone of Korean moral culture, Korean feminists largely failed to persuade either the justices in the Constitutional Court or the general Korean public, who were saturated with Confucian mores and norms, with their strong liberal cause. However, as Hee-Kang Kim powerfully shows, the feminists were finally able to garner overwhelming public support by the time of the abolition of the family-head system by the Korean Constitutional Court in 2005, when they abandoned the “liberal versus Confucian” framework and began to argue that “gender equality in the family would not deny other Confucian family values and that the family rearrangement achieved by the abolition of the family-head system would, indeed, help to preserve the family, a core institution of Confucianism” (Kim Reference Kim2007, 268). In this important case which dramatically transformed Korean society, the type of moral reasoning and public rhetoric employed by the Korean feminists was characteristically Confucian and it is this sort of moral reasoning that Confucian public reason is modeled after and aims to articulate. One of the best ways to understand the distinctive characteristics of Confucian public reason is by comparing it to liberal public reason, which we have investigated extensively earlier.

First, in terms of content and character, Confucian public reason is clearly distinguished from liberal public reason. As we have seen, at the heart of liberal public reason, as far as the idea of public reason is concerned, is its complete detachment from any kind of perfectionist ends or comprehensive values. As purely political values, public reason is only formally concerned with certain rights, duties, or liberties. In contrast, Confucian public reason, as shown in the cases above, is grounded in substantive Confucian moral values such as filial piety, respect for elders (including ancestors), harmony in family, and ritual propriety and these values inform the contents of otherwise liberal political rights, duties, and liberties. For instance, in a Confucian democratic society where citizens generally cherish filial piety as one of the most important moral virtues, and thus the state is permitted (by its citizens) to promote it publicly, both the moral contents of core democratic rights and liberties such as freedom of expression and right to the pursuit of happiness and the public understanding of to what extent such rights and liberties can enjoy public protection, are qualitatively different from a society where filial piety has no salient public value. Likewise, in a society where values like filial piety and ritual propriety are socially cherished and publicly promoted, the very conception of the state becomes radically different than that which we find in a liberal society—the state is deemed not so much as the outcome of (hypothetical) social contract but as kind of a family writ large in which citizens see (and feel) themselves as related through familial ties.

A more concrete case would be useful here. Freedom of expression is one of the essential liberal values and most East Asian societies hold it in their constitutions as an important civil right. There are a variety of reasons why freedom of expression is held sacred in Western liberal societies, constitutionally as well as socially, but one important reason has to do with the fact that it underlies both liberal individualism, concerned with who I am or personhood, and liberal pluralism, concerned with individual diversity and associational freedom (Galston Reference Galston2002; Kateb Reference Kateb and Gutmann1998; Rosenblum Reference Rosenblum1998). However, in a society where “I” is understood in relational terms, family values and ritual propriety are publicly promoted, the society as a whole is deemed (or idealized) as a nationally extended family, and therefore social harmony and familial citizenship are valued, the value of freedom of expression is appreciated and exercised differently than it is in a liberal society. While liberal people embrace the “costs” accompanying their expressive liberty such as reputational injury and emotional distress (Cohen Reference Cohen1993) and make it a virtue to tolerate someone's free expression, though the expressed values may not be agreeable, Confucian people make every effort to avoid incurring even such mild harms to others, with whom they are indirectly and more distantly related, by constraining the way they exercise this freedom by means of ritual propriety and making the expression agreeable to communal norms and moral sentiments. The practical consequence of this difference is rather dramatic: whereas liberal people, by bearing certain costs of the freedom of expression and thus putting up with the “vicissitudes of pluralism” (Rosenblum Reference Rosenblum1996, 40), try to keep the state at bay from civil and private conflicts, Confucian people are more worried about uneasy social relationships than what liberals would consider “intervention” of the state, which they conceive of in terms of the image of the family. Thus understood, in a Confucian democratic society, freedom of expression is still valued as a citizen's constitutional right but its moral content and social scope is always balanced with Confucian mores, values, and moral sentiments. Confucian public reasoning involves this complex balancing process.

This, however, is not to say that grounded in certain perfectionist values, Confucian public reason is insulated from different, even contending, interpretations. Quite the contrary, public reason Confucianism allows citizens to negotiate their comprehensive moral values with Confucian public reason, then with particular rights, duties, and liberties. As long as citizens are willing to do so, public reason Confucianism further allows them to contest the dominant understanding of public reason in the public space of civil society as well as in more formal public forums (such as parliament and the court) so that it can be more inclusive and accommodating without forfeiting its Confucian character.

Second, Confucian public reason is also different from its liberal counterpart in terms of structure. Unlike liberal public reason, which is in principle concerned solely with matters of constitutional essentials and basic structure, Confucian public reason is open to all kinds of public political debates among democratic citizens. I would even argue that the home of Confucian public reason is not so much the court and parliament but civil society where Confucian citizens are struggling with various kinds of rights, duties, and liberties, that is, with what these political values mean to them both conceptually and practically, values with which they are culturally unfamiliar. For Confucian citizens (as well as their political representatives and other public officials including judges and justices), Confucian public reason mediates their habits of the heart—Confucian mores, moral sentiments, and civilities—with rights and liberties, which are of Western provenance, thereby helping them exercise such rights and liberties in their own terms.

Finally, the defining characteristic of Confucian public reason is that it is constituted by familial moral sentiments. Recently, inspired by David Hume, Sharon Krause has challenged the rationalist understanding of public reason (of the kind advanced by Joshua Cohen) by claiming that “public reasons are constituted by the things we all care about—not by things that ‘reason itself’ tells us we should care about” (Krause Reference Krause2008, 151). I argue that Confucian public reason has much in common with Humean public reason in that they are both nonrationalist: they are motivated not by the faculty of reason as such but by moral sentiment and they are equally concerned with what citizens care about with regard to collective self-government and the public good. What distinguishes Confucian public reason from its Humean counterpart is that it consists of sentiments and emotions that are characteristically familial. When the state is envisioned as an extended family and values such as filial piety and ritual propriety are socially cherished and publicly promoted, public reason is deeply fused with or mainly composed of familial affectionate sentiments. Put differently, Confucian public reason is the reason of citizens who see themselves as members of “one family,” which is now institutionally housed in a democratic civil society.Footnote ¹⁸ And it is by sharing Confucian public reasons that citizens in a Confucian society continue to cherish the values of filial piety and ritual propriety, values/virtues inculcated first in (extended) family settings, especially through the interaction with parents and other senior members. The two Korean court cases introduced earlier and our discussion of freedom of expression clearly demonstrate this familial affective dimension of Confucian public reason.

In a Confucian democratic society, therefore, public reason consists of concerns that citizens have in common, who despite their awareness of the value of individual identity, individual rights, and value pluralism, nevertheless see themselves related as family members. On the other hand, Confucian democratic society is a society where citizens are committed to sustain their shared familial public norms and values. Then, it can be concluded that public promotion of some core Confucian values in a Confucian society is a natural corollary of the familial nature of Confucian public reasons.

P6: Confucian Legitimacy

It may be objected that the public promotion of certain Confucian values, which I admit cannot be perfectly severed from traditional Confucianism, may do injustice to those who do not share Confucianism as their cultural value. Given the increasing number of immigrants in East Asian societies (particularly from the South and South Asian countries) and the resulting multiculturalization of those societies, this is a valid concern. In fact, one of the major differences between public reason Confucianism and public reason liberalism a la Rawls is that public reason Confucianism only embraces the external conception when it comes to the scope of public reason. That is, public reason Confucianism assumes that the fact of pluralism in East Asia is not a consequence of liberalism but a fact about the world East Asians find themselves in, to which political theory, liberal or Confucian, must accommodate itself. Therefore, public reason Confucianism stipulates that in a Confucian democratic society public reason must be justifiable to those who are not Confucian in any strong moral or religious sense. At the same time, P3 and P4 clearly commit public reason Confucianism to the principle of nondiscrimination, especially regarding immigrants, on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, or culture. As equal citizens they are entitled to enjoy the same set of political rights and are expected to fulfill duties that accompany their rights and liberties.

Does P6 contradict the core stipulations of P3 and P4? I think not. Public reason Confucianism is not a liberal political theory precisely because unlike (many) liberal theories (Abizadeh Reference Abizadeh2008; Carens Reference Carens and Beiner1995), it is not concerned with the boundary question. For instance, public reason Confucianism conceived of as a political theory for the self-governing Confucian people would not embrace the following statement—“democratic theory either rejects the unilateral right to close borders, or would permit such a right only derivatively and only if it has already been successfully and democratically justified to foreigners. This is because the demos of democratic theory is in principle unbounded, and the regime of boundary control must consequently be democratically justified to foreigners as well as to citizens” (Abizadeh Reference Abizadeh2008, 38). Here “democratic theory” refers to liberal democratic theory and as long as we understand the boundary question as internal to liberal democratic theory, the statement above has some force, for the internal conception in principle does not allow democratic citizens, insomuch as they are liberal, to draw the boundary unilaterally, that is, without a process of justification to foreigners. If we only embrace this liberal notion of democratic theory, then we may rightfully start to quibble about whether current democratic citizens have the right to control their borders as well as the right to national self-determination, and whether they have no prima facie right to integrate immigrants into the existing social, economic, and political order.

Public reason Confucianism as nonliberal democratic theory is not pre-committed to liberalism's background cosmopolitan assumptions as some liberal political democratic theories are (especially when they are conceived of as pure philosophical arguments instead of rooted in the concrete political experiences of particular liberal societies). It understands national self-determination as one of the most important political rights of the Confucian people, especially in the face of the global hegemony of liberalism. Grounded in Confucian public reason, the reason of the self-governing Confucian democratic citizens, public reason Confucianism has no preconceived philosophical burden to prove or disprove that the Confucian demos owes justification to foreigners when it comes to its border policy and other domestic policies that may affect them.Footnote ¹⁹ Without embroiling itself with the boundary question, therefore, public reason Confucianism agrees with what Will Kymlicka says about immigrant multiculturalism—that is, what is at issue is not so much whether integration (including naturalization) as such is just but whether the societal integration of immigrants takes place on fair terms so that immigrant groups are able to equally participate within the mainstream (academic, economic, and political) institutions of the existing society (Kymlicka Reference Kymlicka2001, 162–171). Such fair terms include the right to basic freedoms, including freedom of association, based on which immigrant cultural groups can claim “polyethnic rights” (Kymlicka Reference Kymlicka1995, 31).

Confucian public reason is the inevitable price for a fair integration of immigrants who have joined a new political community voluntarily, with full awareness that they are entering a Confucian society, a society that cherishes and publicly promotes certain Confucian values and in which citizens give justification to one another in light of Confucian public reason. As stipulated in P4 and P5, new citizens have the right to contest the currently dominant understanding of Confucian public reason first by negotiating it with their religious or nonreligious comprehensive doctrines and then by offering an alternative notion of public reason that is intelligible to other citizens. In no case, however, are the fair terms of social integration meant to embrace unreasonable pluralism that is likely to erode the society's Confucian public character and undermine the people's right to collective self-government based upon it. Thus understood, the criterion by which to judge whether or not Confucian democratic citizens treat immigrants fairly is not so much whether they expect immigrant groups to appeal to Confucian public reason in public deliberation processes, but whether they respect the minority groups’ right to basic freedoms (for instance, freedom of association) as equally as other cultural groups, especially Confucian groups and associations who may be under the wrong impression that they have a privileged connection with Confucian public reason.