Are there irresolvable value conflicts according to early Confucian ethical and sociopolitical thinkers? If so, how do Confucians recommend that people decide on an appropriate course of action in such cases, and what is the impact on their moral integrity of the choice they make and the conduct they undertake? Is their integrity rendered vulnerable when they are forced to choose between conflicting values, and is there value in the vulnerability of integrity? Michael Ing examines these questions in The Vulnerability of Integrity in Early Confucian Thought, and his bold and highly compelling analysis of how early Confucians addressed them is an important contribution to scholarship in multiple fields of study. In Ing's study, there is ample consideration of content from the Analects, the Mengzi, and the Xunzi, which receive the most attention from scholars. His examination extends beyond them, however, to include detailed discussions of other texts that are often overlooked, including the Kongzi Jiayu, the Han Shi Waizhuan, the Kong Congzi, the Liji, and others. The scope of Ing's knowledge of the early Confucian textual corpus, and of the scholarship on it in English, Chinese, and Japanese, is impressive. Moreover, the skill with which he draws widely from these materials in explicating the components of his argument makes for a nuanced and innovative study that exemplifies the highest methodological standards in text-based sinological research and in contemporary ethical philosophy.

Ing seeks to broaden and enhance the reader's understanding of early Confucian ethical thought by distinguishing between conceptions of moral invulnerability—articulated not just in the early texts and commentarial tradition but also in contemporary scholarship—and vulnerability, which, while also present in these Confucian writings, has been largely neglected in the current scholarship on them. In the first chapter, Ing explains that portions of the early corpus relate that sages, the most highly cultivated moral agents, are able to maintain their integrity and transform society to benefit people, even when they must collude with immoral rulers or deviate from accepted ethical standards in order to do what is right. Sages, by relying on their unfailing moral discretion in taking exigent actions, always enable integrity and necessity to coincide. Thus, they feel no guilt about implementing the required exigency, and their integrity remains invulnerable. Contemporary scholars have used accounts of invulnerable sages to argue for what Ing calls the “harmony thesis” (the subject of chapter 2). That is, in cases where values conflict, highly creative moral agents engage their moral imaginations in ways that resolve the apparent conflict by preserving, harmonizing, and maximizing, to the extent possible, each of the values at stake in a given situation. For sages, there are no tragic moral dilemmas, and though they may grieve the unavoidable harm done by a course of action they chose, they never feel regret because they optimized all the values at play in a complex moral situation.

In the book's remaining chapters, Ing shifts the focus away from learning about invulnerable sages to what he calls “Lived Confucianism,” which “stresses the applied features of being moral in real situations” (p. 18). Ing criticizes several features of the “harmony thesis” by astutely analyzing numerous vignettes in the corpus where people—nonsages and sages alike—do in fact encounter irresolvable value conflicts in the relations and affairs of their everyday lives. The moral distress they feel about not being able to attend to all values in such cases entails regret and resentment, not simply grief, and a frustrated longing for things to be other than they are. These feelings sometimes motivate them to transgress conventional social norms in order to release their pent-up frustration in edifying ways that will enable others to learn and develop morally and transform their societies in accordance with the Confucian dao. The quintessential example Ing uses to illustrate this kind of transgression is Confucius's composition of the Chunqiu. In examining these themes, Ing challenges prevalent scholarly opinions concerning not only the notion of resentment in Confucian thought, but also those asserting that, because Confucians interpreted the world as principally guided by harmony, they lack a tragic sensibility about it. He also complicates the portrayal of sages as being invulnerable, virtuoso moral agents by recounting other, more ambivalent vignettes in the corpus depicting such early sages as Yao, Shun, and Wu Wang as morally compromised figures, and Confucius as a conflicted figure.

The Vulnerability of Integrity in Early Confucian Thought aptly culminates in a thoughtful discussion of the “instrumental” and “intrinsic” values associated with the vulnerability of integrity (the subject of two outstanding chapters, “The Vulnerability of Integrity” and “Conclusion: The Value of Vulnerability”). The audiences for these chapters, and the entire study, are as diverse as ethicists working on the issue of vulnerability; those working on the ethics of care; and sinologists interested in early Confucian sociopolitical philosophy, ethics, and ritual practice. Ing posits that being vulnerable—physically, emotionally, and morally—is an inherent part of what it means to be human and live a morally rich, rewarding, and well-rounded life. Instrumentally, vulnerability enables moral learning, development, and maturity, and it facilitates forming meaningful and enduring familial and social relationships and bonds of friendship, trust, and reciprocity. Intrinsically, vulnerability, as a state of “caring about [people or] things,” can be, through self-cultivation, developed into “caring for [people or] things in morally appropriate ways” (p. 240). In these and other ways, vulnerability, Ing argues, contributes vitally to the Confucian sense of integrity whereby moral agents not only fulfill their “identity-confirming” commitments and obligations to others, but also inspire others to perform their proper roles in the relationships that largely define them. Ing's book powerfully demonstrates the moral relevance of vulnerability from an early Confucian perspective, and its scholarly impact, will reach across disciplinary boundaries and persist over time.