Here is a thought-provoking study by Erin Cline that compares the political philosophies of John Rawls and Confucius (Kongzi):
More HERE. If you think the essay is too long, at least read the two concluding paragraphs below.
It is important to see that, despite the remarkable differences between their accounts, both Rawls and Kongzi exhibit a concern with political philosophy in general and a sense of justice in particular. On both views, having a sense of justice is a part of what makes us human. Rawls says that without a sense of justice, people “would lack certain essential elements of humanity”. In the Analects, Ren 仁 is the fullest realization of one’s capacities as a human being, and as a number of the passages we have examined make clear, Kongzi sees having a sense of justice as part of being Ren (“humane”). Rawls and Kongzi also maintain that parent–child relationships provide the foundation for cultivating a sense of justice, which in turn provides the foundation for a stable and harmonious society. Despite the laudable attempts of feminist ethicists to introduce discussions of the family into political philosophy, the role of the family in the achievement of a just society remains a tangential issue for many liberal theorists. Rawls did not consider it a tangential issue, and I hope this essay goes some way toward reintroducing Rawls’s discussion as a reminder of its importance for liberal thought.
I also hope this essay begins to show that the Confucian tradition has much to contribute to our ongoing discussion of the relationship between the family and society. Confucian philosophers emphasized the importance of the virtue of filiality in family relationships more than other schools of thought, and they explicitly argued for the distinctive claim that filiality is the root of other ethical sensibilities, including the political virtues. Accordingly, the Confucian tradition should serve as a resource for future discussions of the family in political philosophy. In addition, as we have seen, Confucianism places a great deal of emphasis on self-cultivation and has much to contribute to discussions of moral development and moral psychology. The importance of a sense of justice in the Analects is but one example of capacities that we can learn more about as a result of studying ancient Chinese and contemporary Western accounts comparatively.
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