Origins and Limits of Confucian Modernity

This essay reviews the origins and limits of Confucian modernity, dating back to Confucius’s teachings (method of humorous self-directed questioning, pursuit of objective-collective freedom through etiquette practice), and compares them with Socrates’s teachings (method of ironic refutation, pursuit of subjective-personal freedom through alternative thinking) that we can find in the origins of Western democracy and Enlightenment. It also examines how much the driving forces of Confucian modernity (knowledge-oriented attitude, ideal of self-cultivation, seek of a stable system, meritocracy) could satisfy the conditions of postmodern society, explaining how they are revealed recently in the so-called Chinese Dream.