Theorists have responded to the challenge of pluralism in East Asia by either advocating a less-demanding form of Confucianism or neutral liberal democratic institutions. This article transcends this dichotomy by extending the challenge down to the individual, prioritizing “exit-based” institutional mechanisms characterized by polycentric interjurisdictional competition over collective “voice.” Drawing from the tradition of epistemic liberalism, this framework not only provides groups the space to enact their moral commitments but facilitates cultural discovery in a complex environment where knowledge of what is of cultural importance is in the first place not centralizable. Our novel proposal accepts the pluralist’s preference for an anti-perfectionist regime without being committed to political democracy. In our approach, not only is Confucianism knocked off its special status in justifying the social order, even democracy is deprived of its special status in the arena of governance.

Shakespeare’s Cymbeline explores the tension between the desire for freedom and the obligations individuals owe to their social and political communities. Through the course of the play, characters seek freedom from the authority of their fathers, kings, emperors, and gods with devastating consequences. Tragedy is only averted once these characters understand that the freedom and authority they variously desire is only fulfilled in a mutual love or good will that is bolstered by forgiveness. The play’s setting at the birth of Christ is carried through in the Christian argument and outcome of the plot.

Hannah Arendt did not live to complete her anticipated work on judgment, a faculty she considered essential for resuscitating political life against the threat of totalitarianism. Scholars have attempted to reconstitute it, primarily through her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Yet when discussing her turn to judgment, Arendt cites the ancient Greek historian Herodotus as a model, claiming that recovering the ancient sense of histor (judge) is crucial to reclaiming human dignity. Herodotus is in fact central to her depiction of the Greeks throughout her work. Excavating his influence not only helps clarify her theory of judgment; it also reveals how she both distances herself from Heidegger and yet retains certain core agreements. Her reading of Herodotus thus helps delineate the intellectual relationship between two of the twentieth century’s foremost thinkers, while inviting us to reflect on how and why to read the Greeks today.

Judith Shklar’s negative brand of liberalism is sometimes thought to have little to say about the ethical character required of citizens in liberal democracies, beyond the injunction to avoid cruelty. In this article, however, we argue that Shklar’s negative liberalism prescribes four distinctively political virtues—rational empathy, a healthy apprehension of state power, self-restraining tolerance, and being a good loser—that, taken together, constitute an ethos of skeptical vigilance. We survey Shklar’s criticisms of republican and communitarian accounts of civic virtue to clarify her concerns about attempts by the liberal state to cultivate these virtues and analyze the case of passive injustice to highlight tensions between active citizenship and liberal values. We conclude with some reflections on how Shklar’s political theory attempts to persuade her readers of the importance of adopting and practicing an ethos of skeptical vigilance.

Opposing electoral democracy in the Chinese context, Bell advocates a political model on which national leaders are selected by political elites rather than by voters.1 Even though deeply disappointed by the current national leadership in the past decade, Bell places his hopes on future generations of Chinese leaders (112). For him, the issue for the political system in China is improvement rather than fundamental reform. He remains hopeful that “China’s political future is likely to be shaped by both Communism and Confucianism” (104). In maintaining such a view, he overlooks a much deeper problem with the current political system in China.

It is a distinctive feature of Bell’s writings that he makes use of his own experiences to substantiate particularly designed arguments for theoretical frameworks.1 This has added weight to his underlying thesis, and provided a unique insight into the value of political Confucianism for modern life. His deliberations are particularly helpful to those who have little experience in and about China, and may explain why he would be regarded as a “public intellectual of China” by some in the Western media.

The confession, as its name suggests, presents the personal, and often private, experience of the author, as we see in Rousseau’s well-known confessions which intend to expose his private self to public scrutiny. Bell’s confessional writing, however, is employed as a rhetorical means to serve his public purpose of political theorizing, since what the author intends to emphasize is not his private world, or even his personal experience as “a minor bureaucrat,” but to explore “the inner workings of Chinese academia and to draw implications for China’s broader political system” (3). Instead of a chronological reckoning of the history of the author’s life as an academic leader, Dean from Shandong has singled out several interconnected topics as a series of recollection of events Bell experienced in his five-year deanship to illustrate what he perceived as the important aspects of the Chinese culture in general and academic life in particular. The first-person narration, with its self-mocking style, foreshadows his intention behind the narrative, namely, his way of doing political theorizing as a political scientist. According to Northrop Frye, the confession is “introverted” and “thematic.”1 Bell’s confessions seem to be more thematic than introverted, “I invoke my personal experience only if it sheds light on social and political life in contemporary China, with its contradictions, diversity, and charm” (18).

Political meritocracy is the idea that the political system should aim to select and promote public officials with superior ability and virtue. The ideal was developed in pre-Qin Chinese history by Confucianism and other schools of political thought. A similar ideal is put forward in Plato’s Republic but political meritocracy has been central the Chinese political thinking for about 2,500 years. It was institutionalized in imperial China by means of a complex bureaucratic system designed to select and promote superior public officials that lasted more than two millennia. The imperial system collapsed in 1912 but the meritocratic bureaucratic system has been reestablished in form (but not content) over the last four decades in China.