Confucian Constitutionalism can be seen as aiming to translate constitutional democracy into the vernacular cultural language of East Asia: “Confucian democratic constitutionalism invites them to reformulate their constitutional identity and public morality in mediation of Confucian civic culture that is still in play in their social, legal, and political lives but for the institutional expression of which they lack an adequate language” (204). The importance of this task is twofold. The first is that the relatively young democracies of East Asia are frequently characterized by an “incongruence between the formal liberal constitutional order and the Confucian civic culture that continues to inform people’s moral reasoning and judgment” (203–4) and yet, as Jürgen Habermas puts it, constitutional rights must be “enduringly linked with the motivations and convictions of the citizens, for without such a motivational anchoring they could not become the driving force behind the dynamically conceived project of producing an association of free and equal individuals.”Footnote ¹ The second reason this matters is that a significant strand of Confucian political theory—so-called “meritocratic” theories—offers a competing ideal which is not democratic in character. To the extent that these vernacular political theories can get a grip on East Asian societies, they are liable to increase the dissonance between the formal institutional order and the background civic culture in democratic states and weaken the forces of democratization in authoritarian states. Hence Kim aims to provide both the conceptual resources for, and an attractive ideal of, Confucian democratic constitutionalism as well as a critical perspective on Confucian political meritocracy.

I leave aside Kim’s compelling criticisms of Confucian meritocracy (at the very least he demonstrates how much work such theories confront if they are to be credible as constitutional theories rather than merely governmental designs) in order to take up three elements of Kim’s rich and complex argument: his interpretation of Xunzi, his moderate perfectionism, and his account of judicial review.

Kim aims to show that Confucian ethics—represented by Mencius and Xunzi—can provide a grounding for moral dignity that will underwrite core democratic rights of political participation and equal protection of civil, social and economic rights. In the case of Mencius, the appeal to innate “moral sprouts” provides a clear basis for moral egalitarianism, but Xunzi seems, given his rejection of Mencius’s thesis in favor of an account of human beings as naturally bad, a more challenging case. Xunzi sees morality as a social artifice that is inculcated by ritual and yi on a recalcitrant natural material. Kim argues, with great plausibility, that Xunzi is committed to the view that human beings are equal in terms of their ability to become virtuous, indeed to become perfectly virtuous (i.e., Sages), based on a (morally neutral) inner capacity that is equally shared by all. This provides a plausible basis for an account of moral dignity. Kim cites two passages in which Xunzi highlights the dangers of “divisive struggle” and of neglecting those who are most disadvantaged such that the people become uneasy with the government. On Kim’s reading this shows that Xunzi’s defence of meritocratic rule involves an appeal to deontic egalitarian principles of justice. But while these passages do rule out the claim that Xunzi only has a utilitarian concern with overall well-being, they don’t obstruct a reading of these passages in prudential terms in which generosity to the least advantaged (the most vulnerable) reassures the people that if things go badly for them the government will act benevolently toward them independent of official judgment of their deservingness. Such a view would not entail that Xunzi’s position is incompatible with a weak (non-intrinsic) egalitarianism based on the features of human equality to which Kim draws attention, nor would it rule out a prudential argument for fundamental constitutional rights. I think Kim wants to advance a stronger claim and on that I am not yet persuaded.

An important feature of Kim’s argument is his commitment to a moderate perfectionism expressed as a public political culture of Civic Confucianism. Kim is rejecting the sharp distinction that Rawls draws between the political realm and the background culture of civil society. He is doing so because he takes an important part of the task of addressing the fact of pluralism to be providing an account of how the brute pluralism of civil society can be transformed into a reasonable pluralism in which citizens recognize the burdens of judgment and are committed to exercising power on equal terms that are fair to all. Here Kim’s argument is closer to Habermas’s view that political culture “is rooted in an interpretation of constitutional principles from the perspective of the nation’s historical experience” and hence “cannot be ethically neutral.”Footnote ² This is clear in his account of Public Reason Confucianism in which the background culture’s inherited language of Civic Confucianism becomes the medium of social communication and public deliberation through which citizens express, debate, and share public reasons around matters of public concern. Importantly, however, this background culture is not simply a matter of a useful common language but also of practices that are central to the cultivation of civility. Thus Kim explicitly points out the role of Confucian ritual (li): “the shared practice of which can give rise to a ‘subjunctive space,’ or the world of ‘as if’, where the reality of differences is bracketed off temporarily for the sake of the coordinated social performance of the public (legal-political) role of ‘an equal citizen’” (112).

Liberal democracies also have such rituals that attend, for example, jury service or voting in an election, but typically do not think of them in terms of ritual and it is a strength of Kim’s account that Confucian public reason is reflectively aware of the significance of ritual in the aspect change that is switching to see ourselves, here and now, under the aspect of “equal citizen.” There is, however, another question that can be addressed to Kim’s moderate perfectionism, namely, whether it is an edificatory or aspirational perfectionism. Edificatory perfectionism aims to induce forms of human flourishing beyond the demands of justice whereas aspirational perfectionism aims to secure the warranted self-respect of all citizens as members of the social and political.Footnote ³ Aspirational perfectionism “rejects the requirement of neutrality by contending that subsidies and other inducements for the attainment of excellence in sundry areas of human endeavour can be proper and vital uses of resources by governments”Footnote ⁴ but, because it is a doctrine of justice, is compatible with political liberalism. Kim insists that Civic Confucianism is a partial conception of the good and this, alongside his stress on Confucian mores, virtues, and sentiments, may incline us to see him advancing an edificatory perfectionist standpoint. But Kim’s focus on the civic character of Civic Confucianism as political culture that has emerged from a history of reciprocal interaction and mutual learning, rather than conflict, with other conceptions of the good (horizontal integration) and interaction with constitutional democratic institutions (vertical integration) might allow for his view to be aligned with aspirational perfectionism. Given his aims, it is not clear to me that Kim needs to be committed to an edificatory perfectionism and it may strengthen his argument if it is not.

Among the many novel and innovative contributions of this book is Kim’s engagement with the debate between advocates of legal constitutionalism (e.g., Ronald Dworkin) and political constitutionalism (e.g., Richard Bellamy). Confucian constitutionalism, as Kim stresses, is based on an acknowledgment of societal pluralism and the circumstances of politics. This is central to his account of dignity of legislation (and the compelling critique of Confucian meritocracy he advances) and it is, in this respect, unsurprising that his view is sympathetic to political constitutionalism. However, Kim’s commitment to Confucian Public Reason leads him to revisit the relationship between the legislature, court, and people in a way that reconfigures judicial review as a process that actively engages the public in reviewing the decisions of the legislature and is situated within a broader picture not only of dialogue between governmental institutions but of democracy as a deliberative system (in the sense that Habermas has proposed). This is a “weak” form of judicial review in the sense that the court offers public reasons (in both senses of public) which invite the legislature to revisit its proposed law with the expectation that the legislature, as a cooperative partner in the quest for law that is both rights-respecting and welfare-promoting, will take these reasons seriously and, in turn, provide public reasons (in both senses) in responding to the court. That the public reasons of both court and legislature are offered publicly also provides further opportunities for public engagement within the process. This attractive view will have appeal beyond its Confucian articulation.