Description

This roundtable brings together scholars in two fields, namely comparative philosophy and comparative constitutionalism, to discuss the book by Professor Sungmoon Kim titled Public Reason Confucianism: Democratic Perfectionism and Constitutionalism in East Asia (Cambridge UP, 2016). Public Reason Confucianism advances a Confucian, political constitutional theory called Public Reason Confucianism, which calls for the active role of a democratic-constitutional state in promoting Confucian values (especially, filial piety and ritual propriety), which according to the author has still remained in contemporary East Asia. The book engages with a variety of Confucian and Western political theories, and discusses the Confucian-constitutional implications of several recent legal cases decided by Korean Constitutional and Supreme Courts. The speakers will discuss, followed by the author’s responses, two major themes in the book: (1) the relation of Confucianism to democracy and civic virtues; and (2) Confucian constitutionalism as a normative model committed to values of both western liberal constitutionalism and Confucianism.