Moral Progress: Between Justification and Innovation

Moral Progress: Between Justification and Innovation Philippe Brunozzi University of Kassel Philippe-brunozzi@posteo.de 1. Addressing Moral Progress in Contemporary Chinese Moral Theory That for Chinese moral community there is no avoiding the need of moral progress is not only a widely shared belief in contemporary Chinese society, it also constitutes a more or less explicit presupposition for much of current Chinese moral theorizing. Quite a number of moral theorists premise their theorizing on the diagnosis that China is experiencing a moral crisis, be it moral decay, moral disorientation or a lack of moral self-determination. Ci Jiwei, for instance, pictures China’s moral crisis as the ubiquitous breach of the most elementary moral norms, Compare, for example, Ci Jiwei, Moral China in the Age of Reform, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014, Chap. 1. whereas, less dramatically, Fan Hao diagnoses that Chinese society is facing a crisis of fundamental moral disorientation due to the coexistence of very different, incongruent – domestic and foreign – moral outlooks in contemporary China. See Fan Hao 樊浩, Zixuan ji 自选集 , Nanjing 南京: Fenghuang chubanshe 凤凰出版社, 2010, pp. 19-28. Others again see the Chinese moral community trapped in moral inertia given the erosion of moral self-determination caused by the prolonged neglect of creative reimmergance in and reappropriation of China’s own traditional moral possibilities during the 20th century. See, for example, Guo Qiyong 郭齐勇, Shouxian daihou: Wenhua yu rensheng suibi 守先待后：文化与人生随笔 , Beijing 北京: Beijing shifandaxue chubanshe 北京师范大学出版社, 2011, pp. 3-8. Compare also from a wider perspective Gan Yang 甘阳, Tong san tong 通三统, Beijing 北京: Sanlian shudian 三联书店, pp. 8-23, and Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Zhongxi zhexue zhi huitong shisi jiang 中西哲学之会通十四讲, Shanghai 上海: Shanghai guji chubanshe 上海古籍出版社, 1998, 21-22. Against the background of such diagnoses, the theorists proceed to advocate different solutions as how to best remedy the situation of crisis and foster robust moral progress. As to the general intellectual atmosphere in which these proposals are put forward, see Gloria Davies, Worrying about China. The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007, chap. 1. The present article will not explore the different reconstructions and analyses of China’s moral crisis or the proposed remedies. What will concern me below is rather how in this context moral progress is conceived of in contemporary Chinese moral theory. One might consider this concern as otiose since it may seem evident that every social and political change that is validated as an improvement from the perspective of the proposed solution and the moral point of view it implies is by that effect an instance of moral progress. There thus seems to be no need to further inquire into some more comprehensive conception of moral progress besides the propounded solutions of the moral crisis. This, however, would be too quick a step. On the basis of the diagnoses and the solutions, including the moral perspectives they resort to, we cannot yet determine which changes in the social and political order are instances of moral progress. Not every change of the practices and institutions of a moral community that constitutes a transition towards the advocated solution is at once an instance of moral progress. To make this point clear, let me introduce the distinction Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell have recently drawn between three basic understandings of moral progress. See Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell, The Evolution of Moral Progress. A Biocultural Theory, New York, Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 51-2. According to them, moral progress obtains in a first sense if the social or political changes are not only welcomed from the respective moral point of view, but if they are furthermore supported by the exercise of relevant human moral capacities, such as the usage of moral concepts or being morally motivated. Moral progress thus implies changes that are deliberately brought about under the guidance of a genuinely endorsed moral outlook. According to a second understanding, a change can be perfectly well qualified as a moral progress even though it did not come about through the exercise of some human moral capacities, but was rather motivated by self-interested or prudential considerations. Following a last understanding, a morally desirable change can be deemed an instance of moral progress even though it occurred by chance, caused by external factors independently of any agential motivation directed towards the morally sanctioned goal. See the example provided by Buchanan and Powell (2018), pp. 49, 51. In what follows, I will take the first, more robust understanding of moral progress as the most appropriate understanding since it seems to best grasp some of our basic intuitions regarding moral progress. While the third understanding would have the perplexing consequence that even social or political changes that occur as side effects of some natural disaster, for instance, qualify as instances of moral progress, the second understanding could not account for the stability we expect moral progress to have. Morally desirable changes brought about on the basis of our unsteady non-moral motivations are unlikely to remain stable upon reflection and over time. From moral progress, however, we hope for long-term effects. The first understanding, in contrast, not only precludes the possibility of contingently occasioned moral progress, it also demands moral changes to be supported by the exercise of our genuine moral capacities, so that it is effected for the right reasons and eventually rests on a more stable basis. So understood, moral progress cannot be simply boiled down to changes validated from some moral point of view. For moral progress to obtain, the social and political changes are to be actively brought about, involving the conscious exercise of our moral capacities. The conceptions of moral progress in contemporary Chinese moral theory cannot thus be worked out on the mere basis of the proposed solutions for China’s moral crisis and the respective moral perspectives. Only the identification of the moral capacities whose exercise turn a moral change into an instance of progress will allow us to get a more accurate grasp on moral progress. Given that current scholarship has widely neglected the understanding of moral progress in contemporary Chinese moral theory, the following investigation constitutes only a first, highly incomplete exploration of that topic. Consequently, its scope will be quite limited. Not only will I attend to but a small part of contemporary Chinese moral theory by identifying and discussing only one specific conception of moral progress, I will moreover not be able to address all the complexities that arise in the vicinity of that conception. Note also that I will not address moral progress on the level of the individual person but touch on the issue only from a social perspective. Only changes that affect the social moral order and the rules that constitute it will be taken into account and considered in view of the moral capacities that have to be involved in order to turn them into full-blown instances of moral progress. The present inquiry will however not only pursue the descriptive task of providing a first snapshot of one conception of moral progress. Given that the account will beg a specific question, I will venture at the same time into the evaluative project of further problematizing and assessing it. The assessment of the considered conception of moral progress will however not be conclusive; it won't go beyond showing that, though problematic, we still have reason to continue taking heed of the conception, while leaving open how it should be further developed. More concretely, the inquiry will take the following course. After first clarifying how the moral capacities can be identified given that no full-fledged accounts of moral progress are available (section 2), I will get the investigation off the ground by introducing the moral capacities that, according to the conception I concentrate on, are to inform changes in order for them to qualify as instances of moral progress; context and details follow then in the next stage (section 3). While the identified moral capacities allow us to draw first conclusions as to the conception of moral progress, they turn out to stand in need of further clarification. In the subsequent step (section 4), I will therefore take a closer look at three Chinese moral theories in order to get a better hold on the moral capacities. The fruits of this analysis will be quite discouraging, uncovering an unresolved tension that runs through the three accounts. Against this background, I will address in a last step (section 5) the consequences of these findings for the conception of moral progress. The tension that became apparent on the level of the moral theories encroaches on the understanding of moral progress itself, leaving it appear in a not very attractive light. Instead of abandoning the account altogether, I suggest that we have reason to keep track of it. How it is to be further developed will however not be touched on. 2. Identifying the Moral Capacities Though the idea of moral progress more or less explicitly informs large parts of contemporary Chinese moral theory, it has not given rise to full-fledged accounts of moral progress. This shall however not prevent us from exploring the conceptions of moral progress that underlie contemporary Chinese moral theory. Fortunately, the perspective adopted above has the virtue of facilitating paving the way to these conceptions. The source of optimism is that the moral capacities that we are advised to focus upon as constitutive of moral progress can be singled out quite conveniently: They seem to be largely congruent with the basic modes in which we generally address moral rules when trying to find out what makes them matter to us and what gives them the specific authority that allows us to issue moral demands of each other in their name. In other words, the moral capacities coincide with the basic modes of moral inquiry. Let me explain. At the bottom, the modes of moral inquiry that guide us in the activity of finding out what is to be done are motivated by and expressive of our aspiration to make the moral order under which we live as transparent as possible to ourselves. Given our modern self-understanding, we simply do not want to live under ethical institutions and practices that depend on mere misunderstandings and illusions. Compare Wan Junren 万俊人, Xunqiu pushi lunli 寻求普世伦理, Beijing 北京: Beijing daxue chubanshe 北京大学出版社 2009, pp. 20-1. See for a discussion of this understanding of moral theory Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, p. 101-3. We want to be in no doubt about what so deeply shapes our lives. The modes of moral inquiry express in this respect what exactly it means for us to be clear about the moral order under whose guidance we live. This striving for transparency, it shall be added, is of crucial importance in view of the social role a moral order has to play. In the Rawlsian parlance, a moral order should enable all the members of the society to make their shared institutions and basic arrangements mutually acceptable to one another. John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” in John Rawls: Collected Papers, ed. by Samuel Freeman, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1999a, p. 305. For this to be possible at all, the members ought to be clear about their basic moral and political institutions, in the sense of being able to ascertain what ultimately makes it worth caring about them. Transparency thus guarantees the functioning of a moral order. Viewed from this perspective, the modes of moral inquiry foreshadow the moral capacities that are constitutive of moral progress. As expressing our aspiration to live under a transparent moral order, the modes of moral inquiry signal at the same time what it means for us to adequately bring about a moral change, a change we likewise expect to remain transparent to us as members of a moral community. It follows that the modes of moral inquiry and the moral capacities constitutive of moral change are co-extensive. They are expressive of the same concern, though in different contexts. This, so it seems, allows us to confidently infer the moral capacities from the basic modes of moral inquiry. 3. Justification and Innovation. With this in mind, it is natural to get started with the basic modes of moral inquiry as they are presupposed by contemporary Chinese moral theorists. The pool of theorists I currently interested in embrace mainly two modes of inquiry. Characterized in a general way (more context and details will be provided in the following section), they advise us to resort, on the one hand, to justification, and, on the other hand, to innovation, or discovery if you prefer, when we seek to figure out which moral rules we can call on each other to live up to. To avoid misunderstandings, note that discovery does not necessarily imply any form of normative realism that assumes that there is anything normative out there in the world. We can discover new ways to relate to each other without needing to presuppose they are prefigured in the fabric of the world. To put it in other terms, according to these moral theorists, the validation of moral rules is considered to proceed from two perspectives: Moral rules are to be understood as social moral rules, i.e. as social rules that enjoy general priority and guide our behavior by forming a basis for shared empirical and normative expectations about what one can demand or not demand from others. From one perspective, we ask for their justification, i.e. we try to validate them by singling out the supporting reasons that ground the authority they possess over us. From the other perspective, we change the mode of inquiry. Moral rules are now no more considered as something to be accounted for, they are rather something we can find out or discover to matter to us. By innovating and introducing new ways to relate to each other we can identify new moral rules that may enable us to improve our social interactions in crucial respects. We then creatively alter or extend the existent moral order. Together both modes of moral inquiry express what it means for us to be clear about the moral rules under which we live. Once we come to see them as justified and as the result of continuing innovative attempts to improve on our moral order, they are no more something alien suspected to be simply pushing us around. We are assured of their adequacy. Note, in this context, that both modes of inquiry are introduced as separate and independent endeavours. At first blush, the distinction between justification and innovation (or discovery) is a plausible one to make. Take the scientific context: How one comes up with new ideas or theories and tries to find out what is the case is to be distinguished from whether that idea, the theory or the way to proceed in one’s research can be justified. Justification brackets how something was innovatively brought about or discovered and focuses only on whether the discovery or the theoretical innovation holds up to justificatory scrutiny, i.e., for example, whether the theoretical innovation is supported by all available findings within the limits of our current state of knowledge, whether it can instructively be compared with alternative theories, ideas or hypotheses, or whether it can be further elaborated on. However, when we lack sufficient evidence to support a theory, or when we are unsure what evidence to gather and/or how to do so, or when we do not know anymore which question is most relevant, we change the mode of inquiry and shift to innovation and discovery. We then ask how we should collect further evidences, how we can find out which way to proceed and which phenomenon and question we ought to attend to. These concerns however have nothing to do with evaluating and justifying specific theoretical claims. They are focused on discovery and innovation, on how to proceed in the generation and elaboration of new and hopefully better theories. This distinction between justification and innovation can meaningfully be extended to the normative domain. As to the project of justification, it is considered by many as most crucial to moral inquiry, though in the normative context it does not rely anymore on a set of evidence, but on a set of normative reasons. Justification now refers to the relation between – in our case – a moral rule and a set of normative reasons. As it stands, the set of reasons at our disposal is limited. It can be narrower or broader, yielding in each case different justified moral rules or moral orders. It limits are however liable to be shifted. If the analogy to the scientific context is sound, altering the boundaries of the set of our normative reasons is however not the business of justification. It is here where innovation comes in. Innovation consists in exploring new moral possibilities. It is the means by which we can extend our available set of reasons by showing that certain rules or social settings not yet considered are valuable or to be favored, or by proposing new rules, i.e. new ways to relate to each other that may turn out to matter a great deal to us. Such changes to our moral outlook are however outside of the responsibility of justification. In the present context, I cannot vindicate this distinction. For a discussion of that distinction see for example Paul Hoyningen-Huene, “Context of Discovery and Context of Justification”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol. 18, 1987, pp.501-515. For the present purpose, it suffices that the distinction between these two modes of moral inquiry has some initial plausibility, so that we can keep an eye of those Chinese moral theories that incorporate it in their general framework. We can now come back to the issue of the moral capacities involved in moral progress. If we are to credit the link between the modes of inquiry and the moral capacities essential for moral progress, the two modes of inquiry just introduced can be taken to correspond to two crucial moral capacities, the exercise of which turns changes in the social moral order into instances of moral progress. On this account, moral progress pertains if the changes are, first, motivated by justified concerns and outlooks, and, second, if they are results of innovations aiming at the improvement of the moral order. While this sketches the basic contours of the conception of moral progress that can be gained from these moral theories, it still calls for some clarification. Introduced in this way, one can become perplexed by the fact that both modes of inquiry figure as separate activities. Given that they point in different directions and operate independently of each other, the question arises how they are ultimately to be coordinated. How then is moral justification to be related to moral discovery if both are to be constitutive of moral progress to an equal extent? Given the connection between the modes of moral inquiry and the moral capacities, the same question also haunts the conception of moral progress, for here too it is unclear how both moral capacities are to be aligned if they are to play an equal role in moral progress. In the following section, I will therefore attempt to gain some clarity in this respect. Again, I will first focus on the modes of moral inquiry, briefly presenting three theoretical outlooks to explore how they incorporate and coordinate both modes of inquiry. This will also give me the opportunity to substantiate to some degree what has been introduced so far. I will come back to moral progress in section 4. 3. The Relation between Justification and Innovation 3.1. Zhou Baosong The first account I shall turn to is very explicit about the two modes of inquiry introduced above. Zhou Baosong – a Hongkong-based thinker – characterized moral theory as first consisting in the project of justifying the moral rules that we are required to act upon and take into consideration when organizing our political community. As he builds his account on the assumption that under modern circumstances we conceive of ourselves and others as free and equal moral persons, justifying moral rules cannot consist in simply validating them from the perspective of some prior morality. Moral rules are rather to be justified from the perspective of each free and equal moral person within some public. Advocating an account of “public justification” (gonggong zhengcheng 公共证成), Zhou Baosong 周保松, Zhengzhi de daode 政治的道德, Xianggang 香港: Zhongwen daxue chubanshe 中文大学出版社, 2015, p. 299. he subscribes to the standard of reciprocal acceptability and accessability of the justifying reasons: A moral and political order is justified if it “can be reasonably accepted by free and equal citizens”. Zhou (2015), p. 295. The fact that acceptance is conditioned on what is reasonable indicates that Zhou counterfactualizes public justification and premises it on certain idealizations. Indeed, justification is not only owed to reasonable citizens, it also has to proceed under idealized conditions, which, following siding Rawls, he models on the idea of a veil of ignorance, a device that is supposed to guarantee that everyone is considered as an equally sovereign moral subject. Zhou (2015), pp. 301, 303. How the story continues should not further preoccupy us in the present context. Independently of this type of moral justification, Zhou also takes moral theory to be engaged in a “related, but at the same time totally different” project, a project that is best characterized as a project of innovation, for it chiefly consists in proposing alternative moral rules. Zhou (2015), p. 222. Moral theory thus also has the task to suggest new moral and political possibilities beyond our known perspectives and conventions. Though these proposals are “unconventional imaginations” (linglei xiangxiang 另类想象), they are not mere fantasies – they are to be understood as real possibilities which society should actually experiment with. Zhou (2015), p. 223. When it comes to the question how both modes of inquiry are to be coordinated as independent enterprises, Zhou fails however to provide further explanations. Yet, leaving this issue unaddressed threatens to shake the static of his account. The problem Zhou is now confronted with is that the kind of public justification conducted behind the veil of ignorance will not be responsive to moral innovation. The veil of ignorance is mounted so as to insulate and protect from the outset pre-selected normative and non-normative content. Inimical to absorb new information, the voice of the moral innovator will simply not be heard behind the veil of ignorance and the insights that moral innovation is meant to contribute are likely to be neglected. They lose their epistemic and emancipatory value. The moral innovator is therefore likely to complain that she is not given enough discursive respect, all the more so given that she was initially said to be an equal party to the project of moral theory. The whole account is therefore at risk of disintegrating, for its constitutive elements don't seem to mesh neatly. This impasse may occasion us to move beyond Zhou and modify his account of justification to reconcile it with moral innovation. We could, for example, abandon the veil of ignorance and get closer to a more actualist version of public justification. We could thus, for instance, come up with the following principle: In the following I resort to Rainer Forst’s version of moral justification with slight modifications. I split the ‘principle’ he proposes in two parts for reasons of presentation. See Rainer Forst, “Political Liberty. Integrating Five Conceptions of Autonomy”, Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism, ed. by John Christman and Joel Anderson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 230. In a moral context, a person is morally free to act (and thus to innovate), only if he or she acts on the basis of reasons that take every other person into account, so that the reasons are mutually justifiable. This modified version however does not fare better, at least from the perspective of those who grant moral innovation a role to play. It again turns moral innovation into an almost impossible project. According to this new principle, the agent can only act morally on reasons that are justifiable to everyone else. As such it entails that there is no context where a person is morally allowed to proceed without justifying herself to others. But that is just what moral innovation is about: It is about advancing without justification, for moral innovation includes by its very nature actions that are not (yet) justifiable to others. The modified principle thus limits moral innovation to a degree of not even letting it get off the ground. Now, we can continue imagining Zhao resorting to the tool of tolerance and propose a further modified principle of justification that could sound like this: One is morally free to act (and thus to innovate), if one’s reasons cannot be rejected on grounds that are mutually acceptable and accessible. See Forst (2005), p. 230. This principle seems indeed to give more room to the innovator. As long as her explorative activities are not rejected on grounds that are mutually acceptable and accessible, she can go on as she likes, without justifying herself. But even this principle might chain and restrict her too much as an innovator. Take the case where her project happens to be rejected by others for reasons that she cannot refute for her part. She then has to give up her project, for the reasons that speak against her project are acceptable. But, as she is likely to protest, moral discovery, as an integral part of moral inquiry, is exactly about challenging what is actually acceptable and accessible and thus about innovating without constraining oneself by justification. In the end then, this version of public justification too is at difficulty adequately integrating moral innovation – again presupposing that we take moral innovation as an independent mode of inquiry. To sum up, moral justification and innovation are not easily reconciled, and Zhou Baosong does not give us any help in this respect, though he introduces both modes as equally central for moral (and political) theory. 3.2. Joseph Chan Let us take as a second example an account from the family of Confucian philosophers. Adopting a Confucian-inspired perspective, Joseph Chan too characterizes his accounts as being informed by two separated types of inquiries. Again, moral theory is first of all identified with the task of providing justifications, which, in Chan’s framework comes down to demonstrating “the attractiveness of the [Confucian moral and political] ideal”. Joseph Chan, Confucian Perfectionism. A Political Philosophy for Modern Times, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 1. This mode of inquiry, which Chan labels as “philosophical”, Chan (2014), p. 1. is however paralleled by a second sort of moral inquiry that he contrasts as being “political” and which consists in developing a non-ideal conception of the Confucian ideal, i.e., in proposing a feasible institutional framework able to realize the Confucian ideal under the constraints of a less than ideal reality. Chan (2014), p. 1. At first sight, this type of inquiry, however, seems to have nothing to do with anything akin to innovation. So introduced, the “political” inquiry seems to consist in nothing more than somehow deducing the institutional setting from the already justified ideal. A closer look will however reveal that more is at stake in the “political” inquiry. As it stands, Chan takes the Confucian ideal to be far too “loose and abstract” Chan (2014), p. 5. to play the role of a guiding principle. As such it can impossibly give us clear orientation when designing the institutional framework that is expected to realize it under non-ideal circumstances. This explains why Chan proceed in a bottom-up approach. Chan (2014), p. 23. This entails that the non-ideal “political” inquiry only stands in a loose expressive relation to the ideal. When embarking on identifying an adequate institutional setting for the Confucian ideal to take effect, we thus can only take “the spirit of that ideal” Chan (2014), p. 5. See also Chan (2014), p. 9. into consideration. Obviously, that is an extremely weak form of guidance that does not allow for clear deduction of institutional settings. See also Michael Phillips, “Reflections on the Transition from Ideal to Non-Ideal Theory”, Noûs, vol. 19, 1985, p. 563. The characteristic looseness of the Confucian ideal also explains why Confucianism got stuck in an impasse: It conveys ideals that make it extremely hard to univocally envision new alternative settings to realize its spirit. See Chan (2014), pp. 10-4. All this indicates that the “political” inquiry is to be understood as a separate project, instead of a project of deduction that would be a mere extension of the “philosophical” inquiry. In contrast to the latter inquiry, it has to explore the social and political world to find out which social and political institutional setting in the neighbourhood of our known social world could realise the Confucian ideal. In this sense, it follows the mode of innovation or discovery. Let me illustrate this by Chan’s attempt to vindicate that Confucian perfectionism and democracy can be combined. For Chan, a crucial feature of the Confucian moral and political ideal is its perfectionist understanding of the relationship between the ruler and the people. From the perfectionist point of view, the authority of the ruler is legitimate if it protects and promotes the people’s well-being and if the governed therefore willingly accept it. The basic political relationship is therefore based on mutual commitment and trust. In contrast to justification that tries to make this ideal attractive, “political” inquiry is chiefly concerned with exploring the social conditions of its adequate realisation in our current non-ideal world. This enterprise is confronted with the challenge that under contemporary conditions the perfectionist Confucian political ideal cannot be realised anymore by resorting to the traditional system of rites. For rites to be effective in realizing that ideal, they are to be backed by widely shared meanings and values. Under modern conditions of evaluative pluralism, shared meanings and values are however no more available, rendering rites unattractive as a default social setting to realise the Confucian political ideal. Chan (2014), pp. 66-7. This should however not unsettle Confucians, according to Chan, for there is an unexpected alternative available: Democracy can substitute rites as institutional backup for the Confucian ideal. To bridge the gap between Confucianism and democracy, Chan proposes to decouple democracy from liberal values, understanding it primarily as a political system that permits its citizen to take part in competitive elections to decide their government. As a mere decision-making procedure to collectively settle issues of binding rules and policies, it need not incorporate and promote liberal values. Chan (2014), pp. 82-3. So conceived, Chan argues first that democracy now becomes suited to expressing the Confucian ideal. Chan (2014), p. 85. The main reason is that democratic elections help to foster mutual commitment and trust between the ruler and the ruled. Via elections the governed can select those who are trustworthy and make explicit their support of those who are elected. In this way, democracy helps to give concrete expression of the commitment and trust that according to the perfectionist understanding ought to inform the relation between the ruler and the ruled. Apart from that, democracy stands, secondly, in an instrumental relationship to the Confucian ideal. Chan (2014), p. 86. Democracy entitles the people to vote their leaders out of office and thus to protect their well-being if the leaders are irresponsible. As a sanctioning function, democratic elections can exert pressure on the leader to promote the welfare of the people. In this sense, democracy is also instrumental to the realization of the central concern of Confucian political ideal, i.e. the well-being of the people. Expressively and instrumentally, democracy can thus be considered as a convenient institution to establish the spirit of the ideal Confucian relationship between ruler and the ruled in non-ideal circumstances. Once we embarked on this path and combine democracy with the Confucian political ideal, we are likely to approve of further revisions to our conception of democracy. Leaving details aside, the Confucian perspective will not only encourage us, according to Chan, to embed the democratic system into a Confucian moral education system that, by instilling the central Confucian virtues, will prevent the institutions from being misused by irresponsible and uncivil officials. It also recommends establishing a second non-democratically elected chamber of virtuous high-quality politicians in order to raise the quality of the discussions on bills or budgets and provide roles models for other politicians to emulate. Chan (2014), pp. 90-109. Irrespective of how Chan’s proposal is to be gauged, the crucial point for our purpose is that the shift from the pre-modern rites to modern democracy and its specific Confucian shape is not guided by the Confucian ideal in the sense of being deduced from it. Democracy simply cannot be directly derived from the Confucian ideal as standing in a supportive relation to it. Starting from our social and political experiences, it rather had to be innovatively reconstructed in a way that brings it into a fruitful relation to the ideal. As constructed in a bottom-up approach that connection remains however revisable. Other institutional settings for the Confucian ideal are perfectly conceivable. Chan (2014), p. 86. With non-ideal political inquiry now detailed, the question arises how justification and innovation are to be coordinated. As it stands, Chan too does not further explicate the relation between both modes of inquiry. This has the drawback that crucial problems are left unaddressed, letting moral and political innovation appear once more as a pointless enterprise. Contrary to Zhou’s account, in the Confucian framework moral innovation is bound from the start to an already established moral outlook. What is left for moral innovation to explore is the institutional setting that can adequately host the spirit of the ideal and give it effective social reality. This enterprise is however likely to fall into paralysis. Recall that the ideal was said to be very “loose and abstract”. Given the looseness of the Confucian ideal, it becomes almost impossible to tell exactly which proposal could count as an innovation and which not. Whatever innovative institutional proposal we come up with, we cannot conclusively determine whether and in which respect it hits the Confucian ideal. The latter is simply too vague to help validating any innovation as standing in an illuminating relation to it. In the end, the political inquiry thus risks becoming a toothless and frustrating enterprise. Again, the mode of innovation thus fails to be adequately coordinated with justification and integrated into a coherent moral and political theory, which it was supposed to be essential component of. 3.3. Wang Haiming The last account I will bring to the table is Wang Haiming’s utilitarianism. In a nutshell, Wang argues for a specific principle of moral justification. Leaving details and quandaries aside, according to Wang, a rule or line of conduct is morally justified, if it contributes to “the increase […] of society’s interests, i.e., the development of economy, the flourishing of culture, stable and secure free interpersonal exchange, and sound laws and policies.” Wang Haiming 王海明, Lunlixue yuanli 伦理学原理, Beijing 北京: Beijing daxue chubanshe 北京大学出版社, 2009, p. 120. This list of measures on the basis of which the utility of a rule or an action is to be determined suggests that Wang’s justification principle asks the agent to abandon her first-person perspective and take the perspective of her current society to assess which rule or line of conduct contributes most to society’s interests. While Wang is confident that this principle will yield unambiguous validations of rules and actions and is thus able to conclusively solve all moral conflicts, Wang (2009), pp. 121-8. he does not reduce moral inquiry to moral justification. Moral inquiry is expected to proceed in an additional mode. Though the perspective of our current society is supposed to do the justificatory job, it runs the risk of narrowing our vision. Taking the perspective of our current society does not ask us to shed more critical light on our social environment by distancing ourselves from it in a more radical way. Remaining thus in the grip of the current social and political constraints and prejudices, we are liable to get an all too distorted view of our society’s interests and eventually perpetuate deeply entrenched injustices and other social pathologies. The justificatory perspective thus prevents us from fully expressing ourselves and finding out what is really valuable to us. Wang Haiming 王海明, Gongzheng yu rendao 公正与人道, Beijing 北京: Shangwu yinshu shuguan 商务印书馆, 2010, pp. 439-441. To mitigate its distorting effect, each member of a society is to be accorded some basic liberties in order to engage in experiments of living, which are meant to allow everyone to discover what is valuable to him or her. Wang thus encourages us to not always take the perspective of our current society, but to engage at times in experiments of living in order explore and innovate on our life forms. Indulging in experiments and innovations thus constitutes a separate mode of inquiry that does not obey the logic of justification and is consequently not governed by the utilitarian standard. How we lead our lives is alone “our own business” Wang (2010), p. 474. and may lead in extreme cases to sacrifice oneself in order to alter and enrich current society, instead of simply increasing the existing interests. Wang (2010), pp. 474-5. So far so good, but once we turn to the question of how both modes of inquiry relate to each other, we are again confronted with intractable problems – not because, as in the case of Zhou Baosong and Joseph Chan, Wang fails to further elaborate on the relation between both modes, but because he is highly ambiguous about it. Although justification and innovation are introduced as two separate modes of moral inquiry, Wang does not uphold this claim. In the end, justification seems to get priority over innovation, leaving no room for experiments of living to unfold as independent inquiries. The problem is that the moral standard and the current interests of society are supposed to determine beforehand the boundaries of the liberties within which one can engage in experiments of living and innovatively explore alternative forms of life. Moral innovation, which Wang has initially introduced as an independent mode of inquiry necessary to break up the confines of the justificatory project, therefore forfeits its independent status by being subsumed under that very same project. With the liberties and their limits drawn and justified in advance, moral innovation loses its emancipative value. Wang (2010), pp. 413-415. In this sense, Wang appears to be highly ambiguous about the relation between the two modes of moral inquiry, for it becomes nebulous why moral innovation was introduced as an independent mode of moral inquiry at all. Again, moral innovation is not well coordinated with the justificatory project that threatens to alienate it from its initial role. Let me sum up this section. If my observations are fair and to the point, there is a dissonance that runs through these accounts. While justification and innovation are introduced in each case as two separate essential modes of moral inquiry, once we ask how they are to be coordinated and in what way they are expressive of a unified project of moral inquiry, we will get no satisfactory answer. Even more, we will be confronted with the problem that moral innovation is not given its due place and eventually cannot perform the role that was originally assigned to it. 4. Sticking to the Chinese Account: The Importance of Moral Innovation Obviously, these findings do not leave the topic of moral progress unaffected. The unbalanced relationship between justification and innovation on the general level of moral inquiry that threatens to turn moral innovation into an otiose inquiry encroaches on the conception of moral progress. For once we acknowledge the close link between the modes of moral inquiry and the moral capacities that are crucial for changes of the moral order to become instances of moral progress, the tension that broke out on the level of moral inquiry entails that the corresponding moral capacities too will not perfectly match either. The Chinese moral theories considered above rather suggest a conception of moral progress that will be in the same way internally divided between the two uncoordinated moral capacities of bringing about changes under the guidance of justified concerns and outlooks, on the one hand, and, of provoking transformations by innovating on the existing moral order. In view of the results of the preceding section, this will have the drawback that especially the moral capacity of moral innovation will probably not be able to perform its role in moral progress and eventually degenerate in an almost pointless undertaking. The agents will experience their capacity of moral innovation as either too restricted or as lacking any orientation. Correspondingly, changes in the social moral order that are brought about by moral innovation will be of only very limited scope, though they were presupposed to be important instances of moral progress. Given this predicament, one possible reaction could consist in leaving things as they are and simply reject the emerging account of moral progress as hopelessly flawed. An alternative way to resolve the tension between both moral capacities would consist in not regarding both modes as distinct inquiries anymore and giving priority to moral justification. We could of course also alleviate the tension between both capacities by giving priority to moral innovation and reducing justification to it. The moral rules that are brought about through moral innovation would then automatically be justified. As this is not a very attractive solution, I do not further mention it. According to this solution, moral justification would, similarly to Wang Haiming, determine beforehand the domain within which moral innovation can take place, by first justifying, for example, some (negative) liberties within the domain of which one can explore and experiment as one wishes to do. As the role of the moral innovation would hence remain very limited, we would give up the direction in which the Chinese philosophers took us when they distinguished two independent modes of inquiry. While the conception of moral progress that emerges on the basis of contemporary Chinese moral theories might indeed leave us somewhat disappointed, rejecting it altogether or giving up its general tenet by according priority to moral justification might however be too quick a step. As unsatisfactory as the results gained above may be, in the end, we might be advised to continue following the Chinese philosophers and premise an account of moral progress on these two moral capacities as separate kinds of progress. Let me explain. Suppose that the main work is done by justification and that moral progress consists primarily in realizing what was shown ex ante as justified – be it an ideal or a rule. Once however we take up the issue of realization and ask how to socially realize the ideal or the rule, moral innovation seems to enter the stage again. When it comes to actually realizing what is justified, we might still need moral exploration or innovation that allows us to make out where on the social landscape the ideals or the rules exactly lie, i.e., in which social settings they can come into effect. To find out where and how exactly the ideals and the rules can be realized in the social reality, we need to know quite a lot: We need to know where we are, which social settings lie in the direction of the ideal and the rule, how the social world functions and changes once we try making it approach the ideal or the rule; we need to know something about the ways in which principles, sets of rules and institutions, work out under certain background conditions. We also need to know the reforms and alternatives open to us from our present social reality as well as their costs. In all these questions, however, we lack sufficient evidence to meet the task of realizing our ideal or rule. In order to recommend moves to new social structures congenial to what we take as justified, we need some knowledge on the institutional structure and dynamics of our society. As in the scientific context, we therefore have to advance in the mode of innovation and exploration. And this is not the business of justification. Justifying some ideal or rule does not yet put us in the position to assess institutional changes as to their aptness to implement the ideal or the rule. This would of course need far more comment than is possible here. Compare for example David Wiens, “Against Ideal Guidance”, Journal of Politics, vol. 77, 2015, pp. 433-446. We rather have to proceed by slowly discovering and creating the social environment that enables the ideal or the rule to take effect. See also Gerald Gaus, The Tyranny of the Ideal. Justice in a Diverse Society, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, pp. 74-104. If this is sound, moral innovation cannot be simply disposed of or substituted under moral justification. The moral capacity of justification is not sufficient to account for moral progress. Since moral progress only pertains if what was vindicated as justified is effectively realized, moral innovation inevitably remains crucial to moral progress and is thus to be retained as an independent type of moral progress. We should therefore take care to not too quickly abandon the Chinese account of moral progress. 5. Conclusion For sure, so far no concrete results have been gained. Fortunately, this was not the goal of this article. My main goal was only to shed initial light on the understanding of moral progress in contemporary Chinese philosophy. Though the emerging account of moral progress eventually turned out to be fraught with problems and challenges, the remarks of the last section suggest we should not all too readily dismiss it. On the contrary, the general orientation of this conception of moral progress is not totally unreasonable. Separating the two moral capacities of justification and innovation seem to be advisable in view of the fact that under non-ideal conditions we first have to make out exactly where and how that which is deemed to be justified can be socially realized. This, however, brings us back full circle to where we started: The question that has to be tackled is still how both moral capacities are to be coordinated so as to guarantee that justification and innovation can both adequately perform their respective function. Do they interact and impact on each other, and if so, how does this proceed more concretely? These are however issues that have to wait for another occasion for they call for a new reading and reconsideration of the Chinese theories considered here as well as other theories neglected so far. PAGE 21