101DOI: 10.4312/as.2020.8.1.101–125
Behind Harmony and Justice
WANG Keping * 9 
Abstract 
The proposition of “harmony higher than justice” was initiated by Li Zehou in 2007. It 
implies a hierarchical consideration rather than value assessment, thus schemed to reveal 
at least five aspects: (1) Harmony on this account is to be preconditioned by justice. (2) 
Harmony largely stems from human emotion instead of human rationality. (3) There are 
three forms of harmony in the societal, personal and eco-environmental domains. (4) 
What makes the three forms of harmony possible involves some key notions that vouch-
safe a theoretical ground and a primary part of the “Chinese religious morality”. (5) The 
morality of this kind procures a regulative principle to facilitate an appropriate constitu-
tion of “modern social ethics” with regard to harmony as the ultimate destination of the 
future society and world alike. Accordingly, the proposition can be employed to further 
develop “the Chinese application” and impact “the Western substance”. 
Keywords: Li Zehou, harmony, justice, three forms of harmony, Chinese religious moral-
ity, modern social ethics
Onkraj harmonije in pravičnosti
Izvleček
Predpostavko o tem, da je »harmonija višja od pravičnosti«, je Li Zehou izpostavil leta 
2007. Bolj kot vrednostno sodbo pomeni ta predpostavka zlasti hierarhično vzpostavitev, 
ki se deli na pet vidikov: (1) V tem kontekstu je pravičnost predpogoj harmonije. (2) 
Harmonija izhaja predvsem iz človeških čustev in ne toliko iz racionalnosti. (3) Obstajajo 
tri vrste harmonije na družbeni, osebni in okoljski ravni. (4) To, kar te tri vrste harmonije 
omogoča, je povezano z določenimi ključnimi pojmi, ki zagotavljajo vzpostavitev teor-
etske podlage in primarne vloge »konfucijanske verske morale«. (5) Tovrstna moralnost 
predstavlja regulativni princip, ki olajšuje ustrezno konstituiranje »moderne družbene 
etike«, ki se nanaša na harmonijo kot najvišji cilj za prihodnost družbe in sveta. V skladu 
s tem lahko to predpostavko uporabimo tudi za nadaljnji razvoj »kitajske funkcije« in za 
vpliv na »zahodno substanco«. 
Ključne besede: Li Zehou, harmonija, tri vrste harmonije, kitajska verska moralnost, 
moderna družbena etika
* WANG Keping is Senior Fellow of Chinese Academy of 
 Social Sciences (CASS) and Professor of Department of Philosophy, 
 CASS University.
 Email address: wangkeping55@163.com
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102 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
In his recent ponderings over East-West ethics from a transcultural horizon, Li 
Zehou brings forth the proposition of “harmony higher than justice” with ref-
erence to the ideal of classical Confucianism and the future of human society. 
Following Li’s line of thought, it is assumed that the proposition refers to at least 
five things: (1) Harmony is to be preconditioned by justice. (2) Harmony large-
ly stems from human emotion instead of human rationality. (3) There are three 
forms of harmony in the collective, personal and eco-environmental spheres. (4) 
What makes the three forms of harmony possible involves some key notions that 
vouchsafe a theoretical ground and a primary part of the “Chinese religious mo-
rality” (zhong guo zong jiao dao de). (5) The morality of this kind procures a regu-
lative principle to facilitate an appropriate constitution of “modern social ethics” 
(xian dai she hui lun li) with regard to harmony as the ultimate destination of the 
future society and world alike. 
What is the ultimate telos then? Pragmatically speaking, the proposition itself is 
schemed to shed light on two entities: the “Chinese application” (zhong yong 中
用) and the “Western substance” (xi ti 西体). That is to say, it is employed to fur-
ther develop “the application of Chinese learning” (zhong xue wei yong 中学为用), 
and exert more impact upon “the substance of Western learning” (xi xue wei ti 西
学为体) according to specific situations and contexts. This discussion looks at the 
subtle connections and interactions between harmony and justice in view of Li’s 
philosophical ethics and ontological approach. In addition, it is intended to reveal 
what matters behind the hypothesis of harmony in light of some key elements of 
“Chinese religious morality”. 
Harmony and Justice in Question 
The idea of “harmony higher than justice” (he xie gao yu zheng yi) was first advo-
cated by Li Zehou in 2007 (Li 2010, 158).1 He then briefly discussed it during an 
interview that appeared in his Ethics (2010, 188–95). In his publication A Theory 
of Anthropo-Historical Ontology from 2016, it is slightly modified in Chinese by 
changing “zheng yi” (正义) into “gong zheng” (公正), and it hitherto appears as 
such (he xie gao yu gong zheng) (Li 2016, 151–57).2 This modification attempts to 
deprive “zheng yi” (文本) of its emotional implication rooted in the word yi (义) 
as righteous obligation,3 and to justify “gong zheng” (justice) in terms of impartial 
1 ‘Tan “ce yin zhi xin,”’ 谈“恻隐之心” (Of ‘Compassion’) (in Li 2010, 158). The original expression is 
“和谐高于正义” in Chinese.
2 The modified expression is “和谐高于公正” in Chinese.
3 According to Li Zehou, the Chinese notion of yi (义) is inaccurately translated into either righteousness 
or justice. It might be better rendered as obligation. Such obligation must be appropriate above all 
because it is associated with reasoning but stems from emotion. (see Li 2010, 190) 
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103Asian Studies VIII (XXIV ), 1 (2020), pp. 101–125
reasoning and impersonal judgment without any emotional engagement. As not-
ed in his new book, A Sequel to Ethics, it is rephrased as “emotion-based harmony 
higher than rationality-based justice” (qinggan hexie gaoyu lixing gongzheng), and 
further explained during a series of related seminars and interviews (Li 2017, 
55–59).4 
The given proposition is most likely conducive to two main interpretations: One 
may take it as a value assessment on an ethical basis, which gives more credit to 
harmony than justice. For it assumes that harmony, as a supreme paradigm of the 
political ideal in Confucianism, is more significant and difficult to attain than jus-
tice, a cardinal imperative of social ethics. The other may treat it as a hierarchical 
consideration, which claims justice as a principle of “modern social ethics” and a 
prerequisite for harmony in the network of human relationships. That is to say, 
only when justice is full-fledged in practice can harmony be feasible and attain-
able to a significant extent. Frankly speaking, Li’s proposition strikes me as a hi-
erarchical consideration rather than value assessment. By “hierarchical considera-
tion” I mean placing the role of harmony on a level over that of justice according 
to the hierarchy of human needs. In other words, it does not really present a value 
judgment with the intention of figuring out which of the two concepts is more 
important or noteworthy than the other. Instead, it implies a critical necessity 
with regard to the human condition in one sense, and in another a hypothetical 
sequence wherein the attainment of harmony presupposes the exercise of justice 
in its all-round range. 
The inherent logic between harmony and justice can be sorted out amid a number 
of explicative statements. According to Li Zehou, the notion of harmony is drawn 
from classical Confucianism with regard to its rites-music tradition and socio-po-
litical guanxi-ism as relationism. 
Although it is somewhat idealized, harmony is characterized with a 
clear and final goal, emphasizing that humans are not merely ration-
al and social beings constrained by norms and institutions, but also 
emotional and relational beings in favour of psychological concord-
ance. “Justice” comes from “rationality” whereas harmony from “emo-
tion”. Without being normalized by this “rationality”, such “emotion” 
could be in no way acquirable at all. This can be termed as “moderated 
emotio-rational synthesis” (he qing he li) that corresponds to assurance 
of “emotional understandability and reasonable acceptability” (tong qing 
da li). (Li 2010, 190) 
4 The rephrased expression is “情感和谐高于理性公正” in Chinese.
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104 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
In any case, “emotion” is normalized by “rationality” such that it is no longer pri-
mordial and instinctive at all. It stands for human emotion instead of its animal 
counterpart. It is therefore alleged to be unattainable in a humanized manner 
resulting from human enculturation. 
Further on, Li points out that the proposition is directed to the future of human 
society, and meanwhile proclaims it as part of China’s contribution to the future 
of the world. Its philosophical basis is “the emotional root” as he articulated in the 
late 1990s. Still, he is aware of the fact that “the right is prior to the good” in re-
spect to the views of the good and the evil promoted in various religions, cultures 
and philosophies. This is chiefly because justice, public reason and “modern social 
ethics” are rather elusive in the socio-political life of individual citizens in China. 
On this account, people must keep alert against utilizing the doctrine of harmony 
to conceal or prevent the solid development of justice-based “modern social eth-
ics” and its institutional system (Li 2010, 194). 
As discerned in his argument, Li seems to be preoccupied with a transcultural 
reflection in this domain. He links harmony with “emotion” and “situation” 
from the Chinese sources, and identifies justice with “rationality” and “social 
contract” from the Western ones. Deliberately, he makes a particular reference 
to the Dao for further rectification. The Dao as human way is presented as 
originating from emotion as the most essential aspect of human nature. With 
the passage of time, the Dao has evolved into a total sum of rites comprising 
laws, regulations, propriety rituals, social mores, codes of conduct and so forth. 
Simply put, “rites” also stem from “emotion”, and are taken as precepts to shape 
the moral acts of human individuals. In a gregarious society, “rites” are adopt-
ed and exercised as social norms and ethical principles to coordinate human 
relationships. As regards the mind-heart of every human being, such “rites” 
are there to have a commanding influence upon one’s “emotion” and specific 
“situation” altogether. 
As a rule and over a long history, harmony has been recommended as an ideal 
paradigm of good governance in Chinese heritage, and justice has been wor-
shiped as the most important foundation stone of good governance in the West. 
For example, Confucius celebrates harmony as the final objective of wise lead-
ership. Aristotle respects justice as comprehensive of all other cardinal virtues. 
In reality, what is comparatively weaker in China now is persistently stronger in 
the West with respect to justice, public reason and “modern social ethics” overall. 
Noticeably, justice is most elementary in that it provides human society with 
an ontological basis with regard to its organization and administration alike. In 
the long course of human history, the vital role of justice has been ostensibly 
evinced and embraced ever since the milestone of the ancient Athenian polity 
and its healthy democracy. It has proved to be the keystone for both reciprocal 
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105Asian Studies VIII (XXIV ), 1 (2020), pp. 101–125
collaboration and the common good. Hence without an adequate exercise of 
justice, a human community could neither last long nor retain its order. Still, 
justice is not enough to ensure the efficacious management of human affairs 
in their entirety. For humans are both rational and emotional beings by nature. 
Their varied needs range from low to high, encompassing the physical, social, 
affective, cognitive, aesthetic and spiritual aspects. As ascertained in principle, 
justice is grounded on rationality and helps secure social order in particular; har-
mony is grounded on emotion and facilitates human affinity in essence. Both of 
them are desirable in light of the varied human needs. However, it follows that 
justice is to be taken up as the first priority to secure social order, and harmony is 
to be pursued afterwards as a promis-de-bonheur for the future of human society 
and the world alike.
In practice in the status quo of China, what is more than necessary first of all 
is to reinforce justice and apply it to harnessing the frequency of wrongdoings 
and consolidating the foundation of social order, especially in the rural regions 
across the country. In my view, it would be better to think about how to exercise 
justice before harmony in the present-day context. Otherwise, it will be less 
constructive than expected. If it is necessary to deploy the general guideline of 
harmony prior to the solid operation of social justice, then the possible out-
come will be like building a castle on the sand, as well as creating obstacles on 
the path to justice-based social institutions and “modern social ethics”. This is 
dramatically exemplified through the lessons gained from the large-scale exper-
imentation of “constructing a harmonious society” launched in the past decade 
in China (Wang 2019, 131–34).  
It is argued that Li seems to hold a paradoxical stance to justice on the one 
hand, and keeps himself in favour of harmony on the other hand. Thus he af-
firms the inevitable service of rationality-based justice in the scope of public 
reason and “modern social ethics”. He even proceeds to identify justice as the 
determinant premise of approaching harmony. Yet he remains rather scepti-
cal about rationality supremacy in the Western mentality. He never hesitates 
to criticize the negative and rampant aspects of instrumental rationality, and 
claims, implicitly or explicitly, that it is not enough to have rationality-based 
justice alone to cope with all human affairs in the most appropriate manner 
possible. In order to address this problem, he moves on to formulate a deliberate 
extension of his theory of emotion as substance, and develops an alternative to 
counterbalance rationality-oriented supremacy and justice-bound worship. He 
repeatedly proposes the conception of emotion-based harmony, and stakes out 
its unique role in the enrichment of human relationships and the construction 
of social symbiosis. As far as I have seen, Li thinks over all this with reference to 
his final purpose. That is, he tries to render the positive aspects of the Chinese 
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106 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
way of thinking and value system into an indispensable and complementary part 
of today’s social ontology. Moreover, he takes it as a fruitful contribution to hu-
mankind at confrontation with varied challenges in human encounters. In short, 
he attempts to develop a holistic paradigm of human co-existence by virtue of 
transformational creation from a transcultural outlook.
Li’s constant efforts in this regard are partly embodied in his pragmatic consid-
eration of the interconnection between harmony and justice, as is more clearly 
expounded in his work from 2017. Here he affirms that harmony is higher than 
justice in view of the reciprocity of human relationships and the future of hu-
man society. But at the current stage of social reality, justice stays in the first pri-
ority as it bears a clear-cut distinction between right and wrong, and produces 
the virtues of equity and reasonability, among others. That is why harmony can 
neither substitute for nor manipulate justice, because harmony is only attain-
able on the basis of justice par excellence. However, harmony can be utilized as 
a principle to regulate an appropriate constitution [of “modern social ethics”], 
and attributed to educating people by morality in contrast with justice that is 
used to govern the state through rule of law (Li 2017, 49). Subsequently, Li goes 
further to clarify the point as follows: The link between harmony and justice is 
the same as that between the rule of law and rule by humans. Harmony can be 
considered only when justice has come into effect. Likewise, rule by humans can 
be deployed only when the rule of law has been carried out in practice. It could 
be rather dangerous to advocate harmony and rule by humans at a time when 
justice and the rule of law have not yet been actualized (ibid., 60). As for “rule by 
humans” in a positive sense, it is intended to be humane governance by wise and 
virtuous leadership, which has been glorified as a political ideal of “sageliness 
within and kingliness without” (nei sheng wai wang) in Confucianism. With 
regard to the potentially “dangerous” tendency, it is supposed that this approach 
might go astray so far as to interrupt or suspend the ongoing legal reform to 
modernize China, and eventually prompt a throwback to a semi-feudal past. To 
note in passing, what Li Zehou emphasizes is his constant concern for the “rule 
of law supplemented by human emotion” (Li 2010, 193). 
Notwithstanding the explication given above, what haunts us again on this oc-
casion are such queries as the following: why does “harmony” count so much in 
the time to come? What does it mean specifically to human becoming and so-
cial development? To what extent is it related to the “emotio-rational structure”? 
What “guiding service” is it referring to when compared with the social function 
of justice? How is it possible to apply it to human relationships and human-na-
ture interactions? So on and so forth. Naturally, all this leads to the question of 
what “harmony” is in Li’s philosophizing, and we will consider this below. 
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The Three Forms of Harmony
Reconsidering what John Rawls (1971) and Michael Sandel (2010) have ar-
gued about the modes and limits of justice, Li Zehou outlines his “philosophi-
cal ethics” with particular reference to the Confucian tradition. In contrast 
to the “common good” and the “good life” promoted by Sandel, Li himself 
champions three forms of harmony (文本), as follows: 
It pertains to the harmony of human relationships, the harmony of body 
and mind, and the harmony of Heaven and humankind (i.e. natural 
eco-environment and human race). They are associated with “emotio-ra-
tional structure” and “guanxi-ism” that serve to “regulate an appropriate 
constitution” of “modern social ethics”. Moreover, they help maintain the 
“common good” and the “good life” that stand for the highest level and 
most fundamental dimension of the continuing human existence. They 
are therefore the “telos” itself. (Li 2010, 193)  
To my understanding, the three forms of harmony hereby represent a critical 
necessity to improving the status quo of the human condition at confronta-
tion with numerous challenges and crises, for instance, social fractures and 
political in-fights, psycho-cultural problems and suicide, global warming and 
eco-environmental damage, among many others. In addition, they provide an 
alternative framework that is not solely teleological in a theoretical sense, but 
also desirable in a pragmatic one. As for the two assumptions mentioned, the 
“emotio-rational structure” (qing li jie gou) and “guanxi-ism” (guan xi zhu yi), 
they are an important foundation of “Chinese religious morality” in classical 
Confucianism. In Li, this kind of morality can foster a regulative principle for 
an appropriate constitution of “modern social ethics” that is rationality-based, 
instrumentality-oriented, and utility-ridden by nature. Now leaving this topic 
for later examination, let us focus more on the three forms of harmony and 
their theoretical grounds. 
In my observation, “the harmony of human relationships” can be seen as a 
remedy to resolve social fractures and political in-fights, “the harmony of body 
and soul” as a therapy to reduce psycho-cultural problems and suicide, and 
“the harmony of Heaven and humankind” a solution to global warming and 
eco-environmental damage. The three forms of harmony appear to engage in 
three domains: the societal, the personal and the eco-environmental. 
First and foremost, let us look at the societal domain in light of “guanxi-ism” 
underlying Confucian heritage. The new coinage “guanxi-ism” can be well 
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108 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
 rendered as “moral relationism”, which conceives of human relationships as 
moral ones. As applied to the treatment of these relationships in complex so-
cial networks, it is deeply rooted in the Chinese mentality and social reality 
alike, and therefore adopted to contrast with the stereotyped usage of “collecti-
vism” and “individualism” (Li 2017, 27). In short, “guanxi-ism” is emotional and 
affectionate in kind when directed to the “harmony of human relationships”. 
Its origin can be traced back to the ancient culture of rites and music that was 
designed to govern the state and educate the people. As acknowledged in the 
past, the rites would be a comprehensive synthesis of laws, regulations, pro-
priety rituals, social mores, moral codes and so on. Moreover, they would be a 
sophisticated system of tenets to set up class stratification and social stability. 
Some of the tenets still remain influential today. Some examples are the pri-
mordial hierarchy of “Heaven, Earth, ruler, ancestors and teachers”, the “five 
human relationships” (wu lun) between “father and son, husband and wife, 
ruler and minister, elder and younger brothers, peers and friends”, and the “ten 
moral obligations” (shi yi) demanding that 
the father be kind to the son; the son be filial to the father; the husband 
be gentle to the wife; the wife be obedient to the husband; the elder 
brother be friendly to the younger brother; the younger brother be def-
erential to the elder brother; the senior be generous to the junior; the 
junior be compliant with the senior; the ruler be humane to the subject; 
the subject be loyal to the ruler. 
The primordial hierarchy is highlighted in terms of the “three bases” (san ben) 
entrusted to the rites proper. According to Xunzi, 
Heaven and Earth are the basis of life, the ancestors are the basis of the 
family, and rulers and teachers are the basis of order. If there were no 
Heaven and Earth, how could man be born? If there were no ancestors, 
how would the family come into being? If there were no rulers and teach-
ers, how would order be brought about? If even one of these were lacking, 
there would be no safety for man. (Hsun Tzu 1963, 91) 
Therefore, the rites advise people to serve the Heaven above and Earth below, 
respect their ancestors, and revere their rulers and teachers. Noticeably, the act 
to “serve the Heaven above and Earth below” calls for the virtue of piety, the act 
to “respect the ancestors” the virtue of filialness, and the act to “revere the rulers 
and teachers” the virtue of reverence. They are all emotion-based, indicating 
relational levels of social structure with a quasi-religious touch. Deliberately, Li 
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replaces “the rulers” by “the nation-state” that requires “the act to love” instead 
of “the act to revere” (Li 2010, 187–90).5 This replacement is more suitable to 
modern people and social life, for “the rulers” (jun) denotes no other than a feu-
dal legacy and historical era.
As it occurs to me, the “five human relationships” are extended from the “three 
bases”. They form a more sophisticated social network. Respectively, the rela-
tionship between father and son is grounded on the virtues of kindness and filial 
piety, the relationship between husband and wife on the virtues of gentleness 
and obedience, the relationship between ruler and ministers on the virtues of 
politeness and devotion, the relationship between the senior and the junior on 
the virtues of generosity and compliance, and the relationship between peers 
and friends on the virtues of sincerity and trustworthiness. They are sustained 
by “human emotions” that are socialized and normalized. Accordingly, human 
individuals are living intimately within this “guanxi” (network of human rela-
tionships) without equality. Therein they discover and experience life-mean-
ing, life-value and life-style. The “ten moral obligations” involve more people 
and more relationships. The scope is tremendously expanded to sustain the 
harmonious atmosphere in a large community. The virtues are multiplied but 
remain emotion-based and affection-oriented. They turn out to establish a 
kind of guanxi-ist ethics. If the “three bases”, “five human relationships” and 
“ten moral obligations” are properly managed through emotional and virtuous 
bonds, the “harmony of human relationships” is to be effectively nurtured and 
secured. Even though the social structure or network is consisted in inequality 
amid family and societal members, it keeps a constant stress on harmony per 
se. According to Li, harmony is emotional. And it is only by means of harmony 
that the human relationships can truly continue and endure for long. The “ten 
moral obligations” help rationalize and normalize the physical eros of people, 
thus bringing an “emotio-rational structure” into the “human relationships” 
in a deontological and reciprocal manner. Naturally, this “emotio-rational 
structure” varies in accord with different sets of “human relationships”, rela-
tionships that are apparently unequal but harmoniously coexistent. In short, 
Chinese guanxi-ist ethics is distinguished from both Greek virtue ethics and 
Rawls’ “sense of justice”, as both of these are premised by equality and indi-
vidualism (Li 2017, 54–55). 
Nevertheless, Confucianism upholds that the “harmony of human relationships” 
cannot be completely cultivated on a single track. In actuality, the culture of rites 
5 The old hierarchy of “Heaven, Earth, rulers, ancestors and teachers” (tian di jun qin shi天地君亲
师) is replaced by a new hierarchy of “Heaven, Earth, nation-state, ancestors and teachers” (tian 
di guo qin shi 天地国亲师). The new hierarchy is taken as part of Chinese religious morality. (see 
Li 2010, 187–90)
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110 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
and music is characterized with a two-dimensional service. It is thus convinced 
that rites impose from without whereas music cultivates from within. Music en-
tails harmony, for music comes from the inner being and originates in the emo-
tions that have been evoked by external things. Then the harmony sought by music 
has multiple functions. For instance, it underlies the concrete examination of the 
emotions aroused by things, satisfies the human need for happiness or joyfulness, 
and facilitates the harmonious concomitance of human relationships for the sake 
of social order. For this reason, 
When music is performed in the ancestral temple of the ruler, and the 
ruler and his ministers, superiors and inferiors, listen to it together, there 
are none who are not filled with a spirit of harmonious reverence. When 
it is performed within the household, and father and sons, elder and 
younger brothers, listen to it together, there are none who are not filled 
with a spirit of harmonious kinship. And when it is performed in the 
community, and old people and young together listen to it, there are none 
who are not filled with a spirit of harmonious obedience. Hence music 
brings about complete unity and induces harmony. (Hsun Tzu 1963, 113) 
Observably, the three kinds of spirit are endowed with the potential to harmonize 
human beings from all walks of life. In this regard, musical harmony is structurally 
similar to the “harmony of human relationships”. The music education in Confu-
cianism works complementarily with the rites education in order to produce har-
mony. This harmony, according to Li, is very much concerned with its actualization 
through human emotion. It is not only rational order, but also emotional logic, serv-
ing to retain both familial harmony and social harmony (Li 2017, 56–57). 
As regards the personal sphere, the “harmony of body and mind” is cultur-
al-cum-psychological on its own. It is largely dependent upon the “emotio-ra-
tional structure” that is furnished within human individuals. In Platonism, the 
body-mind dichotomy stays strong and persistent. Owing to its physical mortality 
and negative constraint, the body is conjectured as the prison of the mind whereas 
the mind is assumed to feature immortality and reincarnation according to the 
“Orphic-Pythagorean conglomerate” (Morgan 1999, 236). Conversely in Chinese 
tradition, the concept of body-mind oneness (shen xin he yi) is always approved 
of and highly celebrated despite the distinction between them. Such oneness im-
plies body-mind concordance or harmony not only in a psychomotor sense, as is 
demonstrated in performing martial arts, but in a cultural-psychological sense, as 
is exposed through the development of “emotio-rational structure”.  
According to the Chinese mode of thought, the human body is allegorized as 
the fountainhead of physical desires for one’s daily necessities, living conditions 
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and procreation, which may produce problems if not satisfied. The human mind 
is coupled with the human heart, which serves as the faculty for such cognitive 
activities as reasoning and thinking. When individuals are dominated by physical 
desires alone, they will become so greed-ridden and self-centred that they will 
see themselves but not any others in their own eyes. However, such desires can 
be enculturated into human emotions by means of human rationality and human 
culture. Then human emotions get rationalized, moralized or socialized in gener-
al, because people are rational, moral and social beings above all. When human 
emotions are cultivated to a sufficient degree, human individuals will become so 
considerate and thoughtful that they can see not only themselves but also many 
others from a reciprocal perspective. When such emotions are exalted to a noble 
degree, they will most likely become so selfless and altruistic that they will focus 
more on others than themselves. This process of transforming physical desires into 
human emotions is the remoulding of the “emotio-rational structure”.  
In Li’s opinion, the “emotio-rational structure” is peculiar to human beings alone. 
It is complex on its own and underlies human nature or human psychology (Li 
2016, 648). By the same token, human nature is not physical nature, but human-
ized nature as an outcome of human culture and human capacity. It is therefore 
as a matter of “emotio-rational structure” in principle. This structure that is here-
by internalized in human nature coordinates human emotions, human capacity, 
and notions of good or evil (Li 2017, 64). This being the case, the remoulding of 
“emotio-rational structure” is no other than the building of human nature, because 
it determines the becoming of the human as human. Human nature is primarily 
tripartite, involving three interactive and inter-permeating dimensions known as 
the cognitive, emotional and volitional. The cognitive dimension is chiefly episte-
mological, the emotional dimension aesthetic, and the volitional dimension mor-
al. They are subtly inter-related to different areas inside the human brain, usually 
functioning in varied modes, types and manners at distinct levels (ibid., 400). 
As a result, these three dimensions lead to the growth of human capacity out of 
three components. The first is the “construction of reason (rationality)” (li xing nei 
gou) with reference to the epistemological power that enables humans to tackle 
numbers, logic and so forth. The second is the “solidification of reason” (li xing 
ning ju) with reference to will power that enables humans to behave properly. And 
the third is the “melting of reason” (li xing rong hua) with reference to aesthetic 
sensibility that enables humans to feel into the beautiful and find out the good 
and the true (Li 2010, 163). These three components are closely related to the 
complicated and interwoven connection between emotion and rationality, which 
in turn enhances the development of the “emotio-rational structure”.
The “emotio-rational structure” of human individuals is regarded as the deep struc-
ture of Confucianism. It is a conscious and unconscious complex that mingles 
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112 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
the emotional and rational aspects of human nature into a complicated whole. 
The two aspects are therefore interacting, interweaving, and inter-permeating (Li 
2017, 368). In Li Zehou, the methodology of remoulding the “emotio-rational 
structure” is chiefly based on a due consideration of “historical specifics” (li shi ju 
ti) and a good command of “proper measure” (du de ba wo). In contrast with the 
“rational supremacy”, the methodology itself neither shares any sympathy with 
the abstract rational principle that is directly applied to all specific things and 
situations, nor does it agree with the ethical standards that originate from abstract 
rationality with so-called universal applicability (Li 2017, 25). As far as I can see, 
“historical specifics” vary from time to time as well as from situation to situation. 
They are related to the Chinese idea of emotions evoked by or experienced in 
specific situations. Hence there are far more specifics than universals in human 
life, culture, history, and practice. As regards the “proper measure”, it is employed 
to do right things for particular reasons in specific situations. It is a kind of art, 
working to coordinate and procure an appropriate proportion of the key elements 
in order to achieve a good consequence. In this way, when it is applied to remould-
ing the “emotio-rational structure” of human individuals, for instance, it is prone 
to create a moderated “emotio-rational” synthesis, say, a harmonious integration 
of the emotional aspect and its rational counterpart. All this is presumed to make 
possible the “harmony of body and mind” mentioned above. 
To extend the scope of our understanding in this regard, it is worth sparing a few 
minutes on the Platonic conception of justice with reference to harmony. Herein 
justice is practically acted out through the just person, and harmony is psycholog-
ically displayed through the harmonious personality. The argument is as follows: 
One who is just does not allow any part of himself to do the work of 
another part or allow the various classes within him to meddle with 
each other. He regulates well what is really his own and rules himself. 
He puts himself in order, is his own friend, and harmonizes the three 
parts of himself like three limiting notes in a musical scale—high, low 
and middle. He binds together those parts and any others may be in 
between, and from having been many things he becomes entirely one, 
moderate and harmonious. Only then does he act. And when he does 
anything, whether acquiring wealth, taking care of his body, engag-
ing in politics, or in private contracts––in all of these, he believes that 
the action is just and fine that preserves this inner harmony and helps 
achieve it, and calls it so, and regards as wisdom the knowledge that 
oversees such actions. And he believes that the action that destroys this 
harmony is unjust, and calls it so, and regards the belief that oversees it 
as ignorance. (Plato 1997, 443c-e)
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113Asian Studies VIII (XXIV ), 1 (2020), pp. 101–125
A surface reading of the above-cited passage may lead some people to take the 
just person as a harmonious being, and correspondingly, to perceive justice as a 
container of harmony. But this perception appears so ambiguous that it demands 
clarification at this point. With regard to justice, what threads through Republic 
is how to address and rectify the issue of justice as the most cardinal of all virtues 
concerning both the character building of the guardians and the good governance 
of the kalipolis as a beautiful city-state. In Plato, justice is essentially two-dimen-
sional: psychological and political. In its psychological dimension, justice seems to 
be the most important craft of virtue as it includes all other key virtues, including 
courage, temperance and wisdom. It is principally directed towards one’s own 
self for the sake of becoming a just citizen. In its political dimension, justice is 
by nature directed towards others involved in the enterprise of the community. 
It entails the most fundamental craft of ruling in the kalipolis and thus points to 
a regulative principle of the division of labour, a principle that enables everyone 
to do what he is good at without trespassing into other professions or trades. As 
hinted in the quote above, the craft of ruling is believed to procure an art of ad-
ministration and ensure the social order. Teleologically, the craft of ruling and the 
craft of virtue seem to be distinct from one another, but in practice they are in-
terrelated to some extent because they share something in common. That is, they 
“both have as their goal the happiness of the one on whom they work. The virtue 
conferred by the ruling craft is explicitly identified with happiness; the advantage 
conferred by the craft of virtue is also happiness” (Parry 1996, 91). Moreover, they 
both take the psyche as mind or soul to be their object in spite of their differences 
in dealing with certain desires. 
The psyche as their object is no easy matter to handle due to its complicated for-
mation. It therefore calls for harmony to assist them. In a specific formulation, 
at Republic (1997, 435c–441d), Plato reveals the three parts of the psyche: reason, 
appetite and thymos. Reason is the first part, associated with one’s cognitive abil-
ity that is designed to learn the truth and wisdom as real knowledge. It is apt to 
calculate long-range consequences and consider what should be done or what 
actions to be taken. The appetite is the second part, and this does not calculate at 
all. It simply desires what it wants for the sake of immediate satisfaction. It is thus 
identified with desire or desires. More often than not, reason finds itself at odds 
with appetite. The thymos is the third part, which is usually termed as the spirit. It 
conventionally mirrors the character of Greek warriors and serves as an aggressive 
principle impelling one to adventure across rough seas or to fight bravely in a ter-
rible battle. It is purposely made an ally of reason in its conflict with the appetite. 
This being the case, there arises the need for harmony. In other words, Plato’s 
tripartite psyche requires the role of harmony in order to coordinate and integrate 
the three parts into a harmonious unity. Otherwise, no craft of virtue could be 
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114 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
produced out of the conflicting parts within the psyche, not to speak of the craft of 
ruling pertaining to the good governance of the whole community. In plain lan-
guage, if the appetite of the psyche wants what it wants as much as each member of 
the community wants what he or she wants, what will most likely happen to them 
all in the end? Rampant chaos or awful disorder for certain. Plato is highly aware 
of the classic conflict between the three parts as one of the fundamental issues of 
ethics in his worldview, and wishes to provide a resolution of the conflict with his 
account of virtue. Thus he strongly suggests that the reason do its job to guide the 
appetite and ally itself with the thymos. For reason is related to cognitive ability 
and knows the Idea or Form of justice as the paradigm of proportion and harmo-
ny. Having this knowledge, reason can find out that the proper arrangement of the 
psyche under its guidance is the one that not merely represents the authentic image 
of the Idea of justice, but also allows each of the three parts to fulfil its appropriate 
service. In order to attain such objectives, Plato resorts to the notion and function 
of harmony (harmonias) to synthesize (synarmosanta) all the three parts of the 
psyche by having them fit together in unison (sōphrona kai hērmosmenon) (Plato 
1963, 443b–444c). By so doing, a person is able to “bind together those parts” or 
integrate the three parts into a whole, “put himself in order,” and “become entirely 
one, moderate and harmonious”. In addition, one is able to realize the value of 
being just in the social context. As noted at the end of Book IV of Republic, Plato 
comes along with his spokesperson Socrates to put an emphasis on the value of 
justice in the psyche (ibid., 435b–448e). He reconfirms that justice is valuable in 
itself for human individuals and in its consequences for the social community. In 
order to illustrate this, he goes on to analogize the psyche to the polis by portraying 
the former as having the same parts as the latter, the same structure, and the same 
virtues. This eventually leads to class stratification, the division of labour and so-
cial ethics depicted in Republic. 
In the final analysis, the Platonic conception of justice pertains to the craft of vir-
tue and the craft of ruling in the main. The former is mostly psychological whereas 
the latter political. However, both of them are also ethical or moral. As for the 
Platonic notion of harmony, it is functionally psychological as is deployed to syn-
thesize the partition of the psyche into a harmonious whole under the guidance of 
reason. On this account, justice cannot be perceived as the container of harmony. 
Instead, it can be understood as the teleological fruit of harmony as a medium to 
make the three parts fit together.
Now turning back to the foregoing citation for a second reflection, we can see 
that justice is the most distinguished craft of virtue and craft of ruling embodied 
in the person who is just in the pure sense of this term. Being just as such, he 
is so fair-minded and righteous that he keeps himself in order and harmonizes 
his own tripartite psyche. For example, he works as a musician who harmonizes 
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115Asian Studies VIII (XXIV ), 1 (2020), pp. 101–125
the three parts of his psyche in either the individual or the social context. Under 
such circumstances, he seems to bear a sort of “emotio-rational structure” inside 
himself since the appetite and the spirit are attributed to the emotional category 
in contrast to its rational counterpart. Nevertheless, in Plato, the rational cate-
gory is identified with the leading element of controlling whereas the appetite 
and spirit are identified with the subordinate elements of being controlled. This 
means the three parts have no equal footing at all. The harmonization of them 
is accordingly defined as “a natural relation of control and being controlled” in 
Plato’s terminology. 
Then, in Li Zehou, the “emotio-rational structure” indicates a kind of causal rela-
tion in one sense, and in the other the emotional and rational are conceived to be 
synthetic or inseparable, as though they share an equal footing and interdepend-
ent connection. When it comes to the “harmony of body and mind” in Li, it is 
apparently in opposition to the “dichotomy of body and mind (soul)” in Plato. The 
former emphasizes the oneness between body and mind as it threads through the 
Chinese heritage of personal cultivation, but the latter denounces the body as “the 
prison of the mind”, as it exists in the Hellenic tradition of philosophical learning. 
However, the Platonic mode of thought is more dialectical than straightforward 
in most cases. In his empirical elucidation, for instance, Plato compares the way 
of producing justice with that of producing health, and draws out the resem-
blance between them. In order to produce justice, it is necessary to establish the 
three parts of the psyche in “a natural relation of control and being controlled”; in 
order to produce health, it is necessary to establish the components of the body 
in “a natural relation of control and being controlled” (Plato 1963, 444d-e). Even 
though he distinguishes between the two teleological pursuits, he seems to know 
that they enlighten each other as though a complementary link arises from the 
harmonization of the parts of the psyche and the harmonization of the compo-
nents of the body. Yet, one must remember that the two types of harmonization 
are definitely characterized by “a natural relation of control and being controlled”. 
Now let us turn to the eco-environmental realm. The “harmony of Heaven and 
humankind” is conceptually hidden in the “oneness between Heaven and human” 
(tian ren he yi). In Chinese heritage, the notion of Heaven is used for the Heaven 
and Earth, cosmos, universe, nature, Heavenly Dao or principle. Nowadays it is 
extended to cover a most important item of natural eco-environment in particular, 
because people are growing more and more conscious of global warming and thus 
the need for eco-environmental protection for the sake of all beings on this planet. 
The “harmony of Heaven and humankind” points to the harmonious coordi-
nation of the human-nature relationship, which leads to taking care of nature 
and a better quality of life for all people in its entirety. According to Li, it in-
volves an “affective view of the cosmos” (you qing yu zhou guan) in contrast to 
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116 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
the “scientific view of the cosmos” (Li 2016, 393). This view denotes a positive 
stance to the physical world, human life and human existence. It therefore links 
the human body and mind-heart with natural things in an analogical way. Ac-
cordingly, it tends to affirm, emphasize and sublimate the physical needs and 
human emotions of rational human beings, but not strive to have the soul free 
from the body and fly up to the Heaven, as is expected in Christianity (Li 2017, 
62). As proposed in Confucianism, the meaning of life lies in human affairs. In 
order to find such meaning, humans must live between Heaven and Earth (the 
cosmos or nature). It is no easy matter for humans to live under such circum-
stances, because to live often means to struggle and even fight against endless 
difficulties and hardships of all conceivable kinds. On this account, Confucian-
ism gives credit for the meaning of human life in terms of the affective view of 
the sublime and eternal Cosmos. Actually, the cosmos is extra-emotional and 
nature is neutral as well. Yet, Confucianism claims that the “greatest virtue of 
Heaven and Earth is to beget life” (tian di zhi da de yue sheng), “humaneness is 
the heart of heaven” (ren, tian xin ye), and “the action of Heaven is strong and 
dynamic; in the same manner, the noble man never ceases to strengthen him-
self ” (tian xing jian, jun zi yi zixiang bu xi). “Heaven and Earth” or “Heaven” 
alone here denotes the cosmos or nature. “To beget life” means to give birth to 
all beings and things alike. This capacity of the cosmos is respected as the “great-
est virtue” identified with “humaneness or benevolence”. Apparently, such virtue 
is affective in essence. It serves not merely to make “human life” worthwhile in 
light of the pan-affective cosmic, but also to wrap up the cosmos in warm and 
affirmative human love (Li 2016, 393). Hence humans are encouraged to pursue 
the full development of their own natures and help other fellow beings to do the 
same. Moreover, they are advised to know and assist the transforming and nour-
ishing operations of Heaven and Earth. By so doing, they may with Heaven and 
Earth form a ternion.6 By “ternion” it is meant that the three entities of Heaven, 
Earth and humankind are united into one. It is the same with the “harmony of 
Heaven and humankind”, when “Heaven” is identified with Heaven and Earth. 
Then, in an eco-environmental sense, it requires both relevant consciousness 
and concrete action on the part of humans to look after the myriad things and 
protect the eco-environment for all people. 
What Matters Behind Them?
Pragmatically speaking, what matters behind the three forms of harmony? That is 
to say, what facilitates their attainability after all? In Li Zehou’s opinion it is the 
6 The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhong yong). 1992. In The Four Books, translated by James Legge, 22(49), 
32 (59). Changsha: Hunan Press.
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117Asian Studies VIII (XXIV ), 1 (2020), pp. 101–125
“Chinese religious morality”. The morality of this kind comprises the four given 
notions, namely the primordial hierarchy, “guanxi-ism”, “emotio-rational struc-
ture” and “affective view of the cosmos”. In addition, it involves more elements 
such as the “concordant coexistence of humankind with the cosmos” and “celestial 
people”, among others.  
The “concordant coexistence of humankind with the cosmos” (ren yu zhou xie tong 
gong zai) (Li 2017, 142) is occasionally shortened to the “coexistence of human-
kind with the cosmos” (ren he yu zhou gong zai) in Li’ usage (Li 2005, 53). It is an 
extension of the “affective view of the cosmos”, working towards the becoming of 
the human and the preserving of nature in a concomitant mode. Genetically, it 
is drawn from the conventional idea of Heaven-and-Human Oneness (tian ren 
he yi) that signifies the interdependence between the two sides. Philosophically, 
it is considered to be a metaphysical assumption with reference to the “thing in 
itself ”. Without this assumption, there is neither the source of perception-based 
experience nor the cause of form-based power and feeling. The cosmos itself is 
conducive to an unknown object a priori, whereas the man-made operational 
and symbolic system is creating a cognitive subject a priori. Both are unified on 
the basis of human praxis from the outlook of historical ontology. By means of 
“illuminating the true through the beautiful” and “free intuition”, human beings 
manage to glimpse the mysteries of the cosmos, and thus locate a position for 
their becoming therein. Thanks to their active life saturated with contingency and 
spontaneity, they proceed to make possible their communication with the cosmos. 
They therefore find it necessary to have a metaphysical hypothesis of the “thing 
in itself ” in the name of “physical concordance and coexistence of humankind 
with the cosmos”. This hypothesis will change into an indispensable premise that 
enables people to bestow kinds of order to the cosmos (Li 2005, 53–54). Notwith-
standing the fact that “kinds of order” vary historically, culturally and conceptu-
ally, they are all inclined to acknowledge the dynamic, constant, and significant 
interaction between human beings and the myriad things within the cosmos as a 
whole. In this respect, they seem to manifest a principle of symbiosis in a physical 
and metaphysical sense.
The “celestial people” (tian min) are proposed as the supreme model of human 
becoming in Mencius. They are literally referred to “those who first apprehend 
the principles and then instruct those who are slower to do so” (Mencius 1992, 
9.7). Furthermore, they are commissioned to shoulder a sense of mission for 
their own. They will “promote the principles throughout the world, and proceed 
persistently to carry them out” (ibid., 13.19). The “principles” in this case stand 
for either the “Heavenly principles” or “moral principles”. According to Mencius, 
the “celestial people” are virtuous and noble, even higher than the “great men” 
(da ren), and ready to “serve Heaven” (shi tian) by fulfilling their inborn nature 
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118 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
and looking after the myriad things. Then, from a pragmatic viewpoint, Mencius 
seems to identify them with those who are warm-hearted towards their fellow 
beings and the myriad things under Heaven. In other words, they would devote 
themselves to the ideal of “loving humans and treasuring things” (ren min er ai 
wu) (ibid., 13.45). “Loving people” (ren min) is the result of extending affection 
from one’s kin relatives to other community members in general. “Treasuring 
things” (ai wu) signifies the taking care of all things according to the law of rec-
iprocity. For instance, 
If the farming seasons are not interfered with, the grain will be more than 
can be eaten. If close nets are not allowed to enter the pools and ponds, 
the fishes and turtles will be more than can be consumed. If the axes and 
bills enter the hills and forests only at the proper time, the wood and 
timber will be more than can be used. (Mencius 1992, 1.4) 
Consequently, things are protected and multiplied at the same time, and people 
are, in turn, enabled to enjoy sufficient means and live a reasonably good life. 
Otherwise, it would bring about a detrimental outcome of abusing the natural 
resources and depriving Nature of its generative capacity. This is often metaphor-
ically described in Chinese as though a greedy farmer kills the hen for its eggs. 
Then, one may wonder what other contribution the “Chinese religious morality” 
can make to the human condition at large? In Li’s opinion, it elicits a kind of 
“transformational creation” that aims to develop a new style of ethics and politi-
co-economic institution. It can be therefore deployed as a regulative principle, a 
principle that will be applied to regulating or adjusting an appropriate construc-
tion of “modern social ethics” and politico-economic institution at its best. All 
this is to be tried first in China, and then promoted gradually across the globe by 
adapting it to meeting the needs of humankind in general (Li 2016, 140–41). In 
other words, it can be employed to upgrade “the application of Chinese learning” 
(zhong xue wei yong) on the one hand, and to impact “the substance of Western 
learning” (xi xue wei ti) on the other.
Teleologically, what Li Zehou tries to pursue is at least three-dimension-
al along his line of thought. First of all, he conceives religious morality as a 
“regulative principle”, and “modern social ethics” as a “constitutive principle”. 
Religious morality from Chinese sources consists in the leading notions given 
above, and concerns “the three forms of harmony”. In contrast, “modern social 
ethics” from the Western sources is primarily composed of liberty, equality, hu-
man rights and democracy, and principally preoccupied with the efficiency of 
justice (Li 2016, 391; Li 2017, 63; Li 2010, 33, 190). Pragmatically, “Chinese 
religious morality” is aligned with the “proper measure” (du) as a practical art 
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119Asian Studies VIII (XXIV ), 1 (2020), pp. 101–125
and the “emotional root” (qing ben ti) as its philosophical basis. When utilized 
as a “regulative principle”, it can serve to “regulate an appropriate constitution” 
of “modern social ethics”. 
Clearly, social life today relies on a diversity of rules from the warehouse of 
“modern social ethics”, legal codes, formal justice, individualism, utilitarianism, 
liberalism, and public reason that upholds the precept of “right prior to the 
good”. These rules are not to be put into practice in any abstract and mechanical 
fashion. Otherwise, they would either spur something harmful or plunge social 
encounters into jeopardy. For this reason, they should be introduced into social 
life with due consideration of specific situations, and modified by “Chinese reli-
gious morality” from classical Confucianism. They may help reduce the negative 
effects caused by rigid rules, because they pay more heed to harmony than to 
any other values. If “Chinese religious morality” can be adaptable to different 
circumstances across the world, I think it fairly possible to enrich global moral 
standards in favour of “transnational beneficence”. According to Richard W. 
Miller, the real demands of transnational beneficence go hand in hand with 
the moral demands of transnational interaction and transnational responsibility. 
These demands could not be met without such conditions as mutual reliance, 
mutual trust, equal respect for all and appreciating the equal worth of everyone’s 
life. Beneath such conditions are partly the principles of sympathy and sacrifice. 
Faced with these two principles, genuine practitioners should ground the for-
mer in the latter. By so doing, they can make the most of the merits of the two 
principles so as to foster great concern for and responsiveness to those in need 
(Miller 2010, 6, 17–18, 23–25). However, there are limits in this moral field, 
and legal protection is therefore indispensable in most cases, because “the im-
plementation of demands for beneficence by laws rather than private initiative 
protects responsible people from comprehensive defeat by those who do not live 
up to their own duties of beneficence” (ibid., 212).  
In the second place, “Chinese religious morality” can help build up a humanized 
world (ren xing hua shi jie) that features harmonious interaction and emotion-rea-
son synthesis (qing li jiao rong) amid human beings and their relationships. This 
humanized world parallels the thing-in-itself world (wu zi ti shi jie) that features 
human-nature coexistence and rational mystery (li xing shen mi). As observed in 
current social life, human relationships are becoming increasingly thin, like the 
rare air at high altitudes. This phenomenon is rather universal, as a consequence of 
excessive individualism and inadequate compassion. Fortunately, the Confucian 
“guanxi-ism” can play a crucial role in this regard. With a reciprocal concern for 
personal lives, human relationships and family-like climate in communities, it is 
possible to have social encounters and human affections interwoven to a sophisti-
cated degree. It can therefore be implemented to rebalance rampant individualism 
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120 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
when used as a principle to regulate the proper construction of “modern social 
ethics”, and provide emotional support to public reason along with the ration-
alized social order. In short, Confucian “guanxi-ism” is both moral and affective 
concurrently. It works to overlap and reinforce the emotional basis of social eth-
ics. Naturally, it cannot evade contradictions and even conflicts between the two 
arenas. It needs therefore to be analysed and treated in accord with the specific 
situations or contexts (Li 2017, 58–62). 
Finally, the “Chinese religious morality” is emotion-based and humanity-ori-
ented, but not rationality-denying at all. It calls for a moderated emotio-rational 
synthesis in praxis. On this account, it can be employed to counterbalance the 
excess of instrumental rationality in the Western mainstream. As is often de-
tected in the problematic human condition and social life of today, the excess 
of instrumental rationality is utility-directed and self-interested in most cases. 
It remains rather detrimental to human relationships and social interactions 
altogether. Hence what is greatly needed is an alternative remedy with reference 
to the “Chinese religious morality” in general, and moderated emotio-rational 
synthesis in particular. 
Plausible as this might be as a theoretical vision, it is demanding in practice, from 
my observation. The prerequisite is none other than justice on which “modern 
social ethics” is founded, because the priority of the right over the good cannot be 
passed over at all. In present-day China, this ethics is not solidly established such 
that there is an occasional violation of civil rights and duties. This being true, the 
Chinese religious morality cannot work as a regulative principle in an adequate 
sense, even though the moral sense is deeply rooted in the Chinese mentality. 
Hence I share some sympathy with Rawls’ conception of “justice as fairness”. For 
it is related to the original position of equality and the traditional theory of the 
social contract. Characteristically, according to Rawls,
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of 
thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or 
revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how effi-
cient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. 
Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the 
welfare of society as a whole cannot override. … Therefore, in a just socie-
ty the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured 
by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social 
interests. … an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an 
even greater injustice. Being first virtues of human activities, truth and 
justice are uncompromising. (Rawls 1971, 3–4)  
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121Asian Studies VIII (XXIV ), 1 (2020), pp. 101–125
Moreover, in practice justice involves a series of leading principles. Some of them 
include, for example, the rule of law to constitute a well-ordered society, demo-
cratic equality in the assignment of basic rights and duties, and the institutional 
principle of fair opportunity for personal development, among others. In short, 
justice is social justice by nature. As the most cardinal virtue of social institutions, 
it entails the most decisive way in which “the major institutions distribute fun-
damental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social 
cooperation” (Rawls 1971, 7). All this turns out to be critical for the sake of social 
development and legislative reform in China.
However, when it comes to the construction of a just society in the full sense of 
this term, it is not sufficient to confine the concept of justice to political discourse 
in terms of utilitarian and liberal perspectives alone. The utilitarian approach con-
ceives justice as maximizing utility or welfare. However, it has two defects: First, 
it makes justice and rights a matter of calculation instead of principle; and second, 
it flattens all human goods and takes no account of their qualitative differences by 
translating them into a single, uniform measure of value (Sandel 2010, 260). As 
for the liberal approach, it perceives justice as respecting freedom of choice, and 
thus it takes rights seriously and insists that justice is more than calculation. But it 
tends to accept people’s preferences as they are, and not to require us to question 
or challenge the preferences or desires brought to public life. According to the 
freedom-based theories, “the moral worth of the ends we pursue, the meaning and 
significance of the lives we lead, and the quality and character of the common life 
we share all lie beyond the domain of justice” (ibid., 260–61). Hence it calls for a 
third approach to deliberating about justice by taking into due consideration of 
how a just society is associated and interacts with the cultivation of virtue and the 
common good. This leads to the robust position of Michael Sandel. To his mind,
a just society can’t be achieved simply by maximizing utility or by se-
curing freedom of choice. To achieve a just society we have to reason 
together about the meaning of the good life, and to create a public culture 
hospitable to the disagreements that will inevitably arise. … Justice is 
inescapably judgmental … questions of justice are bound up with com-
peting notions of honor and virtue, pride and recognition. Justice is not 
only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right 
way to value things. (ibid., 261) 
This being the case, the political discourse of liberal neutrality needs to be com-
pensated for or complemented by moral and religious judgments with reference 
to the civic virtues for character building, and the common good for the good life. 
Positively speaking, this communitarian approach is assumed to help people to go 
beyond “the complacent way of life” embroiled in self-satisfaction and material 
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122 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
preoccupations, and to embrace a public life of larger purpose that is to be sus-
tained by political rights, moral and spiritual aspiration, among others. Negatively 
speaking, in Sandel’s opinion, 
the attempt to detach arguments about justice and rights from arguments 
about the good life is mistaken for two reasons: First, it is not always 
possible to decide questions of justice and rights without resolving sub-
stantive moral questions; and second, even where it’s possible, it may not 
be desirable. (ibid., 251) 
And on this account, he proceeds to arrive at this conclusion: “A politics of moral 
engagement is not only a more inspiring ideal than a politics of avoidance. It is 
also a more promising basis for a just society.” (ibid., 269) 
Taking Sandel’s stance of justice as a whole, I find it to some extent a modern 
echo of Aristotle’s voice. Sandel himself is inclined not only to emphasize the 
connection between distributive justice and the common good, but to insist on 
the teleological and honorific aspects of justice. Moreover, he reveals the primary 
cause of the “impoverished public discourse” that is “lurching from one news cycle 
to the next, preoccupied with the scandalous, the sensational, and the trivial” (ibid., 
268). Sure enough, the prevailing surface reading of such discourse serves to create 
a kind of social ambiance, which will in turn sway, confuse, dominate, and even 
distort the public opinion, if not the public reason, under certain circumstances. 
Noticeably, in this respect Li Zehou shares some sympathy with Sandel, for both 
of them address the question of justice from political, teleological, moral and reli-
gious perspectives at once. What rounds their viewpoints out is their tendency to 
take justice as the means for an ends instead of the other way round. In addition, 
they maintain that the principles of justice are practically fundamental, but not 
enough, to attain the final telos. They therefore propose the complementary or 
regulative principles of moral and religious judgments in order to secure a com-
plete vista of a just society in search of the common good for the good life. Quite 
distinctively, Li steps forward along the Confucian line of thought against the 
background of East-West meeting, and Sandel goes ahead along the Aristotelian 
line of thought against the background of American status quo. In spite of that, Li 
differs from Sandel in his anthropo-historical ontology. In Li, people are histor-
ical beings, and human nature is the outcome of human culture. As the fruition 
in part of human culture, morality or ethics not merely points to the codes or 
mores about what one ought to do, but also to the emotion-rational structure and 
cultural-psychological formation of what one should become. When applied to 
human practice in the social domain, the ontology will have an impact upon the 
framework or organization of social institutions.  
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123Asian Studies VIII (XXIV ), 1 (2020), pp. 101–125
A Closing Remark 
To sum up, the proposition of “harmony higher than justice” is a hierarchical 
consideration instead of value assessment. Harmony is preconditioned by jus-
tice in principle, and thus exemplified in the three forms of harmony that are 
lined with the “Chinese religious morality”. Within the framework of Li Zehou’s 
“philosophical ethics” (Li 2017, 63), morality as such is schemed to “regulate an 
appropriate constitution” of “modern social ethics”. That is, it resorts to emotion 
and faith so as to adjust the cold reasoning, legal rigidity, rampant individualism 
and calculated utilitarianism that underlie such ethics. However, they can neither 
replace nor determine one another. They are conducive to the main content of 
“psychological substance” that resembles “cultural-psychological formation”. As 
a matter of fact, Li uses these two terms (“psychological substance” and “cultur-
al-psychological formation”) interchangeably, and confirms their equivalent iden-
tity on some occasions. For instance, the “cultural-psychological formation” is pe-
culiar to humans alone, and identified with the “psychological substance” from a 
philosophical perspective. On this account, what is attributed to the human race 
(as a historical whole) is sedimented into human individuals; what is rational 
is sedimented into what is perceptual; what is social is sedimented into what is 
natural. At the same time, the originally animal faculties that homo sapiens used 
to have are already humanized, which means the natural psychological formation 
has been transformed into its human counterpart. The process of sedimentation 
results from the construction of human nature. It lies in fact in the “humani-
zation of internal nature”, “cultural-psychological formation”, and “psychological 
substance”. These terms bear the same content but different names, for they are 
related to the three spheres known as the cognitive (logical), volitional (ethical), 
and emotional (aesthetic) (Li 2016, 475).  
In Li’s ethics we are exposed to such concepts as “philosophical ethics”, “philo-
sophical psychology”, “psychological substance” and “ethical substance”, among 
others. Then, there arise two issues: one is about the connection between the 
“philosophical ethics” and the “philosophical psychology”, and the other about the 
linkage between the “psychological substance” and “ethical substance”. In order to 
better understand these, two quotes are offered here for reference:
The theory of “humanization of the inner nature” results from the syn-
thesis of the “anthropo-historical ontology” with Chinese classical Con-
fucianism. It strives for the “supreme wisdom of the golden mean”. First 
of all, it takes the Kantian absolutism of practical reason (e.g. categorical 
imperatives) as a foundation stone for the construction of human ethical 
substance (lun li ben ti), and then proceeds to specifying it into the re-
moulding of human “cultural-psychological formation”. What is meant 
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124 Wang Keping: Behind Harmony and Justice
by “psychological” herein is a philosophical assumption instead of a pos-
itivistic study of empirical science. Secondly, it helps inculcate the emo-
tionality of “humaneness” from Chinese Confucianism into the ethical 
substance through psychological channel, and facilitates the “transcen-
dental” reason to develop a possibility of empirical operation. In other 
words, it pertains to “pragmatic reason” instead. Thirdly, it provides a the-
oretical foundation for a relevant distinction between “religious morality” 
and “social ethics”. This theory may be named “philosophical psychology” 
or “transcendental psychology”. (Li 2010, 14–15)7   
The religious morality bears two wings: one is the Confucian notion of 
“making one’s home in a sense of spiritual belonging”, and the other 
is the Western idea of “ultimate concern”. The morality of this kind is 
used to “regulate the appropriate constitution” of “modern social ethics”. 
Moreover, it thus serves to bring body, desire, personal interests and pub-
lic reason back to emotion and feeling, and enables human beings to 
move from the empty concept of man as purpose (Kant) and the empty 
idea of man as Dasein (Heidegger) and step into the concrete and specif-
ic human beings in the human world that is saturated with a variety of 
rich, complex and detailed emotional settings. It requires an intellectual 
digestion of Kant, Marx and Heidegger with the help of Confucius, and 
strives to approach the global centre. This is what the anthropo-historical 
ontology explores. (Li 2010, 195) 
To my mind, Li’s “philosophical ethics” seems to overlap with his “philosophical 
psychology”. It is the same case with the “psychological substance” and “ethi-
cal substance”. Even though they all appear to be notionally distinctive, they re-
main functionally interrelated in search of similar objectives. Moreover, they turn 
out to be a matter of ontology related to the becoming of human perfection or 
the tendency of human fulfilment. They thus pertain to the investigation of “an-
thropo-historical ontology” that provides a bigger umbrella and covers a life-long 
mission in Li’s philosophizing. 
7 The statement is made available in Li’s essay on “The Humanization of the Inner Nature” delivered 
in 1999.
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125Asian Studies VIII (XXIV ), 1 (2020), pp. 101–125
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