ARTICLES

 PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES 

“Han Feizi on Reputation-Driven Disobedience: A Comparative Study,”
American Political Science Review (2024), online first.
OPEN ACCESS

Must absolutist states resort to intimidation and coercion to tackle subjects’ disobedience driven by their pursuit of reputation? Since canonical early modern Western thinkers broached but did not solve this question, I turn to the most renowned ancient Chinese Legalist Han Feizi’s understudied account of reputation for answers. Whether as a means or an end, individuals’ pursuit of reputation always challenges the authority of the absolute monarchy that endeavors to centralize state power. Forcefully confronting this pursuit is the barely but only acceptable way for the state to tackle this challenge, as non-confrontational strategies favored by many Western thinkers inevitably fail due to their incompatibility with the logic of political absolutism. Thus, Han Feizi unwittingly exposes the tension between political absolutism and reputation. This exposure adds nuances to his view of human nature and helps us understand how individuals’ morally ambiguous pursuit of reputation obstructs the centralization of state power. 

“Youthfulness and Rousseau's Anti-Pluralist Realism about Political Pluralism,”
Political Research Quarterly 75:3 (2022), 607-619.
(link to ungated penultimate version)

Rousseau’s attitude toward political pluralism is receiving renewed attention. Against the traditional portrayal of the utopian, anti-pluralist Rousseau, scholars today either explore how his theory of peoplehood supports an agonistic and pluralist vision of democracy or defend his realist willingness to accommodate the plurality of factions within a polity. Challenging both interpretatons, I explore the oft-ignored relationship between legislation and what I call youthfulness in Rousseau’s work. The youthfulness of a people is the subconscious and unsophisticated national bond among its members. It is an outcome of their spontaneous interactions rather than an artificial creation. Unlike other conditions of legislation, which only determine how legislation should be carried out, youthfulness is the essential precondition for successful legislation. It determines if legislation can be carried out and thus sets limit to the Legislator’s creativity. This relationship between youthfulness and legislation reveals Rousseau’s anti-pluralist realism. It not only confirms that inevitable political pluralism need not undermine the unity of a society, but also questions our capability of sustaining the peoplehood of a society whose members refuse to recognize one another as compatriots. 

“The Tragedy of Honor in Early Modern Political Thought: Hobbes, Mandeville, Montesquieu, and Rousseau,” 
History of European Ideas 47:8 (2021), 1243-1261.
(link to ungated penultimate version)

The academic defense of honor for its positive political and moral effects has surged recently among moral philosophers and political theorists. Challenging the narrative that the feudal legacy of honor has become outdated but acknowledging the reasonable points that opponents of honor have made, contemporary defenders aim to render honor compatible with society and politics today. This defense is reminiscent of that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially four modes of honor developed respectively by Hobbes, Mandeville, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Like contemporary scholars, these thinkers were conscious of the problems often associated with honor but appreciated its political usefulness. They aimed to preserve this feudal legacy in the early modern context. However, a comparative examination of these modes of honor reveals that, despite their internal coherence, they conflicted with one another owing to their authors’ competing understandings of the nature of honor. This conflict testified to the conceptual elusiveness of honor and contributed to the tragic failure of the early modern defense of honor. It is a cautionary tale for contemporary scholars who develop and defend essentialist and ahistorical understandings of honor.

“ ‘The Constant Companion of Virtue’: On the Dilemma and Political Implications of Kantian Honor, ”
The Review of Politics 82:4 (2020), 548-570.
(link to ungated penultimate version)

This article provides a reinterpretation of Kantian honor to resolve an ongoing debate concerning Kant’s mixed attitude toward honor and to clarify the political implications of honor. Kant develops two distinct types of honor in his practical philosophy: natural honor as a human desire and ethical honor as a transcendental virtue. The conflict between these two types of honor can be resolved not in Kant’s ethics but in his political theory, which tolerates nonmoral motivations owing to their positive impact on politics and which presumes an imperfect world where political authority has difficulties in properly punishing disrespect. As a viable motivation for citizens to fight disrespect in a principled way, a reformed Kantian honor that combines the normative content of ethical honor and the motivating power of natural honor into a single whole can be conducive to the politics of mutual respect. 

 ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

“Understanding Sociability through Mandevillean Pride: Comments on Robin Douglass's Mandeville's Fable, ”
History of European Ideas (2024), online first.
(link to ungated penultimate version)

In Mandeville’s Fable, Robin Douglass aims to defend Bernard Mandeville’s philosophical credentials by offering a clear and inspiring reconstruction of his pride-centered theory of sociability. In this essay, I evaluate the strengths and limits of this theory by focusing on two of its key concepts: recognition and hypocrisy. Specifically, I raise two questions concerning the theory’s explanatory power. First, when people seek social recognition, do they often treat it as an end in itself or a means to their narrow self-interest in the sense of material well-being and bodily pleasure? Second, when people act hypocritically, are they often motivated by their pride or interest? Correspondingly, I propose that an enhanced theory of sociability requires contemporary political theorists to explain more pride-related phenomena than does Mandeville and to substantiate the necessary connection between pride and hypocrisy. 

 BOOK REVIEWS 

A Dangerous Passion: Leadership and the Question of Honor, by Haig Patapan (SUNY Press, 2021),
The Review of Politics 84:2 (2022), 296-298.
(link to ungated penultimate version)

The Persistence of Party: Ideas of Harmonious Discord in Eighteenth-Century Britain, by Max Skjönsberg (Cambridge University Press, 2021),
LSE Review of Books (2021), online. 

PUBLIC WRITING

"Adam Smith: What Is the Role of Honour in Society?"
Economics Observatory (2023), online. 

WORKING PROJECTS

A paper on the political implications of Adam Smith's moral philosophy (under review)

“A Rousseauean Proof for Natural Pitié” 

“Dignity: Confucian, Kantian, or Medieval?” (co-authored with Joseph C. W. Chan) 

“The Moral Psychology of Tit for Tat: Honor and the Evolution of Cooperation in the Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma”