강정인·권도혁. 2017. “경제민주화 담론에 대한 정치사상적 고찰.”

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Philosophy East and West, Volume 66, Number 1, January 2016, pp.
152-176 (Article)
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For additional information about this article
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ACHIEVING THE WAY: CONFUCIAN VIRTUE POLITICS
AND THE PROBLEM OF DIRTY HANDS
Sungmoon Kim
Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong
sungmkim@cityu.edu.hk

In his classic essay “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Michael Walzer
claims that “the dilemma of dirty hands is a central feature of political life, that it
arises not merely as an occasional crisis in the career of this or that unlucky politician
but systematically and frequently.”1 Defining the dilemma of dirty hands as a generic
problem inherent in political life, Walzer then turns to Machiavelli’s provocative
statement that a ruler must “learn to be able not to be good,”2 yet without subscribing
to the Machiavellian severance of morals from politics. That is, while knowing what
the moral good is or what makes a good man, a ruler must be able to violate the good
in order to achieve some morally weighty political end, thus giving up moral innocence. Thus, “[n]o one,” says Walzer, “succeeds in politics without getting his hands
dirty.”3
What makes such political actions the right thing to do, though they require the
actor to dirty his hands, is his guilt over compromising his moral integrity:
We don’t want just anyone to make the deal; we want him to make it, precisely because
he has scruples about it. We know he is doing right when he makes the deal because he
knows he is doing wrong. . . . If he is [the] good man I am imagining him to be, he will
feel guilty, that is, he will believe himself to be guilty. That is what it means to have dirty
hands.4

The political actor who has dirtied his hands is not morally innocent. After all, his
soul has been tainted. But his guilt testifies that he is a moral politician: “If he were a
moral man and nothing else his hands would not be dirty; if he were a politician and
nothing else, he would pretend that they were clean.”5
Walzer’s argument has invited numerous criticisms not only from the advocates
of moral absolutism,6 who were his main target, but also from consequentialists.7
However, even these critics largely agree that the problem of dirty hands is a genuine
one, though some scholars still assert that the dirty hands argument is merely a muddle, “a conceptual confusion with unfortunate moral residues.”8 The criticism (especially the absolutist criticism), therefore, has been focused on the chastisement of
Walzer’s failure to do justice to the crucial role that absolutism plays in the political
community, for example maintaining its overall ethical climate9 or providing a moral
framework for action.10 More often, what is at issue among moral and political theorists is not so much whether or not the dirty hands problem is a genuine problem, but
whether the political actor who has dirtied his hands must feel guilty.11

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© 2016 by University of Hawai‘i Press

What has been largely glossed over in the recent debate on the dilemma of dirty
hands, however, is that though Walzer traces the dirty hands tradition back to Machiavelli (and Max Weber), the notion, as constructed philosophically, makes sense only
against the backdrop of the absolutism tradition represented most notably by Plato,
Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant.12 And Walzer clearly notes that “the notion of dirty
hands derives from an effort to refuse absolutism without denying the reality of the
moral dilemma.”13 However, the much discussed question of whether the problem
of dirty hands is a philosophically meaningful one — which is indeed the question of
whether the notion of dirty hands can be accommodated, with certain modifications,
to existing ethical theories such as consequentialism (e.g., Kai Nielson’s “weak consequentialism”14) or deontology (e.g., Thomas Nagel’s “threshold deontology”15) — flies in the face of the radical absence of moral absolutism in a certain
non-Western ethical tradition.
In this regard, Confucianism (especially early Confucianism) presents itself as
a powerful case that both belies the generic nature of the problem of dirty hands
and questions the notion’s general applicability across cultures, because not only
did Confucianism produce no viable tradition of moral absolutism, but, more importantly, as an ethical tradition it is characterized by the theme of “the primacy of the
situation.”16 For instance, Confucius 孔子 (551– 479 b.c.e.) never attempted to synthesize general principles by analyzing ethical complications or moral dilemmas, and
he consistently emphasized the variability of situation. Finding Confucius himself
embodying this “principle” of the timely middle way (shi zhong 時中), Mencius 孟子
(372–289 b.c.e.), the second most important sage in the Confucian tradition, therefore praised him as having sagaciously acted according to circumstances.17 Strong
emphasis on moral integrity notwithstanding, Mencius himself was never tempted to
formulate absolute moral principles and valorize the purity of the soul (in the manner
Socrates did18) but, instead, employed the situation-sensitive method of “analogical
reasoning”19 to educate the people, including political leaders.
This does not mean that no moral dilemma was recognized in the Confucian
tradition. Quite the contrary, throughout early Confucian texts we can find a pleth­ora
of moral dilemmas faced by legendary moral paragons, mostly kings and their ministers, who were not “Confucians” in the strict sense, as they preceded Confucius but
were later reinvented by progenitors of Confucianism as Confucian moral heroes.
What is important is how these early Confucians — who held no background faith
in absolute morality (which must not be broken in the first place) and did not valorize the guilty feeling, which, according to Walzer, reveals ex post facto the political
actor’s pre-commitment to absolute morality — made sense of the ostensibly problematic actions by their moral heroes within their ethical framework. Put differently,
what makes early Confucianism a curious case in the philosophical study of the
problem of dirty hands is the peculiar way in which early Confucians came to terms
with the moral dilemmas faced by their moral heroes without compromising their
ethical commitment to the (Confucian) Way (dao 道) and, quite interestingly, without
invoking “dirty hands.”

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Notwithstanding Walzer’s understanding of the dilemma of dirty hands as the
generic political problem, no early Confucian was persuaded that a political leader
must sometimes do the wrong thing in order to do the right thing.20 In their minds,
if the political actor is a truly moral person, he can never do genuine wrongdoing
even in the critical political moment.21 It is this type of reasoning so typical in early
Confucianism that this essay aims to investigate.
In this essay, by investigating the early Confucian cases of “virtue politics,” I refute the received wisdom (though not intended by Walzer himself ) that the problem
of dirty hands is a generic problem inherent in politics across cultures. My key claims
are as follows. (1) Confucian virtue politics, a mode of moral politics advanced by
early Confucians, does not allow stark separations between public and private and
between political and ethical, and thus, contra Walzer (and Weber), gives the political no privileged moral status.22 (2) Confucian virtue politics, nevertheless, acknowledges a critical moment in which a political actor must take an “expedient measure”
(quan 權) to achieve the Way, which may involve a politically controversial decision,
but the decision is not a “tough” decision because the actor in question does not
engage in internal struggle, a flawed process that would disqualify him from being a
sage or being benevolent (ren 仁).23 (3) The virtues required of a political actor in the
moment of expediency are not distinct from moral virtues that Confucian thinkers
ordinarily advocate for people in general. (4) These three propositions thus lead to
the preclusion of the problem of dirty hands in the Confucian ethical tradition.
In making this argument, I pay special attention to Mencius and Xunzi 荀子
(ca. 312–230 b.c.e.), the two greatest Confucians after Confucius, not only because of
their canonical importance in the history of Confucian political thought, but, more
importantly, because in the Mengzi 孟子 and the Xunzi 荀子 they grapple with the
ostensibly puzzling actions (at least to their interlocutors) of their sagacious moral
heroes, most notably Yi Yin 伊尹 (for Mencius) and the Duke of Zhou 周公 (for X
­ unzi),
and rationalize such actions in a way that is consistent with the core stipulations
of Confucian virtue politics. Though the primary purpose of this essay is to make a
Confucian contribution to the philosophical study of the problem of dirty hands, the
finding that Mencius and Xunzi, often understood as archrivals in the Confucian
­tradition, equally allow no room for the case of dirty hands in their respective political theories will also support an argument for a robust political theory of Confucian
virtue politics, largely independent of their different accounts of human nature and
moral self-cultivation.
The Core Stipulations of Confucian Virtue Politics
Admittedly, virtue politics is the paradigm of Confucian moral-political governance.24
For instance, when Ji Kangzi 季康子, the notorious usurper of the lord’s power,25 asks
Confucius where he thinks the essence of politics or governing (zheng 政) should
lie, Confucius replies, “To govern (zheng 政) is to correct (zheng 正). If you set an
example by being correct, who would dare to remain incorrect?”26 But what exactly

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Confucius meant here by “correct” is ambiguous. Another conversation between
Confucius and Ji Kangzi in Analects 12.19 offers an important clue:
Ji Kangzi asked Confucius about governing effectively (zheng 政), saying, “What if I kill
those who have abandoned the way (dao 道) to attract those who are on it?” “If you govern effectively,” Confucius replied, “what need is there for killing? If you want to be truly
good (shan 善), the people will also be good. The exemplary person’s (junzi 君子) virtue
(de 德) is the wind, while that of the petty person is like grass. As the wind blows, the grass
is sure to bend.”

Here Confucius clarifies that “correct” means “being good” (shan) and that one’s
inner power to become good by correcting oneself, or by the inner traits that have
been acquired (de 得) by doing so, is “virtue” (de). In this reasoning, only a virtuous
ruler can transform the people into good.
Confucius’ belief that the essence of governing lies in the virtue of the morally
rectified ruler and that the people would be accordingly transformed by the moral
example exhibited by such a ruler may appear too simple and completely apolitical,
as was indeed the case with many of his interlocutors. For the political here is presented as absolutely subsumed by the ethical — more specifically, to the ruler’s moral
character. In fact, Confucius describes the legendary sage-king Shun’s government
purely in terms of “effortless action” (wuwei 無爲) by likening Shun to the North Star:
“Governing with virtue (de) can be compared to being the North Star: the North
Star dwells in its place, and the multitude of stars pay it tribute.”27 According to
­Confucius, Shun was able to generate and maintain proper order while virtually
“­ doing nothing” (wuwei) but simply assuming an air of deference and facing due
south.28
Eric Hutton challenges this more or less simplistic (almost mythical) understanding of Confucian virtue politics by clarifying that the actual process of the transformation of the people who are morally uncultivated and therefore whose behavior is
largely determined by the situation in which they find themselves is mediated by
the institutions of the Confucian ritual. On Hutton’s account, the core stipulation of
Confucian virtue politics is: “If there are people who do have robust character traits
and are resistant to situational variation, they can design and reliably maintain the
broad range of institutions and situations that facilitate good behavior for everyone
else.”29 One of the most famous passages in the Lunyu justly attests to Hutton’s realistic interpretation of Confucian virtue politics, which balances virtue and ritual:
Lead the people by administrative injunctions (zheng 政), keep them orderly with penal
law (xing 刑), and they will avoid punishments but will have no sense of shame. Lead
them by virtue (de) and keep them orderly through observing ritual propriety (li) and they
will develop a sense of shame, and moreover, arrive at good by rectifying themselves.30

This passage does not, however, illuminate the relation between “leading by virtue”
and “ordering through ritual” or their relative status. Yet, Zhu Xi (1130 –1200), the
authoritative compiler of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, extends an unequivocal

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support to Hutton’s interpretation in his famous Commentary to the Lunyu (Lunyujizhu 論語集註):
Zheng are the tools of governing; punishments are statutes that assist in governing. Virtue
and ritual, then, are the foundation on which to build government, and virtue, in turn, is
the foundation of ritual. . . . Thus, in governing the people, one must not rely vainly on the
inessentials; rather, one should deeply examine the fundamentals.31

Thus understood, Confucian virtue politics is by no means the mysterious rule
of wuwei, nor is it purely “rule by man” (renzhi 人治) as is often assumed. It is a
particular type of institutional governance, the proper operation of which requires
the ruler’s formidable moral character.
Here arises a very important set of political questions, which can collectively
be called the Confucian constitutionalism problem: What relation does a virtuous
ruler have with the institutions of ritual that he maintains? And, where and how does
a virtuous ruler attain his virtue? Is his virtue a special kind comparable to the
­Machiavellian ruler’s virtù, a purely political virtue? Put another way, is a virtuous
ruler standing outside (or above) or within the system of ritual that he manages?32
Confucius’ answer for this set of questions is quite straightforward: notwithstanding
its foundational status vis-à-vis ritual, virtue is the inner trait acquired through the
(reflexive) observance of the ritual.33 Consider the following statement by Confucius:
If their superiors cherished the observance of ritual propriety (li), none among the common people would dare be disrespectful; if their superiors cherished appropriate conduct
(yi 義), none among the common people would dare be disobedient; if their superiors
cherished making good on their word (xin 信), none among the common people would
dare be duplicitous.34

Confucius’ point is, first, that the virtue that a ruler should possess in order to maintain the institutions of ritual to govern the common people is not qualitatively different from the kind of virtue that the transformed people would eventually acquire, and
second, that virtue can be attained when the ruler voluntarily submits himself to
the ritual that he simultaneously maintains. Though this is not directly addressed to
the ruler, Confucius makes a generalized statement on the second point when he
explains ren: “Through self-discipline (keji 克己) and observing ritual propriety (fuli
復禮) one becomes virtuous (ren) in one’s conduct. If for the space of a day one were
able to accomplish this, the whole world (tianxia 天下) would become virtuous
(ren).”35 Thus understood, in Confucian virtue politics a ruler’s political power is at
once constrained and enabled by ritual. The Confucian virtuous ruler is neither a
Nietzschean “Higher Man” (Übermensch) who stands outside the body politic as a
solitary person to whom the people are deemed as the pathetic herd nor an enlightened despot whose benevolent government depends solely upon his personal good
will.
Perhaps more important in the present context is the first point that there is no
qualitative difference between the ruler’s political virtue (virtue required to maintain
the ritual-constituted political order) and the commoner’s virtue acquired after the

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moral transformation by ritual. It is particularly worth noting that Confucius stressed
filiality (xiao 孝, or more broadly xiaoti 孝悌 if fraternal piety is included) as one of
the core moral virtues embodying the spirit of ren,36 through which a ruler can transform the people, as well as one of the essential virtues at which the transformed
people will ultimately arrive.37
Firmly trusting the transformative power of the virtue of filiality, the core element
of ritual,38 Confucius thus never posited any special political virtue (say, virtù) as a
moral requirement of the ruler’s effective statecraft. When Ji Kangzi asked how to
inculcate in the common people the virtue of reverence, Confucius replied: “Oversee them with dignity and the people will be reverent; be filial to your elders (xiao)
and kind to your juniors, and the people will do their utmost; raise the good and
­instruct those who are not and the people will be imbued with enthusiasm.”39
­Confucius’ core argument is that when a ruler exemplifies the virtue of filiality (among
others) and extends it to the government of the people, the people will become
­filially responsible to their close ones and further transformed into goodness, at the
core of which lies benevolence (ren). It is for this reason that Youzi 有子, Confucius’
disciple, called filiality the root of ren.40
Seen in this way, Confucian virtue politics, in which (to use the Socratic language) statecraft and soulcraft are inextricably intertwined, is extended from Confucian virtue ethics.41 As Hutton shows, all three key Confucians in ancient China
uniformly upheld virtue politics,42 although Mencius and Xunzi further developed
their own distinctive visions of Confucian virtue politics.43 What is interesting is that
Confucian virtue ethics (and by extension Confucian virtue politics) does not make a
vivid distinction between human-moral virtue, desirable for its own sake for all human beings, and civic-political virtue, required in sustaining a political community.44
Its concern was to make a person (including the ruler) a sage (shengren 聖人), or,
more practically, a junzi, a man of formidable moral character, and accordingly
­Confucians were supremely concerned with the moral (even spiritual) transformation
of the self (xiushen 修身 as they called it) through the cultivation of moral virtues
such as ren 仁 (benevolence), yi 義 (righteousness), li 禮 (ritual propriety), and zhi 智
(wisdom). Since no conceptual and practical distinction between politics and morals
was posited, a good man (i.e., junzi) was directly analogous to a good political actor
in the Confucian ethical tradition.
Therefore, in Confucianism there is no qualitative difference between the political virtue by which a ruler governs the people and the moral virtue that the common
people, who have been morally transformed by such a ruler, are to acquire. And
the moral virtue acquired by the people is simultaneously the political virtue that
sustains the Confucian body politic, ideally the tianxia.45 More importantly, since the
ruler’s political legitimacy derives solely from his moral virtue, it is logically possible
(though almost impossible in the non-ideal world) that any person, regardless of his
social origin, can become a ruler (i.e. king) if he possesses brilliant moral virtues. Not
surprisingly, therefore, many Confucians and Confucian-minded scholars (except,
most notably, Xunzi) supported the so-called “abdication doctrine,” according to
which royal power is to be transmitted not by bloodline but by individual merit,

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­ lthough, due to both the rapid sociopolitical changes during the late Warring States
a
period and, more importantly, its internal limitations (most importantly, its vulnerability to “counternarratives”), it ultimately yielded to the argument for hereditary
succession.46
Since the political is subsumed by the ethical in Confucian virtue politics, there
cannot be two separate standards for the political and the moral, which implies the
impossibility of the problem of dirty hands. And since in Confucian virtue politics
the political is in continuum with the ethical, in principle it cannot override moral
considerations because doing so only undermines the very root of the political.
The logical impossibility of the problem of dirty hands, however, does not imply
the radical absence of moral dilemmas in Confucian virtue politics. Indeed, after
Confucius proposed a seminal idea of Confucian virtue politics as an alternative
­political vision to the then dominant trend toward realpolitik, ardent followers of
the Confucian Way such as Mencius and Xunzi, despite their different understandings of human nature and conceptions of moral self-cultivation, devoted themselves
to making Confucian virtue ethics-cum-politics more robust and internally consistent
by grappling with the controversial actions taken by some key cultural heroes of
Chinese antiquity, requiring them to re-interpret history and (re-)invent the Confucian
ethical “tradition.”47 In the remainder of this essay, I will investigate how Mencius
and Xunzi made sense of the ostensibly problematic actions taken by their putatively
immaculate moral heroes within the paradigm of Confucian virtue politics, without
invoking the notion of dirty hands.
Mencius on Shun and Yi Yin
As noted, when envisaging the perfect form of Confucian virtue politics, Confucius
occasionally referred to the sage-king Shun’s government, but he did not offer a detailed account of this remarkable government, which reportedly achieved everything
through effortless action (wuwei). Mencius fills this important lacuna in the political
theory of Confucian virtue politics by attributing the secret of Shun’s government to
his moral virtue, particularly his impeccable filiality, the root of ren.
According to the Mengzi, Shun, before being handpicked by the sage-king Yao
堯, was a farmer who had vicious family members, especially his father Gu Sou 瞽瞍
and his younger brother Xiang 象, who constantly plotted to kill him. However, according to Mencius, Shun was not resentful toward them. Rather, what worried him
most was that he would fail in filial piety and fraternal love to his wicked father and
brother:
Shun alone was able to look upon the fact that the whole world, being greatly delighted,
was turning to him, as of no more consequence than trash. When one does not please
one’s parents, one cannot be a human being; when one is not obedient to one’s parents,
one cannot be a son. Shun did everything that was possible to serve his parents, and succeeded, in the end, in pleasing Gu Sou. Once Gu Sou was pleased, the whole world was
transformed. Once Gu Sou was pleased, the pattern for the relationship between father
and son in the whole world was set. This is the supreme achievement of a filial son.48

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What is implied here is that Shun’s political leadership stems not so much from
some mystical source (as the image of wuwei often conveys), nor from a distinctively
“political” virtue, but from his remarkable virtue of filial piety toward his father.
What is important here is that Mencius understands filiality as one of the ruler’s (and
everyone’s) core character traits, which can resist situational variations, the defining
feature of character.49 The following statement by Mencius, though lengthy, vividly
illustrates how the virtue of filiality helps to form a formidable character as the foundation of political leadership:
The king [Yao] sent his nine sons, and two daughters, together with the hundred officials,
taking with them the full quota of cattle and sheep and provisions, to serve Shun in the
fields. Most of the Gentlemen in the whole world placed themselves under him, and the
king was about to hand the whole world over to him. But because he was unable to
please his parents, Shun was like a man in extreme straits with no home to go back to.
Every man wants to please the Gentleman of the whole world, yet this was not sufficient
to deliver him from anxiety; beautiful women are also something every man desires, yet
the bestowal of the king’s two daughters on Shun as wives was not sufficient to deliver
him from anxiety; wealth is something every man wants, yet the wealth of possessing the
whole world was not sufficient to deliver him from anxiety; rank is something every man
wants, yet the supreme rank of king was not sufficient to deliver him from anxiety. None
of these things was sufficient to deliver him from anxiety which the pleasure of his parents
alone could relieve. . . . A son of supreme filiality (da xiao 大孝) yearns for his parents all
his life.50

For Mencius, therefore, filiality is not a mere consanguineous sentiment one
naturally possesses toward his parents51 but a moral virtue that one should strive to
inculcate in one’s self, even when his family is far from the haven of love and affection.52 Only a ruler who has acquired an unswerving moral character, Mencius
would assert, is able to practice virtue politics, resisting any situational variation
(be it wealth, sexual pleasure, or perhaps most importantly, political power). Such a
ruler alone can realize benevolent government (ren zheng) by extending (tui 推) his
benevolent heart (e.g., the kind that one has toward one’s family members) to the
general public. Hence, Mencius advises King Xuan of Qi, who has a seminal interest
in the Kingly Way (wang dao 王道) but is preoccupied with power and interest, by
saying:
Treat the aged of your own family in a manner befitting their venerable age and extend
this treatment to the aged of other families; treat your own young in a manner befitting
their tender age and extend this to the young of other families, and you can roll the whole
world on your palm. . . . In other words, all you have to do is take this very heart here and
apply it to what is over there.53

Does Mencius imply that a political actor would encounter no moral dilemma
that would require him to make a tough decision (tough in the sense that some
or many people may consider it wrong), as long as he devotes himself to moral
self-cultivation? While understanding early Confucian ethics (particularly Mencius’)
in terms of “character consequentialism,” Philip Ivanhoe submits that “the possession

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of certain virtues usually leads to the realization of certain good consequences above
and beyond the possession of the virtue itself,” consequences which I suppose include, most crucially, a benevolent government. He then immediately adds, “[b]ut
these good consequences are not guaranteed to one who pursues or possesses the
virtue.”54 And according to Confucian ethics, humans “are to pursue the Way because it is the Way, not just for the good consequences associated with it.”55 Shun
(in Mencius’ description) is no exception: though being wholly devoted to the Way,
he finds himself in a problematic situation, particularly in relation to the virtue of
filial piety.
In Mencius 5A2, Mencius acknowledges that it is a normal expectation for a son
to inform his parents before getting married. In the same passage, however, Mencius
admits that the sage-king Shun did not do this. In a different passage, Mencius justifies Shun’s behavior as follows: “There are three ways of being a bad son. The most
serious is to have no heir. Shun married without telling his father for fear of not having an heir. To the gentleman, this was as good as having told his parents.”56 In this
case, in not informing his parents, Shun does not act according to what is normally
expected of a son, but according to Mencius he does so precisely out of a desire to
fulfill the requirement of filiality. For Mencius, Shun’s apparent deviation from what
is normally expected of a son is explained by appeal to the very virtue of filiality.
In resolving the ostensible moral dilemma, no moral compromise has incurred.
However, this case is about a moral dilemma (more accurately, the ostensible
violation of the norm) in a non-political setting, and thus our core question still
­remains unanswered: What about the moral dilemma in the political arena? Does
resolving it for the sake of the greater good necessarily involve dirty hands (that is,
committing a genuine wrongdoing), or should doing so invocate a guilty feeling in
the actor?
Consider Mencius’ appraisal of Yi Yin, the sagacious minister of the sage-king
Tang 湯王 (founder of the Shang dynasty, 1566 –1046 b.c.e.), who took Tai Jia 太甲,
Tang’s grandson, into custody when he did not follow the Kingly Way and gave him
back his power after three years of regent rule.57 In Mencius 7A31, Gongsun Chou
公孫丑, Mencius’ own student, asks Mencius about Yi Yin’s seemingly problematic
action:
Gongsun Chou: Yi Yin banished Tai Jia to Tong, saying, “I do not wish to be close to one
who is intractable,” and the people were greatly pleased. When Tai Jia became good, Yi
Yin restored him to the throne, and the people, once again, were pleased. When a prince
is not good, is it permissible for a good and wise man who is his subject to banish him?
Mencius: It is permissible only if he had the motive of a Yi Yin; otherwise, it would be
usurpation.

First of all, it should be noted that Yi Yin’s action is potentially “problematic” (but
not “wrong,” as shall be shown) according to Mencius’ own standard, which stipulates that only ministers of royal blood are entitled to depose the king in the event
that the king makes serious mistakes and the repeated remonstrations fall on deaf
ears; while the ministers of families other than the royal house, like Yi Yin, can only

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remonstrate with the king in such cases, and if repeated remonstrations fall on deaf
ears, they would just have to deal with him or leave him.58 However, interestingly,
Mencius finds Yi Yin’s action morally permissible, assuming that he had the right
motive (zhi 志). Given the violation of the rules of ritual propriety involved in Yi Yin’s
action, what are the grounds for Mencius’ surprising judgment? Before turning to the
question of the right motive, let us first examine whether breaking norms stipulated
in Mencius 5B9 is a genuine moral violation involving dirty hands.
In actuality, the wording of 5B9 is sufficiently general that it is not clear if the
statement commits Mencius to judging Yi Yin’s action as a moral violation at all. It
only tells us that when a non-related minister deposes a king, it is usually wrong. As
for the case of Yi Yin, Mencius makes it clear that his action does not constitute a case
of usurpation, which involves genuine moral violation.59 That is, for Mencius, Yi Yin’s
action may look problematic in light of the general norm to which he subscribes in
principle, but given the situation and considering his right motive, he is not engaged
in any moral violation whatsoever.60
Mencius’ judgment can be additionally justified with reference to his notion of
Tianli 天吏 (Heaven’s Delegated Official). Mencius famously accepts righteous rebellion as legitimate, in the case of serious violations of ren (benevolence) and yi
(righteousness) by a tyrannical ruler.61 However, as Justin Tiwald shows, Mencius “is
careful to say that the leading revolutionary must be a person whose mettle has
­already been tested in prior positions of authority — a person Mengzi refers to as
‘Heaven’s Delegated Official’ (Tianli 天吏). This would-be usurper may be a member
of the wayward monarch’s ruling house62 or a popular prince in a neighboring state,63
but in either and any case, it is not for the people to instigate an uprising on their
own.”64 Though Yi Yin’s case has nothing to do with a righteous rebellion, Mencius’
reasoning can be plausibly inferred that the constitutional crisis generated by Tai Jia’s
misconduct as the Son of Heaven impelled Yi Yin to assume the role of the Tianli,
whose moral and political legitimacy originates in Heaven’s (though temporal) mandate (tianming 天命).
The question of Heaven in Mencius’ moral and political theory brings us back to
the question of the right motive in the case of Yi Yin. In another place in the Mengzi,
Mencius gives a detailed account of Yi Yin’s motive:
Yi Yin said, “I serve any prince; I rule over any people. I take office whether order prevails
or not.” Again, he said, “Heaven, in producing the people, has given to those who first
attain understanding the duty of awakening those who are slow to understand; and to
those who are the first to awaken the duty of awakening those who are slow to awaken.
I am amongst the first of Heaven’s people to awaken. I shall awaken this people by means
of this Way.” When he saw a common man or woman who did not enjoy the benefit of
the rule of Yao and Shun, Yi Yin felt as if he had pushed him or her into the gutter. This is
the extent to which he considered the world (tianxia) his responsibility (ren 任).65

In emphasizing the right motive (zhi), Mencius sounds like a deontologist who argues either that a right motive always yields the right consequence(s) or that an
­action is morally justifiable only if it is propelled by a right motive, regardless of the

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consequence(s) that it ultimately brings. But the Chinese term zhi, the classical definition of which is “where the mind is going,” should be understood more broadly,
in a way that corresponds with its standard usage in the classical texts — as (moral)
­“commitment,” a defining disposition of moral character.66 Put differently, when
Mencius finds Yi Yin’s action morally permissible, his focus seems to be on Yi Yin’s
commitment to the Way and his moral character, namely his moral qualification for
acting in the way he did (as the Tianli, I suppose) rather than his right intentions. That
is, only a person like Yi Yin, Mencius would argue, is qualified to take an action
that, albeit temporarily, upsets the norms of ritual propriety but that can eventually
contribute to the Way, of which ritual propriety is only a part.
This, however, is only half the story. What is equally important for Mencius is a
political actor’s responsibility (ren 任) toward the world (tianxia). Mencius posits
no tension between his virtue ethics (or character consequentialism), which is innerdirected, and a political actor’s responsibility toward the world, by assuming that the
latter is extended from the former. This seamless continuum between inner morality
and outer political action accounts for the virtual absence of inner struggle or guilt in
Yi Yin (at least in Mencius’ narrative), even when he had to make a tough decision, a
decision that would seem politically suspicious to others.
When he was still a private individual, Yi Yin considered the world his respon­
sibility. At this stage, there is no conflict between his inner moral growth and his
Heaven-given moral responsibility toward the world. Strictly speaking, as a private
individual, Yi Yin’s responsibility is basically toward Heaven, and the world offers
an arena where this moral responsibility can be exercised. Once he becomes the
minister, however, Yi Yin’s responsibility is no longer purely a personal moral responsibility toward Heaven; it is also a political responsibility, a responsibility toward
Heaven as well as toward the moral-cultural-political institutions of the dynasty that
the sage-king(s) founded, and it is at this latter stage where virtue ethics is transformed (or extended) to virtue politics.
What is important in this process, however, is that there is no fantastic transformation of virtue from the moral to political, and even at the critical moment in which
special political virtues (analogous to Machiavelli’s virtù) seem to be necessary in
order to safeguard the institutional character of the regime, they turn out to be essentially the same kind of virtues (such as ren and yi) that the political actor in question
has cultivated as a moral person.
In Mencius 4A17, Mencius calls an expedient measure, which (temporarily) violates the norm of ritual propriety (and any moral norm), quan 權.67 With the notion
of quan, Mencius implies that “moral or ritual rules are never absolute, and that the
agent, occasionally, may face the necessity of breaking them. A failure to break the
rules would have extreme and unpleasant consequences: the death of one’s sister-inlaw, one’s father, one’s lord, or oneself, or the destruction of one’s state. It is, indeed,
the extreme cost of upholding the rule under a particular set of circumstances that
seems to validate breaking the rule.”68 But as Griet Vankeerberghen rightly notes,
central to quan is not breaking the rule as such but its function “as a [balancing]
mechanism that can help maintain [the] constant rules as the agent applies them to

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his own unique circumstances,” allowing “the agent . . . to act at his own discretion
without necessarily being guilty of transgressing the norm.”69 Especially for an official exercising quan, Sarah Queen adds, “he must be sure not to compel the ruler to
violate the constant norms. He must ensure that ‘bending the rules’ will not preclude
the ruler from fulfilling his responsibility as living moral exemplar to his people. . . .
[B]ending the rules can be justified only if it is done with the intention of realizing a
righteous principle.”70
Thus understood, Mencius’ praise of Yi Yin’s exercise of quan is not to hail his
great statesmanship, which, according to Walzer, necessarily involves having dirty
hands, but to extol his moral character. After the whole affair, for Mencius the Way
has been achieved and in the process no hands (neither Yi Yin’s nor Tai Jia’s) have
been made dirty.
Xunzi on the Duke of Zhou
In the history of Chinese political thought, Xunzi occupies a unique position not least
because of his heavily controversial notion that human nature is bad but also because of his immense interest in ritual both as virtue and sociopolitical institution.71
Though both Mencius and Xunzi were equally committed to the Confucian Way,
Xunzi was comparatively more interested in “situational control” by means of ritual,
than in “virtue training,” to which Mencius was almost single-mindedly devoted.72
Though important, this relative difference between Mencius and Xunzi should
not be stressed too much, at least in the present context. After all, Xunzi’s political
theory is built on and further develops Confucius’ seminal idea of the inextricable
intertwinement of virtue and ritual, the articulation of which goes beyond the scope
of this essay. For instance, Xunzi declares that “there are men who can bring order
about, but there is no model (fa 法) that will produce order. . . . The model is the first
manifestation of order; the gentleman (junzi) is the wellspring of the model.”73 When
he responds to the inquiry of administering the state in this manner by saying that “I
have heard about cultivating character, but I never heard about administering the
state,”74 there seems to be no critical difference between him and Mencius.75 Eric
Hutton thus presents Xunzi as the champion of Confucian virtue politics when he
submits that “Xunzi makes it clear that a proper ruler is an expert in ritual himself and
promotes ritual practice generally, and that this is crucial for transforming the people.
Considering these points, one can see how acknowledging situationist concerns
might actually drive one to emphasize the importance of robust, virtuous character
even more, rather than less, because it may be that only if some people really do
have robust character can society turn out well.”76
What is worth noting is that the Duke of Zhou, the younger brother of King Wu
武王, who co-founded the Zhou dynasty with his father King Wen 文王, was the sole
focus of Xunzi’s admiration as he called him the Great Ru (da ru 大儒),77 though
Xunzi judged him neither frugal (jian 儉) nor respectful (gong 恭).78 Xunzi’s admiration of the Duke of Zhou is all the more interesting because the Duke virtually made
a similar decision that Yi Yin had made during the formative stage of the Shang

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­ ynasty, when he strove to stabilize the newly founded Zhou dynasty after defeating
d
Zhouxin 紂辛, the last king of Shang and one of the two most notorious tyrants in
Chinese history (along with Jie 桀, the last king of the Xia dynasty). But before delving
into the Duke of Zhou’s seemingly problematic action, let us first examine the Duke’s
moral character. Unlike the Mengzi, which scarcely provides an account of Yi Yin’s
moral character and his political leadership, we find in the Xunzi quite a detailed
description of the Duke of Zhou as both a moral person and a political leader.
Xunzi 8.8 describes the Duke of Zhou’s contributions to King Wu’s expedition of
his enemies and the founding of the new dynasty as follows:
When King Wu [started the campaign that ended in the] execution of Zhouxin, he did it
on a day the army dreaded. . . . When he reached the Fan 氾, it was in flood stage. When
he reached the Huai 懷, the walls had collapsed. When he reached Gongtou 共頭, the
side of the mountain had given away. Houshu 霍叔 [King Wen’s seventh son and the
younger brother of King Wu and the Duke of Zhou] was apprehensive and said: “In
the past three days of our march, five portents of ill have come! How could we have done
nothing that will doom our plans?” The Duke of Zhou replied: “He has disemboweled
Bigan 比干, imprisoned the Viscount of Ji 箕子, and allowed Feilian 飛廉 and Wulai 惡來
to administer the government. Again, how can there be anything impermissible in our
plans?” . . . At dawn of the next day, they pressed on to the Fields of Mu 牧. When they
beat the signal to attack, the troops of Zhouxin turned on their heels, left the field, proceeded to bully the adherents of Yin 殷 [read: the ruling class of the Shang dynasty], and
to put Zhouxin to death.
Surely the assassins were not the men of Zhou, for it was the consequence of the men
of Yin. Accordingly, there was no taking of heads or captives and no rewards for daring
and difficult feats. . . . Within the four seas [read: tianxia] all without exception changed
their hearts and altered their thoughts in order to transform themselves into obedient subjects of Zhou. Accordingly, the outside doors were not locked, and one could cross the
whole empire without encountering any obstructions.

Here Xunzi’s interest is not in demonstrating how great a military commander
the Duke of Zhou is. In Xunzi’s view, what is so great about the Duke of Zhou is his
unswerving commitment to the Way and his unflagging faith in Heaven’s mandate — 
his (and his brother’s) mission as Heaven’s Delegated Official (Tianli) to punish the
tyrant who brutally executed and unjustly imprisoned righteous subjects admonishing on behalf of Heaven and the people. Withdrawing from the mission of Heaven’s
Delegated Official because of the bad omen (“five portents of ill”), Xunzi implies, is
only to reveal one’s lack of faith in the Way, thereby succumbing to fate.79
Eventually, the consequence of unflagging faith in the Way is moral transformation of the people and the world of grand peace, the telos of Confucian virtue politics. Thus, Xunzi, trusting Mencius’ bold statement that “the benevolent ruler has no
match,”80 reiterates the typical Mencian narrative of the punitive expedition of the
tyrant by Heaven’s Delegated Official: “Hence, when the Duke of Zhou marched to
the south, the countries to the north were resentful and said, ‘Why does he not come
to us alone?’ When he marched to the east, the countries to the west were resentful

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and said, ‘Why does he leave us to the last?’ Who could contest with such a ruler!
One who could make his country like this would become king!”81
But just like Yi Yin (more accurately, Mencius’ Yi Yin), Xunzi notes, the Duke of
Zhou, too, was exposed to a similarly difficult situation, requiring him to make a
controversial decision (controversial, at least, to his contemporaries). And it is how
Xunzi understands the Duke’s ostensibly problematic action that is interesting.
In Xunzi 8.8, Xunzi mentions almost in passing that “[w]hen King Wu had died
and King Cheng 成王 [King Wu’s son] was still a minor, the Duke of Zhou acted as a
screen for King Cheng, succeeded King Wu, and took charge of the registers of the
Son of Heaven.” In another place, Xunzi provides a more detailed story (with some
repetitions) about what happened after the death of King Wu and why the Duke of
Zhou acted in the way he did, as follows:
When King Wu died, King Cheng was only a child. The Duke of Zhou acted as a screen
for King Cheng and succeeded King Wu in order to keep the allegiance of the world,
since he dreaded the prospect of a general revolt against Zhou throughout the empire
(tianxia). The Duke of Zhou took charge of the registers of the Son of Heaven, heard the
judicial cases of the empire, acted with such ease that it was as though his position were
securely held, yet the empire did not regard him as covetous of the throne. He killed
Guanshu 管叔 [King Wen’s second son and the Duke of Zhou’s older brother] and laid
waste to the capital of Yin, but the empire did not regard him as brutal. When he had
­established universal dominion of the world, . . . [h]e educated, admonished, taught, and
guided King Cheng, had him instructed in the Way, that he should be able to follow in the
footsteps of Wen and Wu. The Duke of Zhou restored Zhou, turned over the registers to
King Cheng, and the empire did not cease to serve the House of Zhou. Then the Duke of
Zhou faced north as a subject and attended the morning audience.82

In order to better appreciate Xunzi’s ethical rationalization of the Duke of Zhou’s
action within his virtue-ethical-cum-political framework, it is necessary to understand the historical context of the early Zhou period. In particular, two points are
important: the nature of the Duke’s regency and his controversial retirement.
First, whether the Duke of Zhou was called king (and hence “usurped” the
throne) during the time that he served as regent is still the subject of an ongoing
­debate.83 But according to Edward Shaughnessy there are indications that the Duke
of Zhou’s taking control of the government was viewed as a usurpation by his b
­ rothers
serving in the east, which prompted them to join together with Wu Geng 武庚, the
scion of the last Shang king, and other former subjects of the Shang to rebel against
the House of Zhou.84 Thus, despite Xunzi’s apparent denial of the Duke of Zhou’s
usurpation of the throne, there were grounds for such an allegation.
Second, though Xunzi insinuates that the Duke of Zhou returned power back to
King Cheng voluntarily when the latter was capable of governing himself, some historical texts indicate that the Duke’s retirement was forced rather than voluntary. For
instance, the “Jun Shi” 君奭 chapter of the Book of Documents (Shujing 書經), which
records an address made by the Duke of Zhou to the Duke of Zhao 召公, the Grand
Protector,85 indicates that there was a serious disagreement between them regarding

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the Duke of Zhou’s continued control of power. According to Shaughnessy’s interpretation, the Duke of Zhou was arguing to be allowed to continue in power: “The
Duke of Zhou then seems to admit his own illegitimacy to govern (zai jin yu xiaozi
Dan fei ke you zheng 在今予小子旦非克有正), but makes the apology that he is just
ensuring that the ‘young man’ (chongzi 沖子, presumably King Cheng) can benefit
from his predecessors’ merit,”86 recalling, for instance, that King Tang had a virtuous
minister like Yi Yin. All the more troubling (to Xunzi and Confucians in general) is the
existence of a subcurrent tradition among the voluminous hagiography devoted to
the Duke of Zhou that he found himself in disfavor at the court of King Cheng, being
forced to go into some form of exile.87
What is interesting is the way Xunzi reports and evaluates the whole affair, as
he comments that “[t]he transference of power had taken place in an orderly and
methodical fashion within an appropriate span of time. Hence, for a cadet branch of
a family to supplant the main line does not constitute a ‘transgression’; a younger
brother’s execution of an older brother does not constitute a ‘crime of violence’;
and for the ruler and minister to change positions does not constitute an ‘act of
­ isobedience.’”88
d
Like Mencius, Xunzi explicitly denies that there was any wrongdoing on the part
of the Duke of Zhou. Though not explicitly invoking the term, Xunzi apparently rationalizes the Duke of Zhou’s action from the perspective of quan: in exercising quan
during the formative stage of the dynasty, one is reminded, the Duke of Zhou had to
(temporarily) bend ritual propriety, which stipulates the proper order between king
and subject and the distance and hierarchical relationship among the (royal) family
members (especially between the main line and the branch line), but by doing so
he achieved the Way, thereby putting the dynasty, newly founded according to the
mandate of Heaven, on firmer ground.
No inner struggle should be involved in a sage’s (such as the Duke of Zhou)
­exercise of quan, for having inner scruples only makes one disqualified from being a
sage or being ren and from acting in the way the Duke of Zhou (and Yi Yin) did. As
Xunzi puts it:
The sage follows his desires and fulfills his emotions, but having regulated them, he accords with rational principle of order (li 理). Truly what need has he for strength of will,
for endurance, or for keeping guard against unsteadiness? Thus, the man of ren in practicing the Way requires no assertion (wuwei) in his action. The sage’s practice of the will
requires no strength of will. The thought of the man of ren is reverent; that of the sage is
joyous. This is the Way of putting the mind in order.89

Put differently, there is no tension between the Way as the source of the Duke of
Zhou’s personal virtue and the Way that he aspires to achieve as a political leader.
There is only “one Way,”90 and accordingly no differentiation of virtue into two
­different kinds, moral and political. Therefore, even when the Duke of Zhou was
bending the rules of ritual propriety, his hands were never made dirty. In the end, his
moral integrity remained untarnished.91

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Conclusion
The purpose of this essay has been to refute the received wisdom that the dilemma of
dirty hands is an inherent political problem across cultures by investigating the early
Chinese cases of Confucian virtue politics. My central argument has been that though
early Confucians (particularly Mencius and Xunzi) did recognize the cases of moral
dilemma faced by their moral heroes, their deep commitment to the single and
­holistic Way and their strong faith in virtue politics allowed no room for dirty hands
on the part of the actor, even in critical political moments.
Both Mencius and Xunzi wholeheartedly agreed that a moral-political actor
sometimes has to bend the rules of ritual (or any rule) in order to safeguard or uphold
the Way, but in doing so he neither does genuine wrongdoing (and compromises his
moral integrity) nor undergoes guilt-generating inner struggles. In their judgment, the
hallmark of the sage as the paragon of moral character was his ability to make timely
and effortless adaptations to changing situations. Since there is only “one Way,” they
concurred, there could be no differentiation of virtue into moral and political virtues,
and since the political was given no privileged status but rather extended from the
ethical, even when the expedient measure (quan) was required to cope with the
­politically critical moment, it was only to achieve the Way, never to bend the Way
itself.
In a sense, this absolutist commitment to the Way, or “Dao absolutism,” enabled
early Confucians, their internal differences notwithstanding, to find a way to solve
the moral dilemma in both political and non-political situations by approving remarkable moral flexibility in the service of the Way, thus avoiding both moral absolutism (of the kind Walzer criticizes) and dirty hands.
One may wonder, even if the core stipulations of Confucian virtue politics are
accepted, whether Confucian rulers are able to violate the good in order to achieve
some morally weighty political end without being guilty of a moral wrong. That is, it
may be argued that even if a Dao absolutism undergirded by the idea of quan allows
Confucian rulers to resolve moral dilemmas without committing moral wrongs, in
many, if not all, cases where quan is exercised there is a prima facie moral inappropriateness involved, hence the need of moral justification — for instance, in the case
of Yi Yin or Mencius’ case of physically touching the sister-in-law’s hand in an emergency. Doesn’t the very awareness of moral dilemma imply that acting either way
would make one guilty of something?
This is an important question that we can raise for Mencius or Xunzi. After all, it
should be recalled, throughout this essay our focus has been on Shun, Yi Yin, and the
Duke of Zhou in Mencius’ and Xunzi’s virtue-ethical and/or virtue-political narratives. And it is their narratives (and their ethical and political theories) that allow no
room for the problem of dirty hands and philosophical conundrums accompanying
it. For instance, Mencius’ justification of Yi Yin’s seemingly problematic action was
not to admit, through a back door, the inevitability of guilt in the course of resolving
(ostensibly) dilemmatic situations, but rather to vindicate the ethical system that he

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champions (i.e., Confucian virtue ethics-cum-politics), in that it helps a moral agent
(e.g., Yi Yin in his narrative, not necessarily the historical Yi Yin) to rectify certain
moral inappropriateness or imbalance noted in a particular situation, including a
political crisis, in a way that does not involve committing moral wrongs, undergoing
inner struggles, and/or developing guilty feelings. In short, what I have discussed
in this essay is the theoretical or normative account of Confucian virtue ethics-cumpolitics with regard to moral dilemma, particularly in politics.
That being said, whether this way of resolving moral dilemmas is realistic or desirable is a wholly separate matter. In fact, while interpreting Mencius 7A35, in which
Mencius speculates on what sage-king Shun would do if his father had killed someone, Stephen Angle boldly claims that Mencius is mistaken in leaving grief out of
the picture.92 Angle says, “I believe that Shun should feel grief. The ‘and they lived
happily ever after’ implication of Mencius’ tale is too pat, ignoring the complexities
of the situation.”93 I take Angle’s point to be that Mencius must have made his Shun
(or any moral hero in Confucianism that he is now reconstructing) feel grief about
casting aside his responsibilities to his people. Though not directly dealing with the
cases of Yi Yin and Duke of Zhou, I surmise that Angle would respond likewise to
Mencius and Xunzi: in each narrative the protagonist engaging in a “problematic”
action should feel grief because it involves a transgression of conventional moral
norms.
However, there is a great difference between feeling grief and feeling guilt. After
all, according to Mencius’ or Xunzi’s virtue-ethical-political account, the protagonist, a moral paragon, committed no wrongs (as he sees them); he only transgressed
what is conventionally conceived as right. So I agree with Angle when he says, “But
supposing a sage sees that it is the right thing to do, does it with an appropriately
heavy heart, feels appropriate grief, and works through the grief in ritually appropriate ways, is his or her life ‘marred’? . . . The sage might have a strong emotional reaction to such an experience . . . [b]ut ex hypothesi the sage does not wallow in guilt.”94
Given Mencius’ endorsement of grief as an appropriate emotion for a sage to
have in a particular situation,95 the argument that a sage should feel grief when he or
she engages in a “problematic” action is not only convincing but also perfectly compatible with my central argument that Confucian virtue politics allows no room for
the problem of dirty hands. Though ancient Confucians left the question of emotion
out of the picture in their normative account(s) of virtue politics, because of their
strong commitment to Dao absolutism, contemporary Confucian theorists should
further develop Confucian political theory by taking full advantage of the (classical)
Confucian attention to complex emotions such as grief and (affective) resentment.96

Notes
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant f­ unded
by the Korean Government (NRF–2014S1A3A2043763). I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers of the journal for their helpful comments.

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1    –    Michael Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy
and Public Affairs 2, no. 2 (1973): 162.
2    –    Ibid., p. 164. Also see Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 61.
3    –    Walzer, “Political Action,” p. 164.
4    –    Ibid., p. 166.
5    –    Ibid., p. 168.
6    –    Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choices in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage
Books, 1979); Maureen Ramsay, “Democratic Dirty Hands,” in The Politics of
Lying: Implications for Democracy, ed. Lionel Cliffe, Maureen Ramsay, and
­David Bartlett (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
7    –    The consequentialist critique of Walzer’s notion of dirty hands is especially
noteworthy given its strong utilitarian implications that Walzer fully acknowledges: “[The problem of dirty hands] does not mean that it isn’t possible to do
the right thing while governing. It means that a particular act of government (in
a political party or in the state) may be exactly the right thing to do in utilitarian
terms and yet leave the man who does it guilty of a moral wrong” (Walzer,
­“Political Action,” p. 161).
8    –    Kai Nielson, “There Is No Dilemma of Dirty Hands,” in Cruelty and Deception:
The Controversy of Dirty Hands in Politics, ed. David P. Shugarman and Paul
Rynard (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2000), p. 140.
9    –    Suzanne Dovi, “Guilt and the Problem of Dirty Hands,” Constellations 12,
no. 1 (2005): 128–146.
10    –    David P. Shugarman, “Democratic Dirty Hands?” in Shugarman and Rynard,
Cruelty and Deception.
11    –    Ibid. Also see William A. Galston, “Value Pluralism and Political Means: Toughness as a Political Virtue,” in The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005); Dennis F. Thompson, Political Ethics and
Public Office (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
12    –    As Suzanne Dovi understands, “In order to negotiate the problem of dirty hands
properly, it is necessary to have political actors who unequivocally abide by
certain ethical commitments and political actors who are willing to transgress
those commitments for desirable political ends” (Dovi, “Guilt and the Problem
of Dirty Hands,” p. 135).
13    –    Walzer, “Political Action,” p. 162.
14    –    Nielson, “There Is No Dilemma of Dirty Hands.”
15    –    Thomas Nagel, “Personal Rights and Public Space,” Philosophy and Public
­ ffairs 24, no. 2 (1995): 83–107.
A

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16    –    Paul R. Goldin, “The Theme of the Primacy of the Situation in Classical Chinese
Philosophy and Rhetoric,” Asia Major 18, no. 2 (2005): 1–25. To clarify, Goldin presents the theme of the primacy of the situation as the general charac­
teristic of classical Chinese philosophy and rhetoric, of which Confucianism
is only a part, though an important one. For the Confucian emphasis on
particularity of a given situation and the flexible adaptation to it, see
the ­
­Marion Hourdequin, “Engagement, Withdrawal, and Social Reform: Confucian
and Contemporary Perspectives,” Philosophy East and West 60, no. 3 (2010):
369–390.
17    –    Mencius 5B1.
18    –    Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
19    –    David Wong, “Reasons and Analogical Reasoning in Mengzi,” in Essays on
the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi, ed. Xiusheng Liu and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002).
20    –    It should be cautioned that my focus in this essay is how early Confucians
­understood moral dilemmas faced by their heroes, and not on whether or not
those heroes actually dirtied their hands. As such, this study does not aim to
refute Walzer’s core political argument, based on the popular belief, that political actors sometimes are forced to do the wrong thing in order to do the right
thing.
21    –    The problem of dirty hands is not simply the problem that morally good political leaders will have to do things that some or even most people will consider
wrong, but rather that they have to do things that truly are wrong, especially in
the view of the person doing them, because it is only if the actions truly are
wrong that their hands are “dirty.”
22    –    Walzer says, “The effect of supreme-emergency argument should be to reinforce professional ethics and to provide an account of when it is permissible
(or necessary) to get our hands dirty” (Michael Walzer, Arguing about War
[New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005], p. 46).
23    –    According to Galston (see note 11 above), the person with the virtue of toughness is quite aware of the ways in which he is violating moral requirements, and
this awareness generates a subjective feeling (if not a guilty feeling) of internal
tension in the person with such toughness.
24    –    Paul R. Goldin, Confucianism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011),
pp. 23–30.
25    –    Ji Kangzi headed the Lu government between the years 492 and 468 b.c.e.,
during the reign of Lord Ai of Lu (魯哀公, r. 494 – 468), whom he completely
sidelined. See Yuri Pines, Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought
of the Warring States Era (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press 2009), p. 231
n. 23.

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26    –    Analects 12.17. Here I have adapted the English translation of the texts of the
Lunyu 論語 from Confucius, The Analects, trans. D. C. Lau (New York: Penguin
Books, 1979). Unless otherwise noted, though, all subsequent English translations from the Analects are adapted from Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont,
Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998).
27    –    Analects 2.1 (modified).
28    –    Analects 15.5.
29    –    Eric L. Hutton, “Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought,” Philosophical Studies 127 (2006): 50.
30    –    Analects 2.3.
31    –    D. K. Gardner, Zhu Xi’s Reading of the Analects: Canon, Commentary, and
the Classical Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 109
(emphasis added). Also see Xunzi 12.1.
32    –    For illuminating studies on so-called “Confucian ritual constitutionalism,” see
Chaihark Hahm, “Ritual and Constitutionalism: Disputing the Ruler’s Legiti­
macy in a Confucian Polity,” American Journal of Comparative Law 57 (2009):
135–203.
33    
–    
For philosophical explorations on the inextricable relation between virtue
(­ particularly ren, the Confucian virtue par excellence) and ritual in Confucian
virtue ethics (and by extension politics), see Kwong-loi Shun, “Jen and Li in the
Analects,” Philosophy East and West 43, no. 3 (1993): 457– 479; Karyn Lai, “Li
in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility,”
Philosophy East and West 56, no. 1 (2006): 69–83.
34    –    Analects 13.4; also see 14.41.
35    –    Analects 12.1 (modified).
36    –    Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Filial Piety as Virtue,” in Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and
Contemporary Moral Problems, ed. Rebecca L. Walker and Philip J. Ivanhoe
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007); Chenyang Li, “Shifting Perspectives: Filial
­Morality Revisited,” Philosophy East and West 47, no. 2 (1997): 211–232.
37    –    Analects 2.21
38    –    Originally, the ritual Confucius praised and creatively re-appropriated origi­
nated from the clan ritual-cum-law (zongfa 宗法), by which the King of the
Zhou dynasty (1045–256 b.c.e.), called the “Son of Heaven” (tianzi 天子), governed his kingdom (called tianxia, literally “all under Heaven”), consisting of
many feudal states, where many persons were of blood-relation to the Zhou
court. On the origin and the changing notions of the idea of tianxia in ancient
China, see Yuri Pines, “Changing Views of Tianxia in Pre-Imperial Discourse,”
Oriens Extremus 43 (2002): 101–116.

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39    –    Analects 2.20 (modified by Lau’s translation and emphasis added). It is important to note that the Duke of Zhou, whom Confucius admired most, allegedly
addressed his son, the ruler of Lu, saying that “[to govern the people] the
­ruler  (junzi 君子) should not be remiss in family relations” (Analects 18.10,
modified).
40    –    Analects 1.2.
41    –    Admittedly, among students of Chinese philosophy, whether Confucian ethics
can be called a virtue ethics is an ongoing controversy, and some scholars
­indeed understand Confucian (especially early Confucian) ethics in terms of
“role-ethics.” See most notably Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics (Hono­
lulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011). However, these scholars do not claim
that in Confucianism virtue is unimportant; their main claim is that the Confucian emphasis on virtue can be accommodated by the standpoint of role ethics.
For a more direct defense of Confucian virtue ethics, see Philip J. Ivanhoe,
Confucian Moral Self Cultivation (Indianapolis: Hackett 2000); Bryan W. Van
Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy
­(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Jiyuan Yu, The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue (London: Routledge, 2007).
42    –    Hutton, “Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought.”
43    –    See Sungmoon Kim, “Confucian Constitutionalism: Mencius and Xunzi on
­Virtue, Ritual, and Royal Transmission,” Review of Politics 73, no. 3 (2011):
371–399.
44    –    This distinction is from William A. Galston, “Pluralism and Civic Virtue,” Social
Theory and Practice 33, no. 4 (2007): 625– 636.
45    –    On the ancient Confucian ideal of the body politic, see Michael Nylan, “Boundaries of the Body and Body Politics in Early Confucian Thought,” in Boundaries
and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives, ed. David Miller and Sohail H. H
­ ashmi
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). On why the ideal of tianxia,
which had originated in the Zhou dynasty, continued to remain the core
­inspiration for political imagination throughout pre-Qin China, see Yuri Pines,
Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States
Era (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009). In this essay, I translate it as
the “whole world.”
46    
–    
See Yuri Pines “Disputers of Abdication: Zhanguo Egalitarianism and the
S­ overeign’s Power,” T’oung Pao 91, no. 4 (2005): 243–300; Kim, “Confucian
Constitutionalism.” This is not to say, however, that abdication doctrine belonged exclusively to the Confucian school. In fact, it was Mozi 墨子 who first
espoused this doctrine, and it was quite popular among Warring States scholars
as evidenced in recently excavated texts such as the Tang Yu zhi Dao 唐虞之道
and Rong Cheng shi 容成氏.

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47    –    John B. Henderson, Scripture, Canon, and Commentary: A Comparison of
­Confucian and Western Exegesis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991);
Mark E. Lewis, Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1999).
48    –    Mencius 4A28. With slight alterations of terminology and spelling, this and
subsequent translations from the Mencius are from D. C. Lau, trans., Mencius
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970).
49    –    Hutton, “Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought”; Edward Slingerland, “The Situationist Critique and Early Confucian Virtue Ethics,” Ethics
121, no. 2 (2011): 390 – 419.
50    –    Mencius 5A1.
51    –    Cf., Qingping Liu, “Filiality versus Sociality and Individuality: On Confucianism
as ‘Consanguinitism,’” Philosophy East and West 53, no. 2 (2003): 234 –250.
52    –    Analects 4.18.
53    –    Mencius 1A7. Though Mencius stipulates that only a virtuous ruler can realize
a benevolent government, he does not claim that a virtuous ruler alone is
­capable of “extension.” As noted by many contemporary scholars, Mencius
employs extension as a general method of moral self-cultivation applicable to
every human being, who, by nature, has the sprouts (duan 端) of virtue such as
compassion.
54    –    Philip J. Ivanhoe, “Character Consequentialism: An Early Confucian Contribution to Contemporary Ethical Theory,” Journal of Religious Ethics 19, no. 1
(1991), p. 56.
55    –    Ibid., p. 58.
56    –    Mencius 4A26.
57    –    The newly excavated Bamboo Annals (Zhushu jinian 竹書紀年) tells a different
story, according to which “Yi Yin banished Tai Jia to Dong 棟 and installed himself in power. Yi Yin came to power and exiled Tai Jia; in the seventh year, Tai Jia
sneaked out of Dong and killed Yi Yin, taking power. (Yi Yin’s) sons Yi Zhi 伊陟
and Yi Fen 伊奮 were appointed and their father’s lands and buildings were
­returned and divided between them.” This is the Han scholar Du Yu 杜預’s
(222–284) account, which is translated by Shaughnessy. See Edward L. Shaughnessy, Rewriting Early Chinese Texts (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2006), p. 190. Whether there was indeed a power struggle between Yi Yin
and Tai Jia is not my main concern here. What is important in the present context is Mencius’ virtue-ethical and virtue-political account of Yi Yin’s action.
58    –    Mencius 5B9.
59    –    Cf. Analects 3.1.

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60    –    Though Mencius does not invoke the virtue of yi 義 in this particular case, Yang
Xiao’s illuminating study on the Confucian conception of yi, with special focus
on its sensitivity to the particularity of situation, is helpful in making sense of
Mencius’ position. See his “Trying to do Justice to the Concept of Justice in
Confucian Ethics,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 24, no. 4 (1997): 521–551.
61    –    Mencius 1B8.
62    –    Mencius 5B9.
63    –    Mencius 2A5.
64    –    Justin Tiwald, “A Right of Rebellion in the Mengzi ?” Dao 7, no. 3 (2008): 273.
65    –    Mencius 5B1 (modified).
66    –    Drawing on some classical sources, mostly from the Analects, Stephen Angle
argues for understanding zhi as “commitment” quite generally, implying that it
only sometimes means “will,” “intention,” or “motive.” See Stephen C. Angle,
Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 114 –115.
67    –    Mencius says, “Not to help a sister-in-law who is drowning is to be a brute. It is
prescribed by the rites that, in giving and receiving, man and woman should not
touch each other, but in stretching out a helping hand to the drowning sisterin-law one uses quan.” The Gongyang commentary to the Spring and Autumn
Annals (Chunqiu gongyangdian 春秋公羊傳) defines quan as “go[ing] against
(fan 反) the standard (jing 經), so that afterward one can possess the good
(shan 善)” (Griet Vankeerberghen, “Choosing Balance: Weighing [Quan 權] as
a Metaphor for Action in Early Chinese Texts,” Early China 30 [2006]: 76).
68    –    Vankeerberghen, “Choosing Balance,” p. 74.
69    –    Ibid., p. 77.
70    –    Sarah A. Queen, From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the Spring and
Autumn, according to Tung Chung-shu (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), p. 156.
71    –    Kurtis Hagen, The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction (Chicago: Open
Court, 2007).
72    –    Hutton, “Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought,” p. 48. Also
see Slingerland, “The Situationist Critique and Early Confucian Virtue Ethics,”
p. 418.
73    –    Xunzi 12.1. Throughout this essay, all English translations of the text of the
­Xunzi are adopted from John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the
Complete Works, 3 vols. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988–1994).
74    –    Xunzi 12.4.
75    –    Cf. Mencius 1A1.

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76    –    Hutton, “Character, Situationism, and Early Confucian Thought,” 50 –51.
77    –    Xunzi 8.1. Though the Chinese character ru 儒 commonly refers to Confucians
in early Chinese texts, ru cannot be understood here as “Confucian” because
the Duke of Zhou preceded Confucius. I follow Eric Hutton’s interpretation that
ru here means something like “a very cultivated person” in general. It is worth
noting that the Duke of Zhou was Confucius’ most revered moral hero as well
(Analects 7.5).
78    –    Xunzi 8.8. However, one should be reminded that here Xunzi is responding to
the unnamed interlocutor’s use of the terms “frugal” and “respectful.” While
Xunzi seems to deny that the Duke of Zhou was “frugal” and “respectful” in the
passage (8.8), it is not clear that in doing so he intends to endorse the inter­
locutor’s understanding of “frugality” and “respectfulness” as virtues in the first
place, and hence it is not clear that in denying the Duke of Zhou these labels,
Xunzi is attributing to him “prodigality” or “disrespectfulness” as moral faults
himself.
79    –    Compare the Duke of Zhou’s statement with Confucius’ in Analects 7.23:
“Heaven (tian 天) has given life to and nourished virtue (de 德) in me — what
can Huan Tui 桓魋 [the minister of Song 宋, who attempted to kill Confucius]
do to me?” The point is that for both Confucius and the Duke of Zhou (in Xunzi’s description), nothing — be it a human being or a bad omen — is in the way
of their pursuit of the Way.
80    –    Mencius 1A5.
81    –    Xunzi 9.19a. Compare this to the almost identical statement by Mencius in
Mencius 1B11. Note that while Mencius attributes to King Wu the success
of the punitive expedition, for Xunzi it is the Duke of Zhou who was the real
hero.
82    –    Xunzi 8.1.
83    –    See Edward L. Shaughnessy, “The Duke of Zhou’s Retirement in the East and the
Beginnings of the Minister-Monarch Debate in Chinese Political Philosophy,” in
Before Confucius: Studies in the Creation of the Chinese Classics (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 103–107.
84    –    Ibid., p. 103. After the conquest of the Shang dynasty, the Duke of Zhou continued to assist King Wu in the Zhou capital, while other royal siblings, including
Guanshu, were deputed to oversee the former Shang territory in the east.
85    –    The Duke of Zhao (born as Shi 奭) is one of King Wen’s secondary sons (i.e.,
sons by secondary consorts) and the Duke of Zhou’s older brother.
86    –    Shaughnessy, “The Duke of Zhou’s Retirement,” p. 111.
87    –    Ibid., pp. 118  ff.
88    –    Xunzi 8.1.

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89    –    Xunzi 21.7d (modified). Also see Analects 2.4, particularly the last line, where
Confucius says “[F]rom seventy I could give my heart-and-mind free rein without overstepping the boundaries.”
90    –    Xunzi 21.1. Also see Goldin, Confucianism, pp. 84 –86.
91    –    For Xunzi’s emphasis on moral integrity (cheng 誠), see Xunzi 3.9a. Given Mencius’ immense emphasis on the virtue of filiality, how Mencius would appraise
the Duke of Zhou’s killing of his brother is a curious case, but the investigation
of this issue, which would expose a certain critical difference between Mencius
and Xunzi as moral and political theorist, goes beyond the scope of this essay.
Suffice it to say that though Mencius revered the Duke of Zhou (Mencius 2B9),
this particular sage does not seem to be the focus of his admiration.
92    –    Mencius says, “Shun looked upon casting aside the whole world as no more
than discarding a worn shoe. He would have secretly carried the old man on
his back and fled to the edge of the Sea and lived there happily, never giving a
thought to the world” (Mencius 7A35).
93    –    Angle, Sagehood, pp. 103–104.
94    –    Ibid., p. 105.
95    –    Mencius 5A1.
96    –    For Mencius’ endorsement of affective resentment, particularly in the familial
context, see Mencius 6B3. For the concept’s philosophical articulation, see
Sungmoon Kim, Confucian Democracy in East Asia: Theory and Practice (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 64 – 67.

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