Beyond Asiatic Perfectionism

Description

Confucianism claims that the state should offer a particular moral good for pursuing good individual life. To attain such a good life for an individual, it is argued that community prosperity has to be given priority over guaranteeing individual rights. Such a perspective will be criticized throughout this thesis. The ruler‘s primary role in East Asian culture is often suggested as pursuing the happiness of the ordinary people, who are themselves the subjects to be ruled. This study aims to look through the development of the ‚Asian values‘ based on Confucianism and further criticize the perfectionist perspective embedded therein. The character of humans as ordinary people who Asiatic perfectionists presumed in their claims is originally selfish humans. Interestingly, such selfish humans are surprisingly similar to the humans supposed by classical economists in the West. For this reason, it would be particularly helpful to look at the character of cooperative humans, which has recently emerged from behavioral economics, to criticize the nature of selfish humans.