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STEPHEN C. ANGLE

PROFESSOR OF philosophy and Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract: Decades ago, the influential modern Confucian Tu Wei-ming identified feminism鈥檚 critique as the single greatest challenge to the possibility of a viable Confucianism today. The problem is not just that historical Confucian societies were strongly patriarchal, but also that Confucian philosophy can seem to provide theoretical support for gender inequality, and furthermore that some Confucians today continue to explicitly embrace patriarchy. In this lecture I first review some of the core ideas related to gender and social roles that we find within Confucianism, then demonstrate that when these ideas are combined with other key Confucian commitments, it becomes clear that Confucians today should embrace an egalitarian conception of gender. This does not mean viewing everyone as simply the same; I will argue that Confucian ideas help us to shape relationships and societies that honor both equality and difference.