O confucionismo político e os caminhos para um constitucionalismo chinês

Abstract

For the first time, after the 1949 Revolution, Chinese intellectuals congregate around a common goal: to argue with the West, proposing a political theory seeking to deconstruct the universal acceptance of human rights and liberal democracy. This is a political-philosophical movement that has defined its boundaries by trying to respond to the Western expectations on the future of the Chinese state in its march towards the rule of law. Headed by Jiang Qing, authors such as Sheng Hong, Kang Xiaoguang and Chen Ming, have shown substantial reflections in order to recover a remote heritage of political debates in mainland China. Thus, a new branch of Neo-Confucianism is in development. A Confucianism that denounces the contingent aspect of the political theories that ground governments’ legitimacy based on the assumption of liberal democracy. The central dogma of this new paradigm is the proposal of a three-dimensional theory of political legitimacy. According to that standpoint, a political power must simultaneously observe three conditions to be legit: 1) harmonize with the Way (道 Dào); 2) must not diverge from its historical-cultural heritage or break the historical continuity of the nation; 3) conform to the will of common people. Would we be facing a Chinese constitutionalism? In its effort to reconcile tradition and democracy, would that Neo-Confucian project really be able to establish a political order committed to freedom in China? Those are questions that this paper seeks to elucidate.