Reply to Dr. Yu Yihsoong

Abstract

I am grateful to Dr. Yu Yihsoong for having engaged so deeply with my book Sagehood and its view of coherence (or li 理), and to the editor for giving me this opportunity to reply. I am also pleased that Dr. Yu is not hung up on the translation of li as "Coherence"-indeed, he says he likes the translation-but rather argues with the details of what I say about li itself. As I read him, Dr. Yu's critique of my book has three main aspects. First, he sees that I defend a virtue-ethical rather than a rule-ethical reading of Neo-Confucianism, and based on his sense of what virtue ethics is and requires, this leads Dr. Yu to conclude that I am forced into certain errors of interpretation. Second, Dr. Yu believes that while my views are problematic as interpretations of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming, they resonate much more closely with the ideas of Wang Chuanshan, whom Dr. Yu himself endorses as a superior philosopher. Dr. Yu therefore regrets that I did not develop my account in closer conversation with Wang Chuanshan. Third, Dr. Yu argues that I downplay the ontological (for Zhu Xi) and immanent (for Wang Yangming) aspects of li.