Abstract

I am grateful to Dr. Yu Yihsoong for having engaged so deeply with my book Sagehood and its view of Coherence, 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...