Rethinking Nationalism, Patriotism, and Cosmopolitanism: A Confucian Perspective

1. Introduction

Nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism, and the complex entanglements among them have been much discussed in the fields of political philosophy and culture studies, not to mention their place in general discourses and reflections on culture. For example, Martha C. Nussbaum’s 1994 Boston Review article, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” promptly generated 29 responses from readers. Such a substantial reaction to a seemingly abstract and theoretical essay was significant, especially at a time when the internet had not yet served as an instrument of instantaneous communication. The editor of Boston Review, Joshua Cohen (1996), realizing the importance of the issue at hand, compiled an anthology that included 11 of those responses, together with 5 invited essays and Nussbaum’s replies. It appeared in 1996 as For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism.¹ This book presents a deep, multidisciplined, and sustained analysis of many of the core issues concerning patriotism and cosmopolitanism.

Needless to say, both patriotism and cosmopolitanism are issues not exclusive to the West. Issues of patriotism and cosmopolitanism have also engaged the attention of Chinese Intellectuals and thinkers. In my view, these perennially relevant matters need to be addressed with a renewed sense of urgency, given our current geo-political conditions, in light of Donald Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric and foreign policies, and China’s re-invigoration of ideology as a dominant principle of governance.

In this article, I will not discuss or directly engage the views of Nussbaum or the other contributors to For Love of Country, although I will refer to and elaborate upon a number of issues they raise. Rather, my aim is to probe the related issues of nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism from the perspective of Confucianism and present some of my own observations and remarks. In doing so, I hope to highlight some of the defining characteristics of Confucianism.

My arguments will proceed in the following way. First, I will examine nationalism and patriotism as two potentially related and possibly mutually transformed concepts in but not limited to the Chinese context. I will not endeavor to survey the literature on nationalism and patriotism but instead propose how we might define, differentiate, and avoid radicalizing both of these concepts from a Confucian point of view. Second, I will propose how to properly understand cosmopolitanism in terms of the relationship between patriotism and cosmopolitanism and point out a key problem that cosmopolitanism has to address. Third, I will examine the Confucian understanding of humanity (humaneness), self, and all-under-heaven, not only to present the Confucian perspective on these three issues but also to locate Confucianism in regard to the contrast between patriotism and cosmopolitanism. Finally, based on my previous discussions and especially that concerning the Confucian understanding of humanity, self, and all-under-heaven, I will recommend Confucianism as a form of rooted cosmopolitanism or cosmopolitan patriotism, which, among various traditions in the world, can provide the theoretical and practical resources for reconciling the tension between cosmopolitanism and patriotism/nationalism.

The Confucian perspective I here present is not based on one or more particular Confucian figures or texts from Chinese or East Asian history. Rather, it is a view I have developed as a scholar of Confucianism and a Confucian scholar.² While preliminary and offered merely as a sketch of what could be developed into a full and robust point of view, I hope and believe it may enrich our understanding of the inter-action between nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism, which, on the surface, appear to be divergent and contending, rather than coherent and complementary, ideals.

2. Nationalism and Patriotism: Two Mutually Transformed Concepts

In For Love of Country, the debate was focused primarily on patriotism and cosmopolitanism. The issue of nationalism was not directly or extensively addressed, possibly because in North America, at least at the time the book was written, it was not regarded as an idea or ideology particularly relevant to its historical experience. In addition, in public and academic discourse, nationalism, at least in the English-speaking world, seems to have acquired a negative connotation as another word for or close relative of forms of jingoism based on notions of blood and soil. Therefore, for contributors to For Love of Country, there seemed no pressing need to discuss nationalism.

In the Chinese context, however, nationalism has long been a problem and continues to loom large. Particularly when the unavoidably enhanced nationalism in China since the twentieth century has been noticed and criticized by the West, a number of Chinese commentators and thinkers have questioned why similar feelings and behaviors advocated as positive patriotism in the West are regarded as negative nationalism in China? What exactly are the differences between nationalism and patriotism? For this reason alone, aside from patriotism and cosmopolitanism, nationalism needs to receive adequate attention in the Chinese context.

While nationalism and patriotism have been studied and defined, they are not that easily differentiated. It is unnecessary to enumerate all the various definitions of these two concepts. What I want to point out is that nationalism does not necessarily have a negative connotation, while patriotism does not necessarily have a good connotation either. Certain conceptions of patriotism may well yield the same negative consequences that nationalism is said to have generated. Therefore, Nussbaum made a point to examine the limits of patriotism from a perspective of cosmopolitanism, which led to the lively debate in 1994.

Why is it difficult to differentiate patriotism from nationalism? The reason lies in the fact that both are based upon the nation-state that commands the allegiance and identity of its citizens. It is a natural result that the development of human history advances to a period in which it is the nation-state rather than civilization that constitutes the basic structure of politics and society. Either nationalism or patriotism is a kind of feeling and behavior that identifies oneself with a certain nation-state that one thinks he or she belongs to.

What is the difference between patriotism and nationalism? In my view, patriotism, generally regarded as “good/positive,” gives priority to the consolidation of the citizenry of the same nation-state without focusing on the exclusion of people in other nation-states. As such, it is a moral point of view: it can and often does involve criticizing oneself and one’s fellow citizens for not living up to the high ideals and aspirations that one takes as defining one’s nation. Such criticisms can be directed at shortcomings wholly within the state, for example Martin Luther King Jr. and others called on American society to realize its highest ideals of equality, liberty, and justice for all. Such criticisms also can be focused on state actions occurring outside the state, for example, protests against the Vietnam War called on Americans to stop supporting an unwarranted military action or proponents of various aid efforts or humanitarian interventions seek to generate support to relieve suffering that is occurring outside the nation-state. By contrast, nationalism, commonly viewed as “bad/negative,” seems intended on excluding or even attacking people of other political-cultural communities; it encourages our least savory inclinations and offers a license for wrongdoing. This is seen in a common feature of almost all nationalist movements: they often are based upon grievances and resentments—real or imagined—against others. They focus on the wickedness and wrongdoing of others and invoke these as justifications for revenge, demands for reparations, or excuses for greed or aggression. A patriot, as described above, always urges us higher, to be at our best—to listen to the better angels of our nature. A nationalist always seeks to drag us down and encourages the demons that lie within us all. As Timothy Snyder (2017, 113) puts it, “A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best.” In this sense, patriotism is an internal constructive and consolidating force while nationalism is an externally driven force that is aggrandizing and expansive. Patriotism almost unavoidably generates a distinction between “us” and “them” when it consolidates the shared values, but as long as this discrimination does not become overt hostility toward and an attack on other people, it is not nationalism as such. Similarly, nationalism would naturally result in the re-inforcement of people’s self-identity when it is hostile to or even an attack on other people. Numerous historical examples can be given of nations that went to war for the purpose of distracting from an internal crisis. But as long as the purpose is not to consolidate the shared values of a people and community, but a tool to shift inner crisis, and hostility to an attack on other people, it is still nationalism in a bad sense, not patriotism in a good sense.

Simply put, the key to differentiating patriotism from nationalism is to check what feelings and behaviors people truly have and make: are these enlisted for and do these encourage improving themselves and their states or assaulting others? The former is patriotism while the latter is nationalism. In this sense, obviously, those people who attack their compatriots and damage the belongings of their compatriots are not patriots but nationalists; what they have done is nothing but stupid and brutal. Of course, nationalism is not always bad. When a nation-state is invaded and its political and social structure is threatened, people of such a nation-state who fight against the invaders are not nationalists but patriots. Their behavior is self-protection. In this case, we can say that such forms of nationalism already are transformed into expressions of patriotism.

If we have to acknowledge the fact that nationalism and patriotism can be mutually transformed and nationalism is not vile in every case or respect, similarly, patriotism may represent feelings and behaviors that are xenophobic, precisely the sort of pernicious possibility that Nussbaum wrote about. Indeed, since consanguinity, place of birth, mother tongue, and so on are primordial ties that cannot be chosen, patriotism can be regarded as actually a natural feeling of most human beings. Strong evidence for such a claim is found in psychological studies that confirm a strong natural inclination to distinguish between in-group and out-group (Brewer 1999) and to act dramatically differently to people based on this distinction. Such tendencies are also found in the deep human need to belong (Baumeister and Lear 1995). Normally, there is no need to purposely advocate it. For instance, right after the 9.11 attack, so many people in the United States bought flags for their own houses. As a result, flags soon were sold out. This is no doubt a reflection of patriotism. As for the response of the American government to this phenomenon, which called on people to calm down and return to their regular daily lives, it was a wise decision aimed primarily at preventing patriotism from being transformed into vile nationalist fervor. Radical patriotism, which is actually a virulent form of nationalism, invariably leads to jingoism and imperialism often leading to attacking other people.

In this sense, what concerned Nussbaum was not patriotism but nationalism, as seen in her pointing to the potential problems inherent in the former. It is understandable that nearly all 16 of the response-articles endorsed the positive aspects of patriotism. But the more important point is not the acknowledgement of patriotism but the understanding of cosmopolitanism, particularly how to deal with the relationship between patriotism and cosmopolitanism. This is the question that I now want to probe.

3. Cosmopolitanism: Avoiding Generalities and Abstractions

The central idea of patriotism is to advocate loyalty and devotion to the core values of the nation-state to which a people belong. On the other hand, the main tenet of cosmopolitanism is to go beyond the particular values and identities that various nation-states respectively embrace. For a cosmopolitan, the ideal is to be a world citizen and embrace universal values such as humanity, freedom, equality, and justice. It is these universal values, and not the specific ideologies of various nation-states, that are the ground for value judgments and ethical human actions. There are voluminous works on the basic orientation of Cosmopolitanism.³ What I want to appeal to is not these scholarly narratives but the substantial lived human experiences on which these narratives are based. For example, when Oskar Schindler saved so many Jews, despite his membership in the Nazi Party, he personified cosmopolitanism. Another example is the long avenue of trees in front of the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Each of these trees is in memory of a person or a family who also risked death to save a Jew or Jews. These “Schindlers” came from various countries and had different religious backgrounds. But just like the historical Schindler, they went beyond their respective countries and religions to save the lives of others because of their innate humaneness, with which everyone is endowed. The symbolic implication and significance of these trees are so powerful that Nussbaum, a cosmopolitan, mentioned them as a vivid example and used them as the starting point of her final reply to her critics in the last part of For Love of Country. Obviously, the core of cosmopolitanism is the principle that there are higher and more universal values of human beings that go beyond national and cultural boundaries. For a cosmopolitan, when universal values such as humanity, freedom, equality, and justice are in conflict with patriotism, priority is given to the former.

On the surface, there seems to be an unavoidable tension between cosmopolitanism and patriotism. Furthermore, since cosmopolitanism advocates universal values including humanity, justice, human rights and puts an emphasis on rationality and feeling unconstrained by various national ideologies, it occupies the moral high ground. But there is a fundamental problem that cosmopolitanism has to face, that is, how to avoid becoming a general and abstract idea promoted by only a few social elites. The real world is full of inequality. Patriotism and even nationalism in some cases mentioned previously are reasonable to a certain degree. For instance, without the Swadeshi Movement, India probably would still be colonialized by the British. China’s fight against the Japanese invasion during the World War II, and the anti-apartheid movement led by Nelson Mandela in South Africa, are expressions of nationalism in the positive sense. What such nationalism or patriotism pursues and embodies are universal cosmopolitan values including humanity, justice, freedom, and equality, as pointed out by most of the 16 articles in response to Nussbaum, although Nussbaum herself did not ignore the problems of cosmopolitanism.

Then, what we need to further consider is how patriotism, which emphasizes particularity, and cosmopolitanism, which advocates universality can be reconciled. Can we find a middle ground that goes beyond the conflict between and integrates the best of both? In my view, there are conceptual and practical resources in the Confucian tradition that enable us to rethink the inter-relationships between nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism. Let me begin by introducing the Confucian understanding of three concepts: humanity (or humaneness), self, and all under heaven.

4. Confucianism: Between Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism

Ren 仁, humanity or humaneness, is an idea and ideal that is central to Confucianism. Confucian ren is usually regarded as a discriminating form of love, to the extent that it emanates outward from the family, and therefore, it is not viewed as capacious as its counterparts in other traditions, such as Christian agape or Buddhist karuna, which are taken to be universal and cosmopolitan values. This is a misunderstanding. The so called idea of “aiyouchadeng 愛有差等,” which literally means “discriminating love,” does not have evidential support in the Confucian classics. Discriminating love is an empirical fact and natural feeling that everybody experiences. A Confucian is no exception. But this is not what Confucianism advocates. What Confucianism develops is a universal love based upon this empirical actuality. The goal is to move from that which is, represented by discriminating love or differentiated love—the ordinary world as it is, to that which ought to be—the empathetic world of ren that involves all that exists in the world.

From the Confucian point of view, the love for parents and children is the most elemental feeling we experience. Take it as the starting point; we may then fully extend it to not only to other people but heaven, earth, and the myriad things. This extended love is what agape and karuna entail. In fact, for a Confucian, this extended love, as complete humanity (ren), involves not only human beings but also the entire world, including mountains, rivers, land, grass, trees, and even minerals. What Confucianism distinctively suggests is that the differentiated love, which exists as a natural human feeling, should be acknowledged as a basis and starting point. Otherwise, if we advocate that we should treat our neighbors as our parents from the very beginning, the actual result is likely to be that our parents unfortunately are treated as our neighbors. If this is so, then those noble and universal values such as fraternity and compassion would become hollow, abstract, and even self-deceptive slogans, because they would be devoid of social substance and practical application. Thus, on the one hand, Confucian ren acknowledges the empirical fact of differentiated love; on the other, it firmly believes that only when our love can be extended to other people, heaven, earth, and the myriad things can our ren be fully realized.

There is also a prevailing misunderstanding of the Confucian self as a kind of collectivism that ignores the self, such that the value of a self can only be ascertained when it serves as a cog in a larger machine. In light of Confucianism, no one can be understood as an isolated individual in Kierkegaard’s sense, or a monad without windows in Leibnitz’s sense. The construction of every “self” has to happen in interwoven relationships. On the other hand, Confucianism does not believe that every self is originally nothing and totally constructed only after it is born. For instance, Mengzi believes that the “four sprouts” (siduan 四端) of the heart-mind, namely, the feelings of commiseration, shame and dislike, modesty and complaisance, and right and wrong, as original moral feelings, are innate. For a Confucian, the innate knowing of the good as Mengzi defined it, which, Mou Zongsan has argued, is also the moral principle in Kant’s sense, is irreducibly the ultimate reality. This independent and irreducible personality or self is vividly indicated in many Confucians sayings. For instance, Kongzi said, “Is humanity far away? As long as I want it, it is here in me 我欲仁斯仁至矣 (Analects 7.29).”⁴ “The commander of three armies may be taken away, but the will of even a common man may not be taken away from him 三軍可奪帥也, 匹夫不可奪志也 (Analects 9.25).”⁵ In addition, Mengzi said that a “great person 大丈夫” should “not indulge in money and power, not give up his dignity due to poverty and mean condition, not give in by intimidation and violence 富貴不能淫, 貧賤不能移, 威武不能屈 (Mengzi 3B:7),” according to which Chen Yinque 陳寅恪 (1890—1969), one of the great 20th-century Chinese historians, developed his call for “independent personality and free thinking 獨立之精神, 自由之思想” as the ideal existential goal for the citizenry. Thus, the Confucian self should be understood this way: it can only be consummated in relation to others yet, being resolutely free and independent, cannot be reduced to being simply a part of any larger structure.

The Confucian understanding of the world is epitomized by the notion of tianxia 天下, namely, “all-under-heaven” and is germane to the issues of patriotism and cosmopolitanism.⁶ While we know that Kongzi travelled around many principalities in China, we should realize that such travel at that time, during the Spring and Autumn period, was truly a transnational venture, completely different from how we travel between provinces in China today. Before the Qin dynasty, the writings, languages, currencies, and clothing of various principalities were different. Kongzi did not quite need a visa but obviously he had to face the challenges of the vast differences and diversities that existed. Kongzi did not promote his ideas only in his home principality of Lu. He once said “should the way fail to prevail, I prefer to float about on the sea by taking a raft 道不行乘桴浮於海 (Analects 5.7).”⁷ His world extended far beyond the so-called Middle Kingdom. Therefore, it is not farfetched to regard Kongzi as a cosmopolitan and a world citizen. Furthermore, both the social-political ideal of the Great Commonwealth (datong 大同) expressed in the Book of Rites and what Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472—1529), a great Confucian of 15th-century China, said “regarding all-under-heaven as a family and the Middle Kingdom as one person 視天下爲一家, 中國猶一人” in his Questions on the Great Learning hint clearly of a vision of cosmopolitanism. In the ultimate analysis, the Confucian universal core values including humanity, justice, civility, wisdom, and trust bespeak cosmopolitan orientations in that they seek to transcend not only individual self-centeredness but also specific cultures and nation-states.

On the other hand, Confucian cosmopolitanism, without ignoring the differences and diversities, does not advocate a general, hollow, and abstract idea of uniformity. The principle that Kongzi expounds, not only for the relationship between people but also for the relationship between countries, is “harmony without uniformity (heerbutong 和而不同),” the precondition of which is precisely the acceptance of and respect for the difference and diversity among different individuals. Accordingly, the “kingly way” and “humane regime” that Mengzi advocates also denounce the pursuit of hegemony, giving priority to peace among different countries. In this sense, the Confucian ideal of all–under-heaven does not mean to unify the world with one ideology and one social-political structure. Rather, it means the great harmony of various people and countries with their own distinctiveness.

5. The Confucian Standpoint: A Rooted Cosmopolitanism

The Confucian views of humanity, self, and all-under-heaven suggest that there is a middle ground between the particularity of patriotism and the universality of cosmopolitanism. When we scrutinize the history of humankind, we realize that there have been radical and extreme developments of nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism that posed threats to human flourishing.

For instance, cosmopolitanism was once promoted by the Communist International and the imperialist Soviet Union to establish a uniform world by eliminating the differences among various nations, countries, and cultures;⁸ it was a pernicious ideology should reasonably be countered by patriotism or even nationalism. In this situation, the dignity of the individual then should be advocated to fight against the erosion of a hollow and abstract utopia. When nationalism and patriotism were promoted to the extreme, such as the case of the Nazis in Germany, who discriminated against other races, invaded other countries, and launched mass genocide, the spirit of cosmopolitanism stepped forward to protect human dignity. History has already indicated that radical nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism all unavoidably lead to their opposites. As Nussbaum said, “To worship one’s country as if it were a god is indeed to bring a curse upon it” (Cohen 1996, 16).

In short, radical nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism are not reflections of the truth, kindness, and beauty that is rooted in our humanity; these are not ideals for common good and justice. They are deceitful ideologies designed and deployed to fool the masses. The fall of Nazi Germany and the disintegration of the Communist International prove that false ideas are doomed to be punished by history and eventually abandoned by people, even though they proved popular and demagogic for a time. Hu Shih 胡適 (1891—1962), a leader of the Chinese renaissance in the early twentieth century, inspired by a Chan Buddhist master, warned passionate young people not to become befuddled and seduced by any authoritative and populist discourse, wherever it is from, Kongzi or Karl Marx.⁹ His warning still rings true today.

To adjudicate the roles of nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism requires nuanced understanding of history and culture. Nussbaum pointed to the limits of patriotism and criticized radical patriotism that puts one’s race and country over others’, calling on people to pledge their loyalty to universal humanity rather than to the ideology of a particular people. She recommended the cosmopolitanism of the Greek philosopher, Diogenes. However, she also noted that world citizens do not necessarily need to give up their various local identifications, which are resources for individual self-enrichment.

From a Confucian point of view, the formation of a world citizen is a process of continuous extension of a concentric circle, from the inner rings of self and family, through the middle rings of community, neighborhood, and state, to the outermost ring of the world. Such a process has already been clearly elaborated in the Great Learning, one of the most important Confucian classics. As it says,

The ancients who wished to illuminate their luminous virtue throughout the world would first govern well their states; wishing to govern their states, they would order well their families; wishing to order well their families, they would first cultivate their own persons; wishing to cultivate their own persons, they would first rectify their heart-minds; wishing to rectify their heart-minds, they would first make their thoughts sincere; wishing to make their thoughts sincere, they would first extend their knowledge. The extension of knowledge lies in the investigation of things. When things are investigated, knowledge is extended; when knowledge is extended, their thoughts become sincere; when their thoughts become sincere, their heart-minds are rectified; when their heart-minds are rectified, their persons were cultivated; when their persons are cultivated, order is brought to their families; when their families are ordered, their states are well governed; when the states are well ordered, peace is brought to the world.¹⁰

Seen in this light, through self-cultivation, “from the Son of Heaven to ordinary people,” with the establishment of a “one-body” worldview, the tensions between nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism are not insurmountable. Kwame Anthony Appiah once described his own political philosophy and ethics as “rooted cosmopolitanism,” referring to both his specific cultural origins and transcultural intellectual growth. In my view, similarly, Confucianism is a kind of rooted cosmopolitanism or a cosmopolitan patriotism.¹¹ From the perspective of this cosmopolitan patriotism, any country and people should be understood in a context of the whole world and of the universal values shared by all the people.

The key to the possibility of either a rooted cosmopolitanism or a cosmopolitan patriotism is universal humanity and common good; the conflicts between individuals and countries stem from self-interest, which disregards these larger prerogatives. As Lu Xiangshan 陸象山 (1139—1193), the twelfth-century Confucian master once said, “Sages appeared tens of thousands of generations ago. They shared this mind; they shared this principle. Sages will appear tens of thousands of generations to come. They will share this mind; they will share this principle. Over the four seas sages appear. They share this mind; they share this principle.”¹²

I believe that in a general sense, both Western thinkers such as Nussbaum and Confucian thinkers tend to think alike, though they draw from different intellectual resources. Hence, any discussion of the nexus between nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism will benefit from having multicultural perspectives; in this essay I endeavor to offer a Confucian one.

References

• Appiah, Kwame A. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Baumeister, Roy F., and Mark R. Lear. 1995. “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation.” Psychological Bulletin 117.3: 497-529. [https://doi.org/10.1037//0033-2909.117.3.497]
• Brewer, Marilynn B. 1999. “The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate.” Journal of Social Issues 55.3 (Fall): 429–444. [https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00126]
• Brown, Garrett Wallace. 2009. Grounding Cosmopolitanism: From Kant to the Idea of a Cosmopolitan Constitution. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748640928]
• Brown, Garrett Wallace, and David Held, eds. 2010. The Cosmopolitanism Reader. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Callahan, William A. 2008. “Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-Hegemonic or a New Hegemony?” International Studies Review 10: 749-761. [https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2486.2008.00830.x]
• Chai, Shaojin. 2011. “Wang Yangming and Chinese Cosmopolitanism in Comparative Perspective.” China’s Search for Good Governance, edited by Deng Zhenglai and Sujian Guo, 201-228. London: Palgrave Macmillan. [https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337589_13]
• Chan, Wing-tsit, trans. 1969. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Cohen, Joshua, ed. 1996. For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism. Boston: Beacon Press.
• De Bary, Wm. Theodore. 1983. The Liberal Tradition in China. New York: Columbia University Press. [https://doi.org/10.7312/deba93728]
• De Bary, Wm. Theodore. 1996. The Trouble with Confucianism. Boston: Harvard University Press.
• De Bary, Wm. Theodore, and Irene Bloom, eds. 1999. Sources of Chinese Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Ge, Zhaoguang. 2015. “The Imagination of Tianxia: Politics, Thought, and Scholarship Behind a Utopian Project.” Reflexion 29: 1-56.
• Hu, Shih. 1930. Hushi wenxuan 胡適文選 (Self-Selected Works of Hu Shih) Shanghai: East Asian Library.
• Hu, Shih. 1950. China in Stalin’s Grand Strategy. Beijing: Council on Foreign Relations.
• Ivanhoe, Philip J. 2014. “Confucian Cosmopolitanism.” Journal of Religious Ethics 42.1 (March): 22-44. [https://doi.org/10.1111/jore.12043]
• Lau, D. C., trans. 1992. Confucius, the Analects. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong. 116
• Levenson, Joseph R. 1971. Revolution and Cosmopolitanism: The Western Stage and the Chinese Stages. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. [https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520378421]
• Liu, Qing. 2015. “Reconstruction of Global Imagination: from ‘All Under Heaven’ to New Cosmopolitanism.” Academic Monthly 8.
• Peng, Guoxiang. 2016. This-Worldly Concern of the Wise: Political and Social Thought of Mou Zongsan (1909—1995). Taipei: Lianking Publishing Company.
• Snyder, Timothy. 2017. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, 113. New York: Tim Duggan Books.
• Wang, Ban, ed. 2017. Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822372448]
• Yu, Ying-shih. 1997. “The Idea of Democracy and the Twilight of the Elite Culture in Modern China.” In Justice and Democracy: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by Ron Bontekoe and Marietta Stepaniants, 199-215. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. [https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824863197-015]
• Yu, Ying-shih. 2000. “Democracy, Human Rights and Confucian Culture.” The Fifth Huang Hsing Foundation Hsueh Chun-tu Distinguished Lecture in Asian Studies, 1-22. Asian Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.
• Zhao, Tingyang. 2005. The Tianxia System: A Philosophy for the World Institution. Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe.