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When I started to apply to graduate school in the United States in the 1980s, I learned for the first time that there was such a thing as a “merit-based scholarship” with no requirement on applicants’ citizenship, nor imposed bond on post-study service. It was just made available to help students to learn and improve themselves, to promote education for the betterment of the world. Not for national advancement, nor for family glories. Coming out of a strong patriotic education background in China, it took me some time to make sense of such a practice. In retrospect, that was my first lesson in cosmopolitanism.¹

The root idea of cosmopolitanism is being “a citizen of the world,” as Diogenes famously put it, in contrast to a citizen of a particular country or a member of a local community. Samuel Scheffler has formulated two conceptions of cosmopolitanism. The first is a doctrine about justice. This conception of cosmopolitanism holds that all humans are equal and should be treated equally, regardless of their actual citizenships. This idea of justice is opposed to applying norms of justice within bounded groups who are subsets of the global population, be it a federation, a nation, or a local community. The second conception of cosmopolitanism is about culture and the self. It is opposed to the idea, among others, that people’s identity largely depends on their membership in a determinate cultural group (Scheffler 1999). These conceptions are not entirely distinct, however, as Scheffler has noted. But they help us think more clearly about what aspect of cosmopolitanism we concentrate on. This paper is mostly on cosmopolitanism of the second sort, about cultural identity and the self, even though it inevitably extends across to issues of justice.

Following Martha Nussbaum (1994), I understand cosmopolitanism as holding primary allegiance to the community of human beings in the entire world.² Similarly, I understand patriotism as holding primary allegiance to the community of human beings in one’s own country.³ Furthermore, in this discussion we can take into consideration the view of familism. In the context of this paper, I define familism as holding primary allegiance to one’s own family rather than to other families or larger human communities. Thus conceived, familism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism form three concentric circles in a person’s life. There are of course other concentric circles in people’s lives, such as workplace and local communities, but focusing on these three will be adequate for making my point. I argue that each of these human communities constitutes an independent good for the good life, each contributing to the good life in its own way, and that shifting allegiances between these circles entails reallocating loyalty and dedication, and thus it both enriches our lives and incurs a cost. In the view that I argue here, a philosophy of the good life articulates its own vision of the ideal allocation of loyalty and dedication among these three or more spheres. While cosmopolitanism has its own value and good, it also comes with a cost, and proponents of cosmopolitanism— including Confucian cosmopolitans—often overlook such a cost. The paper consists of three sections. In the first section, I examine two versions of cosmopolitanism, held by Martha Nussbaum and Tu Weiming respectively. In the second section, I problematize their approaches by raising the issue of cost in adopting broader stances. Finally, I will argue for a harmony approach to cosmopolitanism that takes into account the cost it incurs on people’s local commitments.

Although the idea of cosmopolitanism has a long history, traceable at least to Stoic philosophy, a more recent wave of scholarly interest in cosmopolitanism was ignited by Martha Nussbaum’s article “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” (1994). Against Richard Rorty’s op-ed piece in The New York Times (13 February 1994), which called for patriotism in the United States, Nussbaum argued that this emphasis on patriotic pride is both morally dangerous and subversive of some of the worthy goals that patriotism sets out to serve, such as national unity in devotion to worthy moral ideals of justice and equality. Nussbaum argued that such goals would be better served by the very old ideal of the cosmopolitan, the person whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world (1994, 1).

Nussbaum did not deny that a person’s life involves a series of concentric circles. Citing the Stoic view, she wrote:

The first one is drawn around the self; the next takes in one’s immediate family; then follows the extended family; then, in order, one’s neighbors or local group, one’s fellow city-dwellers, one's fellow countrymen—and we can easily add to this list groupings based on ethnic, linguistic, historical, professional, gender and sexual identities. Outside all these circles is the largest one, that of humanity as a whole. (1994, 4)

Even though with a strong bend towards cosmopolitanism, Nussbaum insists that being a cosmopolitan does not require us to give up our special affections and localized identifications. We can still retain our identities as family members, fellow villagers, and patriots. She emphasizes, however, that we should “give the circle that defines our humanity a special attention and respect” (4). In her view, patriotism can be dangerous because it is “very close to jingoism” (6). She argues that our first allegiance belongs to what is morally good and the morally good is what we can commend to all human beings (2). Therefore, we should be cosmopolitans.

The contemporary Confucian philosopher Tu Weiming is well-known for a similar view of the concentric circles in a person’s life. Although Tu’s view is not presented in the context of debates of cosmopolitanism and patriotism, his anthropocosmic view deals with similar issues. In his view, we find similar tensions and shared desires to bridge various levels of life that pull on us in different ways. Tu wrote:

The true self, as an open system, is not only a center of relationships but also a dynamic process of spiritual and physical growth. Selfhood in creative transformation is the broadening and deepening “embodiment” (ti) of an ever expanding web of human relationships, which we can conceptualize as a series of concentric circles. As the process of “embodiment” never ends, we never reach the outer rim of these concentric circles. We continually reach out to “form one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things.” Nevertheless, when we reach out to form one body with the most generalized commonality, we also come home to reestablish and reconfirm the centrality of our selfhood. (1989, 113–14)

In Tu’s picture of the concentric circles of Confucian self-cultivation and growth, a person expands one’s existence from a single individual and overcomes one’s ego to seek larger existence, from self to family, to community, to country, and to the world as a whole (1989, 115). The moves from community to country and again from country to the world are parallel to what have been labeled as patriotism and cosmopolitanism. Tu, however, goes one step further, as this concentric movement eventually reaches a level where one would “form one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things.” Note that this process is described by Tu as pure progress in self-cultivation, with the last stage as the highest goal. Through each step, one does not diminish but grows into a richer existence. In Tu’s words, “each concentric circle signifies a moment in which a structural limitation is transformed into an instrument of self-transcendence” (114). By overcoming the structural limitation of the private ego, the self transcends egocentrism and enters fruitful communion with members of the family. Extending beyond the family, the self becomes a productive member of the community, then to the country (Tu uses “state”), and to the world. Tu wrote:

Just as the self must overcome egoism to become authentically human, the family must overcome nepotism to become authentically human. By analogy, the community must overcome parochialism, the state must overcome ethnocentrism, and the world must overcome anthropocentrism to become authentically human. In light of Confucian inclusive humanism, the transformed self personally and communally transcends egoism, nepotism, parochialism, ethnocentrism and anthropocentrism to “form one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things.” (1989, 115–16)

Tu called such a philosophy “anthropocosmic.” It can be seen as a form of ultra-cosmopolitanism as it extends beyond cosmopolitanism in the usual sense. It transcends egocentrism to family, transcends familial nepotism to community, transcends parochialism to country, transcends ethnocentrism to the world, and finally transcends an thro pocentrism to anthropocosmism. For Tu, only by extending our existence through this series of concentric circles can we finally attain the moral personhood. In Tu’s perspective, even Nussbaum’s cosmopolitanism appears parochial, and needs to be overcome in order to finally reach unity with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things. Aided with certain forms of environmental philosophy such as Land Ethics and Deep Ecology, a Tu-ist critique of Nussbaum could accuse the latter’s cosmopolitanism as being too anthropocentric and therefore detrimental to the health and flourishing of the whole world. Does this mean the farther one moves from the inner circles, the better or more moral one is? I will come back to this issue in the next section.

Obviously, Nussbaum and Tu are coming from very different per spectives. Whereas Nussbaum’s inspirations come from Stoics and Kant, Tu’s is primarily grounded on Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism. Nevertheless, Nussbaum and Tu share an important common ground. Both of them hold that, of the concentric circles, the external one(s) is of higher value; both advocate progressing from the inner to the outer circle(s). In doing so, however, they both fail to give adequate recognition of the intrinsic value of the inner circle(s) and to recognize the cost incurred when one moves outward on the concentric circles. I will argue that Tu’s Neo-Confucian approach misses something very important that was developed in classic Confucianism, and that drawing on pre-Qin classical Confucianism enables us to better deal with issues involved in our discussion.

People pursue a variety of good things in life, many of which are independent of one another. Friendship, for example, can be a good independently of some other pursuits, for instance academic excellence.⁴ To those who pursue them, each independent good possesses value on its own.⁵ This differs from dependent goods. Good B is a dependent good of A if the attainment of B requires the attainment of A as a precondition, even though the attainment of A does not necessarily entail the attainment of B. For any cluster of dependent goods, one good on a higher order is built on and encompasses some other goods. For an athlete, being selected to participate in the Olympics is a good. Becoming a finalist for a competition at the Olympics is also a good. So is winning the Olympic gold medal. One’s being awarded the Olympic gold medal is dependent on the goods of being an Olympic participant and being a finalist. After being awarded the gold medal, becoming a finalist in the competition may feel less exciting than before for the athlete, but the good of becoming a finalist does not diminish and it remains at the same level as that for other finalists who did not win the gold medal. In this sense, there is no cost involved when the athlete progresses from a participant to a finalist, and then to a gold medalist. This, however, is not the case when we pursue independent goods. For independent goods, there can be tension and cost in pursuing one good rather than another. The goods of being a family person, a patriot, or a cosmopolitan, are independent goods, or so I shall argue.

In the context of our discussion, life in the inner circles has its own good independently of the good on other circles. Familism is a good on its own, so is patriotism. In families, we are born, get nurtured, and grow. In families, we exercise love and intimate human relationality. Thus, family has or should have a special place in our hearts and in our lives.⁶ Similar things can be said of one’s country. Under normal circumstances, one’s country provides security and a stable environment for one’s existence. Usually, it is also the main source of one’s cultural heritage and identity.⁷ For these reasons and more, families and countries are sources of important value to the good life. While what is morally good can be commended to all in the scope of humanity as Nussbaum maintains in the name of cosmopolitanism, it is not to be commended only this way. Family life is a moral good, so is patriotic life. These types of good exist independently of the good of cosmopolitanism. An illiterate peasant in a mountain village in ancient China, who knew of nothing of his country or the world, would nevertheless enjoy the good of his family life. On the hypothetical story of Emperor Shun secretly carrying his criminal father to escape punishment (Mencius 7A.35), we can criticize Shun for failing his duty as the emperor to maintain order in the country or for acting in a way contrary to justice, but we cannot deny that living with his father “happily” in itself is a good of its own. We are troubled by Shun’s pursuit for a happy life with his father precisely because we—most of us anyway—recognize also the good of allegiance to our country. Considered by itself, a happy life with one’s father, criminal or not, has its own good.

As far as family life and patriotic life are also morally good, they both compete with as well complement the moral good of a cosmopolitan life. They compete in the sense that shifting priority from one to another often incurs a cost, even though sometimes such a cost is justified. When thinkers like Nussbaum and Tu encourage us to move from the inner circles of one’s life to the outer, to cosmopolitanism or even further, they usually emphasize the positive aspects of such moves, without discussing the cost of such choices. I suggest that the cost involved in this kind of move can be substantial and that it should be taken seriously if we want to live balanced lives. We should take into consideration the cost, or potential cost, when making such choices.

In the literature of cosmopolitanism, authors often use words like “allegiance,” “loyalty,” and “love” to describe the need to adjust one’s attachment from one scope (e.g., country) to another (e.g., the human world). When a person transforms from being a patriot to a cosmopolitan, as advocated by Nussbaum, he switches (the focus of) his allegiance, loyalty, and even love, or part thereof, from his country to the entire humanity. Similarly, we can say that, in the case of Tu Weiming, the self grows by expanding one’s allegiance, loyalty, and love, to family, community, country, the world, and eventually the entire cosmos. One may hold that family love and love for humanity are two kinds of love. Different kinds of love can also compete with each other. One crucial feature of such attachment as allegiance, loyalty, and love is that they are not fixed in amount but nor are they unlimited (“NFNU” for short). One’s allegiance and loyalty to, love for a country can grow or fade; one can expand allegiance, loyalty, and love from one country to more countries and even to the entire humanity. However, such moves are not unlimited. One cannot maintain allegiance and loyalty to everything, even including the whole universe, as one may sense in the picture of the unity between heaven and humanity (tianren heyi 天人合一) by Tu Weiming. For allegiance and loyalty to everything amounts to allegiance and loyalty to nothing. Nor can one spread love to everyone and everything in the world without lessening the intensity of love to a particular person or social group in one’s inner circles of existence.

Allegiance, loyalty, and love are not unlimited also because these have to be realized through action. One cannot claim allegiance, loyalty, and love without acting on them, even though there is unmistakably a psychological aspect in them, which could always allow further expansion. One cannot claim allegiance, legitimately, to one’s country without taking into consideration the country when deciding on doing things that affect the country. One cannot claim loving her family, meaningfully, without doing loving things for her family. In acting, a person’s capacity is not unlimited. With limited capacity to do things, one’s allegiance, loyalty, and love must be demonstrated in action as a priority in exercising one’s capacity for action. Many things can be dear to a person: her own well-being, her family, her community, her country, her species, and other living and nonliving things in the world. How to dedicate her energy, effort, and time to these is an inescapable practical question; it indicates her priorities at the moment of action or in life. Prioritizing one of these competing demands means to deprioritize others, directly or indirectly. Taking the feature of NFNU into consideration as we deliberate on issues of cosmopolitanism, we must weigh the cost of divided allegiances, loyalties, and loves; we must take seriously the cost of extending the self to a broader scope.

Cosmopolitans can attempt to minimize the cost for being cosmopolitan. Martha Nussbaum, for instance, does not claim that one cannot do good to one’s country, but she insists that there must be a universal reason for doing so. She said:

None of the major thinkers in the cosmopolitan tradition denied that we can and should give special attention to our own families and to our own ties of religious and national belonging . . . but the primary reason a cosmopolitan should have for preferential attention paid to one’s own compatriots or one’s own children—is not that the local is better per se, but rather that this is the only sensible way to do good (Nussbaum, et al. 1996, 135–36).

Nussbaum holds that giving special attention to one’s own family or country “should not mean that we believe our own country or family is really worth more than the children or families of other people—all are still equally human, of equal moral worth” (1996, 136). For Nussbaum, the fact that this is my family or that these are my compatriots do not constitute an independent good reason for doing good locally.

From the (classical) Confucian perspective, however, that these are my own parents is enough reason to love them, regardless of the efficiency of distributing love in the world. One should love one’s own parents even if exercising such love is less efficient than loving other people’s parents. In such a view, my family or my country is worth more to me, more than other families or other countries.

Nussbaum emphasizes the advantage or benefits of going cos mopolitan, but she fails to take into consideration the cost of doing so. If my above analysis of the inevitable tension between different priorities holds, the cost can be substantial to many people, as giving one’s primary allegiance to humanity implies placing one’s country as secondary or even less.

Tu Weiming frames his program of personal development from one’s inner to outer circles in terms of moral growth. One transcends oneself as an egoist individual to be a member of the family and a relational being in the innermost concentric circle of human existence. Continuous growth leads one to one’s community, country, the world, and eventually to becoming oneness with the universe. In each of these steps, one becomes more and more authentically human by overcoming prior limitations. Tu is correct that improvement of one’s life in outer circles can also help improve one’s life in inner circles. Human values are interrelated. Values that primarily serve the purpose of life in one layer of the concentric circles can also enhance one’s life in another layer of the concentric circles. Being a good community member, for example, can help one to become a better family member and vice versa.

So far all sounds good, except that no mention is made with regard to cost. Tu’s formulation makes it sound as if all is gain without loss. But in real life it is not so. For a person to establish a family, she not only gains an important dimension of a good life, but also takes on new responsibilities, which involve inevitably self-sacrifice. Whereas a move from family to community transcends nepotism, it also takes one’s attention away from family, at least partially. In the story of the Confucian sage-king Yu, he was so dedicated to his role of fighting the flood that, during an eight-years period, he passed his family home three times without even making a stop (Mencius 3A.4). In doing so, Yu may have been a great “patriot” but hardly a good family man. One becomes less parochial to love the country; one also uproots oneself partially from hometown or village. And let us face it, becoming a cosmopolitan makes one less a patriot, at least in terms of the portion of dedication allocated. Being a Mother Teresa makes it impossible to be a good mom or a good patriot. Finally, “forming one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things” takes us further away from all prior spheres of life. This idea of great oneness with the world stands in parallel with the traditional political ideal of “dayitong 大一统,” great unification in the world. When one advocates great unification as a political ideal, one also often carries a sense of personal realization. Under such a banner, one seeks the meaning of life in the larger existence with the tianxia 天下 (“all under Heaven”) instead of with one’s real personal identity.⁸ People under this ideology strive for meaningful lives only in large patterns of existence. Manipulated by ruling authorities, such an ideal can mislead people to pursue false existence in the name of country and the world, leaving individual lives as mere empty shells. This may be the greatest hidden danger of the ideal of becoming one with the world.

All these, together, do not amount to saying that one should not execute these extensions of the concentric circles in life. It does suggest, however, that the theory is not complete without taking into consideration the cost in each step of the way. It may also suggest that it can be reasonable for some people not to go all out toward the phase of the unity with Heaven and humanity because it may be too costly for taking them too far away from their family, community, and country respectively. It is on such ground that one can justify more or less family-centered classic Confucianism against anthropocosmist Neo-Confucianism, from which Tu Weiming’s version of the Confucian vision of life is drawn. The ideal life for classic Confucian thinkers is more localized, more centered on family life.

As an alternative to Nussbaum’s approach, Kwame Anthony Appiah proposed “cosmopolitan patriotism.” Appiah differs from Nussbaum on two counts. First, for Appiah, a cosmopolitan does not have to renounce or overcome patriotism, as Nussbaum’s position appears to suggest. Appiah’s cosmopolitans remain connected to their respective cultures and countries. In his words:

The cosmopolitan patriot can entertain the possibility of a world in which everyone is a rooted cosmopolitan, attached to a home of one’s own, with its own cultural particularities, but taking pleasure from the presence of other, different places that are home to other, different people. (Appiah 1997, 618)

Appiah’s cosmopolitan patriots would accept their civic responsi bility to nurture the culture and the politics of their homes. Yet, they would not confine their efforts for a good society within the bounds of their own country or prioritize their own country as John Rawls has been often interpreted to hold. Unlike Nussbaum, Appiah does not take people’s national identities as “a morally irrelevant characteristic.” For him, people’s local identities are significant because humans live best on a smaller scale. Meaningful lives take place in the many communities in which we live: the country, the county, the town, the street, the business, the craft, the profession, the family (1997, 624). Before reaching the level of a common humanity, all these circles are appropriate spheres for our moral concern. Appiah maintains, the freedom to create oneself requires a variety of local identities, including professional and other social identities. These affiliations can greatly enrich people’s existence as cosmopolitans. In a world of cosmopolitan patriots, as presented by Appiah, cultures are nurtured, localities are maintained, and national politics are sustained. Moreover, a cosmopolitan patriot can be a liberal, too. A cosmopolitan, as a liberal, would not say “My country, right or wrong.” A liberal cosmopolitan holds that there is a higher moral authority, or moral principle, than one’s own particular political community. However, people who love moral principles can also love their country, family, friends. Moral patriots also hold their country and their community to certain standards. Their moral aspirations can be liberal.

The second difference between Nussbaum and Appiah lies in their differed views of the stakes of cultural diversity in cosmopolitanism. Although Nussbaum does not reject cultural diversity, she emphasizes common values of humanity in cosmopolitanism, such as equality (Nussbaum et al. 1996, 137–39). Appiah stresses the richness of cultural diversity. Appiah’s cosmopolitan patriot is a rooted cosmopolitan, who is attached to a home of his own, with its own cultural particularities. He wrote:

You can be cosmopolitan celebrating the variety of human cultures; rooted loyal to one local society (or a few) that you count as home; liberal convinced of the value of the individual; and patriotic celebrating the institutions of the state (or states) within which you live. (Appiah 1997, 633)

Accordingly, being a patriot does not prevent one from embracing common human values. And being a cosmopolitan patriot does not make one reject the value and dignity of autonomous individuals. In Appiah, readers can sense a strong aspiration for being cosmopolitan patriot-liberals, even though they can live alongside homogeneous cosmopolitans, hardline patriots, and conservatives, as long as they all share a common political culture.

Appiah is similar to Nussbaum and Tu in one important aspect, however. That is, Appiah also regards adding or extending layers of concentric circles as solely a plus, without considering its cost. A mathematical formula for becoming Appiah’s cosmopolitan-patriot-liberal is a series of plus signs, without any mentioning of what is lost in the process. I suggest that each of the layers of the concentric circles in one’s life is an independent good and has its own value, and that there is competition in the pursuit of these values, and hence pursuing them inevitably involves costs. E. M. Forster famously said that “if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” We can make sense of, even admire, such a sentiment because friendship is a great good on its own. The same can be said of family, country, and humanity. When a country’s political leaders shut down the borders to keep out a flood of economic refugees, they can be criticized for failing in exercising humaneness or in promoting humanity, but we cannot deny that, at least on some occasions, they do this to protect their own country, which is again also an independent good. Pursuing such a good has its own value.

If these values are independent goods, would there still be a logical sequence for one to start with the self, and then by extension to family, community, country, and the cosmopolitan world, as Tu Weiming has suggested? If there is such a logical sequence, a later one being dependent on an earlier one, can we still claim these are independent values? In other words, are these goods dependent goods after all? I argue that, even though such a sequence may well be the usual route for people to develop values, it is not necessarily the case. Presumably, someone growing up in Plato’s ideal state could become a patriot without enjoying the good of family life, and someone growing up in a refugee camp could become a cosmopolitan without being a patriot. We can also imagine agrarian tribal society, where people live closely to their land. In their conception, a community of people is conceptualized together with the land in which they live. For example, Jimmie Durham, a western Cherokee, said at the Tellico Dam congressional hearing in 1978:

In the language of my people, . . . there is a word for land: Eloheh. This same word also means history, culture and religion. We cannot separate our place on earth from our lives on the earth nor from our vision nor our meaning as a people. (As quoted in Booth 2003, 332)

Accordingly, for the western Cherokee, their people are conceived directly with the land underneath in which they live. It is not the case that they have to embrace the entire humanity before they are united with the earth, as Tu Weiming’s Neo-Confucian vision implies. In her article “We Are the Land: Native American Views of Nature,” Annie Booth writes, “When Native Americans saw themselves in terms of community, their definition of community included the natural com munity” (2003, 334). For Native Americans, the “we” is not merely a group of people; it is the people who are directly and deeply rooted in their land.

If we do conceptual analysis of their conceived world, there would be a direct connection between community and the natural environ ment. That is, their living environment comes prior to their under standing of other human communities and their country, even though presumably they may project other peoples in similar ways in terms of their connections to their lands in other parts of the world. Similarly, a cosmopolitan like Mother Teresa can be seen as being able to connect with the entire world of humanity directly without going through the layers of family, local community, and country. These possible scenarios render further support to my claim of the independent values of family, community, country, and the international world.

To recapitulate: In my view, family life is an independent good, which does not depend on the value of community, country, and more, even though it can be enriched by improvements of the larger environment of the family. We can say the same about one’s country. Patriotic life is a good in itself. It is worth pursuing independently of other goods. Love of humanity is also a good in itself, independent of other pursuits in one’s life.

So, taking into consideration of cost involved in pursuing various values that may incur cost one way or another, what should we do? Naturally, one may think of the need to balance the pursuit of various values in the good life. Ancient Chinese thinkers addressed the challenge of holding competing values together in the good life in term of he 和, usually rendered in English as “harmony.” The Wuxing 五行 text of the excavated Guodian Chu Bamboo Slips states:

The he of the five virtuous practices is called Virtue; the he of the four practices is called Goodness. Goodness is the human Way. Virtue is the Heavenly Way. (Liu 2003, 69)

The four virtuous practices are ren 仁 (human-heartedness), yi 義 (rightness, appropriateness), li 禮 (ritual propriety), and zhi 智 (wis dom); the five virtuous practices also include an additional sheng 聖 (sageliness), which is held to extend beyond humanity and to connect with Heaven. These five are considered among the most important values for Confucians. Enumerating these five virtues here does not imply that other virtues, such as yong 勇 (courage), should be excluded. To live a wholesome life, one needs to incorporate all these virtues in life. Various virtues have their respective value and serve different needs in life and society. However, according to the author of the Wuxing 五行, what makes these virtues most valuable is not each virtue alone, but their he 和, namely a process of achieving and maintaining a good balance of various virtues. It should be noted that, in the context of the Confucian philosophy of harmony, such a balance is not merely an equal distribution of weight to each virtue, nor to maintain a fixed formula of proportion. I have called such a process “dynamic harmony,” to differentiate it from the usual usage of the word “harmony” (Li 2014). The harmonious practices of the four virtues are the human Way. The harmonious practices of the five virtues are the Heavenly Way, adding a spiritual dimension to the human world. This important coordinating role of dynamic harmony makes it the virtue of the virtues. A good person not only possesses various good virtues respectively but also possesses and practices them in a harmonious way.⁹

The author of the Wuxing did not elaborate on what precisely dynamic harmony among virtues is to be achieved. But we can understand dynamic harmony in the broad context of the conception of dynamic harmony in ancient Chinese philosophy. He in this sense is to be understood not as an idealism of serene coexistence of different things, but an active process of the gathering of different things together through mutual accommodation, back-and-forth adjustment, and reciprocal finetuning of various demands towards an optimal configuration. This conception of dynamic harmony is not to eliminate all tensions and conflicts. It is rather a mechanism to manage tensions as we move forward even though we can never find a perfect solution to avoid cost involved. When the pursuits of various goods cannot be realized at the same time without loss, one needs to strike a balance that one thinks appropriate, usually within one’s cultural tradition.

I have called such balance in each culture “cultural configurations of values” (Li 2008a). In dealing with competing values, each culture attempts to configure values in a way that it considers the most optimal combination or configuration.¹⁰ Different cultures may configure values differently. Ancient Sparta and Athens, for example, had prioritized different values. Whereas Athens placed arts and democracy as high values, Sparta prioritized militaristic values (Cartledge 2011). Even within the same cultural tradition, individuals may have varied focuses. In the end, each of us has to find ways to balance or harmonize these various pursuits in our own ways that we think most worthwhile.

Familism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism are also virtues. On the view of the Wuxing, he or dynamic harmony is needed in pursuing these virtues. Classic pre-Qin Confucian thinkers take family life as the foundation of a meaningful life. Such a Confucian can actively contribute to communal life, she can be a passionate patriot, she can love humanity as a whole and be a cosmopolitan, and she can also be an anthropocosmist, feeling a deep connection with the cosmos. However, at the end of the day, her life is most deeply rooted in family life. This line of argument poses a reason to be cautious with Tu Weiming’s move from inner to the outer circles of life towards oneness with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things, because it risks making us less rooted in our families, local communities, countries, and even humanity.

Under extreme circumstances, the process of dynamic harmony can break down when a person has to choose one horn of a serious dilemma. In the Confucian tradition, Shun was an exemplar of prioritizing family life. When caught in the dilemma of serving his country as the emperor and saving his father, Shun opted to save his father at the expense of his throne.¹¹ In contrast, the action of Yu exemplified a patriot life as opposed to family life. Service to his country over whelmed by devastating floods was the utmost priority for Yu, so that he even did not spare a little time to reunite with his family when he passed by his home three times during his eight years of dedicated service fighting the seemingly unstoppable flood. The propriety of these cases is surely debatable. It can be argued that in each case, the character acted in their best judgement in the face of a major dilemma between pursuing different goods. Nevertheless, it would not be desirable for people to have to choose in such dire circumstances on a regular basis. Obviously, Shun could have chosen to continue serving his country if his father’s life was not at stake; Yu could have taken time to reunite with his family if the flood was not as devastating. Similarly, although it is good that we have people like Mother Teresa who love people in the world equally, it would not be desirable for most people in the world to live their lives her way. This is not desirable because such a life misses many other goods important to a satisfactory life.

It should be noted that the cases of Shun and Yu are different from the case of Yang Zhu, an ancient ultra-egoistic thinker. Yang allegedly held the view that he would not lose a single hair even if doing so would benefit the entire world (ba yimao er li tianxia buwei ye 拔一毛 而利天下, 不为也). Mencius criticises him as being too extreme as Yang “takes up one point but neglects a hundred others” (Mencius 7A.26). Restricting himself exclusively in the innermost of Tu Weiming’s concentric circles, Yang’s life failed to maintain harmony in pursuing other goods. Among all ancient sages, Confucius probably lived a life that was the closest to being cosmopolitan. As far as the tianxia (“all under Heaven”) was the whole world conceivable at his time, Confucius travelled from state to state with persistent efforts to bring “the world” back together, with little special consideration for his own state of Lu.12

Returning to the “cosmopolitan” approach to scholarships in the United States mentioned at the beginning of this paper, scholarships in Singapore often prioritize Singaporeans and, scholarships for international students are often associated with a contract to work in Singapore after graduation. Hence, philosophically, Singapore’s scholarships are mainly justified on patriotic rather than cosmopolitan grounds. Even though with a cosmopolitan approach to scholarships in the United States, many (or even most) scholarship awardees choose to work and make contributions to the United States. In effect, these unconditional scholarships also benefit the country. So, one could argue that, perhaps in an indirect way, patriotism is not entirely absent after all.