Philosopher Zhou Lian: All My Thinking Revolves Around "How Should a Person Live?" | Interviews

"If cynicism and self-centeredness have become incurable, we will ask, as Kant did: what value is there in human beings living on this earth?"

In 2013, Zhou Lian and Liu Yu's daughter Bugu was born. It changed their lives overnight. Before Bugu turned one, Zhou Lian gave an oral account, “A Father Is His Daughter's Shield,” full of love and hope for her.

Six years on, his daughter has become, in Zhou Lian's words, "an enormous presence" that he "simply cannot turn away from." "Every morning I'm in a mad rush to get her up, fed and dressed — some days my wife braids her hair, some days I do — then I drive her to school, and in the evening I sit with her while she practices piano. She takes your time and energy directly, but at the same time you genuinely enjoy it."

Now, alongside the hope, there is worry. "I worry about how my daughter will grow up in today's educational environment — can she grow up healthy? Will she have to go through the gaokao? I grew up in that environment myself, but I think we can spare our children some of the poison."

Zhou Lian was born in 1974 in Suichang, Zhejiang. He took his bachelor's and master's degrees in philosophy at Peking University and his PhD in philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and is now a professor at the School of Philosophy at Renmin University of China. He works on moral philosophy, political philosophy and philosophy of language. His books include The Foundations of Legitimacy in Modern Politics, You Can Never Wake Someone Who Is Pretending to Sleep and The Possibility of Justice.

Unlike scholars who live in an ivory tower, Zhou Lian has a strong sense of reality and of real problems. The writer Xu Zhiyuan has described him as having "clarity of thought and a strong awareness of reality"; the philosopher Chen Jiaying calls him "an outstanding young scholar." Zhou Lian himself thinks the eternal question of political philosophy is, at bottom, the most abstract Socratic question of all — how should a person live? "I think all my thinking unfolds around that most abstract Socratic question. But it takes a different form in each era. In ours it appears more in the shape of Rawls's concerns, though Rawls's framework may not be enough to meet today's challenges, so it may need revising."

"Has your daughter changed your answer to the Socratic question?"

"I think so. How should a person live? Clearly that isn't a question for one person alone (laughs)."

"Not for one person alone" also points to the situation modern people are in — forced to seek a shared life. "To oppose using the coercive machinery of the state to realize excellence as a value, and to confine the pursuit of the human good strictly within pluralistic communities founded on the principle of freedom of association, is precisely the logical consequence of entering a heterogeneous, large-scale modern society of strangers. Granting individuals the right to pursue happiness also means individuals must have the capacity to pursue it, and must bear the consequences and responsibilities that follow. This makes individual life, and the pursuit of happiness in particular, rough and uneven — but I believe this is a price that must be paid, and one worth paying," Zhou Lian wrote in the preface to Justice and Happiness.

So for nearly a decade Zhou Lian's work has consisted almost entirely of standing on the ground of the egalitarian liberalism Rawls represents and arguing with the rest of the liberal family — libertarianism, classical liberalism, and the more recent neoclassical liberalism — while also trying to answer the challenges from communitarians, republicans and even conservatives.

He believes that if the liberal family is to be reconciled in any sense, the balance can only be struck between Hayek and Rawls. Nor must freedom and equality stand opposed: any modern political theory with any credibility shares equality as a fundamental value. But compared with libertarians and classical liberals, egalitarian liberals want a distributive structure that is "sensitive to ambition, insensitive to endowment," one that reduces as far as possible the inequality produced by morally arbitrary factors, and they stress how much "free choice" matters across a life.

On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. Zhou Lian was then a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, and the result shook him. Until that point he had planned to keep studying the quarrels inside the liberal family; Trump's election turned him around, and he decided to study liberalism's argument with its external enemies instead — conservatism, political realism, identity politics, populism — trying to understand sympathetically what was valid in each.

"Consensus is a goal won gradually, in the course of doing things, talking, debating and struggling — a historical achievement built up over years of practice. I put special stress on the power of moderation and reason, because the moment you see your opponent as an unforgivable, unreasonable person, you have given up on any attempt at rational communication, and all that's left is division and each side going its own way," Zhou Lian said.

A few years ago he described himself as "politically liberal, culturally conservative, economically Rawlsian." He now feels he has shifted on the last two, and that this era asks a great deal of anyone who thinks for a living. So he holds himself to a long list: "It requires that we not be mindless firebrands, not be shallow liberals, not be heartless conservatives, not be statists speaking for vested interests, not be irresponsible anarchists, and not be starry-eyed utopians."

More than 20 years of philosophical training has also made him careful in how he speaks. "The moment I say a sentence, I immediately think of how imprecise it is, or the challenges it might face. That actually makes speaking and thinking quite hard for me. And when I listen to other people, I find myself very critical without meaning to be. That may be good for me, but in dealing with others it may not be."

A position like his is easily attacked from every side, and can look like fence-sitting or evasion. But perhaps that is exactly where the complexity of theory and of reality lies. He has always believed Wittgenstein's line: "The philosophical disease has a characteristic symptom — a one-sided diet." "So if you don't want to catch the philosophical disease, you have to keep shifting your angle, feeding your thought with all kinds of examples in different contexts, until it becomes richer and more three-dimensional."

Moderation, though, is not the absence of conviction — he has always defended his own position. "Democratic institutions (political society) and pluralistic communities are compatible in theory and in practice; each makes up half of a society. The first guarantees justice and institutions that humiliate no one; the second promises greater certainty and happiness. This may be the most desirable choice available in ordinary politics," he wrote in his essay "Political Society, Pluralistic Community, and the Happy Life."

He thinks contemporary China's public political culture is turning fast into quicksand, but he also thinks he is still making an effort. In April 2019 he published Opening Up: Zhou Lian's 100 Lectures on Western Philosophy, a popular survey spanning 2,500 years of Western philosophy, meant to get people thinking about questions like "how should a person live?" The book is dedicated "to my daughter Bugu," and Bugu — who "turns up about as often as Plato, Aristotle and Kant" — has given his philosophical thinking "a great deal of stimulation and inspiration."

The last two lectures in Opening Up are on Rawls, Zhou Lian's favorite, and the book closes the journey with Rawls's words: "If a reasonably just society that makes power serve its own ends cannot be achieved, and people often fail to follow morality, if cynicism and self-centeredness have become incurable, we will ask, as Kant did: what value is there in human beings living on this earth?"

Q = QDaily

Zhou = Zhou Lian

1. Why might Rawls's "property-owning democracy" offer this torn era some inspiration and a new institutional imagination?

Q: In the preface to Justice and Happiness you write that today's American right — traditional conservatives and libertarians alike — is going against the tide by raising the two banners of Christianity and laissez-faire capitalism again, while the American left (today's liberals) is trying to carry the value of equality all the way into society and even private life, and has taken too large a step. By comparison, Rawls's "property-owning democracy" might offer this torn era some inspiration and a new institutional imagination. Why? What inspiration and imagination can it offer us today?

Zhou: The economic and political institutions of the West over the past 100 years can basically be defined by the concept of "capitalism." After the Second World War, of course, laissez-faire capitalism gave way by degrees to welfare-state capitalism. Why did that shift happen? Simply put, because of the impact of socialism and universal suffrage. But today we find welfare-state capitalism in trouble too, in Europe and in the United States. Rawls's A Theory of Justice is very interesting here — we usually assume he was defending welfare-state capitalism, but Rawls explicitly denied it. He opposed laissez-faire capitalism, and he did not accept welfare-state capitalism either. He held that the political and economic system best suited to the two principles of justice was "property-owning democracy," or "liberal socialism." He barely developed the liberal-socialism side, putting the weight of his discussion on property-owning democracy — a term that has been around since the 1920s, though the version Rawls imagined still looks, even now, like something in the future tense.

He wanted to avoid the problems of laissez-faire capitalism — disregard for fair equality of opportunity, an excessive gap between rich and poor, too little concern for society's least advantaged — while also criticizing welfare-state capitalism seriously. What's interesting is that his criticism of the welfare state sounds, on the face of it, like the criticism many on the right make. What is the right's biggest complaint about the welfare state? That welfare breeds idlers. Rawls's complaint was that giving those at the bottom subsidies for the means of life does nothing to cultivate a sense of personal responsibility, does not make them truly independent, self-reliant people, and can even damage their dignity as individuals.

The "property-owning democracy" Rawls imagined was meant to solve the problems of laissez-faire capitalism and of welfare-state capitalism at once. I won't go into the institutional design, but in intent and aim you could say it strikes at both flanks. I think it offers one possible way out of the world's present economic and political predicament. Whether it is actually workable, though, needs deeper study and reflection.

Q: You've described the vision, but not the concrete institutional arrangements. I think spelling those out would help us understand Rawls better. For instance, compared with welfare-state capitalism and laissez-faire capitalism, "property-owning democracy" takes a somewhat different view of inheritance tax.

Zhou: Rawls's first principle of justice is also called the principle of equal basic liberties, and it sets out a list of them. The one directly tied to property-owning democracy is economic liberty. The most contested point is that he puts freedom of contract and ownership of the means of production outside the protection of the first principle — that is, they are not basic liberties. And we know these are exactly the two economic rights laissez-faire capitalism prizes most.

Classical liberals who follow Hayek and libertarians who follow Nozick are naturally unhappy about this. They would say Rawls's view carries a strong whiff of socialism or communism. But Rawls would answer that he opposes Stalinist command economies just as much, and that he supports a free market economy besides.

So why did Rawls single out ownership of the means of production for exclusion from the basic liberties? His underlying aim was to make sure that appropriate means of production could be distributed to everyone at the starting point of social cooperation. Rawls believed that by giving the lower classes, or the least advantaged, a certain amount of the means of production, training their labor skills and raising their level of education, they could in the end become active participants in society, develop a sense of individual responsibility, and become citizens with real dignity.

That's too abstract. Here is a very simple example. Chinese people often ask: for people in poor mountain regions, do you give them a blood transfusion, or help them make their own blood? The welfare state is a bit like a transfusion; Rawls's idea is closer to helping people make blood. And in the making-blood process it isn't only labor skills and education — you also have to give people some means of production. They need startup money, capital to begin a business. The main source of that money would be taxes such as inheritance tax and property tax.

The philosophical arguments about tax systems are another tangle. Nozick would say any tax policy is, in essence, robbery and plunder. But look at the whole political-economic arrangement of Europe and America and you find that inheritance tax and property tax have long been a fact of their legal systems. So I tend to think the libertarian view, next to Rawls's, is the one further removed from the ground — more idealistic, more utopian.

2. Why can reconciliation inside the liberal family only be found by striking a balance between Hayek and Rawls?

Q: In your essay “Hayek and Rawls on Social Justice,” you write: "Which theory is in fact more beneficial to the poor? Clearly, in the eyes of classical liberals and libertarians, egalitarian liberals occupy only the moral high ground — from an economic or factual standpoint, the normative theory of egalitarian liberalism may be exactly what fails to benefit the poor." Given what you've just said, do you think egalitarian liberalism's normative theory does benefit the poor?

Zhou: Rawls's theory of justice is an "ideal theory," highly abstract and normative, and he was very conscious of that. Reading his books you often meet lines like: this question is too specific, settling it would take more social-scientific knowledge, so I won't pursue it. And that is how it goes — in the course of being put into practice, ideal theory meets all kinds of external, contingent interference, influence, even distortion. So we can't thump our chests and say Rawls's ideal theory is bound to be operable, or that it will never backfire.

As for which theory benefits the poor more, that is much disputed within economics. John Tomasi, a professor at Brown University, wrote a book called Free Market Fairness. His idea is interesting: on one hand he accepts the classical-liberal notion of trickle-down effects, believing they ultimately reach the least advantaged; on the other he also accepts the egalitarian-liberal conception of social justice, and argues the two can be reconciled in theory and made to complement each other.

Q: So far no country has adopted "property-owning democracy." Do you think the theory applies to China?

Zhou: At the micro level we have been running all sorts of vocational skills training, and some local governments give young people startup funds, so in a very limited sense I think shadows of property-owning democracy are already here. But we must not forget that Rawls's first principle of justice secures the ground color of a constitutional democracy. Beyond that, when an abstract idea is put into a concrete political and economic environment, it meets very concrete problems. Many people, for instance, are worried about a property tax — some things that make sense in the West may not make sense here. In theory I would agree with levying a property tax, but if you ask whether China should levy one under present conditions, my answer is no. Inheritance tax too: no. Because we have no guarantee of rule of law or of democracy, and there is no way to supervise where that revenue would end up. We also have to weigh the enormous cost of the bureaucracy and the inefficiency that comes with big government.

Q: You just mentioned John Tomasi's Free Market Fairness. In fact your own work in recent years has aimed at something similar — reconciling the liberal family in some sense. In your view that reconciliation can only be found by striking a balance between Hayek and Rawls. Why?

Zhou: The schools that grew up after Rawls — luck egalitarianism, identity politics, multiculturalism and other strands further to the left — have genuinely pushed the value of equality deeper in theory, but in practice we should be careful not to step too far. A few days ago I read a report that the College Board in the United States plans to add an "adversity score" directly onto students' SAT results, based on their social and economic background. The problem is: can adversity be made objective and quantified? How do you tell whether an SAT score comes from personal choice or from external circumstance? Trying to cancel every effect of external luck through specific policies applied to wildly different individuals not only violates what Hayek called the division of knowledge at the level of epistemology; in practice it also strengthens the government's power to control in ways it should not, producing a super-state and a super-government.

I wrote an essay called “Why Isn't Hayek a Conservative?” in which I argue that the people to Hayek's right — religious conservatives and the far right above all — are an important force tearing contemporary Western society apart.

I increasingly think we have to take hold of both ends and keep to the middle between Rawls and Hayek: stress the importance of social justice while staying alert at every moment to the road to serfdom. Incidentally, the main target of Hayek's attack in The Road to Serfdom was the British welfare state of his day, and the logic he leaned on was mainly the "slippery slope." History tells us that although the welfare state faces all kinds of problems, it did not in fact slide all the way down into a totalitarian state — and, as we have already noted, Rawls did not support the welfare state either. So I believe finding a balance between the two is a more promising line theoretically and a more relevant one practically. Exactly how to locate that midpoint, of course, I have no clear idea yet.

3. How should liberalism answer today's four challenges — conservatism, political realism, populism and identity politics?

Q: In “Liberalism and Its Discontents,” you name four mainstream criticisms of liberalism and answer each of them, and you also name three theoretical challenges facing Chinese liberalism. That talk was given six years ago. Looking back now, is there anything you'd stress, revise or add?

Zhou: You're right — only a few years ago I was still concerned with the quarrels inside the liberal family, but the past two years have changed something. When Trump won the American election in 2016, it made me fully aware that conservatism is a force too important to ignore. Without understanding conservatism you may understand only half of American history. Look at Chinese intellectual circles by contrast: many right-leaning liberals, because of Trump's election and the rise of the right in Europe and America, have swung sharply rightward. People who were once Hayek's disciples are now conservatives.

Within that group, some believe shifting demographics will eventually change the shape of Western civilization, and so have begun to stress the importance of the Anglo-Saxon and Christian tradition — which touches on how to understand and place America's founding principles. Others believe liberalism lacks force, especially when facing the oppression of political power, that it lacks the courage and resolve to fight, and so have chosen to turn conservative. Still others believe Christianity is a more effective intellectual resource for rebuilding social trust. I have never denied the importance of Christianity, but if it is treated as the one correct answer, I hold that with great suspicion. I am willing, all the same, to have deeper and more useful dialogue and argument with them.

I have also been paying close attention lately to political realism. This semester I'm teaching a graduate seminar at Renmin University reading political-realist texts: starting from Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, then Machiavelli's The Prince, Hobbes's Leviathan, Max Weber's The Nation State and Economic Policy, and contemporary Anglo-American work by Bernard Williams, Raymond Geuss, Matt Sleat and others. Political realists generally hold that the political sphere is independent of the moral sphere and highly autonomous — not, as it is sometimes called, "applied ethics." Correspondingly they take the core concepts of politics to be power, order and conflict, rather than normative concepts like the "justice" that political moralists such as Rawls argue for. In that sense they stress a perspective grounded in power rather than one grounded in rights.

I believe that whether it is conservatism or political realism, the questions they care about expose certain theoretical blind spots in the political moralism Rawls represents. Those challenges have to be answered well. This doesn't mean I am giving ground entirely to conservatism or surrendering entirely to political realism — quite the opposite. I hope that by studying these opponents I can defend liberalism better, and in the end give a stronger account of the world we live in.

Q: Do you have a concrete answer to each?

Zhou: Let me take them one at a time. When conservatives explain the birth of modern Western civilization, or specifically the birth of the United States, they always stress that Christianity gave birth to modern Western civilization, that the Bible created America. First, there are other views of that historical claim. In my view modern Western civilization is a whole set of Western values brought forth by the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, and cannot simply be reduced to the Christian tradition. Grant for the sake of argument that Christianity alone did give birth to modern Western civilization; even then we have to see that there is no necessary link between that origin and the flowering of modern civilization elsewhere. When modern Western civilization spreads to other parts of the world, does it have to go back and look for the soil that first nourished it before the sapling can grow? I don't think so. We can use local materials, and in fact its roots have already shifted quietly as it evolved. The essence of conservative thought is sensitivity to concrete context, not dogmatic adherence to a few abstract principles. Take Edmund Burke: Burke was first of all a politician and a man of action, and all his thinking was offered as a response to a specific context, which is very different from the standpoint of a theorist or an onlooker. As everyone knows, Burke supported the American Revolution and opposed the French Revolution; that alone shows his sensitivity to context. When we borrow foreign intellectual resources, we should be careful not to fall into the fallacy of the man who dropped his sword overboard and notched the moving boat to mark the spot. Western conservatives want to conserve the tradition of freedom, so Chinese conservatives copy the gourd and say they too want to conserve the tradition of freedom, and start hunting through Chinese tradition for the genes of freedom. Or, since the value of freedom in Europe began in Christian faith, Chinese conservatives want to build a Christian tradition in China as well. These are all the same fallacy.

As for the political realists, I think the angle from which they think about politics is the angle of the political actor — more precisely, of the ruler. But contemporary political life is entered by many forces from many directions, and the outcome is the resultant of a parallelogram of forces. An understanding of politics grounded in rights has shaped political life too. And an understanding grounded in rights is precisely what checks and balances an understanding grounded in power; it is bound up with power all the same, and does not ignore power at all.

The political-realist angle is undoubtedly important, but let it run unchecked and it produces a whole crop of smug political realists. Why do I stress "smug"? Because they believe they have seen through the truth and essence of politics, explaining all political life and phenomena by the logic of "power," and out of that comes a certain intellectual conceit. Political realism can also end up justifying whatever political reality happens to exist, turning into political instinctivism or the worship of power. Nietzsche has a book called Human, All Too Human; borrowing the phrase, I would say the problem with political realists is that they are "realistic, all too realistic." But political life is rarely about power for power's sake. We take power in order to win something ideal, something normative.

So, genuine or not, ideal and normative elements are always present in political life. What ruler would declare outright that he is simply violence? He needs a narrative of legitimacy, he needs to offer a normative ideal and goal — the American Dream or the Chinese Dream, something aspirational either way. So political idealism, or normative thinking, always has its place in political life.

Q: Because of Trump's election and other changes, you now follow not only conservatism and political realism but identity politics and populism. Standing on liberal ground, how would you answer those two?

Zhou: The challenge of populism actually connects to political realism's critique of political moralism. The trouble with political moralists is that they place too high an ideal on the citizens of a democratic society, taking them to be — to borrow Rawls's phrase — "rational and reasonable," and for exactly that reason they believe political problems can be settled by argument. To put it crudely, Rawlsians tend to imagine political life as a seminar, where we persuade one another with the better argument and finally reach consensus. Political realists would say political life is nothing like a seminar; it is a gladiatorial arena where it is kill or be killed, where people can never reach consensus, only struggle without end.

Populists stress consensus and acknowledge struggle both, but their consensus is not reached through rational dialogue, because populists do not think people are rational and reasonable — they think people are driven far more by feeling, passion and desire. The political figure is a stirrer of public opinion who organizes the people like a flock of sheep and then uses them to obtain political results. And in this process populists have one very typical trait: they claim that they alone represent the people, and all opponents are driven out of the category of "the people" and become enemies. In that sense too, they fully accept the combative nature of political life.

In the end I think politics is about human beings themselves — it involves how we understand human nature, and whether human nature can be reforged. At the level of what is, human nature may indeed be half-human, half-beast. But the question is whether there is room to remake it. How much room — unlimited or limited? On these questions liberalism is relatively optimistic, I think, believing that by building a just society we can fully practice and develop the rational and reasonable side of human nature. Political realism by comparison is far more pessimistic, and populism simply mobilizes the irrational side.

As for identity politics, the politics of difference and multiculturalism, these leftist theories grew up largely by criticizing the liberal theory Rawls represents. For example, in their view liberalism's principle of tolerance cannot really achieve the ideal of treating everyone as an equal, because so-called tolerance merely drives the value preferences and ways of life of minority groups into the private sphere and leaves them invisible, which cannot satisfy those groups' need for recognition. Moving from liberal tolerance to the New Left's emphasis on recognition means, to borrow Iris Young's phrase, reversing liberalism's depoliticization of public life and continuously repoliticizing broad areas of institutional, social and cultural life.

I think these theoretical impulses are the inevitable development of egalitarian liberalism's own internal logic. Tocqueville pointed out long ago that in a society where the consciousness of equality has sunk deep, even the smallest inequality becomes unbearable. In other words, the pursuit of equality has no limit. But I think the process has to match the temper of the times and the particular historical context; if the steps are too large it will certainly draw a fierce backlash from conservative forces, and the end result is a polarized world. The ideals of identity politics are beautiful, I think, but its advocates might rein in their impatience for that beautiful future, slow down, and communicate fully and effectively with their opponents rather than beating them down as ignorant, evil, reactionary forces — recognizing that opponents are partly right, and going forward together through mutual understanding and learning.

4. In an era of violent change, how should a person live with themselves?

Q: Back to the three challenges named in "Liberalism and Its Discontents" — the last is nationalism. That connects to your earlier essay “Individual Freedom and the Rise of Great Powers: Starting from Max Weber's Political Spectrum.” I noticed the essay raises a lot of important questions at the end that you don't answer. Are you willing to answer them now?

Zhou: Weber is a figure especially worth studying seriously; reading him you feel a deep sense of tragedy. On one hand he lays great stress on the logic of politics itself, holding that anyone who throws himself into politics uses power and violence as his means, and has struck a pact with the forces of the devil. On the other hand he has an inborn liking for individualism and liberalism — a fairly aristocratic liberalism, to be sure.

At the end of that essay I wrote something like this: Weber the man and Weber's writing are both steeped in a "spirit that prizes objectivity," and a fatalistic sense of "it could not have been otherwise" runs through his logic. In "Politics as a Vocation" Weber says: "What moves people deeply is a mature person (whatever his age) who is aware of the responsibility for the consequences of his own actions, who feels that responsibility truly from within, who acts according to the ethic of responsibility, and who at some point says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other.'" In my view, when Chinese intellectuals examine Weber's political thought they need to bring more sympathetic understanding. We have to ask: where exactly was the horizon of his thinking? What elements limited his political imagination? Did the historical situation, cultural background, intellectual resources, political order and economic development of his particular time and place leave him no choice? And conversely — as Chinese intellectuals of the 21st century, living through such a violently changing era, how should we live with ourselves? Do we have other choices? Are our judgments and actions guided by an ethic of responsibility or an ethic of ultimate ends, or by neither? Should we dance with whatever wind is blowing, or hold to our own political judgment and personal integrity? That, I think, is the more urgent question, the one felt in the skin. Weber cannot give us a direct answer, but he pushes us to think harder.

Q: So how do you think one should live with oneself? There's a moving line in The Possibility of Justice: "Every era leaves enough room for action for the individual to take up the responsibility of life and of politics."

Zhou: Taking up responsibility means paying a price. You need to think that price through. I don't think I'm brave, but I'd say I've held the line. There is certainly calculation in living a life; the point is whether, after the calculation, you are willing to pay the price you arrived at through careful thought. The price may be steep, but if it keeps your integrity whole, I think it is worth it. That isn't easy to do, but I believe anyone with awareness knows how much the word "integrity" matters — you can feel its weight in your own life. For many people, of course, there may be no feeling about it at all. We often see people who say one thing and do another and take it for political maturity; to me that is political over-ripeness, not political maturity.

Q: Taking up responsibility is a choice, but do you have any advice for young people on how to live with themselves in a turbulent era?

Zhou: My advice carries no compulsion — everyone follows his own path. I would hope young people keep their sincerity and authenticity as far as they can. The American literary critic Lionel Trilling asked, in Sincerity and Authenticity: why is it that we are originals when we are born, and copies by the time we die? Everyone needs to keep asking that, and young people especially, because they still have time to say no to it.

Q: Do you ever feel anxious or powerless? How do you handle it?

Zhou: Often. Life has many sides. Some anxiety and powerlessness come purely from the details of daily life — how to get on with your family, the troubles of parents growing old and children growing up. As a university teacher or an intellectual there is also a kind of anxiety and powerlessness that comes from the times. As a writer there is the anxiety and powerlessness that comes from the words themselves.

How do I handle it? I often say everyone has to find his own source of strength. Sometimes you sleep well and wake up clear-headed. I don't think that's some external factor — reaching middle age, I realize more and more how much the body matters. Friends are an important source of strength too: having a few like-minded friends, even across different times and places, who answer you from a distance, and feeling that strength passed on through their words and actions, matters a great deal to me. I have never believed reading and writing can give you courage directly, but reading and writing is a process of confirming again and again what you think, and in that sense I do think it is one source of strength.

5. Has multiculturalism failed?

Q: In Justice and Happiness you write: "Against the background of modernity, if we want to bring about a complete society, political liberalism has to be combined in some way with an ethical communitarianism of pluralism; the first ensures the individual is not humiliated by institutions and may even win self-respect, while the second promises safety, certainty, reliability and happiness itself." In what sense is that combination meant?

Zhou: That's a very good question. This vision faces severe challenges today; many voices in the West hold that multiculturalism has already failed, that political liberalism has already failed. My arguments with some friends turn on exactly this question. Bao Gangsheng, in his new book The Logic of Democracy, says Western society faces a deep crisis and has only three choices: hold to the ideal of assimilation, argue for multiculturalism, or return to what he calls the religious right. His conclusion from the evidence is that the Western world is in fact returning to the religious right, and I believe he also partly endorses that as the right choice normatively.

I don't accept that judgment. Multiculturalism faces all kinds of challenges, but I think it is the choice this era cannot avoid. If we still want to coexist on this planet, it is the only road; the alternative is mutual destruction, a loss for everyone.

Multiculturalism does face major challenges at present, of course. On the Canadian philosopher Will Kymlicka's account, it depends on two preconditions: first, that national security is assured — that the existence of minority groups is not seen as a serious threat to it; and second, that personal security is guaranteed — that different ethnic groups share a consensus on basic human rights.

At first glance the two conditions look like nothing much, but think about them and you see how high the bar is. The moment a political body faces an external threat — in other words, the moment it is not in what Rawls called a "well-ordered society" — multiculturalism loses the precondition for its existence. When hostile forces surround a country from outside, for instance, people begin to worry that minority groups inside its territory could collude with the enemy from within. And once multiculturalism has taken in too many groups hostile to liberalism itself, it becomes equally unworkable.

Seen this way, multiculturalism's position is awkward. If the two conditions are met, multiculturalism becomes unimportant; if they are not met, it becomes impossible. Kymlicka himself admits that multiculturalism is not an effective means of ending violence: in difficult circumstances it has nothing to offer against violence, and in fortunate ones it is not necessary for avoiding violence. So what is multiculturalism for? Kymlicka thinks that for the goal of democratic citizenization, multiculturalism may be necessary. That is a fairly distant goal, of course, and one that needs a slow and difficult evolution.

To my mind, the bind multiculturalism is in is exactly what should remind us to take the thinking of political realism and conservatism seriously. The first reminds us that conflicts of value cannot be avoided; the second warns us that in pursuing our ideals we had better "walk slowly" than "rush ahead," because a well-ordered society cannot be brought about by a single pole of force — it is always the resultant of a parallelogram of forces.

The cover image is The Death of Socrates (1787), an oil painting by the French painter Jacques-Louis David, courtesy of Wikipedia; the tall cover image is of Zhou Lian, courtesy of Imaginist.