of the good. It would be wrong to minimize the difference between the Confucian conception of persons and the Western modern one (Wang Yunping, “Autonomy and the Confucian Moral Person,” 253–256, 266). Moreover, the authorities’ appropriation of the concept of “harmony” for their own use and repression of dissent has a long tradition. Concurrently and/or alternatively, behind the rhetoric and ideal of harmony of social bonds based on mutual concern, two phenomena have to be kept in consideration: violence and multiplicity of ideas. On the recurrent violence in Chinese society throughout its history, recent studies have contributed to offer a more complex reality; the level of violence and its perception could not but negatively influence both the concepts of human dignity and tolerance. Similarly, several studies have examined the contest of pluralistic currents with different opinions in the history of ideas; other studies have drawn attention to the growth of individualistic behaviors in certain social strata, or the dichotomization of public and private life in large sections of population across the centuries of Chinese history. The reflections of this chapter will hopefully encourage further research in this direction.

26. The idea is of a complex educational process for growing moral emotional dispositions instead of a series of battles. See, for instance, David Wong, “Early Confucian Philosophy and the Development of Compassion,” 187–189.