ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that in contemporary East Asia in which people are subscribing increasingly to diverse moral, philosophical, and religious doctrines as private individuals, Confucianism as a shared cultural heritage still has profound implications for their public life. It illuminates the public significance of Confucianism in contemporary East Asia from a nationalist standpoint. The chapter presents two arguments: Confucianism as a shared cultural heritage enables the East Asian people to govern themselves as a Confucian nation, a uniquely East Asian mode of a civic nation that is neither liberal nor antiperfectionist; and at the core of the Confucian nation is a Confucian public culture that provides East Asian citizens with an environment for collective self-government, thereby enabling a Confucian citizenship within the modern, mainly liberal, constitutional structure. It justifies Confucian public culture as the culture of the Confucian nation from a perfectionist perspective with reference to John Rawls's distinction between full and partial comprehensive doctrines.
