A Critique on Professor Ruiping Fan's Article and a Moral Analysis of COVID-19 and Exposition of Confucianism

ABSTRACT

My response to Professor Fan's essay mainly deals with two issues. Firstly, through a simplified analysis of the history and basic ideas of Confucianism, Fan's paper did not grasp the basic idea of "Ren" and "empathy of the Heart/mind of ren "as well as the theoretical structure of "ren-li-de" in Confucianism. Hence, his thesis on Familism and Confucian Virtue Ethics was not based on solid Confucian texts and arguments. Secondly, Principlism is nothing as extreme as Fan described and his analysis on the Covid-19 pandemic are fairly rational and reasonable. The management of the pandemic in the West does have serious defects, but it has nothing to do with Principlism and liberalism. It is mainly due to the misunderstanding and misjudgment of the nature of this new pandemic by specialists and common folks. Lastly, I present a brief outline on how Confucianism could join with democracy and liberty in fighting against Covid-19 effectively performed by Taiwan people.