Autonomy and Interdependence: A Dialogue between Liberalism and Confucianism.

The article presents a dialogue that discusses the question of whether Confucianism can be made compatible with liberal individualism. One person asserts that a rapprochement between the two positions is possible and suggests that a combination of the two views might produce an ethic which improves on both Confucian and liberal-individual morality. The other person, a Confucian, resists the claim and insists that any combination of different positions would lose the core values upon which each is founded. He also claims that liberal Confucianism would be no more than a modified liberalism and not a form of Confucianism at all. The author declares that the dialogue offers an evidence that Western and Chinese values cannot be readily assimilated within a single value perspective.