New Confucianism
As such, Jiang claims that there are problems with New Confucianism. First, it overtly focuses on the ideas of individuality and self-cultivation, causing familial and social relations to collapse. In this respect, New Confucianism fails to recognize how traditional social institutions can help transform individuals into sages. Secondly, it excessively emphasizes the abstract metaphysical concepts. This makes New Confucians blind to practical social and political reality. Thirdly, New Confucians believe that through individuals’ self-cultivation of virtue, external social and political problems will be solved. Because of this, they do not comprehend the critical role of ritual and legal systems in alleviating sociopolitical problems. Finally, under the assumption that the human mind exists outside of space and time New Confucianism resorts to transcendentalism. This lack of attention to history causes New Confucians to be unaware of the sociopolitical reality. Moreover, it betrays the Confucian spirit, for Confucius held that human beings exist at a point in historical and social reality; it is vital that they be defined by socio-political relationships according to the rites. Among other things, the fact that New Confucians predominantly draw on Mind Confucianism has made them oblivious to the values of Political Confucianism, a strand in which Jiang uses as the basis for his alternative solution. Moreover, Jiang believes New Confucians have inappropriately blended Western ideas of science and liberal democracy that are neither compatible with Confucianism, nor the Chinese society.