This Author Meets Critique panel engages with Paolo Santangelo's Facets of the Self in Early Modern China: Escape from Authoritarian and Moralistic Predicaments (Cambria Press, Amherst-New York, 2025). The book examines how Confucian moral discourse, religious thought, and political authority interacted in shaping — and contesting — moral hierarchies, social inequalities, and individual subordination from the late Ming to the early Qing. Challenging the view of Confucianism as an exclusively communitarian and hierarchical tradition, Santangelo reconstructs a vibrant intellectual landscape in which thinkers reassessed key oppositions such as collective interest (gong 公) and private interest (si 私), governance by virtue (dezhi 德治) and governance by law (fazhi 法治), ritual conformity and moral conscience. Central to this reconfiguration is the rehabilitation of emotions (qing 情) and desires (yu 欲), traditionally distrusted, as morally meaningful forces capable of grounding a more autonomous yet socially embedded self.By foregrounding figures such as Li Zhi, Wang Yangming, Dai Zhen, Yuan Mei, and Huang Zongxi, the book shows how critiques of Confucian orthodoxy and moralistic paternalism exposed the use of religious-ethical norms to legitimize inequality and authoritarian control, while also providing resources for dignity, moral equality, and resistance. Religion thus emerges as an ambivalent force, simultaneously reinforcing and challenging unequal moral and political orders. The panel aims to explores how Confucian ethical frameworks contributed to debates on (in)equality, authority, and moral governance, and how these debates resonate with contemporary discussions on religion's role in sustaining or contesting social and political inequalities. With Paolo Santangelo present as author, the discussion will be led by Riccardo Pozzo (Università di Roma 2, Tor Vergata) and Maurizio Paolillo (Università di Napoli, L'Orientale).

Philosophy, Ethics, Religious Studies