The Dominance of Consensual over Technical Rationality in Confucius' Socio‐economic Thought

For over 2,000 years Confucian philosophy dominated Chinese social thought, thus leaving an enormous body of Confucian literature addressing social problems. Yet very little of that which is Confucian social thought appears to possess economic content. Joseph J. Spengler concluded that “the Confucian school did not emphasize economic questions. Confucius's real concern was with social organization, together with ethics, politics, and societal harmony…”. Not unexpectedly, therefore, there is very little secondary literature which attempts to capture the essence of Confucian economics.