The Government of Self and Others: Ci Jiwei, Chinese Philosophy, and the Magic of Order

This essay develops a reading of Ci Jiwei’s political thought with an eye towards his engagement with questions of hypocrisy and anti-hypocrisy. I show how Ci develops a hermeneutic of magnanimity that reads Western critical theory against the grain to find a political theory of the real conditions of possibility for an illusory freedom. Following up on these positive images of illusion, falsity, and conjuring, I suggest ways in which we might push Ci’s arguments further with the help of anti-anti-hypocrisy thinking from China’s own philosophical traditions.