A review on Thock Kiah Wah

Under the impact of the Ideological trend of modern democracy and post-modern democracy, Thock Kiah Wah responds the modern democratic politics through the virtue democracy of Confucianism. He critics and inspects transcendently the modern democratic politics by the concept of moral life which being emphasized in Confucianism. The research that Thock did on Mou Tsung-san’s concepts of “ethical authority”, “political authority” and “scholars’ authority”, led him re-identifies the relationship between the rule of virtue and democracy. He then proposes the speculative concepts of “commercial authority” and “interactive”, in attempt to optimize Mou’s theory of “Confucian Democracy”. Apart from  the construction and revision done in the level of academic theory, the perspectives of the “local” and the “present” that emerged from Thock’s work also inspire the author of this paper to unravel the discussion space of conception exploration and practical motivation.