A Response to Eric Hutton’s Review

摘要

I would first like to thank Eric Hutton for his careful review, and the editors of Dao fonoffering me this opportunity to respond. As a general strategy, Hutton weighs the persuansiveness of my coherence argument for a constructivist interpretation of Xunzi against nhypothetical coherence argument for a realist interpretation, and he finds the hypotheticanargument more convincing. I am not sure I find that very convincing. It is perhaps toonmuch to really expect to convince “someone inclined to a kind of ‘realist’ interpretation onXunzi” to change his view, especially by providing a coherence argument. If my book didnnot convince, I can hardly hope this short response to do so. However, I can at least try tonprovide enough details to explain why I think his critique is off the mark.