This book is long in process. I began to have a serious interest in neo-Confu- cianism and a strong desire to write something about it following two graduate seminars I took, on Zhu Xi and Liu Zongzhou respectively, with Professor Tu Weiming. It was at the time I was conceiving my dissertation topic on the debate between liberalism and communitarianism on which is prior: (religious and metaphysical conception of) the good or (political conception of) the right. I had a sense that something could be developed from neo-Confucianism, particularly Zhu Xi’s philosophy, to reconcile these two sides and thus had an itch to bring it into my dissertation. My dissertation committee, directed by Professor Francis Fiorenza and including Cornel West and the late Gordon Kaufman, wisely dissuaded me from doing it, not because they thought neo- Confucianism is unimportant or irrelevant to this topic, but because the project would grow too big to be manageable. They suggested that I focus on the liberal and communitarian debate in my dissertation and work on Zhu Xi afterward.