 The relational approach in Confucian and Daoist philosophies is apparent in their conceptions of what it is to be a person. The Confucian conception of the person is that of a profoundly social being. Hall and Ames (1998) use the language of the individual’s being the focal point of an interlocking “field” of relationships. Henry Rosemont, Jr. (1991b) identifies the individual with the sum total of their social roles. One issue here is whether a person’s identity is wholly constituted by their relationships and how this can be compatible with what Shun (2004) has identified in Confucianism as the capacity to step back from an established social setup, to criticize it and possibly to reject and separate oneself from it. Hall and Ames, furthermore, want to affirm as part of Confucianism the belief in the individual’s power to contribute creatively to the constitution of social roles in the “field,” and the question is how such a power co-exists with being wholly constituted by the field (Wong 2004b). However one ends up resolving that question, it seems clear that a good part of a person’s identity on the Confucian view must lie in their relationships to other persons, and even the reasons for distancing the self from the established social setup would involve a critical ethical stance toward that setup based on rightness and humanity together with realization that these values could not be fully realized in one’s lifetime.