 Tan (2003) argues that Confucian methods for encouraging the realization of virtues are non-coercive because its conception of the good life is process-oriented and fallibilistic, and its conception of personhood is social and relational. Human beings become persons through processes of relationship with each other, by contributing to each other’s ethical growth. What growth amounts to is something that can be meaningfully judged only within the particular circumstances and the processes that have led up to the present. A figure such as Confucius has authority not just because of who he is but because others respond to him with spontaneous acceptance, admiration, and emulation. Since Tan holds that these Confucian conceptions are eminently plausible, she argues that not only is Confucianism compatible with democracy, but that democracy needs to incorporate the insights of Confucianism. In the Western tradition, she finds in John Dewey a thinker who is sympathetic to these insights.