 Joseph Chan (2014) has classified Confucian ethics, along with much of ancient Greek ethics, as perfectionist in structure. Many of the central ethical judgments in Confucianism have to do what what it is to live a good human life, and the virtues it takes to live such a life. As indicated earlier, the Confucian conception of a good human life is centered around relationships--within the family, within friendship, and also within a society in which one aspires to serve a government by advancing the mission of securing the material and moral welfare of the people. From the standpoint of a contemporary liberal democratic theory, one might question how much room this leaves people to choose among a plurality of reasonable conceptions of the good life. Certainly, many contemporary Americans and Europeans would not place so central an emphasis on family relationship and on filiality as Confucians do. Chan (2000, 2014) proposes to defuse this tension through advocating a moderate Confucian perfectionism that refrains from promoting a comprehensive view of how people ought to live. The liberal argument that conceptions of the good life are too controversial to be promoted by the state does not apply, he argues, to some important constituents of the Confucian conception of how to live--prudential goods and goods necessary for agency. Such goods, when separated from a comprehensive conception that orders and prioritizes them into a particular way of life, can be promoted in piecemeal fashion through non-coercive methods in the context of particular issues, and justifications can be given on the basis of common ground and compromise.