 Wang Fu’s Qianfulun is in part a revival of the approach of Confucian disengagement, offering a solution to the tension between social concern and personal virtue. Early Confucians, hundreds of years before Wang Fu’s time, stressed the importance of strong commitment to the development and moral rectification of society as a whole. The morally developed person, according to these thinkers, has a commitment to the community that is not contingent on the goodness of the community. This must be the case for all of the communities that one is part of and that make up vital facts about who one is—the state, the village, the family. One cannot abandon or turn one’s back on a corrupt or vicious family, but instead must put their effort into trying to rectify this community. To do less than this would be a failure of one’s humanity. We find many passages in the early texts committing to such a view (for example Analects 4.18). At the same time, we find an alternative response developed in these same texts, including the Analects (8.13; 15.6) and Xunzi (32.7). The committed and morally developed person has a responsibility to take an active role in the community when the times (shi 時) are such that either the moral way prevails or it is possible that one can bring it about. But when the times are such that the moral way is abandoned and it is impossible to bring it about, the morally developed person should stay away from taking an active role, lest they become morally soiled.