 The way that an earlier example of putative radical difference can be questioned serves as some confirmation of this argument from charity for strong agreement between traditions. Confucian conceptions of the state as family writ large are not especially puzzling even when we do not subscribe to them. We find similar themes that have arisen within the Western tradition, and again, it is possible to conceive what the appeal would be. However, these points also raise certain doubts about the use of charity to argue for strong agreement. The fact that we can point to similar beliefs within our own tradition and that we can imagine what the appeal would lie behind such beliefs does not mean that we share those beliefs with others even as we attribute to them. Even if we were to share with them a belief in certain values, that would not necessarily mean that we place the same importance on those values relative to other values we (and perhaps they also) hold. It is often observed that a distinctive feature of the Chinese Confucian tradition is the very high value placed on filial piety. It is a common feature of many cultures that one should honor thy father and mother, of course, and it is not difficult to find analogies within American society to Confucian filial piety. At the same time, the Confucian tradition is unusual in the stringency of its duties to parents. The scope of filial duties includes taking care of what parents alone could have given one – one’s body. Cengzi, one of Confucius’ students, is portrayed in 8.3 of the Analects as gravely ill and near death. He bids his students to look at his hands and feet, and quotes lines from the Book of Poetry to convey the idea that all his life he has been keeping his body intact as part of his duty to his parents. It is only now near death, he says, that he can be sure of having been spared and thus fulfilling this duty to parents. This very idea, that one must keep one’s body intact as a duty of gratitude to one’s parents, has remained a central idea in Chinese culture. While American culture certainly contains similar themes of gratitude toward those from whom one has received great benefits, such themes do not necessitate agreement on the centrality and stringency of filial duties in the Confucian tradition. Important kinds of moral difference, then, may consist in the differing emphases given to values that are shared across cultural traditions (Wong, 1996b). Thomas Kasulis (2002) puts a similar point in a visual metaphor: what is foreground in one culture may be background in another culture.