Can a life of faultless moral judgment serve as a meaningful goal? Can it constitute an ideal of moral perfection? Thorian Harris has recently argued that early Confucians rejected moral perfection as both impossible and undesirable (Harris 2023). In this essay, I examine his claim with respect to Mengzi 孟子, showing that Harris’s reading relies on particular assumptions about what perfection must entail—assumptions that Mengzi either endorses or need not share. Drawing on key passages where Mengzi presents the sage Shun 舜 navigating complex moral situations in faultless fashion, as well as Mengzi adjudicating hypothetical dilemmas authoritatively, I argue that the text can be seen to endorse “responsive perfection” as a regulative ideal. This conception of perfection manifests either through proper prioritization of values or through harmonious integration of competing considerations, without requiring absolute moral standards or denying the contextual nature of ethical judgment. While Harris rightly critiques rigid approaches to perfection that impede moral growth, Mengzi’s vision of responsive perfection remains compatible with ongoing moral development. This analysis invites us to reconsider how moral perfection might function as a meaningful ideal without the drawbacks Harris identifies.
