4
ontologically or historically prior to the other—may exploit, but does transcend, such paradoxes
when they appear in real historical time.
What does transcend those paradoxes? Zhang does not offer a definitive answer, but by
recasting the problem of founding he offers conceptual resources to think through both the
dilemmas of founding in real historical time and the nature of subsequent political action. Zhang
puts forward the possibility that individual action may be capable of bringing about self-rule
where one does not, and has never, existed, but he does not do so by positing the ontological
priority and autonomy of individuals. Nor does he play benevolent Lawgiver to impose a new
way of life on the Chinese people. Zhang interprets founding as an empirical question:
recognizing the necessarily shared, interpersonal nature of functional political rule, Zhang asks
how personal practices and outlooks can be gradually reoriented toward unprecedented, society-
wide ways of living and governing, a process he believes is precipitated but never determined by
the incremental, exemplary actions of ordinary individuals. In formulating this solution, he
recasts the legitimacy/efficacy question in a slightly different light, borrowing from a neo-
Confucian model in which the efficacy of an act turns on its very moral rightness. Zhang‘s
arguments suggest that the efficacy of an act turns not on its absolute moral authority but, in a
democratic society at least, on its resonance with others—which rests legitimacy in what are
often incomplete but always ongoing attempts at inspiring and being inspired by others, rather
than in a set of institutions to which all must instantaneously consent. In the process, Zhang
offers a more realistic picture both of inaugural political action and the spaces and times in which
such action is possible.
The chapters that follow detail Zhang‘s attention to the steps in this transformative
founding process—from self-awareness (自覺), to local engagement of one‘s talents (自用才), to
Convention