The beginnings of this book lie in a chapter that I decided not to write for my dissertation. I was intrigued by what Liu Shipei had written about “quanli” – his term for rights – in the first years of the twentieth century. I was coming close to finishing my dissertation on the nature of cross-cultural ethical differences, and I thought that a study of the differences between Liu's concept of quanli and Western ideas of rights current in his day would enhance what I had already written. At some point, though, it occurred to me that if I didn't write the chapter on Liu, I could finish the dissertation that much sooner – and maybe, if I was lucky, get a job. My advisers agreed, and I filed away my notes on Liu for another occasion. My thanks once again to an excellent trio of graduate advisers, Don Munro, Peter Railton, and Allan Gibbard, both for all their help and for knowing when I should stop.

A few months later, luck had come through and I was starting a job at Wesleyan University. Soon after I got there I learned that a major East-West Philosophers' Conference was to be held the following January in Hawaii, and that Wesleyan would pay for me to go if I could get my name on the program. This sounded like too good an offer to pass up, so I called Roger Ames and asked if there was anything he could do for me.