Abstract: The postmodernist critics in political science search for an ethics that can accommodate ontological alterities conventionally denied voices in political literature. Confucianism is useful because it demonstrates the existence of such an alterity. By historicizing Confucianism, Confucianism ironically becomes an irreplaceable discursive vehicle to understanding Chinese political behavior. Postmodernist ethics points to the possibility of moving out of Confucianism. This possibility cautions against any scientific explanation of behavior because scientific explanation is, by comparison, no more than another historicist contingency. Political actors are thus in an ontological position to determine where they derive meanings of social surroundings. This way, postmodernist teachings prove that every human being is ethically responsible for their own actions.