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Given the centrality of ritual and its relation to ethical conduct in Confucian thought,it is rather remarkable that,apart from Song dynasty-inspired fascination with the Zhongyong (中庸) and Daxue(大学) chapters,very little modern philosophical attention has been paid to the entire corpus of Liji (礼记),Record of Rights.In addition to this lacuna,it is only very recently that scholars of Religious Studies who focus on ritual have turned their attention to early Confucian conceptions of rites with an eye to incorporating these conceptions into alternative theoretical frameworks.While Michael Ing's truly outstanding and powerfully argued Dysfunction of Ritual—grounded both in classical Chinese and modern English-language commentary—does extrapolate a "tragic theory of ritual" which broadens discussions in current Religious Studies debates,this review will focus on the degree to which this "tragic theory" can deepen our estimation of early Confucian thought.