In the Confucian framework, the self is not a bounded individual who then enters into relationships — the self is constituted by those relationships, defined by its place in the web of human obligations. This is not a loss of individuality but a different account of what an individual is: a person in context, whose flourishing is inseparable from the flourishing of those around them. The loneliness of the disconnected Western self is, from this view, a philosophical error.
Each step builds on the last.