| Chapter 4: | Human Dignity |
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Notes
1. Zhang Dainian, “Zhongguo Gudian Zhexue zhong de Renge Zunyan Sixiang,” 18.
2. Yan Yunxiang, “Introduction,” 2.
3. For the relation between human dignity and human rights, see Roetz (“Rights and Duties: East/West”), who emphasizes the autonomous role of the moral agent in ancient Confucianism. Rediscovering Confucianism’s humanist tradition, some scholars like Du Weiming (Tu Wei-ming) Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity) and de Bary (Confucianism and Human Rights, 158–167; and The Liberal Tradition in China) consider Confucianism compatible with modern liberalism and democracy. They link the idea of “reciprocity” with the idea of “implicit rights”: duties and obligations might well be thought of as a form of rights, in the sense of reciprocal obligations categorically demanded of the sovereign, the subject, the father, the son, and the spouses, with the consciousness that this interpretation is an innovation in light of present sensibilities and changes in social structure and hierarchies. Others, like Rosemont, emphasize that the particularized role of ethics allows no room for the modern Western conception of the free and autonomous self on which the rights discourse is predicated. On different positions see Anthony Yu’s critical evaluation of Wang Gungwu (“Power, Rights, and Duties in Chinese History,” 165–187). Anthony Yu (“Enduring Change,” 53–54) is doubtful about the compatibility of Confucianism with human rights and the full development of personality for its inadequacy to protect against the invasion or harm of each individual’s fundamental dignity.
4. Shuowen jiezi 說文解字, Wo bu 我部, 8359. Cited and translated by Peimin Ni, “Seek and You Will Find It,” 180.
5. Zhang Qianfan, “The Idea of Human Dignity in Classical Chinese Philosophy,” 305. In Human Dignity in Classical Chinese Philosophy (240), Zhang judges Confucianism to be unsatisfactory from modern perspectives due to the prevalent consideration of human beings as the subjects of social control in the interests of order and the paternalistic care of the ruler. Therefore Zhang integrates Confucian moralism with Mohist utilitarism. See Li Minghui, “Rujia Chuantong yu Renquan,” 6–8.