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and individuality” and “Confucianism and corruption”). For a general survey on the debate, see Sarkissian, “Recent Approaches to Confucian Filial Morality,” 725–734. Some authors have expressed various doubts about Confucian filial morality, worrying that this may bring corruption, provincialism, and parochialism (Hall and Ames, Thinking through Confucius, 307–311). Moreover, serious objections are based on the difference between filiality and obedience as well as the evolution of hierarchy roles and of a new sensibility for personal autonomy and reciprocity (Radice, “Confucius and Filial Piety,” 196–200).

12. In a personal comment (e-mail dated June 4, 2006), Mark Elvin argues that “the old Latin root ‘dign-’ stressed something exceptional: exceptional merit, worth, high rank, or prestige. Virtually by definition, it could not refer to a property common to all humans.” Additionally, he raises two questions: “historical anachronism within cultures (both Western and Chinese, since the situation was not timeless in either), and cultural meta-ethism (a word I have just invented, but being no Greek scholar, would be happy to see improved upon: ‘ethos’ means ‘customs’ or ‘manners,’ so let’s say ‘culture,’ and ‘meta-’ points to a change of condition or mind, so shifting in uncritical fashion from one culture’s discourse into another’s with insufficient care to check how far they are compatible). These two dimensions also get inter-tangled.” Elvin (“Between the Earth and Heaven,” 227–228) warns against the “mistake to equate ‘Chinese’ with ‘Confucian,’” as we cannot ignore radical Daoist “individualism” and the whole of “mind” tradition in Neo-Confucianism. Moreover, Elvin (Changing Stories in the Chinese World) has highlighted that the re-incarnational concept of Buddhism and Daoism trans-temporally allows for multiple relational links that modify the unique positioning of a Chinese individual within a given social context.

13. Roetz, “Human Rights in China,” 310.

14. “In the public realm of society, it has to do rather with what happens when virtue fails and how will those in power be held accountable. Subjects, wives, children, and inquisitive journalists may be swiftly penalized if they err, but who will effectively censure, curb, or bring to justice the transgressive emperor, the patriarch, the judge, the senior minister, or the members of the ruling party? The question of human rights, in this context, is not about mutual kindness, assistance, and cooperation, however noble such acts may be in themselves. Rather, it is about the lower and lowest levels of human society and what recourse they have and do not have when they are abused and ill-treated. Must they rely