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merely on the ‘fearless remonstrance of loyal ministers’ that de Bary’s books exalt repeatedly?” (Anthony Yu, “Enduring Change,” 55–56).

15. On prejudice as root of dehumanization and justification of violence, see Bandura, Underwood, and Fromson, “Disinhibition of aggression through diffusion of responsibility and dehumanization of victims”; Bandura, “Selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency”; and Volpato, Deumanizzazione.

16. Peimin Ni, “Seek and You Will Find It,” 193–196. As Zhang Qianfan notes in Human Dignity in Classical Chinese Philosophy (20–21), virtues are vague, and Confucians might not agree among themselves as to which virtues should be placed at the highest hierarchy.

17. Roetz, “Human Rights in China,” 305.

18. Mengzi, Gaozi I, 10 告子上.

19. Roetz, Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age, 153–154; and Xu Keqian, “A Contemporary Re-Examination of Confucian Li 禮 and Human Dignity,” 454.

20. According to de Bary (“Individualism and Humanitarianism in Late Ming Thought,” 146–147), “[...] There is, first of all, the individualism of the hermit or recluse, who has largerly withdrawn from society. This we might call a personal or ‘private’ individualism. Though it has a positive aspect in affirming the individual’s freedom from society and his own transcendent value, from the standpoint of society this is a ‘negative’ individualism since it has no effect on the status of other individuals. It makes no positive claim within society [...]. By contrast, there is a more ‘positive’ and public individualism which seeks to establish the place of the individual or self in relation to others, to secure his rights and status in some institutional framework, or on the basis of widely declared and accepted principles. Here we face the paradox that, in order to establish and secure its own claims, such an individualism must be ‘social.’ Confucianism attempts this in relation to the family and the state [...].”

21. “故謂人有男女則可，謂見有男女豈可乎？謂見有長短則可，謂男子之見盡長，女人之見盡短，又豈可乎？” (Li Zhi, Fenshu 2: 59, Da Yi Nüren Xuedao Wei Jian Duan Shu 答以女人學道為見短書).

22. A religious antecedent of the human dignity is certainly the Christian notion of imago Dei: every human is created in God’s image, and moreover is re-created with the reincarnation of Christ as a human being. But still this high concept risked being a rhetorical expression without a concrete impact on real life because it was marked by the flaw of original