Abstract
Much of the recent debate on the nature, justification, and applicability of human rights or quanli 權利 in the Chinese context has, for better or worse, converged on Confucianism1 as a possible conceptual resource for translating the language of rights into an idiom that may be more compatible with the Chinese worldview. Either explicitly or implicitly, the vast majority of sinologists in the debate assume the following premise:
Confucianism continues even today to be the basis of the Chinese world view… Hence any workable theory of rights justifiable on Chinese terms will in all likelihood emerge out of and be consistent with the basic premises of Confucianism.2
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Notes
See Wm. Theodore de Bary and Tu Weiming, eds., Confucianism and Human Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998);
Joseph Chan, “A Confucian Perspective on Human Rights for Contemporary China,” in The East Asian Challenges to Human Rights, ed. by Joanne R. Nauer and Daniel A. Bell (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 212–240; and the contributions by Henry Rosemont, Jr., Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Roger T. Ames in Human Rights and the World’s Religions, ed. by Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). As Stephen C. Angle points out, with the notable exception of Wm. Theodore de Bary, much of the work being done with Confucianism and human rights seems to equate “classical Confucianism with the whole of Chinese tradition and seems to assume that Chinese moral discourse is static.”
See Stephen C. Angle, Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 21.
R. P. Peerenboom, “What’s Wrong with Chinese Rights?: Toward a Theory of Rights with Chinese Characteristics,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 6 (1993), 32. Peerenboom concedes that Confucianism is not the “only intellectual influence,” but the only other “tradition” which he mentions is “socialism.”
On this point, see Sumner B. Twiss, “Confucianism and Human Rights,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Human Rights, ed. by David Forsythe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 394–403.
Anna Seidel, “Taoism: The Unofficial High Religion of China,” Taoist Resources 7.2 (1997), 40.
See Q. C. Ian Brownlie, ed. Basic Documents on Human Rights, 3rd Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
See Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 355–387.
See also Amartya Sen, “The Global Reach of Human Rights,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 29.2 (2012), 91–100.
See Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 355–387.
See also Amartya Sen, “The Global Reach of Human Rights,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 29.2 (2012), 91–100.
See Liu Xiaogan, Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1994);
Luo Genze 羅根澤, “Zhuangzi waizapian tanyuan” 莊子外雜篇探源, in Zhuzi kaosuo 諸子考索 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1958), 282–312;
A. C. Graham, “How Much of Chuang-tzu Did Chuang-tzu Write?” in Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990), 283–321;
Guan Feng 關鋒, “Zhuangzi waizapian chutan” 莊子外雜篇初探, in Zhuangzi neipian yijie he pipan 莊子内篇譯解和批判 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960), 319–358. Luo calls this group “leftist Daoists” (zuopai daoji 左游家) while Liu, in addition to this group of chapters, also adds chapters 28, 29, and 31 (what Graham labels the “Yangist Chapters”) to a classificatory heading that he calls the “Anarchist School.” Although there are clear similarities between the Primitivist and Yangist Chapters (e.g., critique of moralists, focus on xing, utopian aspirations), I believe that the two sets of chapters are distinct enough ideologically and philosophically that the two designations, pace Liu, are warranted. I would also add Chapter 16 (Shanshing 繞,性), based on philosophical affinity and parallel terminology, to the category of “Primitivist Chapters.”
See Qian Mu 錢穆, Xian Qin zhuzi xinian 先秦諸子繁年 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 524–574.
See Harold Roth, “An Appraisal of Angus Graham’s Textual Scholarship on the Chuang Tzu,” in A Companion to Angus C. Graham’s Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters, ed. by Harold Roth (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), 199.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Second, Revised Edition, trans. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1995), 300.
Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Topics in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 85.
Hayden White, Metahistory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 11. I am assuming with White that one invokes, at least tacitly, such putative laws in the course of explaining such historical phenomena as, let’s say, the Great Depression or the Fall of the Roman Empire.
This is based on Ruan Zhisheng’s 阮芝生 analysis of Sima Qian’s historical method in the Shiji. See Stephen Durrant, The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qjan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995), 128. The relative convergence between Sima Qian’s historiographical presuppositions and those of the Primitivists may derive from a shared set of cultural beliefs (e.g., cosmology, metaphysics) more than anything else. As Michael Loewe, Frederick Mote, and Benjamin Schwartz have suggested, the “organismic” model of cosmology may be a pan-Sinitic phenomenon, applicable to ancient Chinese thought as a whole.
Cf. Laozi 80. Although Arthur Waley infers from the relative consonance between Chapter 80 of the Laozi and the passage from Chapter 10 of the Zhuangzi that the former must have borrowed from the latter, one could argue, perhaps more reasonably as Graham does, that both passages could be derivative of a common source, possibly the lost writings of Shennong. See Arthur Waley, The Way and Its Power: La Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 242; Graham, “Reflections and Replies,” in Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham, ed. by Henry Rosemont, Jr. (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1991), 271.
See also Cho-yun Hsu, “Comparisons of Idealized Societies in Chinese History: Confucian and Taoist Models,” in Sages and Filial Sons: Mythology and Archeology in Ancient China, ed. by Julia Ching and R. W. L. Guisso (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1991), 43–63.
David Miller, Anarchism (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1984), 5.
See also Patrick Dunleavy, “The State,” in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993), 611–621.
See also Patrick Dunleavy, “The State,” in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993), 611–621.
Ames, The Art of Rulership, 7. See also Michael LaFargue, A Tao of the Tao Te Ching: A Translation and Commentary (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992), 167.
Dan Robins, “The Warring States Concept of Xing,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 10 (2011), 32. Cf. A. C. Graham, “The Background of the Mencian Theory of Human Nature,” in Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature, 7–66.
See also Franklin Perkins, “Recontextualizing Xing: Self-Cultivation and Human Nature in the Guodian Texts,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37 (2010), 16–32.
David Little, “Natural Rights and Human Rights: The International Imperative,” in Natural Law and Natural Rights: The Legacy of George Mason, ed. by Robert P. Davidow (Fairfax, VA: The George Mason University Press, 1986), 69.
See Qian Mu 錢穆, Guoshi da gang 國史大綱 (Beijing: Shang wu yinshu guan, 1996), 88–89.
Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989), 96.
See George Woodcock, Anarchism (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1962), 111.
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, ed. by Isaac Kramnick (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976).
On this point see Roger T. Ames, “Is Political Taoism Anarchism?” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 10.1 (1983), 27.
John P. Clark, “What Is Anarchism,” in Anarchism, ed. by J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: New York University Press, 1978), 13. See also Richard Sylvan, “Anarchism,” in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, 215–243.
See Julia Ching, Mysticism and Kingship in China: The Heart of Chinese Wisdom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), xv.
Sumner B. Twiss, “Global Ethics and Human Rights: A Reflection,” Journal of Religious Ethics 39.2 (2011), 212.
Harold Roth, “The Yellow Emperor’s Guru: A Narrative Analysis from Chuang Tzu 11,” Taoist Resources 7 (1997), 44.
Amartya Sen, Human Rights and Asian Values (New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 1997), 27.
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© 2014 Jung H. Lee
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Lee, J.H. (2014). The Preservation of the Way: Rights, Community, and Social Ethics in the Zhuangzi . In: The Ethical Foundations of Early Daoism. Palgrave Macmillan’s Content and Context in Theological Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137384867_5
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