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Confucianism and the Problem of Human Rights
Randall Nadeau
Trinity University
Opposing Sides of the Human Rights Debate
The human rights debate has typically been framed as an argument between
opposing sides: Asia vs. the West, “Asian values” vs. “Western values,” and
specifically Eastern (Confucian) Communitarianism vs. Western Individualism.
In Asia, according to this view, the “rights of the community” are emphasized
over individual, “political and civil” rights. In addition, defenders of “Asian
values” accuse Western liberal democracies of pursuing an oppressive,
colonialist agenda, threatening the viability of communities-in-transformation by
the one-sided and single-minded assertion of selfish individual needs.
This debate has assumed a series of associations: Asian, Confucian,
communitarian, authoritarian, and statist, on the one hand; Western, Christian,
individualist, and liberal-democratic, on the other. I would like to argue in this
paper that these are false associations, focusing on the Asian side of the equation,
and that Asian, and specifically Confucian, values are a powerful, universal
resource for a profound affirmation of human freedom expressed in both
individual and communitarian terms. Far from asserting the hegemony of the
state, community, or family over and against individuals, Confucianism supports
human liberation for individuals-in-community. Western liberal democracy is
not the only model for universal human rights: I will argue that Confucianism
can and should be a universal ethic of human liberation. The goal of personal
freedom is not uniquely Western, and it is not anti-Confucian. Selfdetermination is as much a Confucian value as it is a Western value, and the
West has a great deal to learn from the East about self-cultivation in the context
of family and community life. Embedded in the Confucian classics, as well as
historically in specific Confucian institutions, is a profound idea of individual
possibility, creativity, and achievement, in some ways more dynamic and
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integrative than Western values, which see individuals and communities in
conflict and opposition.
Part of the problem in the debate over human rights is attributable to the
definition of “rights,” which individuals are believed to “have,” “assert,” or
“share,” or to “be granted” or “be denied.” There are often disagreements as to
what rights should be included in the enumeration of rights, as well as
disagreements about the role of social institutions (family, community, and state)
which may either guarantee or infringe those rights. Later, I will return to the
question of how the various rights are typically grouped and organized, but
“human rights” can be seen to include any or all of the following: the rights of
conviction (freedom of religion or of opinion), the rights of speech (freedom of
expression and dissent), political rights including the freedom of assembly and
the right to vote, familial rights including the right to marry and bear children
(or freedom from constraint or forced marriage), juridical rights including the
right to due process (freedom from arbitrary arrest, torture, and imprisonment
without trial), social rights (including the right to an education, the right to work
and fair wages, the right to a home, and the right to adequate sanitation and
health care), and communal rights (such as the right to self-determination of
minority ethnic groups in maintaining their artistic, linguistic, religious, and
cultural traditions). For the moment, let us think of “human rights” in all of these
senses, from “personal” to “communal,” as I will argue that Confucianism
supports all human rights, including individual human rights, and not just those
rights associated with the family, community, and state.
The idea that Confucianism supports human rights is not widely shared, and
there are many who would argue – and have argued – that Confucianism does
just the opposite, supporting the power of the state or of the family over against
individual freedom, and sustaining the power of males over females in its
economic and cultural forms. Chinese intellectuals of the New Culture and May
4th movements (in the late Qing and early Republican period) criticized
Confucianism as the product of a feudal age. Chen Duxiu, a founder of the
Communist Party, contrasted Confucian mores with independence and personal
choice, and saw Confucianism as China’s great oppressive force. He
sympathized in particular with “sons,” “younger brothers,” “daughters,” and
“wives,” who have suffered under the tyrannical institutions of the Confucian
family and state (de Bary, 1960, pp. 153-156). A leading feminist of the same
period, He Zhen, stated that Confucianism “promotes male selfishness” and
“deprives women of their natural rights;” Confucianism justifies “polygamy [for
men] and chastity [for women] … driving women to their deaths with empty
talk of virtue … [and] condemning women to the hells” (He, pp. 7-13). Lu
Xiulian, now the Vice President of the Republic of China on Taiwan, has stated
this same view more recently in a whole-scale condemnation of Confucianism
for centuries of oppressive conditions for women (Lu, 1990).
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In contemporary China, Confucianism is employed as an ideology that
supports the rights of the community (including the rights of the state) against
individual self-interest. In contrast to the anti-Confucian stance of the Chinese
Communist Party through most of its history, the new regime, shaped by Deng
Xiaoping and carried forth by his protégé Jiang Zemin, has embraced
Confucianism as an indigenous defense against the hegemonic influence of the
West, and in particular against the accusations of human rights abuses voiced by
Western governments (Lam, 1995). This is not simply a communist argument:
The current leadership of the People’s Republic of China is following the
footsteps of Taiwan’s Jiang Jieshi and Singapore’s Lee Kwan-yu in defining
Confucianism as benevolent authoritarianism. The use of Confucianism as an
apology for states’ rights over individual freedom is the ironic byproduct of the
drive to modernization, which affirms Western techniques but rejects Western
“spiritual pollution.”
It is not surprising, then, that Confucianism should be seen in opposition to
individual human rights, as this was the view of the early reformers, who
rejected Confucianism because of its oppressive nature, as well as modern
authoritarian states, which embrace Confucianism to justify limits upon
individual freedom for the sake of social progress and economic efficiency.
In my view, this reading of Confucianism is itself historically conditioned
by China’s emergence as a world power, and its self-conscious efforts to define
itself in opposition to the economically and technologically advanced powers of
the West. The definition of Confucianism as authoritarian – whether that
authoritarianism is “oppressive” or “benevolent” – is a product of modern
history, and though it is true that a tendency to authoritarian abuses can be found
in the Confucian tradition, it is not definitive of that tradition. In fact,
Confucianism, both in its essence and in its historical manifestations, is a force
of human liberation, whether communal or individual, and has been a prophetic
voice on behalf of personal freedom and human rights throughout its long
history.
Again, I am not alone in interpreting Confucianism in this light. It is a view
shared by some of China’s greatest modern intellectuals: Kang Youwei, Liang
Qichao (1873-1929), Hu Shi (1891-1962), Mou Zongsan, up to Tu Weiming in
the present day (Zarrow, 1998, pp. 209-233; Tu, 1960, pp. 297-307). All of these
intellectuals deny that Confucianism is authoritarian at its core, but rather see
Confucianism as a profound resource for the attainment of individual freedom in
the context of the positive construction of a wider community identity.
Historically, this prophetic voice has rarely been empowered by state
recognition, and thus the Confucian tradition shares with the prophets of Biblical
religions a role as social critic speaking from the cultural core, though often at
the political margins. It is false to associate Confucianism with the interests of
the state, as Confucianism has for most of its history been a source of gentle
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remonstration and principled argument against the worst abuses of state’s rights
or political authoritarianism.
Human Rights and Their Underlying Principles
Where is the conflict between “East” and “West” in the human rights arena?
Clearly, it is not in the definition of rights themselves, where there is broad
universal agreement. Most states are signatories to the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the 1979 Convention on the Protection of
Women’s Human Rights, and other protocols. Where disagreements arise is in
the principles underlying these standards: the meaning of “rights” as a
philosophical idea, the cultural understanding of human identity, and the
relationship between individuals and communities. These disagreements are
profound and important, as they affect the implementation of human rights
protocols when conflicts arise between human rights and national interests.
Some argue that as long as there is agreement about the enumeration of
rights, the underlying principles can differ, preserving the cultural autonomy and
local understandings of Western and Asian states.1 But I believe that some
mutual agreement on underlying principles is crucial if human rights are to be
recognized on an international basis. Both Western and Eastern states can
contribute principles from their respective cultural traditions to the on-going
dialogue on human rights. I believe that Confucianism can contribute greatly to
this mutual understanding, not by emphasizing the community over and against
the individual, but by providing a positive model for their interaction, which
includes, at times, the defense of individual freedoms against the oppressive
tendencies of the family or state.
For example, one area where there is profound disagreement between the
United States and the PRC is in the different emphases given to “first
generation” and “second generation” human rights. The U.S. favors “first
generation” human rights, which are translated into Chinese as “renquan”:
freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of
assembly, freedom of choice. China consistently argues in human rights debates
for the “second generation” human rights, sometimes described as “minquan”2:
the right to work and receive fair wages, the protection of the family, adequate
standards of living, rights to education and health care, rights to political, social,
economic, and cultural development, and rights to the expression of ethnic and
religious identities. Again, it is not the case that states disagree on these rights,
but they disagree (at least rhetorically) on their prioritization, and this arises
from the different principles underlying cultural understandings of the self and
the self’s relationship to other selves in their families and communities.
Looking at the Western values underlying human rights, we can see why
“first generation” rights are given so much emphasis. These include the radical
autonomy of the individual, the soul in a transcendent relationship vis-à-vis the
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world, the prioritizing of the individual over the family, and the prioritizing of
the individual over the state. The West defines human rights as “freedom from”
oppressive tendencies of the family and state, and grounds human rights in the
fundamental equality of all persons. Thus, human rights are equated with human
liberation – liberation of the autonomous individual from the restrictive
community.
Are these values necessary for human rights? If so, then it will be difficult
to imagine that Asian nation-states will be able to subscribe to the “first
generation” rights given so much importance in the West. A number of scholars
have argued that the language of human rights depends upon Western
individualism, which is conceptually absent from the Confucian tradition3.
Indeed, we find no equivalents in Classical Chinese to any of the following
concepts so basic to Western human rights discourse: “freedom,” “liberty,”
“individual,” “autonomy,” “rights,” “choice,” “equality,” and “dignity.” The
Chinese translations of these terms all have modern origins, most dating to the
last hundred years, and all have a distinctly Western ring. Often, Chinese
evaluate these terms in a negative light.
The absence of individualism as a philosophical concept leads some
scholars to conclude that the very language of “rights” should be abandoned in
inter-cultural moral discourse (Rosemont, 1960, pp. 54-56). As long as the
language of “rights” persists, they argue, there will be no possibility of resolving
moral conflicts, either within or between nation-states. In Henry Rosemont’s
words, “The conceptual framework of rights, within which human beings are
seen as free, rationally choosing autonomous individuals, is at the heart of the
problem… Neither the Confucian tradition nor contemporary American society
is best served by scholars examining the Confucian corpus for precursors of the
concept of human rights. Much more will be gained … by seeing the Confucian
vision as an alternative to ours, and one that may, with emendations, be viable
for the ‘global village’ our planet is becoming” (Ibid, pp. 57, 60).
I do not believe, with Rosemont, that it is necessary for us to abandon the
language of “rights” for productive dialogue to go forward, but I agree strongly
with his suggestion that we look to Confucianism for new perspectives on the
debate (Rosemont, 1988, pp. 167-182). Specifically, we on the Western side
may have to rethink individualism as the conceptual separation between persons
and the communities in which they live. Talking about rights in terms of a
fundamental opposition between the individual and the community is counterproductive to intercultural dialogue. The concept of rights does not depend upon
Western individualism, and it is especially counterproductive to the
development of “second-generation” rights protocols to insist upon a Westernindividualist foundation for global human rights.
Turning to the Confucian values underlying human rights discourse, we see
a very different understanding of the individual in relation to his or her family
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and community. The Confucian self is a “center of relationships,” living within
the world.4 Individual identity is defined in relation to the family, the
community, and the state. For the Confucian tradition, human rights are best
defined not as “freedom from” the restraints of community life, but “freedom
for” participation in the totality of human relationships. Thus, human rights are
associated with human duties. Individuals are placed in a relationship of
integration with others on the basis of the rights and responsibilities of persons
within their communities.
Does this mean that the individual “disappears” in the cultural collectivity,
sacrificed to the interests of the group? This is a common Western
misconception of the Confucian understanding of the self. But classical
Confucianism does not in any way diminish the importance of the self in the
cultivation of moral ideals – in fact, the self is central, and is the starting point
for any possibility of human moral improvement. This is stated simply but
profoundly in the Great Learning (Daxue)5, moving from the cultivation of
reason and knowledge to the rectification of the self and the state. In the
Confucian tradition, everything of value and importance begins with the self.
But clearly this is not the Western self, abstracted from the community in which
it grows and develops. Rather, it is a self defined by those relationships,
developing in reciprocal interaction with others. Self and community are
mutually produced, not mutually opposed.
Classical Confucian Principles for Human Rights
The integration of self and community is expressed in the basic teachings of
classical Confucianism. First, we can find the seeds of human rights in the
Mencian idea of ren or “human goodness.” For Mencius, ren is the defining
mark of humanity, to the extent that someone lacking in ren is literally “not a
person.”6 Ren is the inner capacity for moral development, and is often
translated into English as “benevolence,” “kindness,” “love,” and so on. Western
interpreters often think of ren as “internal” and therefore “private,” but it is a
thoroughly communitarian idea. The character “ren” means “co-humanity,” that
is, the common feeling shared among all humans as moral agents, and Mencius’
insistence that ren is the identifying quality of a human being means that the
essence of personal identity is the self’s full participation in a range of human
relationships. Ren is important, essential to being human; therefore, it is
humans’ right to develop and express ren to their fullest capacity.
Ren is a very important idea for the development of the Confucian basis for
human rights. Mencius insisted that moral sensitivity, the sensitivity that
distinguishes humans from all other species, is found within persons, not
imposed from outside. This is a profound statement of individual human dignity.
My humanity originates from myself; it is not a “gift” bestowed upon me by my
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parents or by the state. So, the Communist idea that rights are bestowed by the
state is fundamentally anti-Confucian.
A similar argument can be made about the other key concept of the classical
Confucian tradition: li. Li is translated as “rites” but includes all of the civilizing
patterns of speech and behavior that define individual existence in relation to
other persons. Li goes much further than the Western idea of law; li is not an
“external restraint,” but the outward expression of the moral sensitivity of ren,
and involves every aspect of the self in its moral development. Classical
Confucianism sees li as a positive virtue encouraging the individual’s full
participation in his or her wider community. Li requires that persons have a
place, an arena of moral expression, and again it is a violation of their human
rights to deprive them of that place. In this sense, we can define li as the situated
meaning of ren. It could be said that li gives structure to the more inchoate,
more volatile feelings of ren. The natural feelings and desires that make me a
human being are interactive, and the li give me the words and behaviors that
allow that human interaction to take place in a way that is productive and
fulfilling for all persons.
It is a mistake to interpret li as coercive. This is very un-Confucian, and in
fact the Confucian tradition has always been careful to distinguish the moral
guidelines of li from the coercive and punitive measures of fa (law) or xing
(punishment). Ultimately, the li are internalized. They are as much a part of
myself as are the feelings of benevolence and humanity defined by ren. So, the
expression of li is found in the participation of individuals in community, not the
imposition of community needs over against individual desires. To put it another
way, it is a natural human desire to want to participate in family and community;
the li are simply the means to do so.
The continuum between ren and li, then, is not the Western continuum of
private and public. Ren is as much public as it is private, because it defines
humanity in terms of the interpersonal orientation of the self. The li are as much
private as they are public, as they are the means of expression of our inner
feelings and desires. The private/public dichotomy simply does not exist in
classical Confucian thought – the terms gong and si are complementary and
interactive (Judge, 1998, p.221; Zarrow, 1998).
How then can we define human rights in Confucian terms? I would put it
simply as follows:
It is inhuman to deprive persons of their humanity, that is, it is a violation
of a person’s human rights to deprive that person of the relationships that
he or she has cultivated as a moral agent. Engaging in moral selfcultivation vis-à-vis their families and communities, as children of
parents, citizens of the state, as brothers, sisters, and friends, all persons
should enjoy the right to develop as individuals-in-community, not by
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coercion or restraint, but by the full development of self-generated moral
growth and fulfillment.
In one of the first drafts of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, we
find this sentiment expressed in Confucian terms: “All men are brothers. As
human beings with the gift of reason and members of a single family, they are
free and equal in dignity and rights.”7
Clearly, the Confucian ideas of ren and li are fully compatible with both
“first generation” and “second generation” human rights. As moral agents with a
shared inner capacity for growth, persons should have the freedom to cultivate
moral virtue to its full individual potential. As individuals-in-community, they
should cultivate this virtue in an arena where basic needs are met and all persons
are provided the means for full participation in the communities in which they
live and grow.
To state this point in another way, the conflict between first generation and
second generation human rights assumes the separability between individual and
community: This is a conflict that arises only when one accepts Western
individualism as the basis for human rights. But from a Confucian point of view,
just as self and community are conceptually inseparable, so too are first
generation and second generation human rights inseparable in practice. Insofar
as self and community are mutually generative (that is, self and community
produce one another), first-generation and second-generation human rights are
mutually productive.8
Human Rights and the Confucian Self
While I am convinced that the Confucian tradition, as evidenced in the
doctrines of ren and li, is fully consistent with human rights, Confucianism may
suggest a conception of the self that is significantly different from the traditional
Western view – with implications for human rights in practice.
The first significant area of difference is in the idea of equality. Ren is
fundamentally egalitarian, in that all persons are seen to possess the means by
which to develop as moral beings, but the practice of ren is never egalitarian.
That is to say, it is a basic characteristic of human relationships that they are
hierarchical and therefore non-egalitarian. Confucius said, Junzi he er bu tong,
xiaoren tong er bu he (Lunyu 13:23). The fully developed moral person, the
junzi, seeks harmony without equality, or harmony-in-difference; the morally
undeveloped person, or “petty person,” seeks equality without regard for
harmony. Harmony depends, in other words, upon social differentiation.
This idea is developed more fully by Mencius when he describes the Five
Cardinal Relationships as the active manifestations of ren.
Öparent/child
Öruler/minister
Öhusband/wife
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Öelder/younger
Öfriend/friend
These Five Relationships are basic expressions of ren, and so, again,
participation in these relationships is the fullest expression of humanity. No one,
especially the state, should deprive any human being of full participation in each.
But these relationships are unequal to the core: They are hierarchical, first
reading from top to bottom (suggesting that some relationships are more
important than others), and second reading from left to right. Of course,
Mencius was careful to limit the powers of the stronger parties in these pairs,
and his stance against tyranny is well known, but the inequality of persons at the
level of duties and obligations is basic to Confucianism.
As a Westerner who bases human dignity upon human equality, I am
uncomfortable with hierarchy, especially when it is based simply upon the
conditions of birth (being born last rather than first, female rather than male, and
so on). But I do think that human rights must be made compatible with hierarchy
if they are to be acceptable to Confucian cultures.
Without going into detail here, I think that one solution to this conflict
between East and West is to suggest that the Confucian tradition retain a
hierarchy of merit while abandoning a hierarchy of birth. That is to say,
deference is owed to those who have cultivated and earned their status rather
than attaining their status by birth. A parent is not superior to a child simply by
the act of procreation; a man is not superior to a woman simply by the fact of
biological differentiation; one friend or sibling is not better than another simply
by virtue of their order of birth. Here is an area where Western thought may
contribute to a new understanding of hierarchy in the Confucian tradition.
There is Confucian precedence for the compatibility of hierarchy and
equality, and that can be found in Wang Yangming’s tenure as a magistrate
among so-called “barbarian tribes” in Guizhou during his banishment from the
capital. While Wang Yangming found the people of Guizhou to be uncultured,
uncivilized, and in a basic sense, not fully human, his interaction with these
people ultimately led to his belief in the basic moral potential of all human
beings (Wang, 1970; Ch’ien, 1970). That is to say, human potential is
fundamental to all persons, and so all persons are equal in terms of the seeds of
moral growth. To put it in modern terms, all persons are equally deserving of
basic human rights.
A second Confucian challenge to the Western conception of human rights is
in the fundamentally communitarian basis of li. As we have seen, the traditional
Western view of human rights conceptually separates the individual from the
community, which is potentially oppressive. So, human rights are frequently
expressed in Western terms as a kind of freedom, independence, or liberation.
Feminism, for example, is equated with “women’s liberation” from the
oppressive nature of fixed gender roles.
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Indeed, there is an oppressive quality of the Confucian li which is well
known to both Asian and Western critics of the Confucian tradition. And I
would like once again to propose a new understanding, partly informed by my
Western upbringing, for a more fluid understanding of li. This more fluid
understanding permits full participation in the hierarchical roles required by the
li, without seeing those roles as fixed and immutable. As I have expressed the
point earlier in this paper, human rights can be defined not as “freedom from li”
(or, liberation from the potentially restrictive tendencies of the li), but rather as
freedom to participate fully in the li, in a way that is expressive of selfdetermination and self-motivation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have attempted in this paper to make these four
statements:
1. The Confucian tradition supports human rights for individuals-in-community,
including both “first generation” and “second generation” rights.
2. Ren and li are positive models for self-cultivation, emphasizing human
creativity and development.
3. Ren and li are definitive of humanity, and it is a violation of a person’s human
rights to deny his or her full participation in family, community, and state as a
self-actualizing moral agent.
4. Confucian relationships are non-egalitarian but affirm the fundamental worth,
dignity, and freedom of all persons.
References
Ch’ien, T-h.
1970 Nien-p’u. 32:7a.
de Bary, W. T., et al. (Eds.)
1960 Sources of the Chinese Tradition, vol.2, pp. 153-156. New York:
Columbia University Press.
de Bary, W.T., & Tu, W. (Eds.)
1998 Confucianism and Human Rights. New York: Columbia University
Press.
He, Z.
1998 Nuzi fuchou lun, Tianyi bao no. 3(10), 7-13. In P. Zarrow (Trans.).
Quoted in W. T. de Bary & W. Tu (Eds.) Confucianism and Human
Rights (pp. 2-3). New York: Columbia University Press.
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Judge, J.
1998
The Concept of Popular Empowerment (Minquan) in the Late Qing.
In W. T. de Bary & W. Tu (Eds.) Confucianism and Human Rights
(p. 196). New York: Columbia University Press.
Lam, W.W-L.
1995 Jiang’s Crusade. South China Morning Post, May 3, 1995. Cited in
Randall Peerenboom, “Confucian Harmony and Freedom of
Thought,” in W. T. de Bary & W. Tu (1998)(Eds.) Confucianism
and Human Rights (p.255, n. 7). New York: Columbia University
Press.
Lu, X
1990 Xin Nuxing zhuyi, 4th Ed. Taipei: Qianwei chubanshe.
Rosemont, H.
1988 Why Take Rights Seriously: A Confucian Critique. In L. Rouner
(Ed.), Human Rights and the World’s Religions (pp. 167-182).
South Bend: University of Notre Dame.
1998 Human Rights: A Bill of Worries. In W. T. de Bary & W. Tu (Eds.)
Confucianism and Human Rights (pp. 54-56). New York: Columbia
University Press.
Taylor, C.
1999 Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights. In J. R.
Bauer & D. A. Bell (Eds.), The East Asian Challenge for Human
Rights (pp. 124-144). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tu, W.
1985 Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation. Albany:
SUNY Press.
1998 Human Rights as a Confucian Moral Discourse. In W. T. de Bary &
W. Tu (Eds.), Confucianism and Human Rights. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Wang, Y-m.
1970 Yang-ming ch’uan shu (Complete Works). Taipei.
Zarrow, P.
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Press.
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Notes
_____________________________
1
One example is Charles Taylor (Taylor, 1999).
2
The term minquan can be dated to 1878, as employed by the Qing reformer
Guo Songtao (Judge, 1998, p.197).
3
See, for example, the contributions by Sumner Twiss and Randall
Peerenboom (in de Bary & Tu, 1998).
4
The phrase is Tu Weiming’s. See for example, “A Confucian Perspective on
Learning to be Human” in Tu (1985).
5
“Investigating things, knowledge becomes complete. Knowledge complete,
thoughts are made sincere. Thought sincere, the mind is rectified. The mind
rectified, the person is cultivated. The person cultivated, the family is
regulated. The family regulated, the state is rightly governed. The state
rightly governed, the whole kingdom is made tranquil and happy.”
(Author’s translation)
6
Mencius 2A: 6.
7
From the first draft of the Universal Declaration, framed by Chinese
delegate P. Chang (de Bary & Tu, 1998, p.41).
8
This is only the briefest statement of a complicated argument. In short, I
place myself more with those scholars, both Chinese and foreign, who see a
basic compatibility between Confucianism and human rights, but recognize
the need for “correction” on both sides, with Confucian cultures offering
incentives for Western cultures to be more fully attentive to social and
economic (second generation) rights, and Western thought encouraging
Confucian cultures to be more attentive to civil and political (first
generation) rights. However, in my view, Confucianism offers more in the
way of conceptual tools for alleviating the potential conflict between firstgeneration and second-generation human rights.
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