The Idea of Human Dignity in Classical Chinese Philosophy: A Reconstruction of Confucianism Ⅱ
张千帆
【全文】
3.The Confucian Concept of Human Dignity
Although human dignity is explicitly a western concept, it has a close Chinese correlate.Its literal translation today is Zun Yan, a word often used in conjunction with a familiar Confucian term, Ren Ge, which is sometimes translated as “moral personality”.The latter word had a rather tortuous history.It was first used in Japanese to express “persona”, a psychology term.When it was introduced to China, however, it became associated with the ideal Confucian personality and acquired moral and ethical connotations.
In expressing the idea of human dignity, it is perhaps better that the two Chinese words be used jointly,
so that Ren Ge expresses, in Professor Hare’s terms,
the descriptive element, and Zun Yan the prescriptive element, of the normative concept.Although neither word appear systematically in the classical Confucian texts, as I argue below, this concept (denoted as human dignity from now on) best captures the moral teachings of Confucius and Mencius.
In Confucianism, human dignity is a composite normative concept and, as such, implies conceptual elements on three related but distinct dimensions: descriptive, prescriptive, and emotive.On the descriptive (or cognitive) dimension, the concept contains the belief in the basic facts about human life or, more accurately, about the possibilities of human life, based on empirical observations of social interactions among human beings.This is the relatively objective realm of “is” or “can”.The prescriptive (or evaluative) dimension, on the other hand, presupposes the subjective valuation of these facts by human individuals or groups, from which the prescriptive notion of “ought” is derived.On this dimension, the concept implies evaluative determination of what types of human life, actions or dispositions to act are to be regarded as “good”, noble, and praiseworthy, and positively prescribes a duty to develop, maintain, and preserve--at least refrain from harming--the conceived good.Thus, the first two dimensions defines the normative meaning of a value concept.Finally, the emotive dimension entails the behavioral manifestations naturally ensue from believing in and subscribing to the norm.It can include, for example, the exhibited psychological satisfaction and confidence derived from continuous moral practice prescribed by the norm, or the natural sentiments it arouses in common people, such as approbation for what they perceive as conforming (thus desirable) behaviors and antipathy to deviant practices.In this way, the emotive dimension furnishes a partial empirical “proof” for the universal presence of the norm within normally developed human beings.
I shall seek to explain below the term “human dignity” along these three dimensions.
3.1.The Meaning of Dignity as Exemplified in Confucian Gentleman
Descriptively, human dignity stands for a set of beliefs about human life or the kind of life that human beings are capable of living.Here the concept contains two aspects about human nature: potential and actual (which roughly corresponds to Gewirth’s notion of “inherent” and “empirical” dignity, or Stetson’s notion of “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” dignity)
.The vision of unique human potentials sets the end for a good life, and requires active pursuit to actualize these potentials.The Confucian idea of human dignity is thus closely related to its central concepts of innate virtues, the personality of gentleman (Junzi),
and the Principle of the Mean (Zhong Yong).It should be noted that, unlike virtues in the Greek sense which stand for acquired moral habits, “virtues” used here to translate the Chinese word De means potentials in a human being, and is sometimes translated equivalently as potency, power, or capacities.In other words, the Chinese “virtues” are not primary faculties ready to carry out certain types of actions (e.g., the quality of justice as propensity to act justly), but only secondary faculties that enable a person to acquire the primary faculties (e.g., the ability to become a just person through some effort).
