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Merits in arguments of this type aside, however, they cannot support the assertion that the Confucianists did not value the pure potentials in every human life.There are plenty of passages in the classical Confucian texts that point to the contrary.For Confucius, human beings in general worth more than anything on the earth, and cannot be arbitrarily harmed or destroyed even by the highest ruler of the state.He strongly condemned, for example, the custom of using figurines in the kings’ burial because the figurines were made to look too similar to real people
(instead of only those with gentlemanly outlook).When a horse stable caught on fire, he asked, without mentioning horse, whether anyone (rather than only men of elevated moral status) had been hurt.
Likewise Mencius clearly sees the same worth in a human baby in his famous example where he attempts to illustrate the existence of humanity by the spontaneous feeling of compassion.
Suppose we witness a baby approaching a water well, he argues, we would be prompted by our natural compassion to go forward and save her from the danger.
Had Mencius not valued the potentials innate in a human being, we would seem to have no reason to save the baby, for she is yet to develop any of her unique human potentials.In this case, an undeveloped human child should not worth more than other animals, and we should not feel more compelled to save her than to save, say, a cat about to fall into a well.But Mencius would argue, I believe,to the contrary: whenever a human life, whose multifarious potentials are yet to be actualized, faces such danger, the matter is of an entirely different order.Thus, although Mencius intended to use this example to illustrate the presence of humanity in every human being as a potential virtue, it can be plausibly extended to show the general Confucian concern and respect for the innate human potentials.Whether a person has actually developed these potentials (as he ought to), they are regarded to have value by themselves and deserve respect from others.In the Confucian view, then, the potential virtues innate in every human being are an inseparable part of human dignity.
On the other hand, as a value concept, human dignity also carries a prescriptive component.It places high premium on certain potentials innate in every human person and treats them as the irreplaceable good, which positively requires the individuals to cultivate these unique potentials by learning and practice in order to become fully developed men and, at the same time, to respect the same potentials in every other man and woman.Further, the concept can be plausibly so construed as to demand that the state and society should respect, protect, and help cultivate the virtues in every individual, thus providing everyone with certain basic rights, both in the negative (liberty) and positive (claims) senses.The prescriptions entailed by human dignity, then, contain three distinct aspects: the self, the other, and the collective.
First, a Confucian gentleman is a person who values his inborn virtues and takes care to preserve and develop what he believes to be noble in him, and he is said to have developed dignity precisely because he act in accordance with his innate nobility.Significantly, the Confucianists did not stop here, but further required the conscious cultivation and actualization of these inborn capacities.To see this we need only mention the classic Great Learning (Da Xue), which prescribes a systematic program for self-cultivation (Xiu Shen).Having cultivated the virtues, a Confucian gentleman practices and displays them overtly in his daily actions, giving rise to an appearance that commands respect from others.Thus, the Confucian dignity combines both the internal and external aspects of a human being; it presupposes the potential unique to mankind and, taking its value for granted, requires every man and woman to make a good effort to develop it in daily life.When the dignity is fully developed, it would spontaneously display itself in one’s appearance and behavior, as a part of acquired habits.
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