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]As long as one has not lost the minimal sense of self-esteem, he would feel offended if his employer treats him merely as a machine for producing profit or government agents push him around rudely, as if they were taming a wild beast.In these situations one would feel humiliated because he thinks that he deserves better treatment than what a mere animal or machine receives.Although he may purport to ignore or even consciously reject the worth inherent in him, thereby degrading himself and inviting despises from others, his aversion against the maltreatment seems to imply that he still thinks himself to have some value.Thus, it can at least be argued that the sense of dignity is not limited to those cultivated persons; rather, it is universally found in every human being, even though the degree of such sentiment may vary.The apparent availability of such a feeling in every human being may not establish conclusively the existence of innate human virtues, but does suggest the reasonableness of the Confucian belief in the basic worth of human person.
What is human dignity, then?What does it amount to say that human being is a dignified creature? According to Confucianism, man is dignified because he is born with a set of innate virtues unique to human race and the capacity of fully realizing these virtues that make him a mature person, and becausehe respects himself (and other men and women) by attributing high values to these unique virtues, which lead him to consciously develop them.Human dignity is then a composite idea that consists in the innate potentials believed to be uniquely endowed by every human being and held at the highest irreducible value, plus the extent to which these potentials is practically realized through conscious self-cultivation.An action is dignity-enhancing if it cultivates, practices or exhibits one’s virtues; it is dignity-reducing (thus degrading) if it fails to exercise virtues or prevents anyone from cultivating or exercising virtues.Those who adopt this positive view of mankind, seeing the same worth and virtues in themselves, take life-long efforts to cultivate them so as to better themselves, striving to achieve the highest dignity possible for a human being.Having cultivated these virtues, they take pride in them and display an overt confidence in their daily behavior; on the other hand, if they happen to have done things that tend to diminish or prevent the realization of virtues, they would feel degraded and shameful.They assume that everyone ought to see these virtues in himself and in others as something noble and worthy, and thus make a conscious effort to respect and to cultivate them in order to make himself a better human being; failure to do so would justly invoke moral disapproval from other members of society.Finally, they further require the state and society to not only respect, protect, and refrain from degrading the dignity in every man and woman, but also provide the basic social conditions that makes it possible for everyone to attain a dignified existence.
【注释】See Zhu Yilu (朱义禄), Confucian Ideal Personality and Chinese Culture 《儒家理想人格与中国文化》 (Shenyang: Liaoning Education Press, 1991), pp. 1-18.The earliest source I can find that explicitly attempts to connect the western concept of human dignity with Chinese Ren Ge is Zhang Dongsun (张东荪), Rationality and Democracy 《理性与民主》 (Hong Kong: Longmen Shudian, 1946), pp. 47-82.
See Zhang Dainian (张岱年), “The Concept of Human Dignity in the Classical Chinese Philosophy” (“中国古典哲学中的人格尊严思想”), International Confucianism Study 《国际儒学研究》 2 (1997), p. 18.
R.M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 10-27.
See, respectively, Gewirth, ibid., pp. 12-14, and Stetson, ibid., pp. 15-17.
“Gentleman” (Junzi) here is gender neutral.Unless specified or made clear by the context, none of the masculine words in this paper suggest any sex bias.
For confining the notion of virtues to socially beneficial human abilities and propensities, see Cheng, ibid., pp. 145-146.
Analects, 7: 22; see Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 32.
Mencius, 6A: 6.
Liang Qichao (梁启超), History of Political Thought in the Pre-Qin Period 《先秦政治思想史》 (Taipei: Zhonghua Shuju, 1972), p. 381.
As to the Confucian distinction between “xiao ren” and “Junzi”, see Yu Ying-shih, ibid., pp. 160-177.
Principle of the Mean, sec. 3; also see sec. 4, 5, 9.In addition, “a gentleman follows the path of Mean, and feels no regret even though his virtue is unknown and neglected by the world.”In the Principle of the Mean, sec. 11, trans. James Legge, The Four Books (Hong Kong: Wei Tung Book Co., 1971), p. 7.
Analects: 9: 29; see Legge, ibid., p. 126.
Analects, 7: 38.
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (2nd Ed., Notre Dame: University of Nortre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 222-223.
Principle of the Mean, sec. 10; see Legge, ibid., p. 7.
Thus,“a gentleman seeks the Way rather than material support....What worries him is not poverty, but that he fails to attain the Way” (Analects, 15: 32).
Mencius, 7A: 9; see Legge, ibid., p. 305.
Principle of the Mean, sec. 14; see Legge, ibid., p. 11.
Principle of the Mean, sec. 10; trans. Legge, ibid., p. 7.
“A gentleman seeks in himself, while a littleman seeks in the others.” In Analects, 15: 21; see Legge, ibid., p. 137.“A gentleman must first acquire the virtues before he may require them in the others; he must rid himself of the vices before he can prohibit them in the others.”In Great Learning, sec. 10; see Legge, ibid., p. 12.
Shen Du; see Great Learning, sec. 6.
Mencius, 2A: 2; see Legge, ibid., p. 63.
Mencius, 3B: 2.
J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin Books, 1977), pp. 15-49.
Xunzi, “Kingly Government”, Ch. 9; see Homer H. Dubs, The Works of Hsuntze (Taipei: Cheng-wen Publishing Co., 1966), p. 136.
That is, the lack of belief in the original human sin and the resulting guilt, see Max Weber, The Religion of China (trans.Hans H. Gerth, New York: Free Press, 1951), p. 235.
See Bloom, ibid., pp. 104-108.
Mencius, 6A: 17.
Mencius, 6A:14.
Donald J. Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 49-83.
See Mencius, 1A: 4.
Analects, 10: 17.I owe this example to Professor Ni Peimin in response to a question raised by Professor Li Chenyang at the panel discussion at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy.
See Peter L. Berger, Brigitte Berger, & Hansfriend Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 89-95, for an argument of similar conceptual understanding in the West and for an illuminating discussion of how the process of modernity and the disintegration of traditional social institutions led to the transition from the particularistic concept of “honor” to the universalistic concept of “human dignity”.
Mencius, 2A: 6.
Analects, 15: 24.
Analects, 12: 2.
For a general argument that “good” is an indefinable, non-natural quality, see G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1902 ), pp. 2-21, and further discussion in Mackie, ibid., pp. 50-63.
This is recognized even by the utilitarianist J.S. Mill, who argues that the “sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other” is identified with one’s “unwillingness ... to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence.”In Utilitarianism, Ch. 2; from Spiegelberg, ibid., p. 64, n. ii.
“A gentleman is friendly, but do not follow blindly.” In Principle of the Mean, sec. 10; see Legge, ibid., p. 7.
Analects, 20: 2; see Legge, ibid., p. 183.
Ibid.
Principle of the Mean, sec. 33.
“A gentleman can stay with his poverty; but a poor littleman will do anything .” In Analects, 15: 2.
For a Greek but similar description of the “great man”, see Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (trans. David Ross, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 89-95.Compare Max Weber, The Religion of China (trans. Hans H. Gerth, New York: Free Press, 1951), pp. 228-229 for the contrast between “shame culture” and “guilt culture” in the west, which presupposes the original sin in human nature.
Analects, 13: 20; see Legge, ibid., p. 113.
Mencius, 4B: 8.
Analects, 14: 27.
Mencius, 4B: 18.
See Mencius, 5B: 4.
Analects, 11: 24; see Legge, ibid., p. 89.
] Mencius, 6A: 10.The distaste for the lack of respect is clearly expressed by Mencius: “To feed a man without love, is to treat him as a pig; to love him without respect, is to keep him as a domestic animal.” In Mencius, 7A: 37.
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