The Idea of Human Dignity in Classical Chinese Philosophy: A Reconstruction of Confucianism Ⅲ
张千帆
【全文】
4.The Double Implications of Human Dignity: Toward a Balanced View of Rights and Duty
It is commonly asserted, however, that the Chinese tradition in general and Confucianism in particular lacked any clear conception of rights.While this appears to be obviously true from even a cursory scan of classical Confucian works, it would be a mistake to infer that Confucianism is inherently opposed to individual rights, including basic political rights.I argue below that the Confucian concept of human dignity can accommodate the notion of rights as a device for cultivating individual virtues.To hold this view may require us to modify the traditional view of personhood and to reject the dogmatic strain within Confucianism which took the legitimacy of tradition for granted.But doing so does not undermine the basic argument that, leaving the descriptive content of human dignity open to future modifications, as mankind acquire more experience and better judgment, Confucianism can adapt itself to changing circumstances and conceptions of human nature.Indeed, with overall optimistic assumptions of human nature, Confucianism can derive a balanced view of duty and rights, and provide a more consistent foundation for the commonly held belief in human worth and dignity than modern liberalism in the West.This section is divided into two parts.First, I briefly review the western liberal theory of individual rights as represented by Hobbes, and point out its deficiencies.Second, I discuss the possibility and the necessity of deriving individual rights from the universal duty of respecting human dignity in Confucianism to make it consistent with the basic social facts.
4.1.The Primacy of Rights over Duty in Western Liberalism
Belief in human dignity is often implicitly assumed in modern liberalism, a dominant ideology in the western liberal democracies.On June 27, 1998, for example, President Clinton made the following remarks in the historic city, Xi’an, the first stop in his recent trip to China: “Respect for the worth, the dignity, the potential and the freedom of every citizen is a vital source of America’s strength and success....In this global information age ... a commitment to providing all human beings the opportunity to develop their full potential is vital to the strength and success of the new China as well.”Yet, paradoxical enough, modern liberalism seems to be incapable of providing a solid philosophical foundation for the widely held belief in human dignity.It is simply difficult to find any worth or dignity in man from its basically negative view of human nature.And, without dignity and worth, many basic and now widely accepted rights would lose their legitimate ground.
