Human rights and harmony

Human Rights Quarterly

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 76-94

  Angle, Stephen C ^a,b  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HUMAN RIGHTS; PHILOSOPHY;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 39749197535     PISSN: 02750392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2008.0006     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. STEPHEN C. ANGLE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND CHINESE THOUGHT: A CROSS-CULTURAL INQUIRY (2002).
2. The most obvious way the present argument would have to be adjusted for an American context would be to further articulate the sources in local traditions for concern with harmony, and along the way to spell out precisely what this value means in a contemporary American context.
3. For some background and sources on the Confucian conception of harmony, see Scott Bradley Cook, Unity and Diversity in Musical Thought of Warring States China (1985) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan) (available at University of Michigan Library); Chenyang Li, Zhongyong as Grand Harmony: An Alternative Reading to Ames and Hall's Focusing the Familiar, 3 DAO: J. COMP. PHIL. 173 (2004); Chung-Ying Cheng, Toward Constructing a Dialectics of Harmonization: Harmony and Conflict in Chinese Philosophy, 4 J. CHINESE PHIL. 209 (1977).
4. Here is one recent expression of these widespread views: "Confucian values - altruism, unity, morality, respect for authority - have been used by emperors and presidents throughout the ages as a means to maintain hierarchies and order." Jonathan Watts, Family Tree of Chinese Sage Branches Out to Include Women: Traditional Teachings of Confucius Find Favour as China Looks to Fill Ethical Vacuum in Wake of Market Reforms, THE GUARDIAN (London), 28 Sept. 2006, at 23.
5. For a different perspective, see Randall Peerenboom, Confucian Harmony And Freedom Of Thought. The Right To Think Versus Right Thinking, in CONFUCIANISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS 234, 235 (William Theodore de Bary & Tu Weiming eds., 1998). Peerenboom argues that harmony collapses, at least in practice, into unity and uniformity.
6. MARINA SVENSSON, DEBATING HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA: A CONCEPTUAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY 24 25, 162 (2002).
7. Here is a representative sentiment, from Deng Xiaoping: "[W]e have stressed the need of strengthening Party leadership, democratic centralism, and centralization and unification. The most important aspect of centralization and unification is unifying our thinking. This is essential if we are to have unity in our actions." DENG XIAOPING, SELECTED WORKS OF DENG XIAOPING (1938-1956), at 286 (The Bureau for the Compilation and Translation of Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin Under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China trans., 1st ed. 1992).
8. ANGLE, supra note 1.
9. Id. at 225-39.
10. MICHAEL SLOTE, MORALs FROM MOTIVES 67 (2001).
11. Id. at 67.
12. Id.
13. Id.
14. Id. at 68.
15. Id.
16. Id. at 69.
17. Id. at 70.
18. Slote sees it as a strong-point of his theory that the theory's requirements appear to fall in between Singer's extremely demanding consequentialism, and Williams's extremely loose theory of moral integrity. Id. at 73.
19. Id. at 78.
20. Many kinds of violation of women's human rights constitute an important exception to this generalization.
21. SLOTE, supra note 10, at 65.
22. What about a multi-national corporation whose managers choose policies that wreak havoc on vague, undifferentiated groups of strangers living in the vicinity of the company's factories? The problem here is not the aggregative nature of their concern for the factories' neighbors, but the imbalance between their concern for their own wellbeing and their concern for the strangers'. This latter relation, recall, must meet the test of non-aggregative balance.
23. ZUO ZHUAN, Zhao 20 (522 BC); translation from Cook, supra note 3, at 67-69, 71.
24. ANALECTS 13:23; The Brooks translate "tong" as "conformist," which also captures the idea being criticized. E. BRUCE BROOKS & A. TAEKO BROOKS, THE ORIGINAL ANALECTS: SAYINGS OF CONFUCIUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS 103 (1998).
25. The famous discussion of regicide in Mencius is often taken to endorse a right to revolt against tyranny, but other passages in the text strongly suggest that the author only applies this doctrine to political elites, rather than to the common people. Compare Mencius 1B:8 and 5B:9. See also 1B:4, which explicitly says that common people should not criticize the ruler: "Should there be a man... who is not given a share in [the realm's] enjoyment[s], he would speak ill of those in authority. To speak ill of those in authority because one is not given a share in such enjoyment is, of course, wrong. But for one in authority over the people not to share his enjoyment with the people is equally wrong." Translation from MENCIUS 1B:4 (D. C. Lau trans., 2003).
26. See Albert H. Y. Chen, Mediation, Litigation, and Justice: Confucian Reflections in a Modern Liberal Society, in CONFUCIANISM FOR THE MODERN WORLD 257 (Daniel A. Bell & Hahm Chaibong eds., 2003) for a good discussion of some of the issues surrounding mediation, with specific reference to both historical and current practice in China. In an unpublished manuscript, I discuss both mediation and the delicate relation between moral and legal norms in more detail. My argument there is that Confucians would favor a system of law as a second resort: readily available, but typically not the first place to which one turns to resolve a problem. Stephen C. Angle, Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Ethical and Political Philosophy (2007) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author).
27. JOHN STUART MILL, ON LIBERTY (Michael B. Mathias ed., Pearson Longman 2007 (1859)).
28. There are, admittedly, some complex matters here. For instance, the human right to free expression is not a right to say whatever one wants under any circumstances: certain kinds of dangerous, libelous, or hateful speech, for example, are rightly prohibited. So long as these distinctions are clear, though, the right to freedom of expression is still either violated or not, in a given instance. Another issue is the reliability with which rights are protected. It is certainly true that some states have more developed systems of protections, and thus some do a better job than others of guaranteeing protection against "standard threats." See HENRY SHUE, BASIC RIGHTS: SUBSISTENCE, AFFLUENCE, AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY (2d ed. 1996). Still, this is an issue of degrees of protection, not degrees of the rights themselves.
29. ZONGSAN MOU, ZHENGDAO YU ZHIDAO [THE WAY OF POLITICS AND THE WAY OF ADMINISTRATION] (1991).
30. Id. at 57.
31. Id. at 59.
32. Id. at 124-5.
33. Id. at 125.
34. Id. at 128.
35. For a non-Confucian argument that harmony requires democracy, see Zhu Xueqin, Harmony Stems from Democracy, CHINA DAILY ON-LINE, 2 Dec. 2005, available at http://www.chinadaily. com.cn/english/doc/2005-12/02/content_499872.htm; Tu Weiming, A Confucian Perspective on Human Rights in THE INAUGURAL Wu T EH YAO MEMORIAL LECTURES 1995 1, 29-30 (1995).
36. Mou, supra note 30, at 114-23.
37. Id. at 124.
38. Richard Rorty, Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality, in ON HUMAN RIGHTS: THE OXFORD AMNESTY LECTURES 1993, 111, 122 (Stephen Shute & Susan Hurley eds., 1993).
39. See ANALECTS 2:4.
40. THE LEGALIZATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: MULTIDISCIPLIARY PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS LAW (Saladin Meckled-Garcia & Ba A Çali eds., 2006).
41. See GEORGE SHER, BEYOND NEUTRALITY: PERFECTIONISM AND POLITICS (1997); Joseph Chan, Legitimacy, Unanimity, and Perfectionism, 29 PHIL. & PUB. AFF. 5 (2000).
42. My brief discussion of mediation and of law as a system of second resort in Section IV, above, is meant in precisely this spirit.