On Yanfu’s Thought Of Rights

Though the concept and discourse of rights has a long history around the world, the riseof that hasn’t taken place in China until late Qing Dynasty. The introduction of that, as anoutcome of industrial and commercial civilization, to China brought a huge shock to the oldfarming society. The society of China with warrior as the core, farmer as the foundation andthe hierarchy system of warrior, farmer, craftsman and merchant as the basic structure, mustmake its own response. For the sake of saving the country and retaining the Confucian culture,the traditional Confucian intellectuals responded instantly by starting the WesternizationMovement aiming at self-improvement but ended up with a big failure in the Sino-JapaneseWar. Since this mode which was called as the early modernization failed, a new answer wasobviously needed. Yanfu, the most outstanding knowledgeable thinker in that age who tookpart in and witnessed numerous political and social events of that age, put forward a newsolution by asserting that China should positively integrated this living style of human beingson the basis of rights, which is an answer from the perspective of history of culture andcivilization and, in the aspect of law science or jurisprudence, which means that it isnecessary to establish a new society of rights made up of liberty and democracy, which iscompletely different from the society of morals advocated by Confucianism. As Yanfu putforward a new perspective of concept and discourse of rights in China since1940, it is ofgreat significance to look back on Yanfu’s thought in modern society in which the law, rightsand liberty is the mainstream discourse. The dissertation consists of five chapters except thepart of introduction and conclusion.The introduction briefly explains the significance of the dissertation summarizes relevantresearch situation at home and abroad and clarifies the research methods and main structure.The dissertation aims to find an answer to the question: since19th century is universallyregarded as a century of exchange and collision of Chinese culture and western culture and asthe biggest difference between lies in the concepts of rights, how did Yanfu think of thedifference? And what studies did former scholars make? It is both a descriptive study ofhistory and a problem-oriented and theoretical study work. Based on study of relevantliteratures, the dissertation points out that former studies of Yanfu’s thought on rights is notdeep enough, which does not reveal the essence of his thought. The dissertation takes articleswritten by Yanfu as main study materials and uses classical works translated by him to justify the thesis, which is a study of tracing the origin.Chapter One generally argues that Yanfu and his thought on rights established an age ofrights completely differing from traditional society. This chapter briefly reviews the conceptand history of rights in China since1840, reveals the historical background of the forming ofYanfu’s thought on rights and, on this basis, points out that his thought on rights aimed atcalling for a brand-new age of rights society. There was a preliminary origin and theoreticalform of concept, opinions and thought of rights in modern China, but the serious crisis ofChina at home and abroad appeared in early and middle period of19th century upset andcomplicated its natural development. The Chinese scholars who advocated Confucianismmade corresponding rethinking and exploration. Yanfu, as a practical and theoreticalparticipant in this process, put forward rights on the basis of liberty and democracy as asolution. Theoretically, it means replacing the benevolent government system based on moralswith the jurisprudence system featured with rights and practically it demands a transfer fromtraditional hierarchy system society to the equal law society based on rights.Chapter Two studies several main theoretical basis of Yanfu’s thought on rights. Thischapter briefly explains the reason why he didn’t apply the universal source of thought. Firstly,his rights thought is individualistic emphasizing on separating nation and individuals, whichis the foundation of his thought. Individualism has ontological and methodological meaningand the second one is much more important. Besides, Yanfu’s rights thought is featured withscientific history theory, which was based on general evolution principles. However, thebiological evolution root of his thought is not so deep, as social habits and conventionsfunctions as a kind of historical fact but not a particle. As for the understanding of rights andrelevant modern matters, Yanfu didn’t deny the role of reason but he thought the guidance ofexperience was more important.Chapter Three analyzes the liberty matter in Yanfu’s rights thought, which plays afundamental role. Liberty has both moral value and political and legal value. Yanfu is thefirst thinker in modern China who related liberty and human beings’. His opinion of Hisviews on individual itself is the starting point of his thought. That is to say, liberty is the basiccomponent of human beings and the rights of liberty thus was put forward. Yanfu set up arights system consisting of the three principles of strength, ethics and intellects of people,which are three basic individual rights. The system has a strong style of libertarianism. But hedidn’t deny the property rights in the sense of individual interest. Influenced by the rights thought of Adam Smith and its social theory, Yanfu closely combined the liberty of individualwith that of nation. As owing rights is the prerequisite condition of a nation’s bloom, he putforward the opinion of which is universally applicable.Chapter Four studies on the matter of democracy in Yanfu’s rights thought and mainlydiscusses the system of rights guarantee. Firstly, this chapter made a discussion on democracyas a form of government. Yanfu compared Montesquieu regime theory with governments ofancient China and as a result, to great extent he didn’t agree to the standard of dividinggovernments on the basis of the number of governors because he knew the difference betweenrights and democracy, which is also that between constitution and democracy. It representsthat he spoke highly of mixed government of Britain in19th century. Yanfu’s democracytheory aimed at guaranteeing rights so he attached more importance to policies of constitution.In fact, he extremely emphasized the establishment of governing departments, especially thesystem of parliament and local autonomy, of which he analyzed the feasible operation. Inpolitical philosophy and jurisprudence, who is the governor depends on democracy andrepresentative democracy and direct democracy are the main forms competing with each other.Yanfu approved of and defended the popular elite representative democracy, which isparticularly applicable to a country with huge population. He consequently reconsidered thesocial condition of the realization of democratic politics, criticized Rousseau’s massdemocracy theory and concluded that the basis of democracy is rights.Chapter Five points out that Yanfu’s rights thought aimed at establishing a rights society,which is the integration and practice of his. He advocated pursuing a society of justice on thebasis of equality and rule of law, which reveals the turn of jurisprudence to proceduralism andthe renewal of natural law in the mid-20th century. This chapter demonstrates that Yanfu’srights thought is much more than a country saving awareness and he developed a rights theorybased on justice, especially emphasized the priority of rights to those countries whose nationalpurpose is kindness. His thought represents his deep thinking of national idea under thebackground of society transform in late Qing Dynasty and the coming of global age and hisdefense for a new political and social order, in which he particularly emphasized theimportance of equality and the rule of law.On the basis of elaborating main contents of Yanfu’s rights thought, the Conclusion madea general analysis and evaluation of his thought. The dissertation analyzes the feature andevolution of his rights thought, points out that his thought is featured with both local particularity and global universality and briefly explains its influence. Moreover, thedissertation puts forward that the importance attached to the jurisprudence system of rightssociety established by Yanfu was not enough, in theory and practice, his thought and itsimportance hasn’t been acknowledged and relevant studies was not detailed and deep. AsYanfu’s tragedy is a great sorrow of that age, a more tolerant and reasonable age is needed sothat people can understand his great contribution to human civilization, political and legalcivilization in particular.