| Classical Confucianism, through its repository of canonical texts, offers a compelling vision for the exemplary treatment of persons that is ancient in origin, relevant to the needs of present-day China, and contributory to future East-West discourse on human rights. The first of two independent prongs in this dissertation argues that Classical Confucianism generates a foundation for cultivating human creativity and excellence. Imbedded within a picture of the ideal functioning society in the Da Xue, (conventionally translated "Great Learning") and explicated as exemplary personhood (junzi) within the Lun Yu (the "Analects") are the rudiments for a universal, normative standard of exemplary treatment of all members of society. The metaphysical roots for this standard are presumed by Classical Confucian literature such as the Shujing ("Book of History") and most notably the Yijing ("Book of Changes") in which principles such as the harmonization and creativity of nature are understood also as human processes which society is called to cultivate within all individuals. Through the application of Onto-hermeneutics (a hermeneutical method developed by Professor Chung-ying Cheng) to the relevant texts, the concept Tianming as moral authority (conventionally, Mandate of Heaven), emerges as the universal, normative standard for the exemplary treatment of persons. The effective implementation of the Classical Confucian vision, resulting in such widespread personal cultivation at the level of self-actualization (as in Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs), entails the prior satisfaction of lower order human needs.;The second-prong of this dissertation examines the notion of human rights within the Western liberal democratic tradition (i.e., Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, et al.) and considers the analysis of rights by Wesley Hohfeld and conceptions of justice by John Rawls. As a work in comparative philosophy, this dissertation argues that the virtues and duties in Classical Confucianism implicitly generate the standard of universal humane treatment of persons sought after in the liberal democratic (i.e., social contractarian) tradition. A definition of human rights is offered in which the content of rights is differentiated from the mechanism of rights, thereby providing a framework for recognizing comparable outcomes (i.e., the content of rights) between two otherwise incommensurable systems (i.e., incommensurable at the level of mechanism). This analysis makes possible the translation of virtues-duties language into claim-rights language, yielding a set of comparable foundational concepts for an East-West approach to human rights. It is the author's conviction that China, by drawing upon its rich philosophical heritage, is in a position to offer the world a system of values for the exemplary treatment of persons, contributory to the human rights discourse. |
