| This is a study on the issue of compatibility between Confucianism and the idea of human rights and a comparison of Confucian approaches to contemporary Catholicism's adoption of human rights. The study and comparison are within the framework of two UN human rights events: the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and 1993 World Conference of Human Rights in Vienna.; China's moving toward adopting the idea of human rights during both events was more the result of political compromises rather than a real cultural recognition of the idea. On the other side, Catholicism has made an impressive shift from opposing to supporting human rights since modern time. From Jacques Maritain's involvement in drafting the Declaration in 1948 to the later official Catholic social teachings, Catholicism had integrated human rights more and more as part of the tradition. The two age-old traditions, therefore, with the idea of rights absent in the past of both, have been approaching the idea of human rights divergently.; The result of the historical comparisons naturally raises the question of whether the Confucian world could possibly adopt the idea of human rights in the future, not by the political pressures, but by the permission of its own values, as Catholicism did? Through the study of official Catholic social teachings of 1960's and some important contemporary Catholic thinkers, it will show that Catholicism's recent adoption of the idea originates from its position in two fundamental theological issues: the nature of law and especially, the relation between spirituality and the world. The cultural inquiry into the compatibility between Confucianism and human rights thus asks what the possible Confucian positions toward these two fundamental issues would be. We will try to answer this inquiry through studying some important Confucian thinkers in modern time, especially Mou Zongsan's interpretation of mainstream Confucianism. The different way Confucianism approaches the two issues indicates an attitude toward the idea of human rights different from that of contemporary Catholicism. |
