Comparative Research On The Human Rights Thinking Of Hu Shi And Zhang Junmai

The theory of hunman rights ideology of modern sense has been spread in China for about 100 years. Reviewing this history, several large-scale moverments on hunman rights and democratic constitutionalism had launched by liberal intellectuals and middle of the roaders during the time from the late of 1920's to the middle of 1940's , which meant important theoretical value and had great promoted the progress of Chinese human rights theory. As the typical representative of liberal intellectuals,Hu Shi was the initiator of human rights debate in the 1930's, and as the the main leaders of the middle political parties, Zhang junmai was an active participant in the constitutional movement in 1930's to 1940's. They effectively promoted the spread of the hunman rights thinking.The formation of human rights of Hu Shi and Zhang junmai, both influenced by domestic social and political status, and their foreign political and philosophical thinking learning were inseparable. From a philosophical pespective, Hu Shi's views on hunman rights were mainly influenced by Dewey's experimental spirit of suspecting, which required individuals get rid of feudal superstition,liberated our minds, and strived for freedom and personal independence. And Zhang junmai was influenced by the immaterialism of Germany and France primarily, which advocated to search for individual freedom from the spiritual dimension. This is the different departure of their human rights. At the political level,Dewey's influence on Hu Shi's human rights was enormous and comprehensive, and Zhang junmai accepted the British neo-liberal political ideology.The human rights of Hu Shi and Zhang junmai were thought of a process of development and evolution.From the fight for freedom of individual to let the overwhelming governmental power of individual freedom, and then to returen to the attention of human rights.This variational track reflected that the double demands of individual freedom and national salvation were greatly influenced their human rights thinkings.In the protection of human rights mechanism, Hu Shi and Zhang junmai shared many common points,such as in favor of protecting of human rights, implementing constitutional government, requiring the people to learn the sense of fighting for the rights. They also called for protecting human rights by ways of adopting of legislation, establishing democratic politics, reforming the government through gradual improvement. In some macro-issues there were many differences among their points, such as the views of freedom of the individuals,the comments of the government or the countries, the opinions of the relationship between the individual and the government, the concepts of involving in the actual political, and so on. And at the micro-level the concept of human rights, the contents were also different.In the last part of the artle, there are some comments on their human rights thinkings. As liberal intellectuals, Hu Shi and Zhang junmai both advocated human rights of universal concept, which was essentially different from the human rights of clsaa concept, and with the progress of historical significance. Because of the thinking limitation of intellectuals, their human rights focused on the political freedom area, especially freedom of thought and expression. They neglected of economic rights, and they didn't give enough attention to personal rights. These limitations made their human rights thinking a real dilemma at that time.But some of their concept of human rights are important references to the buildings of the protection system of socialist human rights.