Study On P. C. Chang’s View Of Human Rights

P.C.Chang’s view of human rights, based on the theoretical basis of traditional Western concepts of human rights and traditional Chinese Confucianism thoughts, and deeply impacted by Chang’s Western and Eastern life experience, was finally matured in the special historical period when the anti-fascist alliance got the victory of the World War II. As a logic ideological system, P.C.Chang’s view of human rights has relatively complete content, including the basis of human rights, the specific content of human rights, and the behavior subjects of human rights, and so on. Compared with the other ideologists concepts, Chang’s view of human rights is mainly the East-West cultural integration of the product. It has its own characteristics, and is intensively reflected in the universal declaration of human rights. While P.C.Chang’s view of human rights has inevitable limitations, compared with the previous theory of human rights, it is still a huge progress, and has produced a far-reaching effect, and still has great enlightenment to our today’s human rights research.This paper is divided into four parts to discuss P.C.Chang’s view of human rights. The first part is the preface, introducing P.C.Chang’s life story, and discussing the reason, the purpose and the value of this article. The next three parts, namely the three chapters, respectively are:the first chapter, which discusses the basis of the formation of P.C.Chang’s view of human rights, the second chapter, which discusses the core elements of Chang’s view of human rights, and the third chapter, which discusses the significance of the times of P.C.Chang’s conception of human rights.Among them, chapter 1 is from two aspects, the theory basis and the social and historical background, to discuss P.C.Chang’s view of human rights. The former are divided into two parts, including traditional western concepts of human rights and the essence of Chinese traditional Confucian thoughts. In this section, I will discuss the item respectively from the western concept of human rights’ development history and philosophy foundation, and the elements of human rights thought which are contained in Chinese traditional Confucianism.And then try to find the theory support of the formation of P.C.Chang’s conception of human rights. The latter, namely the social and historical background, will be discussed and analysed mainly in three parts, the historical society and background at home and abroad, as well as Chang’s personal life. In my opinion, it is just the special historical background and Chang’s extraordinary life experience that make this view of human rights form.The second chapter is the summary of the core elements of Chang’s human rights thought, respectively from three aspects, namely the content, the features and the specific expression, to discuss Chang’s human rights conception. In the first section of this chapter, I summarize the core content of Chang’s view of human rights in ten parts, including the concrete universality relates to human rights, the foundation of human rights, the content of human rights, and so on. The second section, compared with other human rights theories(including western traditional concepts of human rights, Chinese traditional Confucianism, and other thinkers’ concepts of human rights in the same times when Chang lived), summarizes the distinctive features of P.C.Chang’s view of human rights. On this basis, the third section focuses on the most concentrated expression of Chang’s view of human rights, namely the contribution he had made during the process of the formation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and then indicates the value orientation and basic positions of Chang’s view of human rights.The third chapter explores the significance of the times of P.C.Chang’s view of human rights,by discussing the far-reaching influence of it in the times and the significant enlightenment to our contemporary human rights research. The former mainly analyzes the progress of Chang’s view of human rights, and reveals the significant contributions it has made to the world human rights theory of the time. Meanwhile, it also points out the limitations of the conception. As a result of the special historical background, P.C.Chang’s view of human rights certainly has some shortcomings. On the basis of sufficient discussion on the progress and limitations of this theory, in the latter part, namely the second section of this chapter, it discusses the significance of Chang’s conception to our contemporary research on human rights and China’s human rights development path selection and any other aspects. And in this part, I also summarize and advocate some excellent qualities of Mr. P.C.Chang.Accordingly, I finally draws the conclusion that P.C.Chang’s view of human rights has very important meaning of progress for both the past and the present. It is necessary to make a further research and discussion. And there are also some excellent qualities that Chang owns for us to learn from.