Comparison Of Luo Longji And Zhang Junmai's Human Rights Thoughts

Although China is awash with absolutism and brutal oppression from the Kuomintang in 1930 s, under this special background, the idea of human rights begins to spreads across the old China. A group of people, Luo Longji and Zhang Junmai are the typical representatives of them, who possess the overseas study experience actively publicizes the idea of human rights with combination what they learned with Chinese actual situation. They conduct a thorough analysis of China's national conditions and express their political ideals. This paper adopts the historical comparative analysis method and through the comparative analysis to the difference between the views of Luo Longji and Zhang Junmai in the similar background,analyzes the difference on the ideas of human rights, freedom, legality from Luo Longji and Zhang Junmai from the horizontal perspective in order to sort their thoughts.Generally speaking, influenced by Laski political pluralism and utilitarianism,Luo Longmai thinks that it should be to examine the role and the efficiency of the state from the perspective of utilitarianism. The rationality of the existence of human rights is also reflected in the largest majority interests of majority of people, the political power is not unitary but pluralism. By the influence of liberalism and Fabian socialism, on the relationship between the state and the individual, Luo thinks thestate should implement the rule of law and protect the personal liberty. However, for Zhang Junmai, influenced by the liberalism of Muller and Laski and also influenced by idealist philosophy of Germany and France as well as Chinese traditional Confucianism, he interprets the freedom as the spiritual phenomenon and regards the state as a moral community.Overall, the similarity and difference of thoughts between Zhang Junmai and Luo Longji perform in the following several aspects. On human rights, although both of them receive a new idea of foreign influence, advocate the human rights as a basic right of people, and claim the state to protect the human rights, Zhang's thought also deeply influenced by the Chinese traditional Confucianism so that he supports liberalism and natural rights, while Luo analyzes from the perspective of utilitarianism. On liberty, they two advocate the freedom of the thoughts and expression which shall become extremely conspicuous, especially under the autocratic rule of the Kuomintang. Differing from Luo's thoughts in support of achieving freedom through limiting the power of government, Zhang Junmai thinks that is not in conflict between realization of freedom and the strengthening the power of government. Meanwhile, his concept of freedom is the combination of Chinese and Western culture. On the rule of law, two people all think that the rule of law is the guarantee of human rights, the necessary conditions to save China, and is also the legal guarantee to achieve the democracy and freedom. In addition to the horizontal comparison of the thought between Luo and Zhang, this paper clarifies the change of both thoughts under the different backgrounds inclusive of the period of debate overhuman rights, the period of debates over democracy and the period between 1946 and1949 and introduces how to realize the transformation of thinking under these different situations. At last, this paper makes a brief comment on the human rights thought of Luo Longji and Zhang Junmai, and reveals its significance to the development of contemporary human rights.