Seek and You Will Find It; Let Go and You Will Lose It: Exploring a Confucian Approach to Human Dignity
Peimin NI
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) Department of Philosophy, Grand Valley State University
, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale,
MI 49401, USA
While the concept of Menschenwrde (universal human dignity) has served as the foundation for human rights, it is absent in the Confucian tradition. However, this does not mean that Confucianism has no resources for a broadly construed notion of human dignity. Beginning with two underlying dilemmas in the notion of Menschenwrde and explaining how Confucianism is able to avoid them, this essay articulates numerous unique features of a Confucian account of human dignity, and shows that the Confucian account goes beyond the limitations of Menschenwrde. It is arguably richer and more sophisticated in content, and more constructive for protecting and cultivating human dignity. Discourse on human rights typically takes Menschenwrdeuniversal human dignityas a starting point. The famous statement of the very first article of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, is based on this notion of human dignity. It is supposed to belong to every human being, in equal extent, whether men or women, white or black, rich or poor, moral saints or criminals, geniuses or ignorant. A person does not possess less universal human dignity because he or she is a beggar or a criminal, nor more because he or she is a saint or a king. Moreover, one's dignity cannot be lost or taken away. It is inalienable because it comes from being human and nothing else. It is believed that, on the basis of this dignity, every human being should enjoy the same basic human rights. The concept is often taken for granted and widely endorsedpractically all the countries in the world that signed the UDHR accepted the concept. However, is it as
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clear and obvious as it appears? On what ground is this so-called universal human
dignity based? Why is it inalienable? Does the word inalienable mean that no one is
able to take it away from someone or rather that no one should? In addition, since this
notion appeared only recently in the history of the modern West, are there any of its
elements in pre-modern and non-Western cultural backgrounds?1 Unsurprisingly, the
Confucian classics, being neither Western nor modern, contain no exact notion of
human dignity. Furthermore, many scholars have argued that the Confucian notion of
a person is relational and role-specific, meaning that there is no abstract, universal
concept of individual human being: we might, then, suspect that Confucianism is
incompatible with the notion of human dignity. But is it? Can Confucianism contribute
to the discourse of human dignity? What would Confucius say about human dignity if
he were alive today?
Despite the recent revival of Confucianism, there have been very few discussions
specifically on a Confucian view of human dignity.2 In this essay I will try to show that
not only does Confucianism have rich conceptual resources relevant to human dignity,
it offers a viable alternative to the dominant Western understandings of it. By taking
human dignity as an achievement rather than as a right that every human being is born
with, Confucianism is able to avoid two underlying dilemmas of the notion of
Menschenwrde, and it offers us a concept of dignity that is much richer in content
and more constructive for protecting and developing human dignity.
Before I begin, I would like to make clear that due to the complexity of the issue as
well as the fact that there are varieties of strands within what is loosely referred to as
Confucianism, the essay should be taken just as the subtitle saysan exploration
(rather than a conclusive description) of a (rather than the) Confucian approach to
human dignity. If I ever use expressions like the Confucian view, the word the only
refers to a particular approach that could be drawn from the Confucian classics,
primarily the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius, and to a lesser degree, the Xunzi
, Zhongyong , Liji , and other texts. This does not mean that there are no
alternative approaches consistent with those texts or that there are no additional
resources on the subject within broadly construed Confucian texts. While I am fully
accountable for the fairness of my treatment of Menschenwrde theories as they are
typically understood, I do not assume that my treatment of them is comprehensive. For
the sake of staying focused on the main theses, I must skip over some subtleties,
although they are well worth exploring in their own rights.
1 As Marcus Dewell says, It appeared that the identification of the concept in non-Western and pre-modern
contexts is fraught with several hermeneutic problems. The modern concept of dignity has, at its heart, the idea
of the in-alienable worth of each individual; it has a universalistic ambition and fulfills a justificatory function
in the human rights discourse. While it seems difficult to project this notion, linked as (...truncated)