Liu Jintian: Why do you say that traditional Chinese culture contains the gene of human rights thinking?
Xi'an, March 31, China News Service Title: Liu Jintian: Why is it said that traditional Chinese culture contains the gene of human rights ideology?
Author Liu Jintian, Researcher, Human Rights Research Center, Northwest University of Political Science and Law
Although the concept of human rights first appeared in Western culture, Chinese culture also has its own roots and genes. "People are the most expensive in the world" "Benevolent, lover"... These traditional humanistic ideas, which have a long history in Chinese culture, are the precious genes of Chinese quan thought.
The essence of human rights is universal care and equal protection for all people, with universal humanity. Universal human rights have different forms of expression in different cultures and civilizations, the universality and particularity of human rights are dialectically unified, and the idea of universal human rights cannot negate the particularity of national culture, nor can we use the particularity of national culture to negate the human universality of human rights, and we should promote the concretized understanding and practice of human rights values in the mutual adaptation and mutual interpretation of universality and particularity.
The historical and cultural background and subject basis of human rights thinking
The idea of human rights is based on the historical and cultural form of humanism. Both ultra-humanistic theistic cultures and non-humanistic materialistic cultures are difficult to form human rights ideas. As early as the occasion of Yin Zhou, Chinese culture bid farewell to the theological culture, formed a humanistic culture, transformed the main body of value from God to man, affirmed the value of man himself, and the value of man's misfortune and good and evil were all created by man himself, not determined by God. Because "the Destiny of Heaven is constant" and "only virtue is a supplement", it is necessary to "match heaven with virtue" and "respect virtue to protect the people". The Shang Shu Tai Oath says: "Heaven sees its own people, and heaven listens to its own people." "Man and the people have replaced heaven and God as the main body of value, and attaching importance to and caring for people has become a new value orientation."
The audience visited the "Dunxing Hometown: The Forbidden City Dunhuang Special Exhibition". Photo by Du Yang, a reporter from China News Service
Traditional Chinese humanism emphasizes that man is the subject, man is the ontology, and man is the fundamental. This provides the human rights thinking with its proper subject, that is, the person. In the chinese cultural humanist spirit, value is man himself, not gods or things. This is the main premise of caring for people and the premise and basis of the idea of human rights.
Traditional Chinese humanism embodies the concepts, contents and propositions of human rights thinking
Traditional Chinese humanism, because it regards people as the main body of value, believes that in all things, the value of human beings is the highest and most expensive. This is in full line with the idea of human rights.
Chinese the backbone of humanistic culture is Confucian culture, and Confucius, the founder of Confucian culture, attaches great importance to the value of people and people. The Analects records: "When the stables caught fire, the son retreated, asking people, not horses." "Xunzi affirms" that people have anger, life, knowledge, and righteousness, so they are the most expensive in the world." Zhang Dainian said that you are the value we are talking about now. To say that people are the most expensive in the world means that people are the most valuable existence in the world. Although there are precious and valuable things outside of man, they are all because they are beneficial to man, otherwise they are things that are not valuable or worthless.
In the view of humanistic values, value depends on people, values exist from people, values vary from person to person, values change from person to person, and there is no value that leaves people. Property, wealth, etc. are valuable because they benefit people themselves. The important value of "the most precious person in the world" is the fundamental concept of human rights thinking.
The idea of human rights advocates affirming, caring for, loving, and respecting people. The core value of the Chinese cultural humanistic tradition, especially Confucianism, is "loving people". The core value of Confucianism is "benevolence." Confucius said: "The benevolent one, the lover." "Ren" is the general virtue of various virtues spoken of by Confucianism, and the meaning of this general virtue is "to love others.". Benevolence, a core Confucian value, is in line with the concept of caring for human rights.
As a "lover", "benevolence" is embodied in two aspects, namely "forgiveness" and "loyalty". Forgiveness means "do not do to others what you do not want", that is, not to harm others; loyalty is "to establish oneself as one desires", that is, to help others. Not harming people is the requirement of human rights thinking, and helping people is also the requirement of human rights thinking. It can be seen that the Confucian idea of humanism and benevolence is in line with the idea of human rights.
Traditional Chinese humanism asserts that human beings are the most precious, and the primary meaning is that the value of human life is the most precious. Folk sayings that "human life is at stake" and "killing people to pay for their lives" is a manifestation of attaching importance to human life. Now we talk about the "supremacy of life" of people, which is also the embodiment of attaching importance to the value of human life.
The picture shows Shenzhen citizens lining up in an orderly manner to do free nucleic acid testing. China News Service reporter Chen Wen photographed
Heaven and Earth Are The Masters of Heaven and Earth are the beliefs of Chinese culture. Because heaven and earth give sunshine and rain to plant crops, and crops grow and mature to give people food, human life can exist and continue. The Monarch gives people social life and spiritual life. The reason why the Heaven and Earth Emperor has become the faith of the Chinese is because it is the resource and condition for the realization of human life. The most basic content of human rights is the right to life and the right to life, which is the embodiment of the value of the supremacy of life. It can be seen that the humanistic beliefs of Chinese culture are similar to the ideas of human rights.
Traditional Chinese humanism contains the basis and resources of human rights thinking
Confucius put forward the idea of "benevolence by oneself" as a fundamental stipulation for the essence of man. "For benevolence by oneself", that is to say, whether a person is benevolent or not is benevolent is determined by oneself, not by the external forces of outsiders. That is to say, man has the freedom to choose, which is the essential characteristic of man. Confucius advocated "benevolence by oneself", which is to emphasize that the essence of human beings is freedom.
The idea of human rights advocates attaching importance to and loving people, and its fundamental reason is to advocate attaching importance to people's freedom and loving people's freedom. Because of freedom, talent acquires its own essence, and talent has dignity. The Chinese cultural humanist tradition of defining the essence of man with freedom is a very important and fundamental idea of human rights. Of course, the freedom advocated by Chinese culture is mainly positive freedom rather than the negative freedom advocated by liberalism. Positive freedom should be recognized as the philosophical metaphysical basis for negative freedom.
One of the main issues to be addressed by the idea of human rights is the relationship between civil rights and State power. Mencius proposed: "The people are noble, the society is secondary, and the king is light." "The monarch is the representative of state power, and it can be said that the people are precious and the monarch is light, which can be said to advocate restricting the power of the state and avoiding its harm to individual rights, which is the political requirement of human rights thinking.
China News Service reporter Jia Tianyong photographed
In the Chinese cultural humanist tradition, this voice, although not mainstream, is endless. Although this precious idea is only a value concept, it is still an important traditional value resource of modern human rights thinking, which is conducive to coordinating the relationship between state power and individual rights, and is conducive to the protection of individual rights and the exertion of state power.
The dialectical characteristics of traditional Chinese humanistic human rights thinking
Human rights have social characteristics, and are the value concepts and institutional designs that protect people and respect people in social relations. Man's value in social relations is justice. Justice is a relationship between people that does not harm each other, which includes two aspects: on the one hand, I do not harm others, on the other hand, others do not harm me or I am not harmed by others. It is an obligation that I do not harm others, and it is a right that I am not harmed by others.
Western culture emphasizes that I am not harmed by others, that is, rights; Chinese culture emphasizes that I do not harm others, that is, obligations. The combination of the two is complete justice and the true protection of man. Chinese dialectical demand of the culture of civilism dialectically unifies the two aspects of my obligation not to harm others and my right not to be harmed by others, emphasizing the dialectical unity of human rights and responsibilities.
Therefore, the human rights demanded by the Chinese cultural humanistic tradition should be, in its entirety, the rights and responsibilities of human beings. The concept of rights and systems are the protectors, and the concepts and systems of obligations are also the protectors, and only by combining the two aspects can we better protect the people more completely.
We should integrate the humanistic tradition of Chinese culture with the Western Enlightenment culture to create a more reasonable view of human rights in the process of practicing socialism with Chinese characteristics. This view of human rights can be called the concept of human rights and responsibilities. (End)
About the Author:
Liu Jintian is a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Academy of Culture and Value Philosophy of Northwest University of Political Science and Law, the vice chairman of the Academic Committee of Northwest University of Political Science and Law, the chief expert of Marxist theory, a researcher of the Human Rights Research Center, and the vice president of the Chinese Society for the Study of Philosophy of Values.