Short commentary: Who wrote "conscience" into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
China News Service, Beijing, April 22 Title: Who wrote "conscience" into the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights"?
China News Service reporter An Yingzhao
On 10 December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without objection, opening with the following opening words: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." They are endowed with reason and conscience and should be treated in a spirit of brotherhood. The advocate of "conscience" writing in the Declaration is Zhang Pengchun, a Chinese representative who celebrates the 130th anniversary of his birth today.
Zhang Pengchun
Zhang Pengchun was born in Tianjin on April 22, 1892, and his brother was the famous educator Zhang Boling. Zhang Pengchun's life is quite legendary, in his early years as a student of Gengjian, he took charge of the United States, and then assisted his brother in organizing Nankai University, trained the drama artist Cao Yu, and proposed the creation of the "World Health Organization"... One of the most popular is his participation in the drafting of the Declaration as Vice Chairman of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and representative of China.
Zhang Pengchun, Vice-Chairman of the UN Commission on Human Rights (Image from the UN website)
Mary Ann Granton, a law professor at Harvard University and former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, wrote in Brave New World: The Birth of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Zhang Pengchun was not only a key participant in the drafting of the Declaration, but also played an important role in the team work that promoted the acceptance of the document by the United Nations General Assembly. As her research shows, Zhang Pengchun incorporated traditional Confucian ideas such as benevolence, loyalty, and tolerance into the Declaration, making the first international bill of rights in human history a classic that condenses the wisdom of Eastern and Western civilizations.
In discussing the first article of the draft Declaration, most representatives of Christian countries advocated the inclusion of "God's creator status" and "human rights are conferred by God". Zhang Pengchun has repeatedly reminded that the Declaration should be applicable to all parts of the world and reflect the diversity of human rights cultures, with the Chinese people accounting for the largest proportion of the world's population and their human rights concepts and traditions different from those of Christian countries. If we only embody the Western human rights culture and impose the Western concept of human rights on non-Western countries, this in itself does not pay attention to human rights.
Zhang Pengchun also stressed that it is not enough to write "reason", but also to add "benevolence" in traditional Chinese culture. He explains that the literal translation of "ren" into English is "two-man mindedness" and can also be understood as "sympathy" or "consciousness of one's fellow men" in the English context. After much discussion, the delegates unanimously agreed to juxtapose the English word closest to "benevolence" (conscience) with reason (reason), which led to the famous first article of the Declaration.
The process of repeated debate and mutual understanding between Zhang Pengchun and the representatives of various countries is itself a vivid interpretation of Confucius's idea of "harmony and difference". As John Humphrey, the first director of the UN Human Rights Division, said of Zhang: "He was a master of coordination, with a whole set of Confucian classics, and he was often able to provide rules to enable the Commission on Human Rights to emerge from the impasse." ”
In fact, what wrote into the Declaration of universal human rights concepts such as "conscience" was Zhang Pengchun's excellent traditional Chinese culture that had been passed down for thousands of years; what made Westerners understand Eastern human rights thought was not the word conscience, but the three-hundred-year-long civilizational exchanges and mutual learning between China and Europe in the 16th and 19th centuries.
The UN Human Rights Council's "Side Meeting on the Clouds" was held in Nanjing. China News Service reporter Yang Bo photographed
Some Western scholars, such as Jacques Maridan, believe that the philosophical or rational basis of human rights is natural law, and human rights will not have vitality if they are not rooted in natural law. It is true that the concept of "human rights" was first proposed by modern Western Enlightenment thinkers, but the idea of human rights can be said to have existed in China, such as Confucianism's emphasis on "benevolence", Mojia's emphasis on "both love", and Taoism's emphasis on "human nature".
Although different civilizations have different emphases on human rights, respecting and protecting human rights is the common pursuit of mankind. In the 17th century, after reading about Confucianism from Matteo Ricci's Notes on China, the French scholar Ramette Le Valere compared Confucius to Socrates, believing that the proverb "Do not do to others what you do not want to do to others" is the essence of Chinese morality. In the 18th century, Voltaire, who called himself the "Great Abbot of the Confucius Temple", said more bluntly that this was the "law of invincibility", comparable to Newton's law of gravity, and should be "inscribed in everyone's heart". Contemporaries such as Diderot and Montesquieu often quoted Confucius's famous sayings and praised them as "moral philosophy".
At the end of the 18th century, after the outbreak of the Great Revolution, the French National Convention adopted the first official declaration of human rights in human history, the Declaration of Human Rights and Citizenship, which was written into it, "Do not do to others what you do not want", which became the basic moral code of citizens.
John Locke emphasized in his Treatise on Government that "since men are equal and independent, no one may infringe upon the life, health, liberty or property of others", which is no different from the deep meaning of the Book of Philology that "all things are born together and do not harm each other". John Mill said in "On Liberty" that "as long as the actions of individuals do not involve the interests of anyone other than themselves, individuals do not have to be responsible for accounting to society", which is the same as "Zhou Yi Qiangua" "Dry road changes, each life is righteous".
Human rights are historical, concrete and, more realistic. The commemoration of Zhang Pengchun is not only to express his respect for representing China and contributing to the world, but also, as Granton said, "Let our world benefit from the wisdom of that great generation." (End)