Book Review

Book Review

Summarize separately each reading, stating the author’s basic argument and how they support it. Analyze each reading by offering your own thoughts and reflections in response to the article.

Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human
Rights: A Mencian Perspective
By SUNGMOON KIM
ABSTRACT. This paper attempts to show the compatibility between
Confucianism and human rights, first by revisiting the moral philosophy of Mencius, a key founder of the Confucian tradition, then by
reconstructing the Mencian-Confucian idea of human rights from
the perspective of his moral philosophy. One of my central claims is
that not only did Mencius acknowledge core human rights—
socioeconomic as well as civil-political—justified by his foundational
faith in universal moral equality and human dignity, but he further
understood the right to subsistence as an essential part of Confucianconstitutional rights. Contrary to the widely received notion that in
Mencian-Confucianism the right to subsistence has an overriding value
vis-a-vis civil-political rights, I argue that Mencius (and Confucians in
general for that matter) never stipulated such a lexical ranking among
rights. I conclude by discussing how the type of Confucian moral
reasoning that Mencius employs in justifying the moral value of
human rights can be re-appropriated to produce Confucian rights
suitable for today.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Introduction:
The Ongoing Debate Over Confucianism and Human Rights
In the past few decades, there have been a plethora of studies on the
compatibility between Confucianism and human rights. The purposes
of these studies vary. Some aim to rediscover and revivify Confucianism’s humanist tradition, which in their view has been hijacked and
further exploited by authoritarian regimes in East Asia, as a cultural
resource for liberalism and democracy by making human rights an
integral part of modern Confucianism (de Bary 1983, 1998a; Tu 2002).
Others find this sort of attempt a poor representative of the authentic
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 74, No. 1 (January, 2015).
DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12084
© 2015 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.
Confucian tradition, whose strong emphasis on human relationships
and particularized role ethics allows no room for the modern Western
conception of the free and autonomous self on which the rights
discourse is predicated (Rosemont 1988, 1991, 1998, 2004; Ames 1988,
2011; Hall and Ames 1987, 1999; Ihara 2004). Philosophical advocates
of the compatibility thesis take pains to differentiate Confucianism as
a tradition of philosophical thought from Confucianism as a political
ideology or actual state practices and attempt to reconstruct a modern
Confucianism that is fully compatible with the discourse and practice
of human rights (Chan 1999, 2014; Tiwald 2011). Still, skeptics of the
compatibility thesis, especially those who are keen on particular
economic and political contexts in which the East Asian governments
are situated, do not necessarily deny that Confucianism would
endorse a certain type of rights, particularly socioecomomic rights
such as a right to subsistence or a right to be fed, but they are
uncertain as to whether there is any room for civil-political rights in
the Confucian tradition; even if there is, they argue, the Confucian
tradition firmly establishes that socioeconomic rights have an overriding value via-a-vis civil-political rights (Bell 2006).
Though these studies have undoubtedly advanced our understanding of Confucianism as well as whether or not Confucianism is
compatible with human rights (and if so, then, with what kind of
human rights in particular), there are two problems in existing studies.
First, participants in this compatibility debate tend to assume Confucianism as a monolithic philosophical tradition, neglecting its variegated sub-traditions with various philosophical doctrines, political
platforms, and policy orientations. As William de Bary (1998b) once
complained, scholars who draw attention to the humanist tradition in
traditional Confucianism often dismiss the important difference
between ancient Confucianism (created by the founders of the tradition such as Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi) and Neo-Confucianism,
particularly of version advocated by Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and his
followers during the Song (960–1279) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties
in China and the Choso ˘n dynasty (1392–1910) in Korea, which gave
rise to what some scholars call “constitutional culture” in the Confucian political tradition (Chu 1998; Hahm 2009). I propose that even
among the three ancient Confucian masters there are still meaningful
150 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
differences as to whether there is room for the notion of human rights
in their respective philosophical thought, given their different conceptions of human nature (Ivanhoe 2000; Van Norden 2000), different
ideas of the origin of the civil state, and, albeit arguably, different
conceptualizations of the constitutional polity (Kim 2011). Since Confucianism as a philosophical tradition never constituted its political
theory in terms of human rights, it is crucial to refrain from attributing
a (seminal) notion of rights to the tradition in general, even if we find
what may seem like “rights” in an individual thinker’s philosophical
thought, especially when dealing with ancient Confucians, to whom
both compatibilists and incompatibilists turn in order to make their
cases.
Second and relatedly, when we are relating the notion of human
rights to the Confucian tradition, we should be clear about in what
intellectual context we are introducing the notion—are we engaging
primarily in an interpretive task (i.e., to discover the notion of
rights, or its equivalent, in Confucian philosophical thought) or are
we trying to advocate human rights in modern East Asian countries
that have a Confucian heritage, to which the concept (especially the
philosophical concept of rights) has been completely unknown until
the late 19th century (Angle 2002)? In the existing literature, these
otherwise distinct philosophical tasks (i.e., interpretive or normative)
are often conflated, inviting many questions, theoretical as well as
practical. For instance, noting the virtual absence of the concept of
rights in core Confucian classics, some incompatibilists boldly assert
that, in contemporary China, the notion of rights is completely irrelevant. But why should the observation that ancient Confucianism
was not constituted around the idea of rights lead to the complete
denial of the significance of human rights in modern China, where
citizens are now fully aware of the crucial importance of a variety
of rights?1
Compatibilists have their own problems when they claim that
Confucian rights discovered in classical texts comprehensively define
contemporary life in East Asian, historically Confucian, societies. This
is a problematic presumption because even though, evidently, East
Asians are saturated with Confucian habits and mores, they are not
Confucians in a philosophically monist and culturally monolithic
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 151
sense, but rather subscribe to different religious, moral, or philosophical doctrines as private persons (Kim 2014a). In this regard, the
common claim that because ancient Confucians believed that material
welfare has an overriding value over everything else, East Asian
governments are also primarily concerned with a right to subsistence
rather than civil and political rights (Bell 2006), is not entirely logical
nor convincing. This line of argument completely disregards the
radically altered societal context of modern East Asian societies,
particularly the fact of value pluralism. I argue that in contemporary
East Asia, increasingly marked by value pluralism, Confucian rights,
properly understood, should be rights negotiated with Confucian
mores, moral sensibilities, civilities, and practices, not so much what
we read literally from the ancient texts. Certainly, classical texts are
important sources of inspiration in conceiving of Confucian rights, that
is, rights suited in the modern Confucian society, but by no means can
(or should) they alone determine the substantive moral content of
human rights or a ranking among the rights, especially when they are
in conflict.
Keeping these two major problems in mind, my aim in this article
is quite modest. I do not embark on a comprehensive investigation of
compatibility between Confucianism as a whole and human rights.
Instead, I first focus on one ancient Confucian thinker, Mencius
(372–289 BCE), whom the tradition understands as the second most
authoritative master next to Confucius. There are three reasons for my
focus on Mencius. First, historically, of various philosophical schools
of Confucianism, the Confucianism inspired by Mencius (or Mencian
Confucianism) has been most influential, both intellectually and politically, in China and beyond. There have been other forms of Confucianism, but they were also influenced by Mencius. For example,
Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, a particular version of Confucianism
that dominated the intellectual world during the Song and Ming
dynasties, is significantly different from Mencius’s original philosophical thought because of its dialectical interactions with and incorporation of Buddhist metaphysics and Daoist naturalism. Nevertheless, this
reformed Confucianism, revolving around the metaphysical concepts
of li 理 (principle) and qi 氣 (vital force), is, at its core, built on
Mencius’s foundational philosophical ideas on human nature and
152 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
human moral perfectibility (Ivanhoe 2000: 43–58). Second, as will be
shown, the Mencian conviction of the original goodness of human
nature, the Mencian faith in human moral perfectibility and moral
equality among all human beings, and the Mencian respect for human
dignity, all lend support to the Confucian conception of human rights,
though I admit it is debatable whether it is desirable to capture
Mencius’s moral and political philosophy in terms of human rights.
But if it is granted that we can understand certain aspects of Confucianism in terms of rights, it is indisputable that Mencius’s philosophical thought presents the Confucian idea of human rights most clearly
and powerfully. Finally, an investigation of Mencius’s philosophical
thought enables us to recast the received wisdom that in Confucianism
the right to substance has an overriding value, permitting the state to
sideline other rights, especially civil-political rights, if by doing so it
can (better) serve the people’s right to be fed.
The second aim of this article is modest from a different angle, in
the sense that even though my argument supports the compatibility
thesis, it does not advocate the direct application of Confucian rights
gleaned from ancient Confucian texts to contemporary East Asia. What
I am rather interested in is the way in which Confucian perspectives
of basic human entitlements and goods are being negotiated with
various kinds of rights, thereby producing Confucian rights pertinent
in contemporary East Asian societies. One advantage of conceiving of
Confucian rights as the outcome of a dialectic process of cultural
negotiations is that these rights can be institutionally connected to the
democratic constitutional structure without forfeiting their core cultural characteristics. Confucian rights understood in this way may not
be fully representative of the original Confucian philosophical and
political tradition, but they are compatible with value pluralism and
the resulting moral disagreements. In short, the cultural modesty of the
idea of Confucian rights enables it to be more inclusionary, democratic, and just.
This article consists of three main parts. In the following section, I
revisit Mencius’s moral and political philosophy with special focus on
his deepest commitment to moral equality among all human beings
and his faith in human dignity. I then reconstruct various kinds of
Mencian-Confucian human rights by reinterpreting Mencius’s political
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 153
ideas, still strongly influenced by the old feudal ritualism that prevailed during the Zhou dynasty (1045–256 BEC), from the perspective
of his moral philosophy. After critically revisiting Daniel Bell’s claim
that in Confucianism a right to subsistence has an overriding value, I
conclude this article by discussing, albeit briefly, what implications
can be drawn from the discussion so far for a normative political
theory of Confucian rights in modern East Asia’s pluralist societal
context.
Mencius on Moral Equality and Human Dignity
Beyond the Legacy of Aristocracy
In a recent essay, Justin Tiwald (2011: 245) presents two minimum
stipulations of a “human right”: first, there should be something to
which virtually all human beings are entitled, and second, there
should be some set of significant rules or norms that helps to guarantee the entitlement, should normal means fail. Traditionally, no
Confucian thinker advanced his moral and political theory in a way
that unequivocally meets the second stipulation.2 The reason is not
difficult to understand—Confucians did not attempt to constitute a
civil polity in terms of rule of law, to which a discourse of rights as a
moral and/or legal entitlement is integral, but rather by means of rites
or rituals (li 禮 in Chinese), which applied only to the aristocratic
caste. As will be shown shortly, Confucians did acknowledge that
there are some fundamental goods to which all human beings are
entitled, but they claimed that when the government fails to deliver
such goods, the remedy ought to be sought according to procedures
stipulated in the rituals and therefore only by the aristocrats, the
carriers of rituals, who were simultaneously regulated by them.
Though Confucians were deeply concerned with the people’s moral
and material well-being and believed in their moral entitlement to
certain goods, they did not allow active political agency among
laypeople (Tiwald 2008; Kim 2011).
Discrepancy between the universalist concern with the well-being
of the entire political community and selective endorsement of active
political agency in early Confucianism is best shown in Mencius’s
154 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
justification of tyrannicide, which many modern scholars have used to
interpret Mencius as having advocated the people’s right to rebellion
(Twiss 1998: 43; Cheng 1998: 150). When King Xuan of Qi asks
whether it is true that Tang (a sage-king who founded the Shang
dynasty) banished Jie (the last ruler of the Xia dynasty), and whether
King Wu (a sage-king who co-founded the Zhou dynasty with his
father, King Wen) assaulted Zhou (the last ruler of the Shang dynasty),
Mencius responds: “One who offends against humaneness is called a
brigand; one who offends against rightness is called an outlaw.
Someone who is a brigand and an outlaw is called a mere fellow. I
have heard of the punishment of a mere fellow Zhou but never of the
slaying a ruler” (Mencius 1B7).3 But consider the following statement
by Mencius:
There are ministers who are from the royal line and ministers who are of
other surnames. . . . If the ruler has great faults, they should remonstrate
with him. If, after they have done so repeatedly, he does not listen, they
should depose him. . . . [As for high ministers of a different surname] they
should remonstrate with [the ruler]. If they do so repeatedly, and he does
not listen, they should leave. (Mencius 5B9)
Mencius’s key argument is that even though the ruler has immense
moral and political responsibility to serve the people’s moral and
material well-being, when the ruler has failed in this fundamental moral
duty and has become a tyrant, the (ritually prescribed) right to depose
him falls upon a selected group of aristocrats. Even in Mencius 1B7,
where Mencius appears to endorse the people’s right to tyrannicide, the
agent who actually carries it out is the tyrant’s sagacious minister, not
laypeople. In another place, Mencius calls the ministers who are
entitled to depose the incumbent king “Heaven’s delegated officials”
(tianli 天吏) (Mencius 2B8), thus differentiating them from the
laypeople who lack this important political agency or political right.
That said, early Confucianism’s fundamental premise that only
(selected) aristocrats are permitted by Heaven to remedy the government’s failure to deliver essential human goods should not be
understood as representing Confucianism’s core philosophical claim. In
fact, we should not forget that as far as (active) political agency and
political ritualism are concerned, early Confucians, especially Confucius and Mencius, had yet to clearly part company with the
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 155
pre-Confucian political conventionalism of feudal aristocracy embedded in the culture of the Zhou dynasty, which Confucius (and Mencius)
wanted to restore by proudly calling it “this culture of ours” (siwen
斯文) (Analects 9.5).4 The point I want to make here is that when
approached independently from its foundational virtue ethics (Van
Norden 2007; Ivanhoe 2013), early Confucianism can be easily mistaken
as merely justifying moral ideals and political practices of the Zhou
dynasty.
Moral Equality
What is interesting about early Confucianism, especially Mencian
Confucianism, is that its virtue ethics imparts a fresh moral meaning to
the political ritualism of the Zhou culture. Moreover, this new moral
meaning not only develops a serious tension with the old political
ritualism with which early Confucianism is still implicated, but more
importantly, gives rise to something close to what we now call rights.
Let us examine how Mencius derives a seminal idea of rights by
developing virtue ethics and rearticulating feudal political ritualism
from the virtue ethical perspective. Mencius begins his moral philosophy by grappling with what Confucius left ambiguous, that is, his
controversial statement on human nature: “Human beings are close by
nature [although] they can be different through repeated practices”
(Analects 17.2). The problem with this statement is that Confucius
never explicates what “close” (jin 近) means: Does it imply that
human beings are by nature good, or bad, or good and bad? Mencius
attempts to resolve the ambiguity in Confucius’s statement by claiming
as well as demonstrating that human beings are by nature good (xing
shan 性善). For him, however, the goodness of human nature does
not mean moral perfection. The kernel of Mencius’s xing shan thesis
consists of the belief that human beings are born with moral sensibilities, which incline them toward moral goodness. According to him,
humans are endowed with four “sprouts” (duan 端) of virtue, which
he describes in terms of moral sentiments.5
Here is why I say that all human beings have a mind that commiserates
with others. Now, if anyone were suddenly to see a child about to fall into
a well, his mind would be filled with alarm, distress, pity, and compassion.
156 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
That he would react accordingly is not because he would hope to use the
opportunity to ingratiate himself with the child’s parents, nor because he
would seek commendation from neighbors and friends, nor because he
would hate the adverse reputation [that could come from not reacting
accordingly]. From this it may be seen that one who lacks a mind that feels
pity and compassion would not be human; one who lacks a mind that feels
shame and aversion would not be human; one who lacks a mind that
feels modesty and compliance would not be human; one who lacks a mind
that knows right and wrong would not be human. The mind’s feeling of
pity and compassion is the sprout of humanness (ren 仁); the mind’s
feeling of shame and aversion is the sprout of rightness (yi 義); the mind’s
feeling of modesty and compliance is the sprout of propriety (li 禮); the
mind’s sense of right and wrong is the sprout of wisdom (zhi 智). Human
beings have these four sprouts just as they have four limbs. (Mencius
2A6)
What is important here is Mencius’s claim that all human beings have
these moral sprouts. Implicit in this claim is that all human beings,
regardless of their social backgrounds, are equal, naturally as well as
morally (Bloom 1998: 101–102). This does not mean that all human
beings, simply because they have equal moral potential, will become
morally good with no qualitative distinction. As Donald Munro (1969:
1–2) has noted, Confucians, Mencius in particular, distinguish natural
equality, equality in the sense that human beings are born equal (which
encompasses Mencian moral equality), from evaluative equality, which
suggests that all human beings are of equal worth, thus deserving equal
treatment. One of Mencius’s greatest insights is that natural or moral
equality is perfectly compatible with evaluative inequality as similar
moral potential can be developed to varying degrees. By using his
trademark “agricultural” metaphor of moral self-cultivation, which
Philip Ivanhoe (2000: 15–28) aptly captures in terms of a developmental
model, Mencius gives a powerful statement on how moral equality and
evaluative inequality can overlap.
In years of abundance, most of the young people have the wherewithal to
be good, while in years of adversity, most of them become violent. This is
not a matter of a difference in the native capacities sent down by Heaven
but rather of what overwhelms their minds. Now, let barley be sown and
covered with earth; the ground being the same, and the time of planning
also the same, it grows rapidly, and in due course of time, it all ripens.
Though there may be differences in the yield, this is because the fertility
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 157
of the soil, the nourishment of the rain and the dew, and the human effort
invested are not the same. (Mencius 6A7)
Based on this line of reasoning, some contemporary Confucian
scholars argue that the gist of Mencian Confucianism (or early Confucianism in general) lies in political meritocracy, a rule by superior
virtue and ability (Bell 2006; Bai 2008; Li 2012; Chan 2014). However,
singularly concentrated on Mencius’s acknowledgment of evaluative
inequality, the meritocratic interpretation misses Mencius’s central
argument: although the quality of moral development depends greatly
on the degree of effort a person has put in, evaluative inequalities
among people do not disqualify the fundamental similarity among
human beings. Put differently, what Mencius is concerned with is not
so much classifying people into different political classes based on
degrees of their moral cultivation but encouraging all of them to make
an effort at moral development.
That Mencius’s focus is on moral effort, not so much on evaluative
inequality, is even more evident in his famous analogy between Ox
Mountain, which has become barren due to excessive logging and
sheep-breeding, and the people who have failed to cultivate their
innate good nature, then went astray. Mencius says:
Seeing this barrenness, people suppose that the mountain was never
wooded. But how could this be the nature of the mountain? So it is also
with what is preserved in a human being: could it be that anyone should
lack the mind of humanness and rightness? . . . Thus, given nourishment,
there is nothing that will not grow; lacking nourishment, there is nothing
that will not be destroyed. Confucius said, “Hold on and you preserve it;
let it go and you lose it. The time of its going out and coming in is not
fixed, and there is no one who knows the place where it goes.” In saying
this, he was referring to the mind. (Mencius 6A8)
Again, Mencius’s point here is not to stress how immoral or uncultivated
laypeople are and to politically differentiate them from moral elites who
are qualified to rule, but rather to draw our attention to what all human
beings are capable of given their similar human nature.
One may challenge Mencius’s moral egalitarianism by pointing out
that the claim that all human beings are capable of moral effort does
not necessarily entail that all are equally capable of moral effort. The
158 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
implicit reasoning underlying this challenge is that even if it is granted
that all human beings possess similarly good nature, the obvious fact
that not only do people differ in their moral efforts but, more tellingly,
most of them fail to become morally good, belies the core assumption
of Mencian Confucianism that all human beings are equally capable of
moral effort. If people differ in their effort-making abilities, how could
Mencius’s moral egalitarianism hold? As George Sher notes, however,
the possession of an ability to exert effort is distinguished from the
exercise of that ability and “[w]e cannot infer the conclusion that
people differ in their effort-making abilities directly from the fact that
they differ in their efforts” (Sher 1979: 368). Although Mencius does
not offer a robust philosophical explanation on equal effort-making
capacity, throughout the text of the Mengzi he seemingly believes that
there is no significant difference among human beings in this basic
human capacity, when he says:
What people are able to do without having learned it is an expression of
original, good ability. What they know without having to think about it is
an expression of original, good knowledge. There are no young children
who do not know enough to love their parents, and there are none who,
as they grow older, do not know enough to respect their old brothers. To
be affectionate toward those close to one—this is humanness (ren 仁). To
have respect for elders—this is rightness (yi 義). All that remains is
to extend these to the entire world. (Mencius 7A15)
For Mencius what counts as “moral effort” is one’s capability of
cultivating the virtues of ren and yi (and li and zhi) and, surprisingly,
he understands the kernel of these cardinal moral virtues as consisting
of nothing more than one’s ability “to be affectionate toward those
close to one” and “to have respect for elders.” Of human beings,
Mencius asks: Who is incapable of doing these sorts of things?6 Who
would possibly be unable to extend such fundamental human affections to others? In fact, precisely on this ground, Mencius admonished
the then rulers, who were preoccupied with the enrichment and
strengthening of the state by any means, the typical concerns of
realpolitik, and urged them to turn to the Way to become true kings,
namely, the Kingly Way (wangdao 王道). According to Mencius, the
Kingly Way can be attained only if the ruler is able to extend his
affectionate moral sentiments natural for his own family members to
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 159
the people that he governs: “By treating the elders in one’s own family
as elders should be treated and extending this to the elders of other
families, and by treating the young of one’s own family as the young
ought to be treated and extending this to the young of other people’s
families, the empire can be turned around on the palm of one’s hand.
. . . Thus, if one extends his kindness it will be enough to protect all
within the four seas, whereas if one fails to extend it, he will have no
way to protect his wife and children. . . . Why do you make an
exception in the case [of the people]?” (Mencius 1A7).7
As such, for Mencius, there is only one Way (dao 道) by which to
become morally good and for this end, one’s sociopolitical status does
not matter. Nor does it affect one’s capacity to develop good moral
character, although Mencius did believe that a ruler’s moral virtue
would have far-ranging social and political ramifications for the wellbeing of the people (Kim 2010). Mencius’s unswerving conviction that
all human beings are equally capable of becoming virtuous, regardless
of one’s sociopolitical status or physical endowment, is most clearly
revealed when he boldly claims that “[t]he sage and we are the same
in kind” (Mencius 6A7). Quoting Yan Yuan, Confucius’s favorite
disciple, Mencius proclaims fundamental equality of human beings as
this: “What kind of man was Shun? What kind of man am I? One who
exerts effort will also be like them [i.e., sages]” (Mencius 3A1).
Thus understood, Mencius’s idea of human nature as inherently
good in terms of the capacity of all human beings for moral development should not be understood merely as a philosophical account
of human nature. In a more profound sense, it is unflinching faith in
human perfectibility, an ability possessed by all human beings to
become a sage, a perfect moral paragon. This is how later Confucians,
including Song-Ming Neo-Confucians, understood Mencius’s xing
shan thesis (de Bary 1983), and more strikingly, it is on the basis of
this Mencian faith in universal human perfectibility that some female
Neo-Confucians in Korea were able to espouse moral and spiritual
equality between men and women (Kim 2013, 2014b).
Before Confucius and especially Mencius, sagehood, the ultimate
stage of moral perfection, had been exclusively tied with kingship,
and virtue (de 德) had been considered a divine benefaction from the
king (and some selective aristocrats) to the people, authorized by the
160 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
Mandate of Heaven (tianming 天命) to rule as a mediator between
Heaven and the people (Ching 1997; Wang forthcoming). Inspired by
Confucius, who made virtue accessible to all human beings (Creel
1949: 75–99; Schwartz 1985: 76), Mencius further advanced Confucius’s seminal moral egalitarianism by stipulating as well as demonstrating the innateness of virtues (albeit in an incipient form) within
every single human being. In doing so, he enabled the people not only
to directly access virtue but to attain sagehood.
Human Dignity
Mencian innovation in the Chinese philosophical tradition does not
end with his xing shan thesis, the culmination of which is the
accessibility of sagehood by all human beings. Certainly, for Mencius,
sagehood is a moral stage to arrive at through relentless selfcultivation. “When it [virtue] is filled up within oneself, one may be
called ‘beautiful.’ When it is filled up and brightly displayed, one may
be called ‘great.’ When one is great and exercises a transforming
influence, one may be called a ‘sage.’ One who is a sage and
unknowable may be called a ‘spirit’,” says Mencius (Mencius 7B25).
One way to make sense of Mencius’s idea is that sagehood is the final
stage of moral self-cultivation, attainable only by moral heroes, and
gentleman (junzi 君子)-hood, at which according to early Confucians
all human beings can arrive, can be rarely attainable by ordinary
persons in practice. As noted, there is no denying that Mencius
acknowledged evaluative inequality. However, when Mencius
re-appropriated the pre-Confucian ideal of sagehood in a way accessible to all human beings, thereby making it a universal moral ideal,
he not only encouraged everyone with moral self-cultivation to
become a sage but he also saw everyone, regardless of the level of his
or her moral development, as a dignified person, a person who has
fundamental moral worth. Consider the following statement:
If, among the things he detested, there were none greater than life, then why
should he not do anything necessary in order to cling to life? If, among the
things he detested, there were none greater than death, why should he not
do what he had to in order to avoid danger? There is a means by which one
may preserve life, and yet he does not employ it; there is a means by which
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 161
one may avoid danger, and yet one does not adopt it. Thus there are things
that we desire more than life and things that we detest more than death. It
is not exemplary persons alone who have this mind; all human beings have
it. It is only that the exemplary ones are able to avoid losing it; that is all.
Suppose there are a basketful of rice and a bowlful of soup. If I get them,
I may remain alive; if I do not get them, I may well die. If they are offered
contemptuously, a wayfarer will decline to accept them; if they are offered
after having been trampled upon, a beggar will not demean himself by
taking them. And yet when it comes to a stipend of ten thousand zhong,
I accept them without regard for decorum and rightness. What do the ten
thousand zhong add to me? . . . What formerly I would not accept even at
the risk of death, I now accept for the sake of beautiful houses . . .. Could
such things not have been declined as well? This is what is called “losing
one’s original mind.” (Mencius 6A10)
The most common interpretation of this passage draws attention to
Mencius’s emphasis of rightness (yi 義) over material advantages
(including even life in a purely materialistic or hedonistic sense) from
the perspective of his apparently moralistic extolment of virtues of ren
and yi over profit (li 利) as most clearly shown in his famous
conversation with King Hui of Liang in the opening lines of the
Mengzi.8 It is arguable whether Mencius indeed pitted morality against
material interest,9 but his key point is that ordinary people often lose
their righteous mind, which is still there deep in their heart, when they
pursue material interests blindly. As Irene Bloom (1998: 107–108)
observes, however, what is also found in this statement is Mencius’s
acknowledgment of the sense of dignity. Though all human beings
desire life and detest death, there are times they desire something
other than life (i.e., rightness) and detest something more than death
(i.e., something dishonorable). Even the most uncultivated people
such as wayfarers and beggars hate being treated with disrespect or
contempt, even if such might be the only way they can be fed. Implicit
in the passage is Mencius’s conviction that no one should be treated
with disrespect due to his or her low sociopolitical or economic
standing.
Understanding Mencius’s virtue ethics as a moral justification for
evaluative inequality and political meritocracy, some contemporary
Confucian scholars argue that in Mencius’s moral and political thought
only those who are virtuous have moral dignity (Bai 2008; Li 2012). In
162 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
this view, dignity is a sort of entitlement attached to a person of
virtuous character. However, Mencius’s own view belies this interpretation because he does not necessarily associate human dignity with
his virtue ethics, if we understand Mencian virtue ethics in terms of
formation and development of moral character. For him, dignity is the
moral entitlement of everyone qua human being and it is rooted in the
foundational idea that all human beings are able to become a sage.
Thus understood, to distinguish between sagehood and the ideal of
sagehood is of crucial importance in making proper sense of
Mencius’s idea of human dignity: while in Mencius’s virtue ethics
sagehood is the final stage of moral self-cultivation, hence subject to
evaluative inequality, in his overall moral and political philosophy the
ideal of sagehood or human perfectibility entails a reconceptualization
of the moral worth of human beings as they are, that is, all human
beings are capable of sagehood and as far as such fundamental moral
capability is inherent in human nature, all are morally dignified. In
short, for Mencius human dignity derives directly from moral equality.
Mencian-Confucian Human Rights: A Reconstruction
It is important to recall that Mencius (and early Confucians in
general) was neither a democrat nor a self-conscious advocate of
human rights. Notwithstanding his advocacy of moral equality and
faith in human dignity, in no instance did Mencius advocate political
equality for all, nor did he conceive of inalienable rights to which
private individuals are morally as well as politically entitled, especially in the form of moral/political claims against the state or other
human beings. As we have seen earlier, even when Mencius gave a
moral justification for tyrannicide, he never allowed laypeople to
either depose or enthrone the ruler. That right, if we can call such
a moral-political privilege a right, was held exclusively by a small
number of aristocrats. Therefore, I admit, there is a danger in
attempting to derive human rights directly from Mencius’s ideas of
moral equality and human dignity.
That said, if we understand the notion of human rights as premised
upon moral equality and human dignity, it would not be far-fetched to
say that Mencius indeed developed some seminal ideas of human
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 163
rights in the Confucian context. In this section, I explore the Mencian
notion of human rights by reconstructing Mencius’s political theory in
a way that corresponds directly with his commitment to universal
moral equality and faith in human dignity.
Socioeconomic Rights
Many contemporary Confucian scholars seem to agree that early
Confucianism, Mencian Confucianism in particular, has no problem
accommodating so-called second-generation rights, namely, socioeconomic rights. Most commonly cited is the following passage from the
Mengzi.
It is only a gentleman who will be able to have a constant mind despite
being without a constant means of livelihood. The people, lacking a
constant means of livelihood, will lack constant minds, and when they lack
constant minds there is no dissoluteness, depravity, deviance, or excess to
which they will not succumb. If, once they have sunk into crime, one
responds by subjecting them to punishment—that is to entrap the people.
With a person of humanity in a position of authority, how could the
entrapment of the people be allowed to occur? Therefore, an enlightened
ruler will regulate the people’s livelihood so as to ensure that, above, they
have enough to serve their parents and, below, they have enough to
support their wives and children. In years of prosperity they always have
enough to eat; in years of dearth they are able to escape starvation. Only
then does he urge the people toward goodness; accordingly, they find it
easy to comply. (Mencius 1A7)
The context of this statement is that Mencius is admonishing one of
the rulers (King Xuan of Qi) with the Kingly Way in order to make him
a true king. And as the last sentence of the passage clearly shows,
Mencius’s main point is about good governance, a mode of governance that would yield easy compliance from the people. Strictly
speaking, “a constant means of livelihood” is not a right the people
can claim against the government or other citizens through formal
institutional procedures. It is what makes a good government on the
ruler’s part ; it is the minimal socioeconomic conditions of what
Mencius calls a benevolent government (ren zheng 仁政). Here the
relevant agent is always the ruler, and “a constant means of livelihood” is his moral and political responsibility, which is not directly
164 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
accountable to the people. Mencius never suggests that people have
an institutional mechanism to appeal to when the ruler has failed
fatally in this grave responsibility.
However, if we reread Mencius’s statement, focused on moral
statecraft, from the perspective of his ideas of universal moral equality
and human dignity, we can see a radically different picture. Seen in
this way, the importance of “a constant means of livelihood” is not
primarily political in the sense that it helps prevent people from
succumbing to “dissoluteness, depravity, deviance, or excess,” thereby
ensuring government without revolts. Instead, its importance is essentially moral, in that not only does it enable the people to live a
dignified life, a life that is not dependent on the benefaction from
others,10 but it further provides the people with a socioeconomic basis
upon which they can live a flourishing moral life, individual as well as
familial.
Mencius claims that if a ruler (or the government) fails to protect the
people’s right to a constant means of livelihood, the moral significance
of which is derived from the foundational idea of human dignity, he
does nothing more than “entrap” the people. Implicit in this claim is
that if people succumb to “dissoluteness, depravity, deviance, or
excess” because of such an entrapment by the government, they
should not be blamed, at least morally, even though they might be
legally liable for their criminal action. Dissoluteness, depravity, deviance, or excess refers to, above all, an injury to human dignity, a
pathological state in which humans have become like beasts. What is
remarkable about Mencius’s statement is that this seemingly selfinflicted injury is actually caused by the government when it failed to
provide the people with a constant means of livelihood. As a result,
what is violated here is the people’s right to subsistence and, perhaps
more fundamentally, it is their rightful claim to human dignity that has
been violated. Mencius’s emphasis on the right to subsistence as an
expression of human dignity is even more adamant in the following
episode.11
When there was a clash between Zhou and Lu, 33 Zhou officers
died but the people did nothing to save them, watching with hatred
as their superiors died. Duke Mu of Zhou asked what is to be done
about this, to which Mencius replies:
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 165
In years of calamity and years of famine, the old and weak among your
people who were left to tumble over into drains and ditches and the strong
who were scattered in the four directions numbered in the thousands.
Meanwhile, the lord’s granaries were full and his treasures overflowing,
and not one of the officers informed him—so callous were those above, so
cruel toward those below. . . . When now people are at last able to pay
back what they have received, the lord should not blame them. If the lord
practices humane government, the people will feel affection for their
superiors and will die for their officers. (Mencius 1B12)
Here Mencius does not merely say that a ruler or a government has a
moral responsibility for the people’s basic material well-being. According to Mencius, the people’s otherwise immoral action was justified
because it was rightful payback for the (massive) violation of their
right to subsistence. But again, what is violated is not merely a right
to subsistence as such, but a right to live a dignified life. What could
be more undignified, Mencius seems to ask, than thousands of people
tumbling over into drains and ditches when the ruler’s granaries are
full and his treasuries overflowing? What could be a greater violation
of human dignity than allowing or even forcing people to live a less
than human life? When such a violation occurs, people are not
culpable, morally as well as legally, in their revenge. And in this action
of payback, people are more than helpless victims of bad government
or docile recipients of the ruler’s personal benefaction. Quite the
contrary, they present themselves as active political agents.
Political Rights
This final point leads us to revisit Mencius’s qualified endorsement of
the right to depose, even kill, a tyrant. Is this right, bestowed by
Heaven, an exclusive privilege of a handful of nobles? Does Mencius’s
political theory only permit nobles to become active political agents?
According to the text of the Mengzi, the answer seems to be affirmative. However, Mencius’s philosophical faith in universal moral
equality allows room for the possibility that his allegiance to the
aristocratic culture of the Zhou dynasty can be recast to be compatible
with the moral dignity of common people.
According to Justin Tiwald (2008: 276), the visible qualification to
become a Heaven-delegated official, that is, someone who is qualified
166 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
to replace the incumbent ruler with a new ruler, is the possession of
some territory, at least 100 square li. In practice, either a feudal lord
or a minister in the court of the Zhou king, the suzerain ruler of all
feudal lords in “all under Heaven” (tianxia 天下), could be a candidate for this position. Laypeople might be able to engage in collective
protest against the tyrant but the right to replace him with a new ruler
is exclusively held by Heaven’s delegated official(s), often consisting
of ministers of noble families (Kim 2011: 384–385). Given these
realities, how can Mencius’s allegiance to this old aristocratic ideal of
political inequality be aligned with his fundamental faith in universal
moral equality?
Recall that Mencius upheld universal moral equality on the basis
of good human nature and the equal capacity to become a sage,
objecting to the older paradigm of hereditary privilege and natural/
moral inequality among human beings. Furthermore, by claiming
that sagehood is accessible to all human beings, he questioned the
exclusive connection between sagehood and kingship in the
ideal of sage-kingship, and decoupled the former from the latter
(Mencius 3B9). The result was what can be called the democratization of (the ideal of) sagehood. Now, Mencius’s inclusionary ideal
of sagehood has two important political implications. First, the
ruler, who ascends the throne by hereditary right and thus is not
necessarily virtuous, must strive for virtuous character to merit the
title of “king,” the original meaning of which is the office of
the Son of Heaven (tianzi 天子). Mencius’s famous notion of “rectification of the ruler” (ge jun 格君) (Mencius 4A20) and his advocacy of the ministers’ right to remonstrate with the ruler find
justification in this stipulation.12 Second, officialdom is open in principle to everyone who is virtuous, regardless of his pedigree13
and the highest rank at which the most virtuous one can arrive is
ministership.
The second point is especially important in our context. If, in
Mencius’s more refined political thought, the highest public post
ought to be given to the most virtuous person, irrespective of
his social background,14 neither the territory qualification nor the
pedigree of the minister acting as Heaven’s delegated official
(i.e., whether he is from a noble family) is of crucial importance.
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 167
After all, in his justification of Yi Yin’s controversial action (i.e., his
assumption of the role of Heaven’s delegated official),15 Mencius’s
focus was not so much on Yi Yin’s territory as his brilliant moral
virtue and political sagacity derived from it (Kim 2011: 385).
Why is this important? Mencius’s commitment to universal moral
equality and human dignity undermine his allegiance to old aristocratic ritualism. Still, active political agency is a sort of privilege
exclusively held by (high-ranking) officials, but the officials in question are no longer recruited by hereditary right or pedigree; instead,
they are selected by virtue of moral character. As far as the theory
goes, the right to participate in public affairs, including constitutional
decisions such as whether to depose (or even kill) the tyrant, or whom
to make a new ruler, is open to anyone who is qualified. And Mencius
is unequivocal when he proclaims that there is only one qualification
for exercising this right, namely, moral virtue (Mencius 6B13). Here
whether laypeople may or may not be able to exercise this right is a
secondary, though important, issue. What is more important is that
the right itself no longer belongs exclusively to a small number of
aristocrats.
A comparison with modern representative democracy might be
helpful in making clear sense of how Mencius’s political theory, as I
have reconstructed it, can lend support to the notion of political rights
in the Confucian context. Though many understand popular sovereignty and popular participation as referring to the same thing, they
are not the same, neither conceptually nor practically. Popular sovereignty is the principle of democracy, declaring that sovereign political
power resides in the people, not in a king or the aristocrats. That is,
popular sovereignty represents the ideal of political equality. Popular
participation is a particular mode of realizing the democratic ideal of
popular sovereignty. Like any form of democracy, representative
democracy upholds the ideal of popular sovereignty but it does not
make popular participation its essential component, for many theoretical as well as practical reasons. Under representative democracy,
all citizens possess the right to political participation, but in most cases
of public decision making, this right is exercised only by a small
number of political representatives elected by means of popular vote
or other means.
168 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
I am not suggesting that Mencius’s political theory, even with my
reconstruction, is in any way similar to representative democratic
theory. To repeat, Mencius is not a democrat. The point I wish to
make here is that even if according to Mencius’s political theory
people are not empowered to directly influence public affairs as an
organized power (i.e., as citizens), this lack of active political agency
does not lead to the conclusion that they therefore lack the right to
political participation, especially if we take seriously the distinction
between the right to political participation (which is open to anyone)
and the qualification for active exercise of this right. Equally important
is that there is strong textual evidence for Mencius’s understanding of
officialdom not so much as the ruler’s bureaucratic machine16 but as an
institutional basis for virtuous scholars to aid the ruler, and quite
frequently, to remonstrate with the ruler in the service of moral and
material well-being of the people, which is, Mencius is convinced, the
reason government exists. This enables us to understand Mencius’s
emphasis of qualification for active participation or direct involvement
in public affairs as a vindication of some sort of representation
mechanism, although, admittedly, he did not develop in any systemic
way a notion of political accountability of public officials to those
whose well-being they represent gyroscopically.17 If my reasoning so
far is accepted, it can then be concluded that the fact that Mencius
conceives of political representation differently from modern democratic representation does not necessarily go against the claim
that there is a seminal conception of political right in his political
thought.
This does not imply that the political right possessed by the people
is always dormant, which brings us back to the right to regicide.
Indeed, it is difficult to infer from the Mengzi that Mencius allows the
people an active right to depose or kill the incumbent ruler, however
tyrannical he may be. On the other hand, considering Mencius’s
explicit endorsement of the people’s revenge against inhumane public
officials, that is, officials who failed fatally in their roles as representatives of the people’s moral and material interests, it is equally difficult
to believe that Mencius allowed the people no active agency with
regard to an inhumane ruler to whom the Heaven-given responsibility
of taking care of the people’s well-being ultimately falls. Again, in my
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 169
view, the best way to resolve this apparent tension in Mencius’s
political thought is to distinguish between the right to rebellion and
the right to regicide: for Mencius, the people possess (and exercise)
only the former but not the latter, which is exercised only by the
qualified few as an extra-constitutional prerogative. In this regard, the
following statement by Theodore de Bary is quite suggestive.
Does this then, call for revolt? No, for Mencius the next move is to have the
responsible members of the ruling house depose the errant ruler (5B9).
Failing that, it is understandable that some other leader will overthrow him,
punish his misuse of power and replace the defaulting dynasty. While
recognizing that unchecked misrule may well provoke rebellion, Mencius
recommends a process entirely consistent with his—and the general
Confucian—view that violence is to be avoided at all reasonable costs.
Revolt is only a last desperate recourse for an exasperated people, understandable but not to be commended. That violence often prevails, Mencius
is well aware, but the point of his teachings is to replace the use of force
with a well-considered civil process, and above all with due process (what
is right, fitting and orderly in the circumstances). It is in this sense
then—that the observance of human rights is dependent on civility and
due process—that Mencius and the Confucians can be said to offer what
Twiss [1998] calls informed moral resources in support of human rights. (de
Bary 1998: 8–9)
As de Bary rightly notes, the fact that the ruler has lost legitimacy
and deserves to be removed does not and should not automatically
call for revolt because it will only exacerbate the political crisis already
present under the tyranny. Regicide by a people’s revolt is to be
avoided by all reasonable means in a civil, constitutional regime
because a violent popular response to a violent ruler only drives the
political community into a constitutional debacle, further jeopardizing
the people’s welfare. What is needed is a due process according to
which the errant ruler can be removed, and if necessary, even killed.
The right to regicide is an integral part of this due process and this
right belongs to the qualified few permitted to handle the ongoing
political crisis. That being said, the practical imperative that violence
must be avoided by any reasonable means should not be mistaken to
mean that people do not possess a right to rebellion. The right already
belongs to the people; it is only that the right is rarely (hopefully
never) called into action. We should not forget that even John Locke,
170 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
commonly understood as the champion of the right to revolution,
made this particular right (among other political rights) extremely
difficult to be exercised in reality by the participants of the social
contract.18
My point is that the fact that Mencius does not actively advocate
people’s exercise of the right to rebellion or revolution (if we take the
constitutional element in Mencius’s political theory seriously) does not
prove that no such right exists in his political thought. It only proves
that Mencius is a thoughtful constitutional thinker. I strongly agree
with de Bary that when all reasonable means to cope with a constitutional crisis have been exhausted and the due process employed
does not work anymore, the right to rebellion is no longer dormant;
people can then exercise it.
Other Civil and Political Rights
There is a danger in identifying the people Mencius refers to directly
as citizens as conceived in the Western republican or democratic
political theory, as those who govern themselves by actively participating in collective self-government. Certainly, for Mencius, “people”
(min 民) was not one of the formidable political institutions as
“citizenship” is understood in the Western political tradition (Pocock
1995). However, Mencius’s endorsement of the right to rebellion or
revolution suggests that for him people were more than amorphous
masses. For him, the people was a political body equipped with several
civil and political rights, including the crucial right to rebellion. While
the right to rebellion appears to be a collective right, it seems that
some other rights can be claimed both individually and collectively.
One important political right Mencius is seen to endorse is the right
to speech. In a sense, this right is integral to the right to rebellion
because it is surely one of the reasonable means for the people to
employ under the reign of an inhumane ruler, in the form of an oral
or written complaint, appeal, or protest. Mencius offers an example of
oral complaint/protest by quoting the chapter called “The Declaration
of Tang” in Shujing 書經 (Book of Documents) in which the people of
Xia complain about the tyrannical government of Jie 傑, the dynasty’s
last emperor: “O sun [Jie], when will you perish? We will die along
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 171
with you” (Mencius 1A2). Not surprisingly, with this passage,
Mencius admonishes one of the rulers of his time for neglecting the
people’s material well-being while pursuing wealth and power for
himself.
While the people’s complaint/protest is the right to speech exercised collectively with a view to expressing popular discontent with
the incumbent government and to rectifying it, Mencius supports
more actively (as a part of the due process) the right to speech by
individual officials in court in the form of remonstrance. According
to Mencius, when a ruler refuses to heed the minister’s righteous
admonitions, not only does the moral relationship between the two
dissolve, but, at worst, such an action can turn the relationship into
one of animosity.
When the ruler regards his ministers as his hands and feet, the ministers
regard the ruler as their stomachs and hearts. When the ruler regards his
ministers as dogs and horses, the ministers regard the ruler as just another
person. When the ruler regards his ministers as dirt and grass, the ministers
regard the ruler as a bandit and an enemy. . . . Now, however, a minister’s
admonitions are now followed and his advice is not heeded, with the result
that benefits to not extend down to the common people. When he has
reason to depart, the ruler tries to seize and detain him and even tries to
place him in extreme jeopardy at his destination. He repossesses his land
and residence on the day of his departure. This is known as being a bandit
and enemy. (Mencius 4B3)
Evidently, Mencius justifies the minister’s right to speech in terms of old
political ritualism19 without explicitly establishing a robust philosophical connection between this (ritual-endorsed) right and his overall
moral philosophy, premised on universal moral equality and human
dignity. Even here, however, we can see that Mencius explains why the
minister’s right to speech is morally important from the perspective of
his philosophical humanism—because its benefits extend down to the
common people! Even though the right to speech in the form of
remonstrance is hardly a universal right accessible to all human beings,
due to its affiliation with the stringent ritual qualification (i.e., as the
right of the officeholders), when accommodated by and reinterpreted
through Mencius’s overall philosophical thought, it would not be
far-fetched to say that the right to speech is an important Confucian
172 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
political right, reflecting human dignity and promoting the welfare of
the people.
Another right, one fully open to all human beings, to which Mencius
pays special attention, is the right to education. Mencius says:
If the king wishes to put this [benevolent government] into practice,
he should return to the root of the matter. Let mulberry trees be
planted around households of five mu, and people of fifty will be
able to be clothed in silk. . . . With fields of a hundred mu, do not
interfere with the appropriate seasons of cultivation, and families
with eight mouths to feed will be able to avoid hunger. Attend carefully to the education provided in the schools, which should include
instruction in the duty of filial and fraternal devotion, and gray-haired
people will not be seen carrying burdens on the roads. (Mencius
1A7)20
Earlier, we noted that Mencius understood a socioeconomic right,
the right to constant means of livelihood, as a fundamental human
right. Here, it is worth noting that Mencius places almost equal
emphasis on moral education by virtue of which people can
become, above all, filial and fraternally responsible (xiaoti 孝悌),
virtues that Confucians cherish as the root of ren, the Confucian
virtue par excellence (Analects 1:2). In a sense, the right to education is the natural corollary of Mencius’s theory of moral development. Though the moral sprouts are inclined to develop into fully
functioning moral abilities and character traits, the road toward
robust moral character is neither automatic nor linear. Suggested by
Mencius’s agricultural metaphors on how the moral sprouts are to
be cultivated, proper and continuous effort to cultivate the otherwise feeble moral sprouts is absolutely necessary. However, it
should not be misunderstood that by moral efforts, which are necessary for moral development, Mencius means only self-originated
endeavors. Unless a person is properly guided by accumulated
knowledge and collective human experiences embedded in rites
and rituals (li 禮), he or she can easily go astray from the Dao, the
only proper way for all human beings. Even one of the most basic
natural affections, namely, affection toward parents, has to be carefully cultivated and educated so that it can be expressed appropriately in various circumstances.
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 173
Mencius’s core moral claims that everyone can become a sage and
that the process of moral development requires education make
having proper education a fundamental human right. Exclusion from
(institutional) education means a critical impediment to moral development to becoming fully human. It is a colossal blow to human
dignity.
The Overriding Value of the Right to Subsistence?
As noted, most compatibilists agree that the socioeconomic right or
the right to subsistence is one of the most important human rights
endorsed by Confucians. What they disagree on is whether or not this
right has an overriding value vis-a-vis civil and political rights. Daniel
Bell is most vocal for the overriding value thesis. Based on some
passages in the Analects and Mengzi, including Mengzi 1A7 where
Mencius stresses the importance of a constant means of livelihood,
Bell (2006: 238) says: “People must be educated so that they can
develop their moral natures. First, however, the government must
provide for their basic means of subsistence so that they won’t go
morally astray. . . . There is no point promoting moral behavior if
people are worried about their next meal. Thus, the government’s first
priority is to secure the basic means of subsistence of the people.” Bell
further claims that the priority to the right to subsistence is one of the
defining characteristics of the Confucian ethical tradition: “This value
has not been so prominent in Western political tradition(s). It conflicts,
for example, with Rawls’s ‘lexical priority’ for the first principle of
justice that secures civil and political rights. For Confucians, economic
rights come first” (Bell 2006: 242–243).21 Bell’s most controversial
claim takes the following form:
For Mencius, as for Confucius, the government cannot secure the peace if
its people are not well fed. Hence, the first obligation of government is to
secure the basic means of subsistence of the people. By extension, the
worst thing a government can do—the most serious violation of “human
rights,” so to speak—would be to deliberately deprive the people of the
means of subsistence (by killing them, not feeding them, not dealing with
a plague, etc.). . . . In contrast, the sorts of violations of civil and political
rights that might be viewed as constituting tyranny by contemporary
Western defenders of human rights, such as systematic denials of the right
174 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
to free speech or the heavy-handed treatment of political dissenters in the
name of social order, would not be viewed as human rights violations
sufficiently serious as to justify humanitarian intervention by foreign
powers. (Bell 2006: 47)
Our examination of Mencius so far, however, does not support
Bell’s claim. For instance, nowhere in the Mengzi is Mencius found
claiming that the minister’s right to speech can be “systematically
denied” in the name of social order. And there is no philosophical
basis to interpret the relationship between the right to subsistence and
the right to speech in the way Bell does. If something can be
systematically denied, how can we call it a right? As we have seen, for
Mencius, a systematic denial of the minister’s right to speech is
nothing more than a betrayal of rightness (yi 義) in the relationship
between the ruler and the minister(s) and there is no clearer indicator
that the ruler in question is a borderline tyrant than a systematic denial
of the right to speech. What about the right to education? Would
Confucians allow this right to be denied or sidelined as long as the
government feeds the people well?
Bell says that violations of civil and political rights would be viewed
as human rights violations sufficiently serious as to justify humanitarian intervention by foreign powers. It is extremely difficult to infer
from the ancient Confucian texts a proper Confucian-style international engagement in the modern global context. However, as an
interpretation of Mencius’s political thought, Bell’s claim is highly
problematic. Consider Mencius’s advice to King Xuan of Qi who was
tempted to annex (and later did) Yan, a neighboring state:
If taking it will cause the people of Yan to be pleased, then take it. . . . If
taking it will cause the people of Yan to be displeased, then do not take
it. . . . If a state of ten thousand chariots [Qi] attacks another state of ten
thousand chariots [Yan], and the people come with baskets of food and
pitchers of drink to welcome the king’s army, can it be for any reason other
than to avoid flood and fire? If the water then gets deeper and the fire
hotter, they will surely turn again. (Mencius 1B10)
Here Mencius introduces the welfare of the people of Yan as the
decisive factor in determining the justness of annexation. However, it
should be recognized that all Mencius does in the statement above is
to proclaim a general principle that other things being equal a state’s
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 175
annexation of another state is justified in terms of punitive expedition
(zheng 征), only if doing so is welcomed by the people of the
annexed state. Here we do not know whether the ruler of Yan failed
fatally in his responsibility to take care of the people’s material
well-being, nor is it clear if Mencius makes the people’s economic
destitution the sole criterion for “humanitarian intervention,” if we can
apply this Western concept to ancient China. That said, what Bell
completely dismisses here is why Mencius thought Yan might deserve
a punitive expedition in the first place. As I discussed elsewhere in
detail (Kim 2010b: 46–55), Mencius found the recent political incident
in Yan—where the Prime Minister Zizhi usurped the throne from Lord
Zikuai, the then ruler of Yan, thereby driving the entire population
into civil war—completely unacceptable because it is by the Mandate
of Heaven alone that the throne can be legitimately transmitted
(Mencius 2B8). As an equal feudal state, Qi has no right to punish, let
alone annex, Yan; Qi might be able to punish Yan on behalf the Zhou
court (i.e., the Son of Heaven) or Heaven but in that case, the rationale
of the punitive expedition comes from the illegitimate royal transmission between Zikuai and Zizhi, which did not involve the Mandate of
Heaven.
Though I think there is a certain danger in identifying Confucian
punitive expedition directly with humanitarian intervention, I do not
deny the possibility that an important insight might be drawn from
the text of the Mengzi for a Confucian theory of humanitarian intervention. However, such a constructive philosophical rationale does
not justify Bell’s claim that Confucianism would not view violations
of civil and political rights sufficiently serious enough to justify
humanitarian intervention by foreign powers. The fact of the matter
is that the illegitimate transmission of the throne in Yan was a
serious violation of the Mandate of Heaven and by implication of
the political right of the people who vicariously represent Heaven’s
content (or discontent) with the incumbent ruler (Mencius 5A5). If
we understand this right—a political right in its broadest and constitutional sense—as deriving from some sort of a tacit consent
between the ruler and the people in mediation of the Mandate of
Heaven, it was the violation of this foundational consent in
Mencius’s view that would authorize Qi, on behalf of Heaven, to
176 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
intervene in the internal affairs of Yan. In the intervention justified
in this way, the economic well-being of the people in Yan is an
important moral consideration, but in no way can the people’s right
to subsistence compete with the constitutional-political right that
they possess vis-a-vis the state. In the most profound sense, for
Mencius, the right to subsistence is an integral element of the
people’s constitutional-political right.
Ultimately, in my view, the mistake of the overriding thesis boils
down to a questionable interpretation of the passage on a constant
means of livelihood in Mencius 1A7. Recall that in the passage,
Mencius says: “It is only a gentleman who will be able to have a
constant mind despite being without a constant means of livelihood.
The people, lacking a constant means of livelihood, will lack constant
minds” and will do bad things. Mencius’s point is not so much that
there is no point in promoting moral behavior if people are worried
about their next meal as Bell claims, but that the moral cultivation of
ordinary people, the supreme goal of a good government, cannot be
expected under a destitute economic situation. To be sure, creating a
decent economic condition is the first practical task of the Confucian
government, in fact, of any government. Does this imply the moral
priority of material well-being over other goods? Consider the case of
a professional tennis coach. The first practical task the coach has is to
make sure that the athlete he or she is coaching is in good physical
condition. If the athlete is too weak to hit the ball sufficiently or to
move fast enough, how can he or she compete in a match, let alone
become successful? However, no one would say that the coach’s first
task is his or her primary task, for which he or she is paid. The coach
will have failed in his or her purpose if he or she fails to make the
athlete competitive in a match, no matter how well the coach has been
keeping the athlete in good health.
Likewise, in the Confucian state as Mencius conceives of it, while
the first chronological task of the government is to make sure that
people live in decent economic conditions, its primary priority task
lies in something else, in making people develop their moral potential
and helping them to live a flourishing moral and social life (Mencius
3A3). Since for Mencius civil and political rights are directly concerned
with human dignity and human dignity is an integral element of a
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 177
flourishing moral and social life, we can reasonably conclude that
these rights cannot be sacrificed or sidelined solely for economic
considerations without a strong moral justification on the part of the
state.
This is not to argue that we should turn Bell’s argument upside
down and suppose that Mencius would place more weight on civil
and political rights than socioeconomic rights. All I am arguing here is
that in Mencius’s political thought both socioeconomic and civilpolitical rights are grounded in the same moral sources—universal
moral equality and human dignity—and this very fact makes both
kinds of rights equally constitutional rights to which the MencianConfucian polity is morally committed. There can be no lexical
ordering among constitutional rights (and Mencius certainly never
entertains the idea of a lexical ordering among human rights) and their
relative importance should be determined on a case-by-case basis in
every particular political situation. In any event, it is far-fetched to
draw the following contemporary implications from Mencian Confucianism, even though it is granted that Mencius was not a democrat.
If nondemocratic forms of government can do better at alleviating poverty,
then what’s the hurry with democracy? . . . Whatever the empirical facts
regarding the relationship between democracy and poverty, the centrality
of civil and political liberties in the moral framework of Western political
traditions means that Western countries will continue to devote “excessive”
resources to the promotion of democracy abroad, just as East Asian
governments will continue to draw upon background Confucian concerns
to press for economic justice first. The tendency to dismiss either position
as motivated entirely by crude realpolitik can only inflame international
tensions. In such cases, it may be necessary to tolerate, if not respect,
cultural difference. (Bell 2006: 252)
Conclusion
Can Confucian human rights as I have reconstructed here with reference to the Mengzi come to terms with the reality of East Asian
societies that are increasingly pluralist and multicultural? Is there room
for rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of association,
freedom of religion, or freedom of thought? By noting that the
emphasis in Confucian China has been on right thinking (rather than
the right to think) and harmony or unity of thought, Randall
178 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
Peerenboom (1998: 234) argues that Confucianism has structural difficulty accommodating, for instance, freedom of thought, a freedom
constitutive of being who one is, that is, of being this particular person
as opposed to someone else. It is a constructive philosophical question whether Confucianism, especially Mencian Confucianism, is
indeed able to accommodate freedom of thought, which goes beyond
the scope of this article.
That being said, I agree with Peerenboom that quite often, traditional Confucian values are at odds with what Benjamin Constant
called “the liberty of the moderns” and it is quite challenging to
negotiate Confucian values with modern liberty consisting of various
kinds of rights required in and produced by a modern pluralist society.
After all, no traditional Confucian developed his (or her, though there
are few) philosophical thought as well as political theory with a
plurality of values in mind. Committed to the single right Way (dao
道), traditional Confucians, orthodox Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucians in
particular, were notoriously reluctant to acknowledge other schools of
thought, even unorthodox interpretations of Confucianism, as equally
reasonable philosophical or religious systems, sometimes vilifying the
advocates of such systems as “despoilers of the Way” (Deuchler 1999).
No modern East Asia society is committed to Confucianism comprehensively and monolithically any longer and no country in the
region (including Japan) is a one-man monarchy whose legitimacy is
derived from the Mandate of Heaven. Put differently, not only is there
a societal condition favorable to popular sovereignty in East Asia, but
moreover, the region is increasingly characterized by what John Rawls
calls the fact of pluralism, as citizens there are subscribing to different
moral, philosophical, or religious doctrines, even though many of
them are still embedded in Confucian mores and habits. In this
dramatically altered social milieu, our endeavor to discover and
(re)construct Confucian human rights cannot be motivated by an
anachronistic belief that human rights in East Asia ought to be those
rights deriving directly from Confucian canon or grounded in Confucian philosophical doctrines. Rather, for them to be socially relevant in
pluralist East Asia, Confucian rights should refer to the rights interpreted through and justified by Confucian moral reasoning, regardless
of its origin. Then, Peerenboom’s incompatibility thesis is no longer
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 179
warranted because what is important is not so much whether traditional, philosophically monistic, Confucianism is compatible with
rights buttressing a pluralistic social life, but how to produce Confucian
rights by rereading various kinds of rights, called for by East Asian
citizens, in light of their familiar Confucian moral reasoning.
Perhaps, then, in our reconstruction of Confucian human rights,
what is more important than which human rights Confucianism
endorsed traditionally is on what grounds Confucians justified human
rights at all. Of the Confucians, Mencius explained this moral ground
most clearly and persuasively in terms of universal moral equality and
human dignity. Of course, a fuller picture of Confucian rights, especially in the Mencian strain, can be attained only if we carefully
examine precisely what the Confucians meant by these core moral
values. Only then can we understand the general mode of Confucian
moral reasoning on which the notion of human rights is predicated. It
is by negotiating Confucian moral reasoning and (otherwise liberal)
rights that we can produce Confucian rights, rights best suitable for
modern pluralist East Asia.
Notes
1. It is worth noting that the Chinese (and East Asians for that matter)
have been struggling with the discourse of rights at least since the late 19th
century (Judge 1998; Zarrow 1998; Angle 2002) and now their social life is
mainly constituted by and revolves around the discourse of rights. To present
the contemporary Chinese as total strangers to rights is, to say the least,
disingenuous.
2. Whether Tiwald’s second stipulation must be considered an essential
component of human rights is debatable because the stipulation makes sense
only against the backdrop of positive law. However, if we understand human
rights as fundamental human entitlements, concerned with human dignity, it
is not clear why they ought to be intelligible only after the political enactment
of law.
3. Throughout this article, unless noted otherwise, all English translations
of the Mengzi are adapted from Bloom (2009).
4. For Confucius’s commitment to the Zhou culture, see Analects 3.14,
7.5.
5. Part of this paragraph has been reproduced from Kim (2014a: 138).
6. See Mencius 6B2 where Mencius says: “To walk slowly behind an
older brother is called fraternal; to walk quickly ahead of an older brother is
180 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
called unfraternal. Is there anyone who is unable to walk slowly? It is just that
he does not do it. The Way of Yao and Shun was that of filial and fraternal
duty, that is all. By wearing the clothes of Yao, speaking the words of Yao, and
performing the actions of Yao, you become Yao. . . . The Way is like a great
road. It is not difficult to know it.”
7. On Mencius’s idea of moral self-cultivation by means of “extension,”
see Ivanhoe (2002).
8. Mencius says: “Let the king speak only of humanness (ren) and
rightness (yi). What need has he to speak of profit?” (Mencius 1A1).
9. For a skeptical view on the conventional view, see Kim (2014c).
10. For more on this point, see Mencius 3A3 where Mencius introduces
a well-field system as a socioeconomic and moral structure enabling
(family-based) self-reliance. Also see Kim (2010: 38–39).
11. For a philosophical analysis of this episode from a slightly different
angle, see Kim (2010: 34).
12. For Mencius’s implicit endorsement of a hereditary system despite his
idealization of abdication, see Pines (2005); Kim (2011).
13. Of course, an official’s rank would be determined based on the level
of his virtue.
14. Mencius presents Shun, Fu Yue, Jia Ge, Guan Yiwu, Sunshu Ao, and
Boli Xu as sagacious ministers whose original social backgrounds were quite
low (Mencius 6B15). According to the Mengzi, they were handpicked by the
sage-kings and promoted to minister positions because of their brilliant
virtues.
15. Yi Yin was the sagacious minister of King Tang, the founder of the
Xiang dynasty. When Tai Jia, Tang’s grandson, went astray, Yi Yin took him
into custody and gave him the tianxia back after three years of regent rule
(Mencius 7A31).
16. Historically, Mencius had yet to develop a blueprint of Confucian
bureaucracy. It was Xunzi’s task two generations later.
17. It is for this reason that it is difficult to call Mencian representation
democratic representation. After all, Mencius never conceived of an independent legislature in separation of officialdom, largely bureaucratic in structure
and function in the service of the monarch. On the difference between
promissory accountability, the most common mode of democratic accountability in an electoral democracy, and gyroscopic accountability, see
Mansbridge (2003).
18. Thus Leo Strauss (1965: 232) writes: “Locke opposes Hobbes by
teaching that wherever ‘the people’ or ‘the community,’ i.e., the majority, have
placed the supreme power, they still retain ‘a supreme power to remove or
alter’ the established government, i.e., they still retain a right of revolution. But
this power (which is normally dormant) does not qualify the subjection of the
individual to the community or society. On the contrary, it is only fair to say
Confucianism, Moral Equality, and Human Rights 181
that Hobbes stresses more strongly than does Locke the individual’s right
to resist society or the government whenever his self-preservation is
endangered.”
19. In Mencius 2B5, Mencius says, “I have heard that one who holds an
office will resign if he cannot fulfill his duties. He resigns if he has the
responsibility for speaking out but cannot speak” (emphasis added).
20. The same sentences are found in Mencius 1A3.
21. Bell’s comparison between Confucian ethics and Rawls’s two principles of justice (and their lexical ordering) is simply mistaken. To make a long
story short, Rawls does not relate his theory of justice as fairness with any
particular mode of public policy as Bell interprets him. Rawls’s two principles
of justice are what individuals in the original position would reasonably arrive
at behind the veil of ignorance. Likewise, the lexical order between two
principles of justice is what the rational individuals in a free society would all
agree to, if they put themselves in the hypothetical original position. In none
of his publications on justice as fairness does Rawls engage his political
philosophy with the practical question of how to adjudicate when rights are
in conflict.
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