Human Rights in Chinese Thought
A Cross-Cultural Inquiry

This book is about the history of Chinese ideas of human rights.

Stephen C. Angle (Author)

9780521809719, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 July 2002

304 pages
23.7 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.604 kg

'… groundbreaking … Angle's book is a particularly significant contribution in that he is really one of the first to take contemporary Chinese thinkers seriously … Anyone who thought that nothing new can e said about the 'human rights versus Asian values' debate should be convinced by Angle's book that the opposite is true.' The Philosophical Quarterly

What should we make of claims by members of other groups to have moralities different from our own? Human Rights in Chinese Thought gives an extended answer to this question in the first study of its kind. It integrates a full account of the development of Chinese rights discourse - reaching back to important, though neglected, origins of that discourse in 17th and 18th century Confucianism - with philosophical consideration of how various communities should respond to contemporary Chinese claims about the uniqueness of their human rights concepts. The book elaborates a plausible kind of moral pluralism and demonstrates that Chinese ideas of human rights do indeed have distinctive characteristics, but it nonetheless argues for the importance and promise of cross-cultural moral engagement.

1. Introduction
2. Languages, concepts, and pluralism
3. The consequences of pluralism
4. The shift toward legitimate desires in neo-Confucianism
5. Nineteenth century origins
6. Dynamism in the early twentieth century
7. Change, continuity, and convergence prior to 1949
8. Engagement despite distinctiveness
9. Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Philosophy [HP], Regional studies [GTB]