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A few years ago, Kwong-loi Shun and David B. Wong edited a remarkable book with the title Confucian Ethics, A comparative Study of Self, Autonomy, and Community.(1) On the back cover, one reads that “The Chinese ethical tradition has often been thought to oppose Western views of the self as autonomous and possessed of individual rights with views that emphasize the centrality of relationship and community to the self.” This indeed is a good summary in a snapshot of popular thinking, quickly affirmed to be the conclusion of expert scholars. The collection of studies presented by Shun and Wong indicates at least that the conclusion should not be so hastily drawn. All the same, some chapters tend to reproduce the dichotomy between “right” as individually centred moral imperative and communally grounded “roles” with their duty and responsibility. But the authors explain, discuss and qualify such view. The debate has continued since the book was published in 2004 without modifying the frequent image of the two tendencies, named Western and Confucian, remaining in many minds as contrasting ethical fundamental conceptions: “my rights” to be asserted in order to be respected as a person versus “my role” and duty in a community to be enacted for the common good.
The emphasis on personal rights would, of course, be justified for attaining the common good, which ideally benefits everyone by respecting each individual as a person. On the other direction, to be at the right place, and acting accordingly in society would be seen as the achievement of the individual among others, the fulfilment, and so the happiness, of oneself. Now the issue, which seems simple at first glance, becomes complex when practical matters of organization intervene or impose themselves in daily life. Even though no one without listening should dismiss a theory because of its practical application by more or less vested interest groups, it remains that the concept is of little use if it cannot enlighten concrete moral choices and these choices may point to something wrong or incomplete in the original vision.
From all the essays collected in the book, two can be singled out as particularly stimulating. The first, by Craig K. Ihara, is entitled “Are Individuals’ Rights Necessary? A Confucian Perspective” (Ch. 1, pp. 11-30); the second (Ch. 2, pp. 31-48) is written by David B. Wong (also co-editor of the volume) and explains his view on “Rights and Community in Confucianism.” Alasdair MacIntyre offers a concluding essay by way of a commentary, in which he most interestingly reflects upon what Ihara and Wong have said. The three authors have much to say about self, autonomy and community, mainly concerning the relationship between right and duty. As MacIntyre notes (p. 215), rights are commonly viewed as a negative limit posed to protect myself against predators; for many, follows the notion of claiming a right against some wrong done to me. On the other hand, Ihara (p. 18) remarks that a claim can be made after the non-respect of a rule or a promise, without the presence of the individual as such, but based on some common understanding of ethical behaviour. So, what are the place and the value of the individual person?
In the examples of team sport and ballet dance given to illustrate his understanding of Confucian ethics, Ihara refutes that to conceive persons “as individual rights-bearers” is the only way “to have a sense of human equality, dignity, self-respect, and the rest.” (pp. 25-26).
On the contrary, role and responsibility also provide a sound basis for coherent ethics. The discharge of corollary duty then values the person in a community. Indeed, children’s rights, for instance, are a social construct to address damage in dysfunctional families and should be seen as a dramatic consequence of some lack of responsibility on the part of the parents (p. 27). Wong confirms the precedence of duty over right in the Confucian tradition when he quotes a classic text endorsing “a duty to speak frankly when the violation of propriety and justice is in question”, and this “implies as a necessary correlate the right to
speak (p. 35). It must be immediately added that some rulers may raise other concerns to overrule the right to speak, and punish talks which could jeopardize social stability and bring chaos to the detriment of the members of the community. To fulfil one’s duty is not without danger. It requires trust and enough consensus on an understanding of the common good.
Who are those invited to be part of the consensus? Wong does not fail to remind the reader that not every person was given an adequate sense of personal value in any self-declared Confucian society. Daughters and in general women were openly poorly considered (p. 35). A. Sen(2) makes similar remarks about the rights of citizens which were surely not equally distributed among inhabitants of the famous ancient Greek cities where, nonetheless, a theory of the right of the person was elaborated. Trends of thought are historical, at least in their societal expressions. Although concrete empirical manifestations often influence the formation of a “main line” of thinking or even deform the original view, the two cannot be confused. The validity of a role as a duty in a community is not explained away by addition to their number and variations in their performance, even if this happens well beyond what is found in classical Confucian texts.
As for consensus, the possible inclusion or exclusion of some from participation indicates another danger of a focus on the community which requires mutual trust for the observance of the agreed script assigned to each role. Trust cements a group with a strong bond of solidarity. But what happens if its purpose appears reprehensible to certain others, as it is demonstrated in a mafia type of personal linkage or in economic malpractices? Solidarity understood as some mutual help to reach a goal or even to build up a stable community, seems at least controversial when the good decided in common within the group is not really a common good, but in fact a very particular one. Commitment to a cause can never excuse blindness to evil consequences. Acceptance of one’s role needs a more or less conscious choice to guarantee the involvement and quality of participation. However constraining the circumstances are, the last word of a decision belongs to the person that is facing the choice; even apparently refusing to choose is in itself a stand.
Personal choice, so necessary to speak of human dignity, would appear to place the individual at the origin of moral discourse; it relegates the community into a second position. A consequence of this would be that trust and solidarity are not really essential elements in the definition of the person, but only empirical necessities in concrete life. Moral philosophers may find there an argument in favour of individual rights as a starting point for their discourse, and defend above all the individuality of the person. The fact remains not explained that this person will never know itself without the other, as sciences, natural and social, repeat abundantly, without having to answer why it is so, but only, in a specialized field, how it is so.(3) So again, is the community giving sense to the individual or the other way around?
Some conclude that the question is wrong because it cannot be given an answer. In moral philosophy, others, like Ihara, maintain that different traditions are equally valuable. Would dialectical thinking be of help? It has, sometimes, been ridiculed as an obscure way for an easy escape;(4) it does, however, upon ethical reflection, show that staying on the side of the individual all along creates a contradiction; and the same, if starting from the community.(5) Actually, another concept, not used in the book of Shun and Wong, namely that of “solidarity”, has been proposed to capture a conception of the human being as being never, essentially or existentially, without the other, and at the same time always autonomous...
[ End of sample | Please purchase the magazine for full articles ]
1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2004, 228 pp.
2. In “Human rights and Asian values”, The New Republic, July 14th 1997,
Vol. 217, No. 2-3, p. 33 (8).
3. See, for instance, Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. A treatise in the sociology of knowledge, Anchor Books, 1967.
4. See Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London and New York, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.
5. John McTaggart & Ellis McTaggart, Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, Batoche Books Kitchener, 1999.
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Dominique Tyl, S.J., was a contributor to China News Analysis, Hong Kong, and later worked in China in various work units; he then taught at Fujen Catholic University, Taipei, where he was appointed Director of the Socio-Cultural Research Center, and Director of the Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation Studies. He is a member of the Macau Ricci Institute. |
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| Issue 6.3 |
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Remembering—
A Shared Duty
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