Asian Values and Human Rights: A Confucian Communitarian Perspective (review)

This book is an excellent introduction for those interested in cross-cultural studies in general and for those who struggle to understand Confucianism in relation to Universal Human Rights in particular. In addition, this book could serve as an excellent introduction to those who are unfamiliar with the developing and evolving nature of Confucianism and would like to learn more about it.

Chapter 1 outlines the main argument of the book: that Universal Human Rights are not so much an issue separating East and West as they are "a problem of how the forces of a runaway economic and technological modernization are eroding traditional values in both Asia and the West" (p. 8). Author Wm. Theodore de Bary argues, first, that Confucianism must be viewed as a "continuing discourse of internal self-criticism" (p. 163) as a result of both the social and cultural changes taking place within China and the influences from outside. Therefore, to understand Confucianism as a whole, one must consider the Neo Confucian augmentation of classical Confucianism. Such a historical approach to Confucianism, de Bary maintains, will show that there is a "good reason to believe that Confucian historical experience would lend positive support to many of the human rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration" (p. 16). Finally, "the Confucian preference for rites over laws," according to de Bary, "points to a weakness in the Confucian approach to government" (p. 15), a lack of "a civil society—meaning a practical infrastructure and countervailing institutions able to check the monopolization and abuse of state power" (p. 16). Yet, he concludes, "the noble failure of these Confucian experiments only underscores the very real difficulties of implementing ideal values" (p. 13), values that are unmistakably universal and shared by Confucianism and Universal Human Rights.

Following on this theme of universality, de Bary confronts the East-versus West argument by pointing out, in chapter 2, "a rough parallel" between Confucianism and "the prophetic, protesting voice in other times and places, as in ancient Israel and thereafter in the Judeo-Christian tradition" (p. 21). He further counters the argument that for Confucians the group takes precedence over the individual. Such a view, he points out, is groundless, for both The Mean (Zhong yong) and the Great Learning (Daxue) take as the ideal the balance between the public and the private (gong si yi ti). In chapter 3, de Bary uses the Great Learning and other Confucian classics such as the Mencius and the Records of Rites to prove that in the Mencian communitarian model, the Well-field (jingtian) System, "the 'private' and 'public' are complementary, not opposed, values" (p. 33). The real issue is that the classical Confucian system was based on the Zhou enfeoffment system, in essence a family model. Later, when the state in the imperial dynasties became "a civil bureaucratic apparatus" (p. 34), Confucians had to struggle for an infrastructure to mediate between the individual, that is, the family/clan, and the state. Since Confucianism is a scholarly tradition, de Bary says, Confucians throughout the centuries turned to education for such mediation, and their idea of a participatory community or consensual law developed over a long period.

Tracing this development, then, de Bary points out that although the rulers of all the imperial dynasties, except for the First Emperor, turned to Confucianism, they all ended up favoring "strong state action and control" over the Confucian "decentralized communitarian mode." In chapters 4 and 5, he demonstrates the imprints of Confucian influence as seen in the Community School (shexue ), and the Community Compact (xiangyue). Zhu Xi in the Song dynasty, Xu Heng in the Yuan, and Emperor Ming Taizu and Wang Yangming in the Ming are among the "worthy Confucian predecessors" who "carried on [this] long, losing struggle" for the general education of the common people, which they regarded as "indispensable to public morality and a...