A good post over at Granite Studio by Jeremiah brings up a question I have posed here before: How modern can Confucius be? Jeremiah is responding to a talk given by Daniel A. Bell, a philosophy professor at Qinghua. Bell works seriously on what Confucianism can mean politically today. One of the key issues is: can Confucianism provide a political-theoretical foundation for an alternative to Western liberal democracy? Bell probes this issue by drawing out the communitarian elements of Confucian thought. Jeremiah has some questions:
Finally, I felt as if Professor Bell, in his desire to counteract more extreme criticisms of China from Europe and North America, has set up a bit of a straw man. Yes, there are those in the United States
who see American-style liberal democracy as a franchise suitable for
all places and peoples, but most of the writers and researchers on China
that I know do not fall into this category. Certainly I don’t. As I’ve
said numerous times, I feel that there are certain reforms (free media,
free speech, free religion, the right to assembly, and judicial
independence) that would help consolidate and enhance the reforms
already underway in China. But I fear Professor Bell may have, as the saying goes, ‘leaned too far to one side’ when he suggested on Tuesday that legal rights are not
necessarily a primary prerequisite of development. His admonition that
courts and legal proceedings are inferior to mediation and other more
‘civil’ means of solving disputes is both noble and certainly in
keeping with the Analects and the Late Imperial tradition of
Confucian Statecraft, but preferring to solve things through mediation
does not obviate the need for legal safeguards to protect the rights of
the people.
This helps focus the question. We can ask: does a politically modernized Confucianism have to accept fully institutionalized legal protections of individual rights? You'll notice that I have smuggled the term "individual" into Jeremiah's formulation, but I think that is in keeping with the general thrust of his comments (correct me if I am wrong, Jeremiah).
To push the conversation along, let me cut right to the point. I will argue here (and I am open to persuasive counterarguments) that, to be relevant in a modern political context, Confucianism must recognize and embrace the notion of individual rights. I say this because the inherent dynamics of modernization press in this direction. History, of course, does not move smoothly and unidirectionally. Human agency of various forms can have real and lasting effects. But if we look at Chinese history since, say, 1900, it seems fairly clear that, over the arc of that time, the idea of individuals endowed with inalienable rights, has become stronger. I am influenced in this view by Merle Goldman's book, From Comrade to Citizen; and Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang's book, Rightful Resistance in Rural China.
It should be noted that Elizabeth Perry (warning, pdf file), among others, has pushed against these writers and argued that the Chinese notion of rights is different than the Western notion of rights:
…the meaning of “rights” in Chinese political discourse differs significantly from the Anglo-American tradition. Viewed in historical context, China’s contemporary “rights” protests seem less politically threatening.
She has a point. But even with that important caveat, I think the general point still stands: China has become more rights conscious in recent decades, and that consciousness in creating a more individualistic culture.
We can take the point a step further. Individual rights consciousness in China has arisen not only from domestic sources of economic and political reform, but also from global cultural flows. Globalization does not promote only cultural individualism, but its encouragement of cultural individualism is powerful.
Long story short: Chinese culture today – while not simply a clone of American culture – is more individualized than ever before in its history (I'll let the historians assess that statement!), and it exists in a global context that creates powerful obstacles against a return to anything like traditional communitarianism (I loved Jeremiah's quote from Jaroslav Pelikan: ”Tradition is the living faith of the dead, Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”)
If all that is true – and I admit it is all debatable – then it would seem that any Confucian revival, if it is to be relevant to modern Chinese people or modern people anywhere, must compromise with the pervasive cultural, and increasingly political, individualism that exists in the world today.
This is not to say that Chinese politics will inevitably look like American politics. There are many ways in which individual rights can be legally protected in varying cultural contexts. But it is to argue that, whatever Chinese politics becomes, it will hold within it more recognition and protection of individual rights than was the case in either imperial or Maoist times. Will such an individualized and modernized Confucianism still be fundamentally Confucian? I think it can be. I think, in some ways, that is what Yu Dan is producing.
What a modern Confucianism can do, it seems to me, is not create a fundamental political alternative to individual-rights-based politics but, rather, to provide a critique of how we can understand what an "individual " is. Confucianism highlights the social and moral embeddedness of individuals, and that is important to keep in mind. But, even with that understanding, a modern Confucianism will be politically irrelevant if it cannot embrace the legal and political defense of individual rights.
The Useless Tree 
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