Over at A Ku Indeed, Chris and Peony and some others are discussing Daniel Bell's book, East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia. I'm a bit late to the conversation (the end of semester and beginning of holidays stole my time away) but I wanted to jump in on a point that Chris made; and since this will run to some length I thought I should make it a post here instead of a comment there.
Chris, in searching for the core of Bell's argument, comes up with this reading:
Bell puts it this way, “rights, if they’re to be meaningful in practice, must have some grounding in the local culture” (91). What
I take Bell to mean is that authentic values and practices (a) are
responses to empirical facts on the ground specific to the
circumstances at hand, and (b) spring from the way in which those facts
can take on different weightings or salience when they are interpreted
through the lens of the specific local culture and history in which
those facts are enmeshed.
Given that for Bell this is the “Eastern” way, as he sees it in the Eastern perspective, the particular trumps the universal. Authentic or meaningful values spring from a combination of contingent sets of facts, both empirical and cultural.
I want to consider this notion of "the particular trumps the universal."
I can see how this statement captures something important about Confucianism. Any reader of Hall and Ames will appreciate the context-dependent nature of Confucian ethics. And, thus, it makes good sense that any consideration of human rights in a Chinese cultural milieu would have to be open to a strong particularist, or situational, approach to the issues involved.
I have two cautions to add to this, however.
First, I would hesitate to make too stark a distinction between the particularist "East" and the universalist "West." While it may be true that a kind of universalism may be strong in "Western" philosophy and ethics, particularism is certainly to be found. Think of the abortion debate. While universal rights are certainly invoked, particularly for the women involved, a key aspect of the pro-choice position is the impossibility of applying a single moral standard to a plethora of possible situations. Each individual must sort out for herself whether to bring a pregnancy to term or not, based on her specific personal circumstances. And that is why choice is good: it is flexible enough to allow for a host of particularities. On the other side, we can find universalist elements in "Eastern" thought. I am always struck by the tone of Mencius: he articulates clear principles of humane governance that should serve as general (yes, we could say universal) guidelines that transcend any particular state border (or possibly even cultural context). Of course, the application of the guidelines will have to the shaped by specific circumstances, but there is a distinct sense of an ultimate good: humane governance. Confucianism is not so situational as to give up on certain core principles.
To put it another way: the West is not, and has never been, as "Western" as our philosophical generalizations suggest, nor has the East ever been so "Eastern."
Second, let's say that Chris's reading of Bell is correct, and that Bell, in turn, is correct; that is: in a Chinese cultural context "the particular trumps the universal." So what? What difference does that make for the possibilities of human rights in China? Not much, I think.
Historically, at least since the May 4th period (and we might be able to push that back…), there have been Chinese people in China making claims that all Chinese people should share in universal human rights. Those advocates of human rights were a minority, to be sure, but who is to say they were not "Chinese." We can reject the "they were simply embracing a foreign ideology" critique because that is what Chinese Marxists did as well. The early twentieth century was a time of openness and cosmopolitanism, when many ideas and theories and cultural practices were flowing into and through China, reshaping the meaning of Chinese-ness. Chinese culture was transformed in myriad ways. A liberal expression of Chinese-ness was just as Chinese as a socialist expression of Chineseness: they were all hybrid reinventions of Chinese-ness.
The issue, then, is not one of philosophy or "culture" (however that might be defined), but of politics and, ultimately, military power. Marxism won in China not because of some supposed affinity between its collectivism and Chinese communitarianism. It won because Mao was a more ruthless and effective guerrilla fighter than Cai Yuanpei. Liberalism failed politically in China, squeezed between the neo-traditionalist, neo-fascism of the right-wing of the KMT and the Leninist-Maoist mobilization of the CCP. Culture did not determine politics; politics determined politics, and in so doing obstructed certain cultural possibilities.
Fast forward to 2008. Since 1949, there have been repeated instances of Chinese people coming forth to demand protection of fundamental civil and political rights. These have all been crushed by the CCP. In other words, in the particular circumstances of the PRC there have been various instances of people demanding human rights. Or, to put a finer point on it: the demand for human rights is very much a part of the particular circumstances of the PRC. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the tyrannical political system of the PRC inherently generates these demands for human rights. Human rights are absolutely and deeply embedded in the particularities of the PRC.
The rebuttal to this point might be to ask: then why have the demands for human rights never been victorious? Why haven't more people supported these demands? And we could answer: because the CCP ruthlessly destroys anyone who tries, thus creating a very powerful disincentive for people to follow what otherwise might be their natural political inclinations.
I realize that my answer is loaded – how can I possibly know what "natural political inclinations" might have been? Of course, I cannot know. But neither can Bell. In the repressive political environment that is the PRC it is impossible to know if people would freely choose to demand and defend human rights to a greater degree. And that is my point, exactly: the problem is not the culture, it's the politics. Without greater political freedom we cannot know the full and unfettered political expression Chinese culture.
The Useless Tree 
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