Stephen C. Angle

It is argued that "quanli" meant something different from the "rights" that it purports to translate in the writings of Liu Shipei (1884-1919). This does not mean that "quanli," as Liu used it, has no overlap with any of the meanings of "rights." But it can be argued that these overlaps are in a crucial sense coincidental, since the notion of "quanli" in Liu's major works represents a growth out of, rather than an imposition on, the Confucian tradition. In general, to make sense of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chinese political and ethical discourse, we must highlight the degree to which the concepts involved developed out of various strands of native tradition

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.