RIGHT
The ‘Right’ in Human Rights: Aristotelianism and Neo-Confucianism at the basis of the EU-China Dialogue

Research

RIGHT’s overall objective is to articulate a definitional human rights framework that would overcome the theoretical confines of legal positivism and the practical deadlocks of the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue.

To achieve that, RIGHT argues that one needs to resort to a philosophical system that:

1. is open to essential meaning
2. induces less antagonism by being more inclusive and empathetic.

The project seeks to fill the gap by appealing to two philosophical systems that provide a convincing rejoinder to both a) and b) while bringing together the Western and Eastern worldviews: Aristotelianism and Neo-Confucianism (Daoxue 道学).

Methodology

Aristotelianism and Neo-Confucianism have striking similarities. Firstly, they share a common inductive approach: Aristotle’s induction or epagōgē (ἑπαγωγή) reaches out to the to ti ên einai (το τί ἦν εἶναι), i.e. the definition of things through a type of insight that leads to essential meaning, while Neo-Confucianism introduces the idea of pure knowing or liangzhi (良知), also a type of inductive reasoning suggesting that all ideas have essential content, the Li (理).Secondly, both traditions offer comprehensive accounts of virtue ethics and are structured around the idea of inter-subjectivity, thus addressing the empathetic deficit of legal modernity and offering better terms for a sustainable, global approach to human rights.

Regarding the Aristotelian component, RIGHT focuses on:

1. the Organon and particularly Aristotelian induction, as it reaches out to essences;
2. the Nicomachean Ethics and particularly the ideas of corrective and distributive justice
3. the Metaphysics, and specifically Aristotle’s potentiality-actuality theory.

RIGHT’s approach is that human rights constitute a later expression of justice and should thus be studied within a framework of a history of ideas.

Regarding the Neo-Confucian component, RIGHT focuses on Zhu Xi’s and Wang Yangming’s commentaries on the Four Books of Confucian thought: the Analects (論語), the Mengzi (孟子), the Daxue (大學) and the Zhongyong (中庸).

RIGHT evaluates the convergences and divergences between the Aristotelian epagōgē and the Neo-Confucian liangzhi to configure a unified definitional human rights framework. RIGHT’s hypothesis is that such a joint framework is possible for the two traditions treat in a similar way the definitional structure of concepts: whereas Aristotle suggests that any proposition contains an essence and other parts, for Wang and Zhu these are constituted by some combination of essential coherence, the Li (理) and other worldly endowments, the Qi (气). This scheme fits perfectly into the intensional definition of human rights, which suggests that a definitional human rights’ framework must be composed of the genus and the differentia, i.e. a portion of the definition that is common to all human rights and a portion that specifies each particular right.