A Human Rights Debate on Physical Security, Political Liberty, and the Confucian Tradition

Shing Bun Benedict CHAN*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    6 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    There are many East and West debates on human rights. One of them is whether all civil and political rights are human rights. On one hand, scholars generally agree that rights to physical security are human rights. On the other hand, some scholars argue that rights to political liberty are only Western rights but not human rights because political liberty conflicts with some East Asian cultural factors, especially the Confucian tradition. I argue that physical security also conflicts with some parts of the Confucian tradition, but rights to physical security are still human rights because physical security is a minimal value. I then argue that political liberty, similar to physical security, is also a minimal value. Therefore, similar to rights to physical security, rights to political liberty are also human rights, even though political liberty also conflicts with some parts of the Confucian tradition.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)567-588
    Number of pages22
    JournalDao
    Volume13
    Issue number4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2014

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Philosophy

    User-Defined Keywords

    • Confucianism
    • Human rights
    • Minimal values
    • Physical security
    • Political liberty

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