Abstract
Drawing on insights from both secular and religious sources, including the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition and the Confucian Relational Self, the author presents a heuristic framework for a personalist relational philosophy (“PRP”) of human rights that can serve as a basis for global values and universal norms in a culturally diverse and pluralistic world. Human beings are both particular and universal, the one and the many, the self and the other, the subject and object of human rights and duties, of love and responsibility. The PRP presented here, underpinned by a realist anthropology and a critical-realist axiology, suggests how a holistic shift to the embodied relational self within a virtue-based personalist ethic of care can profoundly affect the clinical practice of bio-medicine and bio-ethics but also, inter alia, the ways in which the law structures rights and rights structure relationships and vice versa. This is part of an on-going search for an integral ecology, hermeneutics and praxis of human rights.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Cross et al., Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behaviour, eds. Mark R Leary & Rick Hoyle, 512–526, New York: Guilford (2009); and see also Cross in Social and Personality Psychology Compass, Vol. 3, Issue 6, pages 949 et seq. (December 2009).
- 2.
Sedikides, Gaertner, O’Mara, Individual Self, Relational Self, Collective Self: - Hierarchical Ordering of the Tripartite Self, Psychological Studies, 2011, Vol. 56, Number 1, Page 98.
- 3.
S. Macedo, What Self-governing Peoples Owe to One Another: Universalism, Diversity, and the Law of Peoples, Fordham Law Review (2004) 72(5) pp.1721–1738
- 4.
Sedikides and Brewer, Individual Self, Relational Self, Collective Self, Psychology Press, 01/gen/2001.
- 5.
Charles Taylor, The Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989 p 36.
- 6.
Jennifer Nedelsky, Laws Relations, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011 at p 33 et seq.
- 7.
See DeCicco & Stroink on the “Meta-Personal Self” in International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 26, 2007. The characteristics of the “Meta-Personal Self” suggest that they can also be aspects of the relational self as presented here.
- 8.
Cf Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1989), 2nd edn, p 7 et seq. But see Michael Freeman, Human Rights, (UK & USA: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 60–62.
- 9.
Denis Chang. Human Rights: ‘So They are Not for the State To Make’ or Unmake? A Short Meta-Legal Meditation on the ‘Human” in “Human Rights (2010) HKLJ Vol. 40, Part 2 at p.154 et seq.
- 10.
An expression borrowed from Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, N.Y., Schocken Books (1951)2004 Ed. with Edition with Introduction by Samantha Power), p 379. It is not suggested that H. Arendt, in the context of her reflections on statelessness, was using the expression in the same sense as it is used here or that it was based on the same rationale.
- 11.
Denis Chang, ibid. (see footnote 9). See also Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law and Church Law, (Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press, 1997),at pp. 1150–1625 and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice – Rights and Wrongs, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), p45 et seq. For the view that the idea of natural rights originated neither in the Enlightenment nor in the individualistic philosophy of the late Middle Ages, but was already employed by the canon lawyers of the twelfth century.
- 12.
Michele Saracino, “On Being Human: A Conversation with Lonergan and Levinas”, Marquette University Press (2003), Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at pp. 13 and 14.
- 13.
Judge Tanaka in the South West Africa Cases (Second Phase) ICJ Rep (1966) 5 at p 296, cited with approval in the decision of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal in the case of Secretary of Justice v Yau Yuk Lung (2007) 7 HKCFAR 385.
- 14.
Robert P. George, Kelsen and Aquinas on the Natural-law Doctrine, 75 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1625(2000). Available at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol75/iss5/3
- 15.
Jacqueline A. Laing and Russell Wilcox, The Natural Law Reader (Wiley Blackwell, 2014) at p.342.
- 16.
Compare this with the definition of “universal viewpoint” by Bernard Lonergan in “Insight”, A Study of Human Understanding, Fifth Edition (1992), Vol 3, at p. 590 in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan ed. Crowe and Doran, University of Toronto Press, Toronto Buffalo London.
- 17.
John Finnis, 2011, Natural Law and Natural Rights (2nd Edition), Oxford, at p. 210.
- 18.
These include what is called synderesis in Aquinas – a stock of effortless insights into basic reasons for action which help or direct the virtue of practical reasonableness – and phronesis (practical wisdom) in Aristotle. In Confucius, the functional equivalent of Aristotle’s phronesis is yi (義) (which includes the notion of what is right and fitting) at least if yi is coupled with zhi (智), meaning wisdom.
- 19.
Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, eds. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran, vol.3, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), chapter 18.2.3; see also a fuller analysis of the operations involved in the work referred to in Footnote 20 below.
- 20.
Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), at pp. 34–41.
- 21.
Insofar as ethical decision is oriented towards action and goes beyond mere evaluation, it can be regarded in Lonergan’s schema as tending towards or forming part of a 5th level of consciousness and intentionality, namely that of responsible action or ethical living in which the whole acting person is likewise engaged.
- 22.
Whilst practical reasoning proceeds from its own first principles (which Aquinas regarded as the basic precepts of natural law) and whilst the “ought” is not derived from the “is” in the manner of deductive or syllogistic reasoning (Hume), the information drawn from such disciplines as anthropology and sociology can be highly relevant and often indispensable to sound judgments of right and wrong e.g. a knowledge of human embryogenesis and intrauterine human development is critical to a proper application of moral principles to the question of abortion: Robert P. George, “Kelsen & Aquinas on Natural Law, ibid., supra, at p. 1627.
- 23.
Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Katheen Blamsey, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 (1990).
- 24.
Denis Chang, ibid. at p.256.
- 25.
Jean-Francois Lyotard. The Other’s Rights in “On Human Rights, The Oxford Amnesty Lectures, 1993, 1994”, Shute & Hurley, eds. Basic Books, NY, at p 136.
- 26.
Stanley J A. Grenz. “The Social God and the Relational Self”. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville & London (2001), see in particular pages 133 et seq for Grenz’s comments on Foucault’s centre-less universe called“heterotopia” and “the chaotic self”.
- 27.
Jacques Maritain. “The Person and the Common Good” Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985, at pp. 12–13
- 28.
Emmanuel Mounier. “Personalism”, first published in French 1950, English transl. Published in the States 1952, and London 1962.
- 29.
Karol Wojtyla, “Thomistic Personalism”, English transl. From Polish, by Theresa Sandok, in” Person and Community”: Selected Essays, Vol. 4 of Catholic Thought from Lublin, edited by Andrew N. Woznicki (New York: Peter Lang, 1993): 165–75. After he became Pope, Karol Wojtyla continued to invoke personalistic arguments, for example, in his Address to the International Theological Commission, December 5, 1983 in Human Rights in the Teaching of the Church, from John XXIII to John Paul II, ed. George Filibeck (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994), 40 and in his encyclical letters Laborem Exercens, 15; and Ut Unum Sint, 28, Letter to Families, 14.
- 30.
See Thomas D. Williams, 2, Who is my Neighbor? Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights (Catholic University of America Press, Washington, DC)(2005)
- 31.
See Rufus Burrows, “Personalism, a Critical Introduction” St Louis, MO: The Chalice Press, (1999).
- 32.
This is consistent with the famous and long-standing definition of “a person“by Boethius (ca.480–524.) Boethius defined a person as “an individual substance [subject] of a rational nature” (“Persona est. rationalis naturae individua substantia”). Aquinas reformulated it as “individuo subsistens in rationali natura”: see Laura Palazzani, Introduction to the Philosophy of Biolaw, English Trans. by Victoria Bailes, Edizioni Studium (2009), Rome, at page 31 et seq, where Palazzani explains that by thus applying a concept of individual substance to a human being. “it becomes clear that the functions which he exercises and the acts which he undertakes do not exist in themselves, but exists only as functions and acts “of” a substantial human individual, which is their singular and permanent reference point, their real ontological condition. “In line with Aquinas’ definition, Karol Woytyla in his 1961 paper (ibid., footnote 29), defined a person to mean “a subsistent subject of existence and action”.
- 33.
Paul Ricouer, “Oneself as Another”, ibid. at pp. 147–148.
- 34.
Martin Buber, “I-and-Thou” English ed. translated from the German Ich und Du (2nd Ed., 1923) by Ronald Gregor Smith. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1987.
- 35.
Daniel Sulmasy, Perspectives in Human Dignity – A Conversation eds. Malpas & Lickiss, Springer 2007, Chap. 2, at p. 16). See also Laura Palazzani, “Introduction to the Philosophy of Biolaw”, ibid. at p. 33 et seq.
- 36.
See Karol Wojtyla, ibid. at p. 178.
- 37.
See Aristotle, (Pol, 1,2, 1253a), Politics, trans. E. Barker (Oxford University Press, Oxford), 1948.
- 38.
Compare this with the formulation of the Personalist Principle by Domènec Melé in “Integrating Personalism into Virtue-Based Business Ethics: The Personalist and the Common Good Principles”, Journal of Business Ethics (2009) 88:227–214, Springer.
- 39.
See Jiyuan Yu, Confucius’ Relational Self and Aristotle’s Political Animal, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 22, Number 4, October 2005.
- 40.
See Qingjie James Wang, “Genealogical Self and a Confucian Way of Self-Making”, International Philosophical Quarterly Vo. 42, No. 1 Issue 165 (March 2002), especially at pp. 100–102: “Relationships are important to a Confucian, but the persons who make the relationships possible cannot simply be reduced or forfeited within the relations. Therefore, a Confucian not only thinks that a human self is relational or inter-personal but, more importantly that the self is an inter-personal being. The emphasis on the personal nature of human social and communal relations, I believe, will help us to understand better the historical, hierarchical, and bodily characteristics of the Confucian ‘relational self’”(ibid. at p 102).
- 41.
Jiyuan Yu. “The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue.” (New York and London: Routledge, 2007), xii, at p 177.
- 42.
As regards problems of incommensurability that may need to be addressed or explored, see Alasdair MacIntyre, “Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation Between Confucians and Aristotelians About Virtues” in Eliot Deutsch, ed., Culture and Modernity (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991) pp. 105, 106, 112. For an argument against MacIntyre, see David Hall and Roger Ames, Thinking from the Han (Albany; State University of New York Press, 1998) pp. xii-xv. See Sor-Hoon Tan, “Cultural Crossings Against Ethnocentric Currents: Towards a Confucian Ethics of Communicative Virtues “in the International Philosophical Quarterly (December, 2005). See Vincent Shen “Creativity as Synthesis of Contrasting Wisdoms: An Interpretation of Chinese Philosophy in Taiwan since 1949″ Philosophy East and West: A Quarterly of Comparative Philosophy 43 (1993) 43: at pp. 178–287.
- 43.
The Book of Odes speaks of Heaven producing the teeming masses and that “where there is a thing there is a norm” 有物有則 (cited by Mencius at Bk. 6, Pt. I, Ch. VI. 8). According to Mencius, Confucius himself affirms the principle, adding the word 必 or “must” for emphasis, saying 故有物,必有則 “where there is a thing, there must be a norm” (Mencius at Bk VI,Pt. I, Ch.VI.8). It is clearly implicit in Confucian ethics that where there is a human being, there must be a norm. Confucius himself has in effect taught what that norm consists of - authentic self-completion of the person of virtue and excellence, the junzi, in which what is achieved is the unity of human, heaven and earth through obedience to Heaven’s Will and the realization of the cardinal virtues, primarily ren. I have elsewhere suggested that, in line with the Confucian doctrine of “rectification of names”, the notion of natural law should not be literally translated into Chinese as ziranfa 自然法 but should be translated by reference to the Confucian concept of xing 性 (nature) or renxing 人性 (human nature but here meaning the rational and humanitarian or best part of human nature, ren). The translations I have suggested for “natural law” are either “renxing ziranfa” 人性自然法 or better still renxing gongtongfa 人性共同法 which means a norm, springing from co-humanity, which is common to all human beings by reason of that which characterizes and befits us all as fellow human beings. See Denis Chang, ibid. at page 257.
- 44.
For an insightful and succinct sketch and critique of various philosophies or ethical positions which conflict with the PRP presented here and which introduce separation theories putting human beings into different categories see Laura Palazzani’s Introduction to the Philosophy of Biolaw, ibid., at pages 13–48.
- 45.
Thomas J. Beauchamp and James Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Fourth Edition. Oxford. 1994
- 46.
See Joseph Tham and Maria Catherine Letendre, “Healthcare Decision Making: Cross-cultural
Analysis of the Shift from the Autonomous to the Relational Self,” The New Bioethics 20.2 (2014),
174–185.
- 47.
See David Gurnham in Special 20th Anniversary issue of Medical Law International: “Best interests in an age of human rights” (2013) Medical Law International 13(1), 3–5. See also Jonathan Herring, “Forging a relational approach: Best Interests or human rights?” Medical Law International 2013 13:32 available at http://mli.sagepub.com/content/13/1/32
- 48.
Jennifer Nedelsky, “Law’s Relations”, ibid., pp. 38, 45, 54, 59, 65, 118 et seq
- 49.
See John Christmas, “Relational Autonomy, Liberal Individualism and the Social Constitution of Selves” in Philosophical Studies 117: 143–164, 2004 for a critique of “relational autonomy” (including proceduralist and non-proceduralist notions).
- 50.
Daniel Sulmacy, “Perspectives on Human Dignity”, ibid., at p. 10
- 51.
See John Finnis in Aquinas. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) at pp. 267–274.
- 52.
See, for example, Richard Hiskes, The Relational Foundation of Emergent Human Rights: From Thomas Hobbes to the Human Right to Water (2010) APSA 2010, APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper, available at SSRN: http://ssm.com. See also Pamela J. Lomelino, “Individuals and Relational Beings: Expanding the Universal Human Rights Model”, Social Philosophy Today 23 (2009): 87–102. See Ruth Zafran. “Children’s Rights as Relational Rights: The Case of Relocation”, Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law [Vol. 18:2, 163 et seq], 2010.,
- 53.
Li–Ann Thio. “Relational Constitutionalism and the Management of Religious Disputes: The Singapore “Secularism with a Soul” Model. Oxford Journal of Law and Religion (2012) 1(2) 446–469.
- 54.
Xinhua News, “CCP Central Committee Resolution on the Construction of a Socialist Harmonious Society”18 October2006. http://news/xinhuanet.com/politics/2006-10/18/content_5218639.htm. The term hexiequan (“harmony rights”) was reportedly first used by Xu Xianming of the China University of Politics and Law at an international conference in 2006 in a paper entitled “Hexiequan: Di sidai renquan” (“Harmony Rights”: The Fourth Generation of Human Rights) which generated much satirical comment and adverse criticism from netizens, human rights lawyers and others: http://211.167.236.236/china/newzt/2006magazine/200602006424160801htm and see Eva Pils: The Dislocation of the Chinese Human Rights Movement in “A Sword and a Shield” eds Stacy Mosher and Patrick Poon, published in 2009 by China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group Lawyers, pp. 141–149.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chang, D. (2017). Human Rights and the Relational Self: A Personalist Approach. In: Tham, J., Kwan, K., Garcia, A. (eds) Religious Perspectives on Bioethics and Human Rights. Advancing Global Bioethics, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58431-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58431-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-58429-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-58431-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)