The Incompatibility Argument Analysis

3.1 The Incompatibility Argument: Relational Understanding of Self
According to Roger Ames, “transplanting” human rights to China was doomed to failure because of the incompatibility between Chinese values and the Western human rights concept.36 Historically, he argues, the concept of rights did not naturally evolve in China, which leads him to portray Western human rights efforts as imperialistic. Indeed, the Western concepts of “rights” may indeed have posed a problem for Chinese society, when it was first introduced: There is general agreement with Ames’ claim that the concept of claim-rights was originally foreign and imported from the West and the fact that translation issues additionally obscured its meaning.37
The problematic aspect,
He evokes the age-old Mencian conception of the social individual to justify the lack of individual autonomy, putting forward the proposition that the Confucian ideal of a harmonious society has actually been realized in Chinese society, historical and present. His claims based on the Mencian conception of human nature may be theoretically correct. Notable scholars agree with Ames about the relational understanding of the individual in ancient Chinese society, stating that there was little room for concern for the personal self as an end in itself.42 However, even in the times of classical Confucianism a vision as described by Roger Ames was considered utopian: A famous passage in the Liyun chapter of the Records of Rites, which is concerned with the utopian vision of the Great Unity (datong), suggests that a completely communitarian society without any personal interest was considered an ideal that might have prevailed in prehistoric times, but could not be fully achieved again. 43 What could actually be achieved was merely a state of “Lesser Prosperity” (xiaokang), that was presented as desirable, but differed from the utopian vision of datong in the following
52 One prominent argument for the alleged superiority of ritual-based societies lies in the moral potential he attributes to Confucian rituals, which he contrasts with the minimum standards of legal rights as set out by the UDHR. He blames human rights in particular for being minimalistic: A society that needs to resort to legal enforcement of that minimal standard, he states, is far from leading a dignified life.53 Furthermore, he expresses the worry that states based on laws and claim-rights may interfere with the free moral development of their subjects. External laws and punishments, according to Ames, merely establish a minimum standard of what is acceptable, providing external constraints for society, thereby securing the existing social order. Ritual practice, on the other hand, goes beyond external motivations, providing direction for personal refinement. Ames’ pejorative portrayal of human rights as state-centred and minimalistic is indeed grounded in a Confucian argument, which other scholars also stress. According to Confucius, regulating behaviour by fear of punishment is inferior to regulating people through ritual. Law and fear may lead to the prevention of crimes, but they will not achieve a transformation of