Reconciling International Legal Human Rights and Confucianism

Recent philosophical research emphasizes the significance of embracing the moral implications of international legal human rights (ILHR) when examining the ethics of human rights. This chapter advocates for a practical view of human rights, specifically endorsing a consequential evaluation of ILHR. This underscores the necessity for further investigation into the relationship between ILHR and Confucianism, as seen in the emergence of academic works exploring this connection through new arguments for Confucianism. Using political and privacy rights as examples, this chapter examines Confucianism’s focus on the service conception of political participation, highlighting the promotion of people’s well-being, and the intimacy account of privacy, particularly concerning family values. It argues that Confucianism can enrich discussions on human rights to political participation and privacy. However, this perspective should be augmented by the norms of ILHR and their pluralistic justifications, challenging the simplistic East–West dichotomy in contemporary discourse.