Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Cultural Change in Asia

Abstract

This is the introductory chapter to the collected volume “Human Dignity in Asia: Dialogue between Law and Culture” (forthcoming by Cambridge University Press). This book grows out of a collaborative project of multidisciplinary scholars who specialize in Asian public law and major religious and philosophical traditions in Asian contexts. The purpose of the book is to fill a huge gap in the current literature on dignity jurisprudence and philosophy, which has already been probed widely across regions but has been in a shortage of that in Asia. The book first investigates how human dignity as a legal concept features in judicial and political discourse in major Asian jurisdictions, which include India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and China. Then it examines dignity in three religious or philosophical traditions heavily concentrated in Asia, including Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Further, it investigates the idea of human dignity by representative voices of major world religions in particular societies, including Islam in Indonesia, Protestantism in South Korea, and Catholicism in the Philippines.

In addition to introducing the individual chapters, this introduction offers theoretical frameworks and background questions that bring the whole book into perspective. First, I note the post-war development of various conceptions of this concept. I observe that the minimum core of the content of human dignity can be captured by such conceptions as dignity as elevated rank, dignity as intrinsic worth, and dignity as anti-humiliation. While these older conceptions continued to be extended to a wide range of issues, since the 70s, a newer conception, namely dignity as autonomy, has emerged and risen to prominence in the following decades, first in the West and then around the world. Second, the rise of populism and political polarization in Western democracies, insofar as it is related to what Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris call “cultural backlash”, signals tension between dignity as individual autonomy and other competing social and communal values. Whether the “backlash” is seen just as a “backlash” to be overcome or whether it implicates a prolonged cultural war between competing cultural paradigms, has great implications for human rights developments. Third, in the post-Asian-values-debate era, a great part of Asia has progressed toward or has become liberal democracies, and human dignity and human rights are embraced as universal values. It is hence the view of this book that culture is not a rigid immutable set of values and practice of particular societies, but contestable and fluid set of meanings and symbols that is subject to change. That said, cultural changes may be path-dependent and cultures cannot be totally fluid in its entirety at a limited historical period. Fourth, Asian countries have already and will continue to work out the full implications of the universal values by applying different conceptions of dignity to concrete issues. To the extent that the challenges faced by liberal democracies cannot be understood apart from how to arrange proper relationships between the individual, society, and the state, it is important to contemplate on how dignity should be understood as a part of a philosophy of human rights and democratic governance. This book helps Asian jurisdictions to reflect on these issues, while offering Asian thoughts and practice to other parts of the world.

Keywords: human dignity, Asian values, human rights, populism, cultural backlash, universalism vs. particularism, human rights in Asia, cultural change, modernization