The book is, in part, the fruit of deliberations that took place in the context of the Building Bridges series facilitated by the International Center for Law and Religion Studies at Brigham Young University, Institute of Islamic Understanding, Seminary Theology Malaysia, and a local Malaysian NGO, UID-Sejahtera Malaysia. What follows are brief overviews by Marshall and Yapp of their respective chapters.

Chinese Conceptions of Dignity and Rights

By Paul Marshall

There is no “Chinese” view of dignity any more than there is an “American” one. There are, rather, many currents. Here I will bypass Chinese Communist Party formulations and instead outline how traditional Chinese thinking helped shape the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), notably through Peng Chun Chang (P.C. Chang).

Most attention on the people who drafted the UDHR has focused firstly on Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the Commission. After that, much consideration has deservedly focused on the large figures of French jurist Rene Cassin; of Portuguese-Jewish descent, Charles Malik, a Greek Orthodox Thomist from Lebanon; and perhaps also French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, whose major contribution was in the philosophical discussions presaging the Commission.

But the remarkable P.C. Chang, the (Nationalist) Chinese representative, also played a prominent role, and was the Commission’s Vice Chair, second only to Roosevelt. He was also chosen as a member of the eight-member drafting committee, charged with the actual wording of the UDHR.

Chang was polymathic. He wrote plays and was deeply conversant in Western culture, completing a PhD from Columbia under John Dewey and teaching at the University of Chicago. In addition, he was an Ambassador to Chile and to Turkey, thus learning of Latin and Muslim culture. Much of his life was spent analyzing and comparing these different thought worlds.

As both a philosopher and diplomat, Chang had a deep understanding of Confucianism and related teachings. In his view, Confucianism was not only moral guidelines, but also a practical approach emphasizing human relations and social responsibility. He drew explicitly on traditional Chinese thought and especially on its underlying themes of human dignity.

Chang emphasized Ren (仁) as “two­ man-mindedness,” the literal meaning of the character, something similar to “benevolence” or “human-heartedness.” Scholar Lee Seung-hwan avers, Confucianism “emphasizes that a genuine community is not composed of mutually disinterested egoistic individuals, but is composed of virtuous members thinking of shared goals and values over one’s own.”

Drawing on these themes, Chang emphasized that attaining personal moral excellence was the highest form of human achievement, and that people should cultivate benevolence, righteousness, and wisdom to achieve such moral self-realization.

Drawing on these resources, he played a major part in shaping Article 27, which deals with rights to culture and science. He emphasized that moral development was closely linked to a human dignity that could not be granted or taken away but was inherent in human beings. He also drew on the idea of “Li” (礼), which includes proper social behavior and respect, to emphasize that others must always be treated with dignity and respect.

At the opening meeting of United Nations (UN) Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), presaging the Commission, he borrowed from Mencius to stress that ECOSOC’s principal task should be to “subdue people with goodness.” Before the UN General Assembly, he sought to counter the idea that Confucian notions of hierarchy made it a weak basis for dignity and rights.

The first draft of the UDHR was a committee document with no individual authors. But reports on the drafting process stress Chang’s and Charles Malik’s roles and connect Chang particularly with the notion of dignity. He was reported to have argued with Malik, stressing a universal rather than a disproportionately Western basis of dignity.

John Humphrey, who was charged with putting Committee deliberations into agreed text, stated in his diary that Chang and Malik sometimes “hate[d] each other.” However, they also often lunched together and, later, Malik praised Chang highly. Humphrey also credits Chang with using his mastery of Confucian philosophy to find compromise language at particularly difficult points, writing that Chang “was a formidable intellectual force and in intellectual capacity he far surpassed all the rest of us on the Committee.”

Chang sought to insert the virtue of ren in Article I and the words “the spirit of brotherhood” were added to emphasize the social relations that Chang thought were so important. Perhaps most striking was his push to include the phrase “inherent dignity” so that Article I reads “All men are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

Chang grounded human rights in a notion of human dignity and sought to relate such dignity to traditional patterns of Chinese thought. Hence, we might say that Confucian ideas have helped shape our understandings of human dignity in the international arena.

Upholding Human Dignity for Peaceful Coexistence and Social Harmony: A Conversation between Muslims and Non-Muslims on Principles and Prerequisites in Malaysian Society

By Eugene Yapp

This chapter explicates the various conceptions and aspects of human dignity that was deliberated under the auspices of the Building Bridges series organised by four partner organisations: the Institute of Islamic Understanding (IKIM), Seminary Theology Malaysia (STM), International Center for Law and Religion Studies at the Brigham Young University (ICLRS) and a local Malaysian NGO, UID-Sejahtera Malaysia.

IKIM is the official think-tank on the study of Islam for the government of Malaysia; STM is a local protestant Christian seminary; UID-Sejahtera is a Malaysian NGO known for exploring issues of national unity and religious diversity; and ICLRS is an international organisation known for its work on human dignity across the globe. The contributing partners in this series come from different religious and ethnic backgrounds and joined forces in this effort to build bridges across the diverse religious and ethnic communities in Malaysia.

My chapter was originally a paper I presented on the occasion of the Asian Perspectives on Human Dignity Conference at the Brigham Young University-Hawaii held on April 17-18, 2023. ICLRS convened the conference with the primary objective of exploring various conceptions of human dignity from across different communities in Southeast Asia. Substantial scholarship has been devoted to the conception of human dignity from the West but rarely from the Southeast Asian context. The ICLRS conference was the first of its kind, with many other seminars and conferences following since.

The chapter examines the outworkings of human dignity as a social good in the context of Malaysia as a Muslim-majority nation. It encompasses the conversation between Muslims and non-Muslims on the principles and prerequisites for upholding human dignity in order to advance peaceful coexistence and social harmony in Malaysian society.

The human dignity approach formulated under the Building Bridges series stands in sharp contrast with the more rigid “rights-based or rule-based” approach undertaken by Western-oriented perspectives, which often appears less sensitive to the gaps posed by modernity and less conciliatory toward the deep-seated cultural differences and outlook within Malaysian society.

The approach to human dignity I put forth highlights the imperative for mutual collaboration and strategic partnerships that must address the problems of common humanity such as poverty, marginalisation, and other issues that hinder unity in diversity and peaceful coexistence in a holistic, integrated, and systemic manner.

The chapter unpacks the various principles within community life and communal living such as looking at peaceful coexistence and social harmony holistically as a social good for the well-being of all people, the intersection between peaceful coexistence and social harmony within the broader framework towards sustainable development, affirming and upholding fundamental liberties and rights by balancing the interests of all people given their social-cultural realities, exigencies of life and local circumstance in practical concordance rather than in a hierarchical or rights-based manner, and maintaining shared moral values and ethical resources as virtues to undergird peaceful coexistence.

In doing so, the chapter emphasizes that positive actions and community development that applies these principles must be grounded in human dignity. In other words, we treat others alike in our social interaction and conversations while demonstrating sociality and the bonds of social relation in our visible practice of love, kindness, and goodness to those around us as marks of respect and honour. Dignity in this sense is what some have called “dia-praxis” in the realm of the lived experience of people. It is only through the visible expression of such fundamental virtues of love, kindness, and goodness to those around us as marks of respect and honour to our fellow human beings that peaceful coexistence and social harmony can become a reality.

The chapter concludes with some issues that need further exploration in order to make human dignity the core foundation in the enterprise for peace building and social harmony in the context of Southeast Asia, and Malaysia in particular.