Cross-Cultural Insights on Human Right
Though the preceding investigation has hardly exhausted the richness or complexity of the
Confucian comprehension of human rights, it is nevertheless time to draw some conclusions, both
general and particular, from the perspective of cross-cultural ethics. The first general conclusion
is simply a reminder that the Confucian notion of human rights is meant to be neither a rival
claimant to a Western understanding of the same concept, nor does it pretend even to offer a
complete philosophical expression of its own of the category of human rights which would satisfy
all the requirements for a contemporary global ethics. A key insight from the methodology
suggested by cross-cultural ethics is that no one philosophical or religious tradition can stand
alone in isolation, or hope to express in a credible and comprehensive fashion the totality of a
complex, multifaceted, and polyvalent notion such as human rights.
Since human rights have little tangible value abstracted from their lived expression in various
concrete situations we must look to a variety of individual cultures and societies to see how these
human rights have become "inculturated" in different ways.