Developing Confucian Virtue-Based Rights: A Response to Jonathan Chan’s Confucian Critique of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights

Dr. Jonathan Chan has presented an excellent critique of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR) from the Confucian perspective. He has pinned down one of the major disagreements between the ethical framework proposed in UDBHR and the core beliefs of Confucianism: should the concept of human rights be seen as the fundamental ground of morality? As Jonathan Chan has made clear in his critique, “the moral position of the Declaration which, as we have seen, takes human rights, and its related moral precepts, to be the fundamental ethical framework in dealing with ethical issues raised by medicine, life sciences and associated technologies as applied to human beings.” In contrast, Confucianism sees the concept of virtue as the ground of morality. Indeed, Confucianism is essentially a virtue-based and family-oriented form of life and ethical theory. It appreciates the cultivation of virtue, which is unachievable without solid, healthy family relationships, as the highest mandate of good governance. This of course extends to considerations of bioethics that is largely framed by the language of individual rights as made explicit in Articles 3–17 of the UDBHR.