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The Confucian concept of human dignity, of course, not only implies the factual recognition of the unique human possibility of becoming a gentleman, but also bestow value on the realization of such possibility.And, like every value, it depends on the evaluative effort of the subject itself.
An uncultivated person has perhaps the equal potential to become a sage or a villain; it encumbers on human beings themselves to value the former and condemn the latter.The great Confucian authority, Xunzi, once says that “Water and fire have essences (Qi), but not life; herbs and trees have life, but no knowledge; birds and beasts have knowledge, but no sense of justice (Yi).Man has an essence, life, knowledge and, in addition, a sense of justice; thus he is the noblest on earth”.
But even if we are convinced that human beings indeed possess the innate sense of justice, it does not necessarily follow that it is the most noble; to thus value mankind above everything else, which gives rise to the unique pride for being a man, is itself a value judgment.It is an anthropocentric view of homo sapiens, individually and as a whole, as it means simply that we value human lives higher than all other things.This (and, to a Confucianist, only this) life is worth living, precisely because it is believed to be a process of continuous actualization of the unique potential worth present in every human life.The “radical world optimism”
is the very essence of Confucian and, more generally, Chinese humanism.
The belief in human dignity presupposes an irreducible worth attached to every person insofar as s/he is a human being.This is best illustrated in the Mencian theory of human nature,
which enables Mencius to develop a positive doctrine of human value.Mencius assumes that everyone is born with a noble body together with the capacity to develop it.Man is set apart from other animals perhaps by only a slight difference, yet it is precisely this small difference that makes man unique.The unique value of man lies not in his material body--because that he shares with all other animals, but exclusively in his moral faculties as embodied in his heart-mind (Xin).Responsible for moral and rational thinking, the heart-mind is the noblest organ endowed by human being and, unlike the material body whose advantages are unequally inherited by different individuals, the moral heart-mind is endowed equally in all men and women.As a result, “everyone possesses in himself the noble value”.
The individual moral differences lie not in the natural endowment, but in the posterior development of the innate potentials.Mencius distinguishes the “noble” or “great” body (the heart-mind where humanity resides) from the “ignoble” or “small” body (sensuous organs giving rise to passion and desire).“While a gentleman follows his great body, a littleman is driven by his small body.”
Unlike a littleman who is preoccupied with his selfish material desires, a gentleman takes care to cultivate his sublime moral character by pursuing humanity and justice, which enables him to lead a life that is worthy of his noble nature.Humanity and justice are true nobility, which is endowed from Heaven and cannot be substituted by human nobility (such as high social status and comfortable material life).While the human nobility is contingent on individual fortune and limited necessarily to a few, the inherent nobility of Heaven is absolute and universal to all human beings.
Now it may be contended that the Confucianists valued not so much the potentials inherent in man as the actually developed qualities exhibited in a gentleman.Munroe observes, for example, that traditional Chinese society had consistently rejected the ideas of democracy and mass political participation precisely because of the Confucian emphasis that only those who had actually developed virtues had the right to participate in politics.
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