Chapter 5 - Nineteenth-Century Origins

Summary

IT IS OFTEN DIFFICULT to identify beginnings. Ask when rights discourse began in Europe, and you can receive answers that differ by centuries, depending on which stage of the ongoing evolution of concepts and practices related to “rights” – and to its correlates and predecessors in a half-dozen languages – one counts as the beginning. It might be thought that the beginning of rights discourse in China would be easier to locate: As there was no concept of rights in traditional thought, shouldn't we just look for the moment that the idea of rights was introduced to China from Europe? Unfortunately, this “moment” is rather difficult to identify precisely. To be sure, we must look carefully at early translations of European texts concerning rights into Chinese, but we will find that these translations seem to be part of an existing discourse almost as much as they begin a new one.

In addition, I need to be very careful when I say that the discussions initiated by these texts are about rights. Since my discussion of these matters will depend on some of the conclusions from Chapter 2, let me briefly review the relevant issues. I argued there that conceptual content depends on the inferential commitments we take on when we use language, and I further contended that the norms governing these inferences are instituted by the practices of the groups to which we belong.