The Concept of Natural Rights and the Cultural Tradition

Abstract

The New Culture Movement of the May Fourth period may have carried with it many serious shortcomings; nonetheless, in the final analysis, it was still a watershed enlightenment in the history of modern thought in China. As its outstanding spokesman, Chen Duxiu, pointed out more than once, there were three major events that deeply influenced the modern civilization of mankind and "were most instrumental in changing the ways of tradition and totally renewing and overhauling the minds of men and society." Of these three, one was the great French Revolution and the concept of the Rights of Man (human rights) that attended it.1 It would not be too far wrong to say that today we are still inheriting and continuing the May Fourth legacy and tradition of science and democracy, and striving to fulfill its unfinished task; naturally, however, we are doing this at a higher level of meaning, and this therefore entails a rethinking and a new understanding and evaluation of certain basic arguments of the May Fourth period.