What should we make of claims by members of other groups to have moralities different from our own? Human Rights in Chinese Thought gives an extended answer to this question in the first study of its kind. It integrates a full account of the development of Chinese rights discourse with philosophical consideration of how various communities should respond to contemporary Chinese claims about the uniqueness of their human rights concepts. The book elaborates a plausible kind of moral pluralism and demonstrates that Chinese ideas of human rights do indeed have distinctive characteristics, but it nonetheless argues for the importance and promise of cross-cultural moral engagement.

Stephen C. Angle is Director of the Fries Center for Global Studies, Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies, and Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. Angle specializes in Confucianism and comparative philosophy, and his research focuses on philosophy’s role in human rights, politics, and ethics both in East Asia and globally. Angle is the author of five books and co-editor of two others; his latest is Growing Moral: A Confucian Guide to Life (Oxford, 2022).