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丹尼爾·貝爾教授在“尋找共同價值觀”主題演講
YouTube · 全球明日研究所
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7QYHEsdLG8&t=1241s
什麽是共同價值觀？它們從何而來？它們與普世價值觀有何不同？丹尼爾·貝爾教授，政治學係主任……
人工智能概述
丹尼爾·貝爾的著作探討了“新興世界秩序”的複雜性，以及在日益多元化的全球環境中尋找共同價值觀的挑戰。他研究了社會如何應對不同文化、政治和經濟體係之間的緊張關係，尤其是在後工業社會和新技術興起的背景下。貝爾的分析強調了建立普遍接受的規範的難度，以及不同視角引發衝突的可能性。
以下是更詳細的分析：
多元化問題：
貝爾承認，由於全球化、技術進步和社會結構的演變，現代世界的價值觀和觀點日益多元化。
超越自由民主：
他的著作，尤其是《超越自由民主》，深入探討了傳統自由主義模式在應對多元複雜性方麵的局限性。
精英的作用：
貝爾探討了精英在應對這些緊張局勢中的作用，包括在塑造新興世界秩序過程中可能出現的衝突與合作。
普遍主義與特殊主義之間的緊張關係：
貝爾的著作探討了如何在尊重不同群體和文化的獨特價值觀和利益的同時，找到共同點。
對話的重要性：
他強調，不同觀點之間需要對話和理解，才能應對多元化世界的複雜性。
本質上，貝爾的著作提供了一個理解新興世界秩序所帶來的挑戰和機遇的框架，強調了在日益多元化的價值觀和觀點中找到共同點的必要性。
Professor Daniel Bell, Keynote at Finding Common Values
YouTube · Global Institute For Tomorrow 2022年10月19日
What are common values? Where do they come from? And how do they differ from universal values?
What are common values? Where do they come from? And how do they differ from universal values? Professor Daniel Bell, Chair of Political ...
AI Overview
Daniel Bell's work explores the complexities of an "emerging world order" and the challenge of finding common values amidst increasing global plurality. He examines how societies navigate the tensions between different cultural, political, and economic systems, particularly in the context of post-industrial society and the rise of new technologies. Bell's analysis highlights the difficulty of establishing universally accepted norms and the potential for conflict arising from diverse perspectives.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
The Problem of Plurality:
- Bell acknowledges the increasing diversity of values and perspectives in the modern world, stemming from globalization, technological advancements, and evolving social structures.
- Beyond Liberal Democracy:His work, particularly "Beyond Liberal Democracy," delves into the limitations of traditional liberal models in addressing the complexities of this plurality.
- The Role of Elites:Bell discusses the role of elites in navigating these tensions, including the potential for both conflict and cooperation in shaping the emerging world order.
- The Tension between Universalism and Particularism:Bell's work grapples with the challenge of finding common ground while respecting the distinct values and interests of different groups and cultures.
- The Importance of Dialogue:He emphasizes the need for dialogue and understanding between different perspectives as a way to navigate the complexities of a pluralistic world.
In essence, Bell's work provides a framework for understanding the challenges and opportunities presented by the emerging world order, emphasizing the need to find common ground amidst a growing diversity of values and perspectives.
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我今天要講的主題有兩個部分：第一部分是尋找共同價值觀，第二部分是新興世界秩序中的多元性。我首先要問的問題是，我們如何找到共同價值觀？嗯，它們是什麽？我會提出一些建議，然後我會指出哪些領域存在著合法的多元性，應該得到世界各地不同社會的尊重。所以，讓我先結束這個話題。第一部分是尋找共同價值觀。當你問到這個問題時，你首先想到的往往是，當你問人們，尤其是政府人員、非政府組織工作人員，還是從事法律和國際法研究的學者，你問他們“共同價值觀”是什麽意思？他們總是說這很容易回答，答案是《世界人權宣言》，它於1948年由聯合國大會通過，是所有民族和國家共同努力的標準。所以我們不需要再討論這個問題了，什麽是共同價值觀，它已經存在了。被載入史冊並得到聯合國認可，為什麽我們還要進一步討論，為什麽我們要進一步討論而不是采取……我要說的是，我要看《世界人權宣言》，簡稱《世界人權宣言》，為什麽它不足以讓我們思考共同價值觀呢？原因有幾個，首先，它包含的權利在今天非常有爭議，你還記得那是1948年，也就是第二次世界大戰中盟軍擊敗其他國家後不久，他們非常……這份文件，《世界人權宣言》，非常表達了西方列強的主導價值觀，坦率地說，他們在第二次世界大戰中取得了勝利，如果你今天看這份文件，它包含了一些條款，這些條款顯然不會得到中國政府和世界許多政府的認可，例如，有一篇文章非常清楚地表明，我在幻燈片上看到它，它表明唯一道德上合法的政府形式是由人民通過自由公正的選舉或秘密投票選出的政府，現在顯然這是選拔領導人的一種方式，但並非唯一方式，也不是唯一合乎道德的方式。如今，聲稱自由公正的選舉是選拔領導人的唯一合乎道德的方式，這極具爭議。我們可以肯定，如果今天有一個大會討論這類文件，那麽那條條款今天不會被認可為一種共同價值觀，或者另一條基本上認可財產權的條款，即每個人都有權擁有財產。這在資本主義國家也相當合理，你知道，財產權幾乎被視為神聖不可侵犯的。
但在堅持社會主義經濟理念的國家，包括中國，這將會非常非常有爭議。我們可以肯定，如果今天就我們的共同價值觀進行討論，財產權不會引起很大爭議，而且不太可能在今天得到聯合國的認可。
如果今天有這樣的討論，那麽《世界人權宣言》的另一個問題是，《世界人權宣言》是一份非常有價值的文件，我認為它有時確實有助於促進人權。人民受到壓迫，但這肯定不是一份充分的文件。
當我們思考當今的共同價值觀時，《世界人權宣言》的另一個問題是，它沒有優先考慮各項權利，也沒有在發生衝突的情況下提供指導。
我的意思是，它列出了相當長的權利清單，其中一些權利並不太有爭議，比如任何人都不應被奴役或奴役。我的意思是，很少有政府，或者知識分子，會支持這一點。我的意思是，有時奴隸製仍然存在，但
它是以一種秘密的方式進行的，並沒有得到公開認可。或者，還有生存權。
你知道，隻有酷兒、瘋狂的恐怖分子才會反對這一點。我的意思是，這些都是普遍的權利或利益，而且很少有人
會反對它們。但《世界人權宣言》也包含一些非常有爭議的權利，或者至少是經濟發達社會的特征。
例如，第24條規定，人人有權享受定期帶薪休假。我的意思是，顯然，
這是個好主意，但在貧窮國家。對於有許多其他優先事項的國家，你不能指望這些會得到強有力的支持，所以需要區分基本權利，或者說基本需求或利益，這些需求或利益是世界各地人民的真實需求或利益，無論其文化背景如何，無論其經濟發展水平如何，例如不被奴役的權利、反對酷刑的權利或生存權，以及其他權利。
但在堅持社會主義經濟理念的國家，包括中國，這將會非常非常有爭議。我們可以肯定，如果今天就我們的共同價值觀進行討論，財產權不會引起很大爭議，而且不太可能在今天得到聯合國的認可。
如果今天有這樣的討論，那麽《世界人權宣言》的另一個問題是，《世界人權宣言》是一份非常有價值的文件，我認為它有時確實有助於促進人權。人民受到壓迫，但這肯定不是一份充分的文件。
當我們思考當今的共同價值觀時，《世界人權宣言》的另一個問題是，它沒有優先考慮各項權利，也沒有在發生衝突的情況下提供指導。
我的意思是，它列出了相當長的權利清單，其中一些權利並不太有爭議，比如任何人都不應被奴役或奴役。我的意思是，很少有政府，或者知識分子，會支持這一點。我的意思是，有時奴隸製仍然存在，但
它是以一種秘密的方式進行的，並沒有得到公開認可。或者，還有生存權。
你知道，隻有酷兒、瘋狂的恐怖分子才會反對這一點。我的意思是，這些都是普遍的權利或利益，而且很少有人
會反對它們。但《世界人權宣言》也包含一些非常有爭議的權利，或者至少是經濟發達社會的特征。
例如，第24條規定，人人有權享受定期帶薪休假。我的意思是，顯然，
這是個好主意，但在貧窮國家。對於有許多其他優先事項的國家，你不能指望這些會得到強有力的支持，所以需要區分基本權利，或者說基本需求或利益，這些需求或利益是世界各地人民的真實需求或利益，無論其文化背景如何，無論其經濟發展水平如何，例如不被奴役的權利、反對酷刑的權利或生存權，以及其他權利。
what I'm going to do today is there's two parts of this theme the first is finding common values and the second is
plurality in the emerging World Order and I'm going to first ask the question is how do we find common values um and what are they and I will make some suggestions and then I'll suggest areas where there is legitimate plurality that should be respected by different societies around the world so let me first quit this the
first part here finding common values now when you ask about that the first thing that often comes to mind when you ask people um whether it's especially government people or people working for ngos or academics who work in law and international law for example you ask them what do we mean by common values well they always say that's quite easy there's a response there's an answer to that it's the universal Declaration of Human Rights which was passed by the United Nations in 1948 by the general assembly as a common standard of achievement for All Peoples and Nations so we don't need to discuss anymore about this issue what are common values it's already there it's enshrined and it was endorsed by the United Nations why do we have to talk further well the reason why we have to talk further and not take I'm going to say I'm going to see Universal Declaration of Human Rights it's udhr for short why is that not a sufficient document for thinking about common values well there's several reasons first reason is that it includes rights that are very controversial today you remember this was 1948 shortly after the Allies as they say defeated other countries in World War II and they were very much um the document the universal Declaration of Human Rights very much expresses the dominant values of let's just be frank the Western Powers um that were Victorious uh in World War II if you look at the document today it includes articles that would clearly not be endorsed by for example the Chinese government and many governments around the world for example one article makes it very clear I have it here on on on on the slide it very it's it suggests that the only morally legitimate form of government is one that is selected by the People by means of free and fair elections or secret votes now obviously that's one way of selecting leaders but it's not the only way nor is it the only morally legitimate way it's very controversial to claim that free and fair elections today is the only morally legitimate way of selecting leaders and we can be quite sure that if there were a general assembly today discussing this sort of document that that article would not be endorsed as a kind of common value today or another article basically endorsing the right to property that everyone has the right to own property alone well again in capitalist countries fair enough you know that is a a the right to property is is almost held sacred often
but in countries that adhere to socialist uh economic uh ideals including China it would be very very controversial and we can be sure that if there were deliberations today about what our common values that the right to property would not would be highly controversial and unlikely would not be endorsed today by the United Nations if
there were such a kind of discussion today so another problem with the udhr again the udhr it's it's a very valuable document and I think it does help sometimes to promote human rights uh where where people are oppressed but it's certainly not a sufficient document
when we think about what are the common values today a another problem with the
universal Declaration of Human Rights is that it doesn't prioritize between rights and provides no guidance in cases
of conflict I mean it's quite a long list of Rights some of them are not very controversial like the idea that nobody
should be held in slavery or servitude I mean uh very few if any governments
today would endorse that or intellectuals for that matter I mean there is still slavery sometimes but
it's done in a kind of secret way and not publicly endorsed or for example there is also the right to life you know
only queer crazy terrorists would object to that I mean those are Universal rights or interests and and and very few
would object to them but the universal Declaration of Human Rights also includes rights that are very
controversial and or at least characteristic of economically developed societies
for example this part of article 24 that everyone has the right to periodic holidays with pay I mean obviously
that's a good idea but in poor countries that have many other priorities you can't expect that to be uh uh endorsed
in a very strong way so there's a need to distinguish between the fundamental rights or let's just say fundamental
needs or interests that are true of people around the world regardless of culture regardless of a level of
Economic Development like the right not to be in slave for example or the right Against torture or the right to life versus other rights
plurality in the emerging World Order and I'm going to first ask the question is how do we find common values um and what are they and I will make some suggestions and then I'll suggest areas where there is legitimate plurality that should be respected by different societies around the world so let me first quit this the
first part here finding common values now when you ask about that the first thing that often comes to mind when you ask people um whether it's especially government people or people working for ngos or academics who work in law and international law for example you ask them what do we mean by common values well they always say that's quite easy there's a response there's an answer to that it's the universal Declaration of Human Rights which was passed by the United Nations in 1948 by the general assembly as a common standard of achievement for All Peoples and Nations so we don't need to discuss anymore about this issue what are common values it's already there it's enshrined and it was endorsed by the United Nations why do we have to talk further well the reason why we have to talk further and not take I'm going to say I'm going to see Universal Declaration of Human Rights it's udhr for short why is that not a sufficient document for thinking about common values well there's several reasons first reason is that it includes rights that are very controversial today you remember this was 1948 shortly after the Allies as they say defeated other countries in World War II and they were very much um the document the universal Declaration of Human Rights very much expresses the dominant values of let's just be frank the Western Powers um that were Victorious uh in World War II if you look at the document today it includes articles that would clearly not be endorsed by for example the Chinese government and many governments around the world for example one article makes it very clear I have it here on on on on the slide it very it's it suggests that the only morally legitimate form of government is one that is selected by the People by means of free and fair elections or secret votes now obviously that's one way of selecting leaders but it's not the only way nor is it the only morally legitimate way it's very controversial to claim that free and fair elections today is the only morally legitimate way of selecting leaders and we can be quite sure that if there were a general assembly today discussing this sort of document that that article would not be endorsed as a kind of common value today or another article basically endorsing the right to property that everyone has the right to own property alone well again in capitalist countries fair enough you know that is a a the right to property is is almost held sacred often
but in countries that adhere to socialist uh economic uh ideals including China it would be very very controversial and we can be sure that if there were deliberations today about what our common values that the right to property would not would be highly controversial and unlikely would not be endorsed today by the United Nations if
there were such a kind of discussion today so another problem with the udhr again the udhr it's it's a very valuable document and I think it does help sometimes to promote human rights uh where where people are oppressed but it's certainly not a sufficient document
when we think about what are the common values today a another problem with the
universal Declaration of Human Rights is that it doesn't prioritize between rights and provides no guidance in cases
of conflict I mean it's quite a long list of Rights some of them are not very controversial like the idea that nobody
should be held in slavery or servitude I mean uh very few if any governments
today would endorse that or intellectuals for that matter I mean there is still slavery sometimes but
it's done in a kind of secret way and not publicly endorsed or for example there is also the right to life you know
only queer crazy terrorists would object to that I mean those are Universal rights or interests and and and very few
would object to them but the universal Declaration of Human Rights also includes rights that are very
controversial and or at least characteristic of economically developed societies
for example this part of article 24 that everyone has the right to periodic holidays with pay I mean obviously
that's a good idea but in poor countries that have many other priorities you can't expect that to be uh uh endorsed
in a very strong way so there's a need to distinguish between the fundamental rights or let's just say fundamental
needs or interests that are true of people around the world regardless of culture regardless of a level of
Economic Development like the right not to be in slave for example or the right Against torture or the right to life versus other rights
這些權利有時取決於文化，有時取決於經濟發展水平，而《世界人權宣言》並沒有區分那些我們稱之為基本重要權利和那些不太重要或更特殊的權利，所以這是另一個問題，為什麽《世界人權宣言》不能被視為代表當今共同價值觀的文件？我的意思是，一方麵，即使其中一些權利在原則層麵上得到認可，但有些權利很難實施。嗯，另一個問題是，《世界人權宣言》隱含地肯定了一種過於個人主義的生活方式，你必須再次記住，《世界人權宣言》代表了二戰後西方列強的主流觀點。嗯，你知道資本主義對私有財產的捍衛，嗯，你擁有對那些尋求個人自主權的個人來說非常重要的價值觀和權利。這有點誇張，所以讓我收回我剛才說的話，因為有一位中國哲學家，當然，這是在中華人民共和國成立之前，他接近嗯，國民黨，但他也是儒家價值觀的追隨者，據說他影響了《世界人權宣言》的第一條，即人人生而自由，在尊嚴上一律平等，這一點非常重要，即人人生而自由，擁有理性和良知。中文裏“良知”這個詞是“良心”，直接來自僧侶的提及。顯然，哲學家張誌雄在《世界人權宣言》中對良知的認可產生了影響。所以說它完全以西方為中心、個人主義，這有點誇張，因為其中存在著一種令人困惑的因素。我們不得不承認，如果這份宣言中能更多地體現非西方文化、宗教和價值體係，不僅僅是儒家思想，還有例如Ubuntu和世界各地的土著傳統，包括我現在在加拿大的原住民，那麽這份宣言顯然會與現在大不相同，社會和諧的重要性就會更加凸顯。我的意思是，在資本主義西方國家，社會和諧是一種價值觀。在其他價值體係中，包括儒家思想和烏班圖撒哈拉以南非洲的倫理體係，社會和諧顯然有時被視為所有價值觀之母，或者說環境保護。我指的是土著傳統。如果土著傳統和原住民的代表參與審議，就會更加強調環境保護作為一項基本人類價值觀和共同價值觀。不幸的是，《世界人權宣言》主要是二戰後西方戰勝國的產物。所以，這些價值觀是缺乏的，我們姑且稱之為非西方價值觀。如果你看看世界人口，就會發現，這些價值觀往往占據主導地位。那麽，我們該怎麽做呢？接下來該如何找到《世界人權宣言》中可能缺乏的共同價值觀呢？我們可以做很多事情，也已經做了很多事情。其中之一就是讓我們與不同倫理和宗教傳統的領導人和代表開啟一場現代的、新的對話。來自世界各地的思想家，比如，杜明教授，他曾在哈佛大學任教，現在在北京大學任教。他參與過許多我們可以稱之為文明對話的活動，其中包括：我們的目標是開展一場比普遍人權教育更具包容性的對話，包括那些並非西方資本主義國家特征或主導的傳統的參與者。嗯，這已經取得了一些成果。但問題是，對話越包容，參與者的數量就越多，參與者的多樣性也就越強。事實證明，除了陳詞濫調之外，很難達成共識。例如，我參與過這些對話。大約15到20年前，這種對話更為常見，因為人們仍然希望我們能夠取得一些有意義的成果。但坦率地說，現在的情況更加悲觀，不僅僅是因為地緣政治，這使得在各方之間進行理性且知情的辯論變得更加困難。比如說中國和
美國，但也僅僅因為很難就具有影響力、能夠塑造政治現實的有意義的全球價值觀達成一致，所以很多抽象的概念，你知道，我們都應該努力做好事，避免做壞事，
但它們太抽象了，以至於它們沒有能力塑造政治現實。
美國，但也僅僅因為很難就具有影響力、能夠塑造政治現實的有意義的全球價值觀達成一致，所以很多抽象的概念，你知道，我們都應該努力做好事，避免做壞事，
但它們太抽象了，以至於它們沒有能力塑造政治現實。
that are quite controversial in particular and depend upon sometimes culture and sometimes level of Economic Development and the universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn't distinguish between let's call them basic important rights and those that are less important or let's say more particular so that's another problem why um the universal Declaration of Human Rights cannot be seen as a document that represents common values today I mean for one thing even if it even if some of these are endorsed at the level of principle some of them are difficult to implement um okay what's another problem another problem is that the udhr implicitly affirms an overly individualistic way of life and you have to remember again that the udhr represents pretty much the dominant outlooks of Western Powers after World War II um so you have you know capitalist defense of private property um and you have values and rights that are very important for individuals that seek individual autonomy Above All Else now that's a bit of an exaggeration so let me take back a little bit what I just said because there was one Chinese philosopher of course this is before the establishment of the People's Republic of China he was close to the uh kmt but he was also um a kind of adherent of Confucian values and he is said to have influenced the very first article of the universal declaration that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and this is very important Point endowed with reason and conscience and the word conscience in Chinese is Liang Shin which comes straight from mentions from monks and apparently PC Chang the philosopher was influential in getting that endorsed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights so it's an exaggeration to say that it's kind of totally West Centric and individualistic um because there is this kind of confusion element that said admittedly we have to say that if the there had been much greater representation of non Western cultures and religions and value systems not just Confucianism but for example Ubuntu and Indigenous Traditions from around the world including First Nations where I am now in Canada um obviously the document would have looked very different than what it is now there would have been much more sense on the importance of social harmony I mean social harmony as a value in in capitalist Western countries it's not regarded as as so important and fundamental but in other value systems including Confucianism and Ubuntu sub-Saharan African ethical system clearly social harmony is sometimes reviewed as the mother of all values or the protection for the environment I mean obviously of indigenous Traditions had been if representatives of indigenous traditions and First Nations had been involved in deliberations there would have been much more emphasis on protection for the environment as a fundamental human value as a common value unfortunately because again the
udhr is predominantly a product of the Victorious Western Powers after World War II so um there is these this these kind of values are lacking let's call them so
for lack of a better term a non-western values which often are quite dominant if you look at the world's population so what do we do then how do we move from here how do we find common values that are lacking arguably in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights well there's lots of things we can do and lots of things that have been done one is to let's start a modern a new dialogue with leaders and representatives of diverse ethical and religious Traditions from around the world so we have thinkers for example uh Professor tueming who used to be at Harvard now he's at Peking University beta in China he's been part of many of these we can call him civilizational dialogues and and these include so that the idea is to have a more inclusive dialogue than was the case in the Universal education of Human Rights including participants of again Traditions that are not characteristic or dominant of Western capitalist countries um and this has led to some results the problem though is that the more inclusive the dialogue the greater the
number of participants and the greater the diversity of participants it turns out it's very hard to achieve consensus
on anything other than platitudes like one example I I've been part of these
dialogue they're much more common about 15 20 years ago because there was still hope that we could achieve something
meaningful but now frankly there's much more there's a bit more pessimism not just because of the geopolitics which
makes it more much more difficult to have you know rational and informed debate between let's say China and the
us but also just because it's hard to set to agree upon meaningful Global values that can have bite and that could
shape political reality so many of the abstractions are you know we should all strive to be good and avoid doing bad
but they're so abstract that they do not have the power to shape political realities w
udhr is predominantly a product of the Victorious Western Powers after World War II so um there is these this these kind of values are lacking let's call them so
for lack of a better term a non-western values which often are quite dominant if you look at the world's population so what do we do then how do we move from here how do we find common values that are lacking arguably in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights well there's lots of things we can do and lots of things that have been done one is to let's start a modern a new dialogue with leaders and representatives of diverse ethical and religious Traditions from around the world so we have thinkers for example uh Professor tueming who used to be at Harvard now he's at Peking University beta in China he's been part of many of these we can call him civilizational dialogues and and these include so that the idea is to have a more inclusive dialogue than was the case in the Universal education of Human Rights including participants of again Traditions that are not characteristic or dominant of Western capitalist countries um and this has led to some results the problem though is that the more inclusive the dialogue the greater the
number of participants and the greater the diversity of participants it turns out it's very hard to achieve consensus
on anything other than platitudes like one example I I've been part of these
dialogue they're much more common about 15 20 years ago because there was still hope that we could achieve something
meaningful but now frankly there's much more there's a bit more pessimism not just because of the geopolitics which
makes it more much more difficult to have you know rational and informed debate between let's say China and the
us but also just because it's hard to set to agree upon meaningful Global values that can have bite and that could
shape political reality so many of the abstractions are you know we should all strive to be good and avoid doing bad
but they're so abstract that they do not have the power to shape political realities w
這通常涉及輪廓問題，我們如何分配稀缺資源，以及我們應該優先考慮哪些方麵，所以這是一個有點問題，那麽我們該怎麽做呢？這些跨文明對話並沒有取得很大成功，我很遺憾地告訴大家，我們該怎麽做呢？另一個建議是，在國家層麵，有很多這樣的全球大會，不，不好意思，例如在國家層麵，由隨機選出的公民組成的國家大會，討論問題，並由專家組成，然後提出如何推進的想法，這些想法在國家層麵真正具有代表性。問題是，如果我們在全球層麵舉行這些大會，想象一下，由於參與者如此多樣化，達成某種共識的難度，而且參與者不太可能克服困擾戰略一的那些問題。換句話說，除了陳詞濫調和抽象概念之外，很難達成共識，因為這些陳詞濫調和抽象概念沒有力量塑造全球現實。也許值得一試，但目前還沒有。已經嚐試過了，嗯，但坦白說，很難
非常樂觀，但我仍然認為這是一個值得嚐試的策略，那麽還有其他什麽可能性呢？嗯，還有另一種可能性，嗯，你有政治理論，
全球視野更加敏感，你知道，當我剛開始在蒙特利爾麥吉爾大學讀本科時學習政治理論時，我們有一些課程，有時被稱為從柏拉圖到北約，對我們來說，政治理論意味著我們
從柏拉圖開始學習古希臘人，然後我們一路前進，你知道，一路走來，呃，
然後，然後，最後把北約的角色當作一個熱門笑話。關鍵在於，這是一個完全以西方為中心的課程，西方的政治理論家幾乎不認為儒家、印度教、伊斯蘭教或烏班圖等非西方傳統具有道德價值。但今天，如果你有見識廣博的政治理論家，他們真正嚐試認真地與非西方傳統互動，並思考哪些價值觀是普世的，情況就會越來越不同。哪些不是，哪些是特定於社會的。對我來說，一位非常有啟發性的思想家是邁克爾·沃爾澤，嗯，他是一位心胸開闊的美國人，對文化差異非常敏感。他對所謂的“厚人權”和“薄人權”做出了非常重要的區分。他認為，隻有這些“薄人權”——有時我們會使用反對謀殺、奴役、酷刑和種族滅絕的消極權利的語言——才應該被視為普遍的。沒有一個理智的政府或坦率地說理智的知識分子會反對這些……嗯，你又說了瘋狂的理論……恐怖分子可能會這樣做……我正要說瘋狂的理論家……嗯，但總的來說，我們可以在這些反對謀殺、奴役和酷刑的消極人權之間達成共識。當然，這些權利在實踐中受到了侵犯，但關鍵在於，在公共話語層麵，這些權利得到了認可，這是為了揭示現實與理想之間的差距。但在理想層麵，世界各地的知情人士對這些權利的價值並沒有真正的爭議。權利，但當談到其他權利時，邁克爾·沃爾特又稱它們為“厚米”，它們並非基本人權。你知道，例子可能包括私有財產權，或者選舉領導人的方式。那麽，我們應該允許不同文化之間存在差異，我們應該允許更多、更合理的差異。我的意思是，有時候，它們並不僅僅是合理的差異。你知道，如果一個政府是通過軍事政變，或者比如說種族滅絕來掌權的，那麽顯然這並不更合理。但如果一個政府保護基本人權，比如免遭謀殺、奴役和酷刑的權利，並且他們是通過競爭性選舉產生的，那麽我們應該尊重它，將其視為一種道德上合理的差異。我認為這是一個很有前途的方法，但它仍然有點過於以西方為中心，因為存在對負麵人權的普查，認為它們真正具有普遍性。但如果你看看西方以外的國家，問問政府、大多數知識分子和政治改革者，對你來說，什麽是普世權利，什麽才是真正最重要的權利。我們隻說人類的利益或需求，人們經常說，不貧窮是正確的，或者保護人們免於饑餓的權利，或者保護人們或提供體麵的醫療保健和住房的權利，這些都是更基本、更普遍的權利，所以它不僅僅是反對酷刑、奴役和謀殺的消極權利，我們也可以稱它們為積極權利，比如政府，所以政府有積極的義務保護人們免於饑餓，提供體麵的醫療保健，以及如何和最低限度的住房
非常樂觀，但我仍然認為這是一個值得嚐試的策略，那麽還有其他什麽可能性呢？嗯，還有另一種可能性，嗯，你有政治理論，
全球視野更加敏感，你知道，當我剛開始在蒙特利爾麥吉爾大學讀本科時學習政治理論時，我們有一些課程，有時被稱為從柏拉圖到北約，對我們來說，政治理論意味著我們
從柏拉圖開始學習古希臘人，然後我們一路前進，你知道，一路走來，呃，
然後，然後，最後把北約的角色當作一個熱門笑話。關鍵在於，這是一個完全以西方為中心的課程，西方的政治理論家幾乎不認為儒家、印度教、伊斯蘭教或烏班圖等非西方傳統具有道德價值。但今天，如果你有見識廣博的政治理論家，他們真正嚐試認真地與非西方傳統互動，並思考哪些價值觀是普世的，情況就會越來越不同。哪些不是，哪些是特定於社會的。對我來說，一位非常有啟發性的思想家是邁克爾·沃爾澤，嗯，他是一位心胸開闊的美國人，對文化差異非常敏感。他對所謂的“厚人權”和“薄人權”做出了非常重要的區分。他認為，隻有這些“薄人權”——有時我們會使用反對謀殺、奴役、酷刑和種族滅絕的消極權利的語言——才應該被視為普遍的。沒有一個理智的政府或坦率地說理智的知識分子會反對這些……嗯，你又說了瘋狂的理論……恐怖分子可能會這樣做……我正要說瘋狂的理論家……嗯，但總的來說，我們可以在這些反對謀殺、奴役和酷刑的消極人權之間達成共識。當然，這些權利在實踐中受到了侵犯，但關鍵在於，在公共話語層麵，這些權利得到了認可，這是為了揭示現實與理想之間的差距。但在理想層麵，世界各地的知情人士對這些權利的價值並沒有真正的爭議。權利，但當談到其他權利時，邁克爾·沃爾特又稱它們為“厚米”，它們並非基本人權。你知道，例子可能包括私有財產權，或者選舉領導人的方式。那麽，我們應該允許不同文化之間存在差異，我們應該允許更多、更合理的差異。我的意思是，有時候，它們並不僅僅是合理的差異。你知道，如果一個政府是通過軍事政變，或者比如說種族滅絕來掌權的，那麽顯然這並不更合理。但如果一個政府保護基本人權，比如免遭謀殺、奴役和酷刑的權利，並且他們是通過競爭性選舉產生的，那麽我們應該尊重它，將其視為一種道德上合理的差異。我認為這是一個很有前途的方法，但它仍然有點過於以西方為中心，因為存在對負麵人權的普查，認為它們真正具有普遍性。但如果你看看西方以外的國家，問問政府、大多數知識分子和政治改革者，對你來說，什麽是普世權利，什麽才是真正最重要的權利。我們隻說人類的利益或需求，人們經常說，不貧窮是正確的，或者保護人們免於饑餓的權利，或者保護人們或提供體麵的醫療保健和住房的權利，這些都是更基本、更普遍的權利，所以它不僅僅是反對酷刑、奴役和謀殺的消極權利，我們也可以稱它們為積極權利，比如政府，所以政府有積極的義務保護人們免於饑餓，提供體麵的醫療保健，以及如何和最低限度的住房
hich often involve contoursal
issues and how do we distribute scarce resources and and where do we prioritize so this is a bit of a problem so what do
we do these these inter-civilizational dialogues have not been very successful I regret to report what do we do then
well another proposal and this is at the national level you have a lot of these Global assemblies no
sorry National Assemblies of randomly selected citizens in in countries for example that PL that discuss issues and
formed by experts then come up with ideas for how to move forward and those are truly representative at the level of
the nation the problem is that if we do these assemblies at the global level just imagine
the difficulty again of achieving a kind of consensus given that there would be so many diverse participants and and the
participants are unlikely to overcome problems that have played that have plagued strategy one in other words it's
going to be very hard to achieve consensus on anything other than platitudes and abstractions that do not
have the power to shape Global realities maybe it's worth trying that hasn't been
tried yet actually um but um frankly it's hard to be very
optimistic though I would still think it's a it's a strategy worth trying so what are some other possibilities
well here's another possibility well you have political theories of
global outlooks much more sensitive you know when I first started learning political Theory as an undergraduate at
McGill University in Montreal we had courses that are sometimes called Plato to Nato for us political Theory meant we
learned about the ancient Greeks from from Plato and then we move forward you know all the way through a mill uh and
and and and ending up with roles or NATO as a kind of hot joke the point is that it was a completely West Centric curriculum and political theorists in the west hardly viewed non-western Traditions such as Confucianism or Hinduism or Islam or Ubuntu and so on as morally valuable so but today it's a different story more and more if you have informed political theorists who who really try to seriously engage with non-western traditions and think about which values are Universal and which ones are not which ones are particular to put to to societies and one very inspiring thinker to me is Michael waltzer um and he's a he's American extremely broad-minded and sensitive to cultural difference and and he has he makes a very important distinction between what he calls thick and thin human rights and he argues that only these thin human rights sometimes we use the language of negative rights against murder slavery
and torture and genocide should be viewed as universal no sane government or frankly sane intellectual would object to those um again you have crazy Theory uh terrorists who might do so I was about to say crazy theorists maybe also um but generally speaking we can achieve consensus among these negative uh human
rights against murder slavery and torture of course they're done these rights are violated in practice but the
point is that at the level of public discourse uh they're endorsed and it's a matter of exposing the gap between the reality and the ideal but at the level of Ideal there's really no dispute among informed people from around the world on the value of these rights but when it comes to other rights again Michael Walter calls them thick rice that are not these basic human rights you know examples might include the right to private property um or ways of selecting leaders um then we should allow for variation from a culture to culture we should allow for more more legitimate variation I mean sometimes they're not more there's not more than legitimate variation you know if uh let's say a government assumes powered by military coup or uh or by let's say genocide
um uh then obviously that's not more legitimate but if a government protects basic human rights like rights against murder slavery and torture and so on and they're chosen by means of then competitive elections then we should respect that as a as a kind of morally legitimate variation now I think that's a promising approach but again it's a little still too West Centric in the sense that there's a census on negative human rights as truly Universal but again if you look outside the west and you ask governments and and most intellectuals and political reformers what are the universal rights for you what are the truly most important rights or let's just say human interests or needs and very often people say well it's right not to be poor or rights to protect people from starvation or protect people or give provide decent Health Care and housing these are are much more fundamental and Universal so it's not just a negative rights Against torture and slavery and murder but also we can call them positive rights such as the government so the governments have a positive obligation to protect people from starvation and to provide decent health care and how and and minimal housi
issues and how do we distribute scarce resources and and where do we prioritize so this is a bit of a problem so what do
we do these these inter-civilizational dialogues have not been very successful I regret to report what do we do then
well another proposal and this is at the national level you have a lot of these Global assemblies no
sorry National Assemblies of randomly selected citizens in in countries for example that PL that discuss issues and
formed by experts then come up with ideas for how to move forward and those are truly representative at the level of
the nation the problem is that if we do these assemblies at the global level just imagine
the difficulty again of achieving a kind of consensus given that there would be so many diverse participants and and the
participants are unlikely to overcome problems that have played that have plagued strategy one in other words it's
going to be very hard to achieve consensus on anything other than platitudes and abstractions that do not
have the power to shape Global realities maybe it's worth trying that hasn't been
tried yet actually um but um frankly it's hard to be very
optimistic though I would still think it's a it's a strategy worth trying so what are some other possibilities
well here's another possibility well you have political theories of
global outlooks much more sensitive you know when I first started learning political Theory as an undergraduate at
McGill University in Montreal we had courses that are sometimes called Plato to Nato for us political Theory meant we
learned about the ancient Greeks from from Plato and then we move forward you know all the way through a mill uh and
and and and ending up with roles or NATO as a kind of hot joke the point is that it was a completely West Centric curriculum and political theorists in the west hardly viewed non-western Traditions such as Confucianism or Hinduism or Islam or Ubuntu and so on as morally valuable so but today it's a different story more and more if you have informed political theorists who who really try to seriously engage with non-western traditions and think about which values are Universal and which ones are not which ones are particular to put to to societies and one very inspiring thinker to me is Michael waltzer um and he's a he's American extremely broad-minded and sensitive to cultural difference and and he has he makes a very important distinction between what he calls thick and thin human rights and he argues that only these thin human rights sometimes we use the language of negative rights against murder slavery
and torture and genocide should be viewed as universal no sane government or frankly sane intellectual would object to those um again you have crazy Theory uh terrorists who might do so I was about to say crazy theorists maybe also um but generally speaking we can achieve consensus among these negative uh human
rights against murder slavery and torture of course they're done these rights are violated in practice but the
point is that at the level of public discourse uh they're endorsed and it's a matter of exposing the gap between the reality and the ideal but at the level of Ideal there's really no dispute among informed people from around the world on the value of these rights but when it comes to other rights again Michael Walter calls them thick rice that are not these basic human rights you know examples might include the right to private property um or ways of selecting leaders um then we should allow for variation from a culture to culture we should allow for more more legitimate variation I mean sometimes they're not more there's not more than legitimate variation you know if uh let's say a government assumes powered by military coup or uh or by let's say genocide
um uh then obviously that's not more legitimate but if a government protects basic human rights like rights against murder slavery and torture and so on and they're chosen by means of then competitive elections then we should respect that as a as a kind of morally legitimate variation now I think that's a promising approach but again it's a little still too West Centric in the sense that there's a census on negative human rights as truly Universal but again if you look outside the west and you ask governments and and most intellectuals and political reformers what are the universal rights for you what are the truly most important rights or let's just say human interests or needs and very often people say well it's right not to be poor or rights to protect people from starvation or protect people or give provide decent Health Care and housing these are are much more fundamental and Universal so it's not just a negative rights Against torture and slavery and murder but also we can call them positive rights such as the government so the governments have a positive obligation to protect people from starvation and to provide decent health care and how and and minimal housi
這些也是普遍權利，我們需要更多對話來思考什麽是共同的
價值觀，但我們也必須問，你知道，即使是稻米語言本身，有時也會被視為有點西方中心主義。我的意思是，有些傳統並不使用稻米語言來表達人類的基本需求或利益，我們不應該局限於人權語言，將其作為談論共同價值觀的唯一合法限製語言。我們應該允許使用不同的詞匯，即使實質上可能沒有太大的
差異。例如，當我們談論社會和諧的需要或保護自然環境權利時，語言可能不一定是理解這些基本共同價值觀的最佳語言。所以，這
更像是一種直覺，因為它仍然是一個持續的爭論，但如果我們思考超越《世界人權宣言》的不同策略，思考哪些價值觀才是真正的普世價值，那麽，哪些價值觀是所有人類共同擁有的，無論文化背景如何，無論經濟發展水平如何，我們很可能會確定一個最簡清單。說到人權，雖然它並不總是用人權的語言來表達，包括反對謀殺、奴役、酷刑和種族滅絕的消極權利，以及積極權利，例如政府有義務滿足人們的基本物質需求，保護他們免於饑餓，獲得體麵的醫療保健，以及保護自然環境。我的意思是，現在越來越明顯了，我的意思是，在製定《世界人權宣言》時，氣候變化並不是一個問題，但現在顯然它已成為一種共同價值觀，應該引起世界各地人民的共鳴，無論其文化或經濟發展水平如何。所以這基本上就是，如果我們思考共同價值觀是什麽，我認為我們應該轉向哪裏。我們並不是說我們需要拒絕基督教人權的體係，而是我們當然需要在此基礎上發展，而不是將其視為思考共同價值觀的充分文件。我的意思是，它是時代的產物，也許現在是時候轉向其他更具包容性的東西了。非西方價值體係，嗯，這樣我們才能就共同價值觀達成一個
真正包容和普遍的觀點。現在我想進入本次演講的第二部分。我不會花太多時間，但我認為今天會議有兩個重要主題。第一部分是
共同價值觀是什麽？第二部分是我們需要拒絕、需要尊重的多元化是什麽？我再次強調，我確實認為
問題更多地存在於西方而非非西方。我的意思是，呃，無論是美國，還是其他西方國家，這都是一個更深層次的問題。你們也有類似的觀點，認為我們的政治製度是最好的，
最終應該為世界其他國家樹立榜樣。嗯，我們指的是一種政治製度，一種民主的政治製度，政治領導人是通過
一人一票選出的，這種觀點也影響著整個宇宙。《世界人權宣言》人權
嗯，這是一個相對較新的觀點，直到二戰後才成為
一種主流觀點，你知道，19世紀英國自由主義者約翰斯頓·密爾，我的意思是，他說，哦不，
並非每個人都擁有同等的能力做出符合道德的政治判斷，我們應該給予受過教育的人額外的
他可以這樣說，而不會被視為瘋子，但在今天的西方，如果你主張一人一觀點一票的替代方案，你就會被視為獨裁的捍衛者，這很糟糕，現在它在道德上再次不合法了。
讓我們把自己置於西方之外，當然，我在中國工作了很多年，所以我不得不問
你知道，主導中國政治體係的主導政治理想是什麽嗎？嗯，我們可以稱之為
政治賢能政治，中文裏是“賢能”，這種觀點認為，
官員應該基於卓越的能力進行選拔和提拔，
而美德意味著願意為人民服務，能力意味著那種展現出來的能力。為人民服務
公職人員要經過幾十年的選拔和提拔過程。呃，現在的選拔、提拔不是一個完美的製度，它非常不完善，就像西方式的民主一樣。
民主非常不完善，你知道在實踐中，通常不是一人一票，而是一美元一票。
在中國，民主非常不完善，經常有腐敗的領導人被選拔出來，而且沒有經過應有的篩選。
所以兩種製度都有優點，也都有缺點。你知道，一人一票製的優點是什麽。
價值觀，但我們也必須問，你知道，即使是稻米語言本身，有時也會被視為有點西方中心主義。我的意思是，有些傳統並不使用稻米語言來表達人類的基本需求或利益，我們不應該局限於人權語言，將其作為談論共同價值觀的唯一合法限製語言。我們應該允許使用不同的詞匯，即使實質上可能沒有太大的
差異。例如，當我們談論社會和諧的需要或保護自然環境權利時，語言可能不一定是理解這些基本共同價值觀的最佳語言。所以，這
更像是一種直覺，因為它仍然是一個持續的爭論，但如果我們思考超越《世界人權宣言》的不同策略，思考哪些價值觀才是真正的普世價值，那麽，哪些價值觀是所有人類共同擁有的，無論文化背景如何，無論經濟發展水平如何，我們很可能會確定一個最簡清單。說到人權，雖然它並不總是用人權的語言來表達，包括反對謀殺、奴役、酷刑和種族滅絕的消極權利，以及積極權利，例如政府有義務滿足人們的基本物質需求，保護他們免於饑餓，獲得體麵的醫療保健，以及保護自然環境。我的意思是，現在越來越明顯了，我的意思是，在製定《世界人權宣言》時，氣候變化並不是一個問題，但現在顯然它已成為一種共同價值觀，應該引起世界各地人民的共鳴，無論其文化或經濟發展水平如何。所以這基本上就是，如果我們思考共同價值觀是什麽，我認為我們應該轉向哪裏。我們並不是說我們需要拒絕基督教人權的體係，而是我們當然需要在此基礎上發展，而不是將其視為思考共同價值觀的充分文件。我的意思是，它是時代的產物，也許現在是時候轉向其他更具包容性的東西了。非西方價值體係，嗯，這樣我們才能就共同價值觀達成一個
真正包容和普遍的觀點。現在我想進入本次演講的第二部分。我不會花太多時間，但我認為今天會議有兩個重要主題。第一部分是
共同價值觀是什麽？第二部分是我們需要拒絕、需要尊重的多元化是什麽？我再次強調，我確實認為
問題更多地存在於西方而非非西方。我的意思是，呃，無論是美國，還是其他西方國家，這都是一個更深層次的問題。你們也有類似的觀點，認為我們的政治製度是最好的，
最終應該為世界其他國家樹立榜樣。嗯，我們指的是一種政治製度，一種民主的政治製度，政治領導人是通過
一人一票選出的，這種觀點也影響著整個宇宙。《世界人權宣言》人權
嗯，這是一個相對較新的觀點，直到二戰後才成為
一種主流觀點，你知道，19世紀英國自由主義者約翰斯頓·密爾，我的意思是，他說，哦不，
並非每個人都擁有同等的能力做出符合道德的政治判斷，我們應該給予受過教育的人額外的
他可以這樣說，而不會被視為瘋子，但在今天的西方，如果你主張一人一觀點一票的替代方案，你就會被視為獨裁的捍衛者，這很糟糕，現在它在道德上再次不合法了。
讓我們把自己置於西方之外，當然，我在中國工作了很多年，所以我不得不問
你知道，主導中國政治體係的主導政治理想是什麽嗎？嗯，我們可以稱之為
政治賢能政治，中文裏是“賢能”，這種觀點認為，
官員應該基於卓越的能力進行選拔和提拔，
而美德意味著願意為人民服務，能力意味著那種展現出來的能力。為人民服務
公職人員要經過幾十年的選拔和提拔過程。呃，現在的選拔、提拔不是一個完美的製度，它非常不完善，就像西方式的民主一樣。
民主非常不完善，你知道在實踐中，通常不是一人一票，而是一美元一票。
在中國，民主非常不完善，經常有腐敗的領導人被選拔出來，而且沒有經過應有的篩選。
所以兩種製度都有優點，也都有缺點。你知道，一人一票製的優點是什麽。
ng these are also Universal rights again we need much more dialogue uh to to think about what are the common
values but we also have to ask you know even the language of rice itself sometimes can be seen as a bit West Centric I mean some traditions don't use a language of rice to express what's fundamental about human needs or
interests and we shouldn't necessarily be stuck on the language of human rights as the only legit limit language of
talking about common values we should allow for different vocabulary even if in substance there might not be much
difference so for example when we talk about the need for social harmony or protection of natural environment rights
language might not be necessarily the best language to make sense of those fundamental common values so again this
is more of an intuition because it's still an ongoing debate but if we think about different strategies for moving
beyond the universal Declaration of Human Rights and for thinking about which values are truly Universal what
are the common values that are shared by All Humans regardless of culture regardless of levels of economic
development quite likely we're going to settle Upon A minimal list we can say of
Human Rights although it won't always be expressed in this language of Human Rights including negative rights against
murder slavery torture and genocide and positive rights such as the obligation
of governments to provide for basic material needs protecting people from
starvation from decent and decent health care and also to protect the natural
environment I mean more and more it's so obvious now I mean climate change wasn't an issue when the universal Declaration
of Human Rights is being formulated but obviously now it's a common uh value
that should resonate with people around the world regardless of culture um or or
level of Economic Development so this is basically
um where where I think we would move uh if we're thinking about what are the common values
um and we doesn't mean we need to reject the universe of that Christian human rights but certainly we need to build on
it and not regard as a sufficient document for thinking about common values I mean it was a it was a product
of its time and perhaps now it's time to move on to something else that is much
much more inclusive of non-western value systems um so that we can arrive at a
truly inclusive and universal view of what are the common values now I want to move on to the second part
of of this talk and I'm going to I won't spend too much time on it but there's
two parts here in this I think two important themes in our conference today and the first again again is what are
the common values but what are the second part is what is the plurality that we need to reject that we need to
respect and again this is I really do think that
the problem here is lies much more in the west than in the non-west I mean uh
whether it's the it's prob probably it's more a deeper problem in the United States but in other Western countries
you have a similar view that our political system is the best
and ultimately one that should set the model for the rest of the world
um and what do we mean by that we mean a political system a democratic political system where political leaders are
selected by means of one person one vote again that view also informs the universe Universal Declaration of Human
Rights um it's a relatively new uh view it's only in post-world War II that it became
a kind of dominant view you know the 19th century the British liberal Johnston Mill I mean he he said oh no
not everybody has equal capacity to make morally informed political judgment we should give extra both to educated
people he could make that claim and not be viewed as crazy but in the west today if you argue for alternatives to one
person one view one vote you're viewed as a defender of autocracy which is bad it's morally illegitimate now again
let's Place ourselves outside the west and course I've been working in China for many years so to me I have to ask
you know what is the dominant political ideal that informs the Chinese political system well it's we can call it
political meritocracy in Chinese it's shenang and this is the view that public
officials are supposed to be selected and promoted based on Superior ability
and virtue virtue means a willingness to serve the people ability means that kind of demonstrated ability to serve the
people and public officials are putting out put on through a decades-long process to select and promote uh to
select to be selected and be promoted now it's not a perfect system it's highly imperfect just as western style
democracy is highly imperfect you know in practice often it's not one person one vote it's one dollar one vote in the
in China highly imperfect you often have corrupt leaders who are selected and who are not filtered as they should be and
both so both systems have advantages and the end disadvantages you know it's the advantages of what one person vote i
values but we also have to ask you know even the language of rice itself sometimes can be seen as a bit West Centric I mean some traditions don't use a language of rice to express what's fundamental about human needs or
interests and we shouldn't necessarily be stuck on the language of human rights as the only legit limit language of
talking about common values we should allow for different vocabulary even if in substance there might not be much
difference so for example when we talk about the need for social harmony or protection of natural environment rights
language might not be necessarily the best language to make sense of those fundamental common values so again this
is more of an intuition because it's still an ongoing debate but if we think about different strategies for moving
beyond the universal Declaration of Human Rights and for thinking about which values are truly Universal what
are the common values that are shared by All Humans regardless of culture regardless of levels of economic
development quite likely we're going to settle Upon A minimal list we can say of
Human Rights although it won't always be expressed in this language of Human Rights including negative rights against
murder slavery torture and genocide and positive rights such as the obligation
of governments to provide for basic material needs protecting people from
starvation from decent and decent health care and also to protect the natural
environment I mean more and more it's so obvious now I mean climate change wasn't an issue when the universal Declaration
of Human Rights is being formulated but obviously now it's a common uh value
that should resonate with people around the world regardless of culture um or or
level of Economic Development so this is basically
um where where I think we would move uh if we're thinking about what are the common values
um and we doesn't mean we need to reject the universe of that Christian human rights but certainly we need to build on
it and not regard as a sufficient document for thinking about common values I mean it was a it was a product
of its time and perhaps now it's time to move on to something else that is much
much more inclusive of non-western value systems um so that we can arrive at a
truly inclusive and universal view of what are the common values now I want to move on to the second part
of of this talk and I'm going to I won't spend too much time on it but there's
two parts here in this I think two important themes in our conference today and the first again again is what are
the common values but what are the second part is what is the plurality that we need to reject that we need to
respect and again this is I really do think that
the problem here is lies much more in the west than in the non-west I mean uh
whether it's the it's prob probably it's more a deeper problem in the United States but in other Western countries
you have a similar view that our political system is the best
and ultimately one that should set the model for the rest of the world
um and what do we mean by that we mean a political system a democratic political system where political leaders are
selected by means of one person one vote again that view also informs the universe Universal Declaration of Human
Rights um it's a relatively new uh view it's only in post-world War II that it became
a kind of dominant view you know the 19th century the British liberal Johnston Mill I mean he he said oh no
not everybody has equal capacity to make morally informed political judgment we should give extra both to educated
people he could make that claim and not be viewed as crazy but in the west today if you argue for alternatives to one
person one view one vote you're viewed as a defender of autocracy which is bad it's morally illegitimate now again
let's Place ourselves outside the west and course I've been working in China for many years so to me I have to ask
you know what is the dominant political ideal that informs the Chinese political system well it's we can call it
political meritocracy in Chinese it's shenang and this is the view that public
officials are supposed to be selected and promoted based on Superior ability
and virtue virtue means a willingness to serve the people ability means that kind of demonstrated ability to serve the
people and public officials are putting out put on through a decades-long process to select and promote uh to
select to be selected and be promoted now it's not a perfect system it's highly imperfect just as western style
democracy is highly imperfect you know in practice often it's not one person one vote it's one dollar one vote in the
in China highly imperfect you often have corrupt leaders who are selected and who are not filtered as they should be and
both so both systems have advantages and the end disadvantages you know it's the advantages of what one person vote i
或許政治合法性問題不那麽嚴重，但多邊政治體製的弊端和優勢在於，領導人可以進行長遠規劃，而不必擔心被取代等等。
嗯，但關鍵在於，兩種政治體製都已經有了指導實踐的政治理想，它們
需要根據各自的政治理想進行改進。所以，是的，我的意思是，我們可以
以西式選舉作為改進西方的標準，也可以以中國式政治民主作為改進中國的標準。我們始終認識到，理想與現實之間存在巨大差距，
我們應該努力縮小這一差距。但問題是，我們應該使用什麽標準？這違背了普遍的《人權宣言》，也違背了在西方國家占主導地位且教條的觀點。
我們應該允許多元化的方式來選拔和提拔公職人員。這既取決於一個國家的規模，也取決於一個國家的主導政治文化，還取決於經濟發展水平，這些都是重要的問題。
我們應該提供多元化的選拔方式。選拔領導人，而不是武斷地斷言隻有一種
選拔領導人的方式，這在中國不是問題。我認為大多數
中國知識分子，至少以我的經驗來看，都承認應該有多種選拔領導人的方式。你知道，我還沒聽到有人說中國任何形式的一夫多妻製
應該被盲目地輸出到其他國家，無論文化背景如何等等。但在西方，這仍然是一個問題，人們仍然認為
所謂的，我不會說所謂的西式選舉是唯一更合法的選拔領導人的方式，我們應該允許合法的多樣性。嘿，還有哪個領域如此重視多元化？
我之所以提出這一點，是因為一方麵，這很明顯；另一方麵，這又不明顯，因為
通常情況下，多元化的形式並不受到尊重。如果你讀過《經濟學人》
、《金融時報》或《華爾街日報》，你就會發現
在組織經濟生活的方式上，還有另一個問題。一般來說，有一種觀點認為，隻有一種
道德上合法的經濟組織方式，那就是資本主義的生活方式，呃，資本主義的
經濟形式，在這種經濟形式下，財產權受到尊重，並被視為基本權利。好吧，也許在某些國家是這樣，但其他國家，包括中國，都堅定地致力於社會主義
理想，而當時的首要任務是減輕貧困。現在，這又回到了
社會主義思想，不僅僅是社會主義者。我的意思是，自古以來就存在著困惑，包括孔子。你知道，孔紮本人也說過，政府的首要任務應該是充分滿足人民的基本物質需求，然後才能教育他們。喬，你知道，這種觀點在中國有著悠久的曆史。社會主義理想之所以在中國占據主導地位，並非偶然，因為他們可以借鑒早期的山穀
體係，該體係優先考慮減輕貧困。高於
其他價值觀，包括尊重私有財產的必要性。嗯，中國憲法也明確規定了共產主義是最終目標。這是什麽意思？嗯，如果你是美國人，這聽起來可能不太好，但共產主義理想是一個非常美好的理想。共產主義理想是先進的機器完成所有必要的勞動，這樣人們就不用再做髒活累活了。
每個人都有平等的機會發展他們的創造性才能，而不必再受枯燥乏味的勞動的束縛。這又是一個美好的想法。如果實現這一目標需要限製私有財產，那麽那些致力於社會主義的國家就會這樣做。我的意思是，
這並不是說我們國家應該盲目地剝奪人們的財產，而是
有時，當涉及到強有力的義務來減輕貧困時，
例如，土地分配可能是必要的，或者最終要發展到一個
先進的共產主義或先進的機器完成所有必要的勞動的狀態，那麽也許就或許應該對私有財產進行一些
合法的限製，我們應該允許更合法的
變化。我懷疑就目前情況而言，共產主義能否成為全球理想，但它
肯定可以成為一種指導中國政治體係的理想，其他國家也必須
承認並接受這一點，並認識到在如何組織經濟生活方麵存在著多元的思維方式。
好吧，讓我再舉最後一個例子，這個例子更多地來自
那些通常將伊斯蘭教作為一種政治形式的國家。現在，再次強調，《世界人權宣言》（UDHR）強烈地構成了自由。
嗯，但關鍵在於，兩種政治體製都已經有了指導實踐的政治理想，它們
需要根據各自的政治理想進行改進。所以，是的，我的意思是，我們可以
以西式選舉作為改進西方的標準，也可以以中國式政治民主作為改進中國的標準。我們始終認識到，理想與現實之間存在巨大差距，
我們應該努力縮小這一差距。但問題是，我們應該使用什麽標準？這違背了普遍的《人權宣言》，也違背了在西方國家占主導地位且教條的觀點。
我們應該允許多元化的方式來選拔和提拔公職人員。這既取決於一個國家的規模，也取決於一個國家的主導政治文化，還取決於經濟發展水平，這些都是重要的問題。
我們應該提供多元化的選拔方式。選拔領導人，而不是武斷地斷言隻有一種
選拔領導人的方式，這在中國不是問題。我認為大多數
中國知識分子，至少以我的經驗來看，都承認應該有多種選拔領導人的方式。你知道，我還沒聽到有人說中國任何形式的一夫多妻製
應該被盲目地輸出到其他國家，無論文化背景如何等等。但在西方，這仍然是一個問題，人們仍然認為
所謂的，我不會說所謂的西式選舉是唯一更合法的選拔領導人的方式，我們應該允許合法的多樣性。嘿，還有哪個領域如此重視多元化？
我之所以提出這一點，是因為一方麵，這很明顯；另一方麵，這又不明顯，因為
通常情況下，多元化的形式並不受到尊重。如果你讀過《經濟學人》
、《金融時報》或《華爾街日報》，你就會發現
在組織經濟生活的方式上，還有另一個問題。一般來說，有一種觀點認為，隻有一種
道德上合法的經濟組織方式，那就是資本主義的生活方式，呃，資本主義的
經濟形式，在這種經濟形式下，財產權受到尊重，並被視為基本權利。好吧，也許在某些國家是這樣，但其他國家，包括中國，都堅定地致力於社會主義
理想，而當時的首要任務是減輕貧困。現在，這又回到了
社會主義思想，不僅僅是社會主義者。我的意思是，自古以來就存在著困惑，包括孔子。你知道，孔紮本人也說過，政府的首要任務應該是充分滿足人民的基本物質需求，然後才能教育他們。喬，你知道，這種觀點在中國有著悠久的曆史。社會主義理想之所以在中國占據主導地位，並非偶然，因為他們可以借鑒早期的山穀
體係，該體係優先考慮減輕貧困。高於
其他價值觀，包括尊重私有財產的必要性。嗯，中國憲法也明確規定了共產主義是最終目標。這是什麽意思？嗯，如果你是美國人，這聽起來可能不太好，但共產主義理想是一個非常美好的理想。共產主義理想是先進的機器完成所有必要的勞動，這樣人們就不用再做髒活累活了。
每個人都有平等的機會發展他們的創造性才能，而不必再受枯燥乏味的勞動的束縛。這又是一個美好的想法。如果實現這一目標需要限製私有財產，那麽那些致力於社會主義的國家就會這樣做。我的意思是，
這並不是說我們國家應該盲目地剝奪人們的財產，而是
有時，當涉及到強有力的義務來減輕貧困時，
例如，土地分配可能是必要的，或者最終要發展到一個
先進的共產主義或先進的機器完成所有必要的勞動的狀態，那麽也許就或許應該對私有財產進行一些
合法的限製，我們應該允許更合法的
變化。我懷疑就目前情況而言，共產主義能否成為全球理想，但它
肯定可以成為一種指導中國政治體係的理想，其他國家也必須
承認並接受這一點，並認識到在如何組織經濟生活方麵存在著多元的思維方式。
好吧，讓我再舉最後一個例子，這個例子更多地來自
那些通常將伊斯蘭教作為一種政治形式的國家。現在，再次強調，《世界人權宣言》（UDHR）強烈地構成了自由。
s
that perhaps the problem political legitimacy is less serious um but the disadvantage the advantages
of the polygamer toxins that leaders can plan for the long term uh and without worrying about being replaced and so on
um but the point is that the both political systems have already political ideals that inform the practice and they
need to be improved based on their own political ideals so yes I mean we can
use western style elections as a standard for improvement in the West and we can use Chinese style political
democracy as a standard for improvement in China always recognizing is a big gap
between the idea and the reality and we should strive to minimize that Gap but the question is what standards should we use contrary to the universal
Declaration of Human Rights and to the view that's so dominant and dogmatic in
Western countries we should allow for diversity diverse ways of selecting and
promoting public officials it depends on a country's well size for one thing on a
country's dominant political culture on dominant on levels of economic development these are all important
issues and we should offer plural ways of selecting leaders and not dogmatically assert that there's only
one way of selecting leaders again it's not a problem in China I think that most
Chinese intellectuals at least in my experience are recognize that there should be plural ways of selecting
leaders you know I haven't heard anybody who says that China any style polygamous
toxic should be you know blindly exported outside of China to other countries regardless of culture and so
on but in the west it's still a problem where people still think that that the
so-called well I'm not going to say so-called western style elections is the only more legitimate way of selecting
leaders we should allow for legitimate variation here Hey where's another area where plurality is so important to
respect and I I make this point because it's on the one hand it's obvious on the one hand it's not obvious because it's
typically not it's the form plurality it's not typically respected here's another one
on the way of organizing economic life again if you read The Economist
um or the financial times or the Wall Street Journal typically speaking there's a view that there's only one
morally legitimate way of organizing the economy and that's a kind of capitalist form of life uh capitalist form of
economy where the right to property is respected and it's held to be fundamental well okay maybe in some
countries but other countries including China are strongly committed to socialist
ideals were that which were the strong priority of garment is to alleviate poverty now again it's
both socialist idea that was not only socialists I mean the confusions ever since the early days including Confucius
you know Konza himself you know said that the first priority of government you know should be full you know
basically to make people to provide for people's basic material needs and only then do you educate them Joe you know
these these this view is very has a very long history in China and it's not a
coincidence that the Socialist ideals uh became dominant to China because they could build on this earlier Valley
system where which prioritized the uh the need to alleviate uh poverty above
other uh uh values including the need to respect private property
um now again China it's in the Constitution it's also committed to Communism as the ultimate end goal what
does that mean well again it it sounds bad if you're kind of American but the Communist ideal is very beautiful ideal
it's the idea that Advanced Machinery does all this necessary labor so people are freed from the need to do a dirty
and unwanted labor and all humans have the equal opportunity to develop their
creative talents and not be bound by mind-dulling labor again it's a
beautiful idea and if it requires restricting private property to get
there then countries that are committed to socialism will do that I mean it's
not to say that we you know that countries should you know blindly uh take away people's property but
sometimes when it comes to strong obligations to deal to alleviate poverty
you know for example or land distribution might be necessary or to ultimately move on to a state where uh
where Advanced communism or Advanced Machinery does all the necessary labor well then maybe there might be some
legitimate restrictions on private property again we should allow for more legitimate
variation I doubt that as it stands that communism can be Global ideal but it
certainly can be an ideal that informs China's political system and other countries are just going to have to
recognize and live with that and recognize that there's a plural ways of thinking about how to organize economic
life well let me give one last example and this one is more comes from
countries that are often committed to Islam as a as a political form now again
the universal Declaration of Human Rights udhr strongly forms the freedom o
that perhaps the problem political legitimacy is less serious um but the disadvantage the advantages
of the polygamer toxins that leaders can plan for the long term uh and without worrying about being replaced and so on
um but the point is that the both political systems have already political ideals that inform the practice and they
need to be improved based on their own political ideals so yes I mean we can
use western style elections as a standard for improvement in the West and we can use Chinese style political
democracy as a standard for improvement in China always recognizing is a big gap
between the idea and the reality and we should strive to minimize that Gap but the question is what standards should we use contrary to the universal
Declaration of Human Rights and to the view that's so dominant and dogmatic in
Western countries we should allow for diversity diverse ways of selecting and
promoting public officials it depends on a country's well size for one thing on a
country's dominant political culture on dominant on levels of economic development these are all important
issues and we should offer plural ways of selecting leaders and not dogmatically assert that there's only
one way of selecting leaders again it's not a problem in China I think that most
Chinese intellectuals at least in my experience are recognize that there should be plural ways of selecting
leaders you know I haven't heard anybody who says that China any style polygamous
toxic should be you know blindly exported outside of China to other countries regardless of culture and so
on but in the west it's still a problem where people still think that that the
so-called well I'm not going to say so-called western style elections is the only more legitimate way of selecting
leaders we should allow for legitimate variation here Hey where's another area where plurality is so important to
respect and I I make this point because it's on the one hand it's obvious on the one hand it's not obvious because it's
typically not it's the form plurality it's not typically respected here's another one
on the way of organizing economic life again if you read The Economist
um or the financial times or the Wall Street Journal typically speaking there's a view that there's only one
morally legitimate way of organizing the economy and that's a kind of capitalist form of life uh capitalist form of
economy where the right to property is respected and it's held to be fundamental well okay maybe in some
countries but other countries including China are strongly committed to socialist
ideals were that which were the strong priority of garment is to alleviate poverty now again it's
both socialist idea that was not only socialists I mean the confusions ever since the early days including Confucius
you know Konza himself you know said that the first priority of government you know should be full you know
basically to make people to provide for people's basic material needs and only then do you educate them Joe you know
these these this view is very has a very long history in China and it's not a
coincidence that the Socialist ideals uh became dominant to China because they could build on this earlier Valley
system where which prioritized the uh the need to alleviate uh poverty above
other uh uh values including the need to respect private property
um now again China it's in the Constitution it's also committed to Communism as the ultimate end goal what
does that mean well again it it sounds bad if you're kind of American but the Communist ideal is very beautiful ideal
it's the idea that Advanced Machinery does all this necessary labor so people are freed from the need to do a dirty
and unwanted labor and all humans have the equal opportunity to develop their
creative talents and not be bound by mind-dulling labor again it's a
beautiful idea and if it requires restricting private property to get
there then countries that are committed to socialism will do that I mean it's
not to say that we you know that countries should you know blindly uh take away people's property but
sometimes when it comes to strong obligations to deal to alleviate poverty
you know for example or land distribution might be necessary or to ultimately move on to a state where uh
where Advanced communism or Advanced Machinery does all the necessary labor well then maybe there might be some
legitimate restrictions on private property again we should allow for more legitimate
variation I doubt that as it stands that communism can be Global ideal but it
certainly can be an ideal that informs China's political system and other countries are just going to have to
recognize and live with that and recognize that there's a plural ways of thinking about how to organize economic
life well let me give one last example and this one is more comes from
countries that are often committed to Islam as a as a political form now again
the universal Declaration of Human Rights udhr strongly forms the freedom o
宗教在當代西方社會中的表現形式，嗯，是的，我的意思是，你知道，有時候我同意人們擁有宗教自由非常重要，但這並不意味著世界各地的所有政治共同體都應該如此運作，私人宗教和公共宗教之間應該有完全相同的區分。一些政治共同體可以合法地
認可國教，甚至限製其他宗教在公共生活中的角色，甚至可能
限製改變宗教信仰的自由。我並不是說我個人會
認可這種做法，但如果那些以伊斯蘭價值體係為主導的國家，
製定類似的政策，或者至少在宗教領域以不同於西方社會的方式劃分公共和私人領域，那麽這是一種道德上合法的變異形式。現在，我很高興地報告，在西方國家，也許自由主義哲學家約翰·羅爾斯在他去世前的最後一部著作《萬民法》中幾乎承認了這一點，他說，嗯，他說他所謂的嗯，他稱之為正經文章。尊重基本人權的人們要記住基本人權，反對酷刑、謀殺、奴役、種族滅絕等等。我還要補充一些權利，嗯，為了提供基本的物質福祉，嗯，但是如果這些國家或人民組織起來，以便他們能夠……憲法是圍繞一個主流宗教而組織的，無論是伊斯蘭教還是其他宗教，甚至規定隻有該宗教的成員才能擔任高級政治職務，你知道那些……他所說的“毒梟”在國際舞台上互動時應該得到自由社會的寬容。現在我的觀點是，這應該不僅僅是寬容，而應該是某種相互尊重，因為有時我們……寬容英語聽起來就像你捏著鼻子說，好吧，我不喜歡你們在做什麽，但我會容忍它，你知道，就像你想要的那樣，你可能想要容忍它，你知道，無論如何，嗯，但重點是在國際領域，在我得出結論之前，我要在這裏總結一下，我們應該允許……在涉及三件重要的事情——選舉公職人員和政治領導人的方式、組織經濟生活的方式以及思考宗教在政治中的作用的方式——道德上合理的差異方麵，我幾乎可以肯定，在這三個關鍵領域，不會存在共同的觀點和共同的價值觀。我們應該允許道德上合理的差異。我確實認為，如果我們擁有一個能夠擁護一些共同價值觀的世界，比如基本人權，反對泛泛而談的人權、反對酷刑、謀殺、奴役和種族滅絕，以及積極的權利，即享有基本物質福祉的權利，同時尊重在選舉政治領導人的方式、組織經濟的方式以及思考宗教在公共生活中的作用的方式方麵道德上合理的差異，我們將擁有一個更加令人愉快的國際秩序，一個使我們能夠解決問題的秩序。所以，請允許我在這裏，我非常歡迎。嗯，再次強調，這些是持續不斷的爭議，可能10年或20年後，我們仍然會有不同的觀點，甚至可能在我們的討論中。所以，請允許我在這裏，謝謝你，太棒了，你能聽到我說話嗎？是的，我能聽到。謝謝，我轉身。巴德教授，您說得對，太棒了。我想我已經聽過很多關於這個話題的演講了，但我敢說，這可能是最有啟發性、最令人耳目一新、也最容易理解的演講之一。所以，我希望，您的這部分演講，會議結束後，全世界成千上萬甚至數百萬人都會聽到。非常感謝！我特別感興趣的是您提出的這些宣言最初是如何發起的，特別是如果在最初階段就將原住民納入其中，社會和諧和環境保護將會發揮截然不同的作用。然後您談到了詞匯的暴政，特別是我所說的英語的暴政，以及對事物的解讀，然後把語言武器化，以至於我們幾乎無法進行任何對話。我也特別喜歡您提出的這三點：我們如何選拔人才，我們如何組織……我們的社會，因此經濟和信仰的作用，宗教信仰和習俗在我們的社會中，非常感謝你，我喜歡你，正如我之前所說的，請你繼續，我們想邀請你參加第一個小組討論，好的，謝謝你，謝謝你推薦我的小書給非常感謝
認可國教，甚至限製其他宗教在公共生活中的角色，甚至可能
限製改變宗教信仰的自由。我並不是說我個人會
認可這種做法，但如果那些以伊斯蘭價值體係為主導的國家，
製定類似的政策，或者至少在宗教領域以不同於西方社會的方式劃分公共和私人領域，那麽這是一種道德上合法的變異形式。現在，我很高興地報告，在西方國家，也許自由主義哲學家約翰·羅爾斯在他去世前的最後一部著作《萬民法》中幾乎承認了這一點，他說，嗯，他說他所謂的嗯，他稱之為正經文章。尊重基本人權的人們要記住基本人權，反對酷刑、謀殺、奴役、種族滅絕等等。我還要補充一些權利，嗯，為了提供基本的物質福祉，嗯，但是如果這些國家或人民組織起來，以便他們能夠……憲法是圍繞一個主流宗教而組織的，無論是伊斯蘭教還是其他宗教，甚至規定隻有該宗教的成員才能擔任高級政治職務，你知道那些……他所說的“毒梟”在國際舞台上互動時應該得到自由社會的寬容。現在我的觀點是，這應該不僅僅是寬容，而應該是某種相互尊重，因為有時我們……寬容英語聽起來就像你捏著鼻子說，好吧，我不喜歡你們在做什麽，但我會容忍它，你知道，就像你想要的那樣，你可能想要容忍它，你知道，無論如何，嗯，但重點是在國際領域，在我得出結論之前，我要在這裏總結一下，我們應該允許……在涉及三件重要的事情——選舉公職人員和政治領導人的方式、組織經濟生活的方式以及思考宗教在政治中的作用的方式——道德上合理的差異方麵，我幾乎可以肯定，在這三個關鍵領域，不會存在共同的觀點和共同的價值觀。我們應該允許道德上合理的差異。我確實認為，如果我們擁有一個能夠擁護一些共同價值觀的世界，比如基本人權，反對泛泛而談的人權、反對酷刑、謀殺、奴役和種族滅絕，以及積極的權利，即享有基本物質福祉的權利，同時尊重在選舉政治領導人的方式、組織經濟的方式以及思考宗教在公共生活中的作用的方式方麵道德上合理的差異，我們將擁有一個更加令人愉快的國際秩序，一個使我們能夠解決問題的秩序。所以，請允許我在這裏，我非常歡迎。嗯，再次強調，這些是持續不斷的爭議，可能10年或20年後，我們仍然會有不同的觀點，甚至可能在我們的討論中。所以，請允許我在這裏，謝謝你，太棒了，你能聽到我說話嗎？是的，我能聽到。謝謝，我轉身。巴德教授，您說得對，太棒了。我想我已經聽過很多關於這個話題的演講了，但我敢說，這可能是最有啟發性、最令人耳目一新、也最容易理解的演講之一。所以，我希望，您的這部分演講，會議結束後，全世界成千上萬甚至數百萬人都會聽到。非常感謝！我特別感興趣的是您提出的這些宣言最初是如何發起的，特別是如果在最初階段就將原住民納入其中，社會和諧和環境保護將會發揮截然不同的作用。然後您談到了詞匯的暴政，特別是我所說的英語的暴政，以及對事物的解讀，然後把語言武器化，以至於我們幾乎無法進行任何對話。我也特別喜歡您提出的這三點：我們如何選拔人才，我們如何組織……我們的社會，因此經濟和信仰的作用，宗教信仰和習俗在我們的社會中，非常感謝你，我喜歡你，正如我之前所說的，請你繼續，我們想邀請你參加第一個小組討論，好的，謝謝你，謝謝你推薦我的小書給非常感謝
f religion in the way that it's manifested in contemporary Western societies well yes I mean you know sometimes I agree that it's very important for people to have their freedom of religion but it doesn't mean that all political communities everywhere should operate this should have exactly the same distinction between you know private religion and public religion some political communities can legitimately
endorse the state religion and even Place constraints on the roles of other religions in public life and maybe even
on the freedom to change religious belief now I'm not saying that that's something that personally that I would
endorse but if countries that for example have a dominant Islamic value
system have policies along those lines or at least draw uh uh lines between what's
public and what's private in the religious sphere in ways that are different from Western societies well it's a form of morally legitimate variation now I'm glad to report that in Western countries the the perhaps the leading liberal philosopher John Rawls in his last work before he passed away on the law of peoples he almost he recognized this point he said what um he said that what he called is um he calls it decent article people that respect basic human rights remember basic human rights rights Against torture and murder slavery genocide and so on and I have we would also add some rights um uh to for the to provide basic
material well-being um but if those if countries or peoples organize themselves so that they have
played Constitutions are organized around a dominant religion whether it's Islam or another religion and even that uh provides that only members of that religion are allowed to hold High political office well you know those
what he calls the Narco people should be tolerated by liberal societies when they interact in the international Arena now my view is that it should be much more than Toleration it should be some sort of mutual respect you know because sometimes we're Toleration English it sounds like you know you hold your nose and say okay I don't like what you guys are doing but I'll I'll tolerate it you know just like you want it you might want to tolerate you know forms of well anyway um but the point is that in the international sphere and I'm going to summarize here before I conclude we should allow for morally legitimate variation when it comes to three important things ways of selecting public officials and political leaders
ways of organizing economic life and ways of thinking about the role of religion in politics and all of those three crucial areas there will not be I'm almost certain common views and common values and we should allow for morally legitimate variation I do think that if we have a world where we can endorse some common values like basic uh human rights against huge language of Human Rights rights Against torture murder slavery and genocide as well as positive rights rights for basic material well-being while respecting morally legitimate variation when it comes to ways of selecting political leaders ways of organizing the economy and ways of thinking about the role of religion in public life we would have a much more uh agreeable International order and one that allows us to solve problems so let me and here and I'm more than welcome um critical views again these are ongoing ongoing disputes and probably 10 or 20
years from now we would have yet different views or maybe even within our discussion so let me in here thank you wonderful can you hear me yeah I can hear you
thank you I'll turn off my right professor professor Bud thank you excellent uh I like to think I've I've
listened to uh various speeches on this topic but I dare say that was probably one of the most enlightening and refreshing but also easy to understand
uh so I'm hoping that uh this segment uh your speech will be wences conference is over we'll be listened to by hundreds of thousands even millions of people around the world so thank you so much and I was particularly interested that you brought forward the ideas of how these declarations were initiated in the first place uh particularly that uh if indigenous populations have been included in the initial stages uh social harmony and protection of environment would have taken on a very different role and then you talked about the the tyranny of vocabulary and particularly what I call the tyranny of English uh the the in interpretation of things and
then to weaponize language in ways that almost we can't have any more conversations and I particularly also
like this your your three points the how do we select people uh the ways in which we organize our societies and therefore economies and the role of beliefs religious beliefs and customs in in our societies uh thank you very much I like you as I've said before uh please uh uh stay on and we'd like to invite you to participate in in the first panel okay thank you and thank you for the the recommending my little book too thank you so much
endorse the state religion and even Place constraints on the roles of other religions in public life and maybe even
on the freedom to change religious belief now I'm not saying that that's something that personally that I would
endorse but if countries that for example have a dominant Islamic value
system have policies along those lines or at least draw uh uh lines between what's
public and what's private in the religious sphere in ways that are different from Western societies well it's a form of morally legitimate variation now I'm glad to report that in Western countries the the perhaps the leading liberal philosopher John Rawls in his last work before he passed away on the law of peoples he almost he recognized this point he said what um he said that what he called is um he calls it decent article people that respect basic human rights remember basic human rights rights Against torture and murder slavery genocide and so on and I have we would also add some rights um uh to for the to provide basic
material well-being um but if those if countries or peoples organize themselves so that they have
played Constitutions are organized around a dominant religion whether it's Islam or another religion and even that uh provides that only members of that religion are allowed to hold High political office well you know those
what he calls the Narco people should be tolerated by liberal societies when they interact in the international Arena now my view is that it should be much more than Toleration it should be some sort of mutual respect you know because sometimes we're Toleration English it sounds like you know you hold your nose and say okay I don't like what you guys are doing but I'll I'll tolerate it you know just like you want it you might want to tolerate you know forms of well anyway um but the point is that in the international sphere and I'm going to summarize here before I conclude we should allow for morally legitimate variation when it comes to three important things ways of selecting public officials and political leaders
ways of organizing economic life and ways of thinking about the role of religion in politics and all of those three crucial areas there will not be I'm almost certain common views and common values and we should allow for morally legitimate variation I do think that if we have a world where we can endorse some common values like basic uh human rights against huge language of Human Rights rights Against torture murder slavery and genocide as well as positive rights rights for basic material well-being while respecting morally legitimate variation when it comes to ways of selecting political leaders ways of organizing the economy and ways of thinking about the role of religion in public life we would have a much more uh agreeable International order and one that allows us to solve problems so let me and here and I'm more than welcome um critical views again these are ongoing ongoing disputes and probably 10 or 20
years from now we would have yet different views or maybe even within our discussion so let me in here thank you wonderful can you hear me yeah I can hear you
thank you I'll turn off my right professor professor Bud thank you excellent uh I like to think I've I've
listened to uh various speeches on this topic but I dare say that was probably one of the most enlightening and refreshing but also easy to understand
uh so I'm hoping that uh this segment uh your speech will be wences conference is over we'll be listened to by hundreds of thousands even millions of people around the world so thank you so much and I was particularly interested that you brought forward the ideas of how these declarations were initiated in the first place uh particularly that uh if indigenous populations have been included in the initial stages uh social harmony and protection of environment would have taken on a very different role and then you talked about the the tyranny of vocabulary and particularly what I call the tyranny of English uh the the in interpretation of things and
then to weaponize language in ways that almost we can't have any more conversations and I particularly also
like this your your three points the how do we select people uh the ways in which we organize our societies and therefore economies and the role of beliefs religious beliefs and customs in in our societies uh thank you very much I like you as I've said before uh please uh uh stay on and we'd like to invite you to participate in in the first panel okay thank you and thank you for the the recommending my little book too thank you so much
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
um what I'm going to do today is there's two parts of this theme the first is finding common values and the second is
plurality in the emerging World Order and I'm going to first ask the question is how do we find common values um and
what are they and I will make some suggestions and then I'll suggest areas where there is legitimate plurality that
should be respected by different societies around the world so let me first quit this the first part here finding common values now when you ask about that the first thing that often comes to mind when you ask people um whether it's especially government people or people working for ngos or
academics who work in law and international law for example you ask them what do we mean by common values
well they always say that's quite easy there's a response there's an answer to that it's the universal Declaration of
Human Rights which was passed by the United Nations in 1948 by the general
assembly as a common standard of achievement for All Peoples and Nations so we don't need to discuss anymore
about this issue what are common values it's already there it's enshrined and it was endorsed by the United Nations why
do we have to talk further well the reason why we have to talk
further and not take I'm going to say I'm going to see Universal Declaration of Human Rights it's udhr for short why is that not a sufficient document for thinking about common values well there's several reasons first reason is that it includes rights
that are very controversial today you remember this was 1948 shortly after the
Allies as they say defeated other countries in World War II and they were
very much um the document the universal Declaration of Human Rights very much expresses the dominant values of let's just be frank the Western Powers
um that were Victorious uh in World War II if you look at the document today it
includes articles that would clearly not be endorsed by for example the Chinese government and many governments around
the world for example one article makes it very clear I have it here on on on on
the slide it very it's it suggests that the only morally legitimate form of
government is one that is selected by the People by means of free and fair
elections or secret votes now obviously that's one way of selecting leaders but
it's not the only way nor is it the only morally legitimate way it's very controversial to claim that free and
fair elections today is the only morally legitimate way of selecting leaders and we can be quite sure that if there were
a general assembly today discussing this sort of document that that article would
not be endorsed as a kind of common value today or another article basically endorsing
the right to property that everyone has the right to own property alone well again in capitalist countries fair
enough you know that is a a the right to property is is almost held sacred often
but in countries that adhere to socialist uh economic uh ideals
including China it would be very very controversial and we can be sure that if there were deliberations today about
what our common values that the right to property would not would be highly
controversial and unlikely would not be endorsed today by the United Nations if
there were such a kind of discussion today so another problem with the udhr
again the udhr it's it's a very valuable document and I think it does help sometimes to promote human rights uh
where where people are oppressed but it's certainly not a sufficient document
when we think about what are the common values today a another problem with the
universal Declaration of Human Rights is that it doesn't prioritize between rights and provides no guidance in cases
of conflict I mean it's quite a long list of Rights some of them are not very controversial like the idea that nobody
should be held in slavery or servitude I mean uh very few if any governments
today would endorse that or intellectuals for that matter I mean there is still slavery sometimes but
it's done in a kind of secret way and not publicly endorsed or for example there is also the right to life you know
only queer crazy terrorists would object to that I mean those are Universal rights or interests and and and very few
would object to them but the universal Declaration of Human Rights also includes rights that are very
controversial and or at least characteristic of economically developed societies
for example this part of article 24 that everyone has the right to periodic holidays with pay I mean obviously
that's a good idea but in poor countries that have many other priorities you can't expect that to be uh uh endorsed
in a very strong way so there's a need to distinguish between the fundamental rights or let's just say fundamental
needs or interests that are true of people around the world regardless of culture regardless of a level of
Economic Development like the right not to be in slave for example or the right Against torture or the right to life
versus other rights that are quite controversial in particular and depend upon sometimes culture and sometimes
level of Economic Development and the universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn't distinguish between let's call
them basic important rights and those that are less important or let's say more particular so that's another problem why um the universal Declaration of Human Rights cannot be seen as a document
that represents common values today I mean for one thing even if it even if
some of these are endorsed at the level of principle some of them are difficult to implement um okay what's another problem another problem is that the udhr implicitly affirms an overly individualistic way of life and you have to remember again that the udhr represents pretty much the dominant outlooks of Western Powers after World War II um so you have you know capitalist defense of private property um and you have values and rights that are very important for individuals that seek individual autonomy Above All Else now that's a bit of an exaggeration so let me take back a little bit what I just said because there was one Chinese philosopher of course this is before the establishment of the People's Republic of China he was close to the uh kmt but he was also um a kind of adherent of Confucian values and he is said to have influenced the very first article of the universal declaration that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and this
is very important Point endowed with reason and conscience and the word conscience in Chinese is Liang Shin
which comes straight from mentions from monks and apparently PC Chang the
philosopher was influential in getting that endorsed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights so it's an exaggeration to say that it's kind of totally West Centric and individualistic um because there is this kind of confusion element that said admittedly we have to say that if the there had
been much greater representation of non Western cultures and religions and value systems not just Confucianism but for example Ubuntu and Indigenous Traditions
from around the world including First Nations where I am now in Canada um obviously the document would have
looked very different than what it is now there would have been much more sense on the importance of social harmony I mean social harmony as a value
in in capitalist Western countries it's not regarded as as so important and fundamental but in other value systems
including Confucianism and Ubuntu sub-Saharan African ethical system
clearly social harmony is sometimes reviewed as the mother of all values or
the protection for the environment I mean obviously of indigenous Traditions had been if representatives of
indigenous traditions and First Nations had been involved in deliberations there would have been much more emphasis on
protection for the environment as a fundamental human value as a common value unfortunately because again the
udhr is predominantly a product of the Victorious Western Powers after World
War II so um there is these this these kind of values are lacking let's call them so
for lack of a better term a non-western values which often are quite dominant if you look at the world's population
so what do we do then how do we move from here how do we find common values that are lacking arguably in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights well there's lots of things we can do and lots of things that have been done
one is to let's start a modern a new dialogue with leaders and
representatives of diverse ethical and religious Traditions from around the world so we have thinkers for example uh
Professor tueming who used to be at Harvard now he's at Peking University beta in China he's been part of many of
these we can call him civilizational dialogues and and these include so that the idea is to have a more inclusive
dialogue than was the case in the Universal education of Human Rights including participants of again Traditions that are not characteristic or dominant of Western capitalist countries um and this has led to some results the problem though is that the more inclusive the dialogue the greater the
number of participants and the greater the diversity of participants it turns out it's very hard to achieve consensus
on anything other than platitudes like one example I I've been part of these
dialogue they're much more common about 15 20 years ago because there was still hope that we could achieve something
meaningful but now frankly there's much more there's a bit more pessimism not just because of the geopolitics which
makes it more much more difficult to have you know rational and informed debate between let's say China and the
us but also just because it's hard to set to agree upon meaningful Global values that can have bite and that could
shape political reality so many of the abstractions are you know we should all strive to be good and avoid doing bad
but they're so abstract that they do not have the power to shape political realities which often involve contoursal
issues and how do we distribute scarce resources and and where do we prioritize so this is a bit of a problem so what do
we do these these inter-civilizational dialogues have not been very successful I regret to report what do we do then
well another proposal and this is at the national level you have a lot of these Global assemblies no
sorry National Assemblies of randomly selected citizens in in countries for example that PL that discuss issues and
formed by experts then come up with ideas for how to move forward and those are truly representative at the level of
the nation the problem is that if we do these assemblies at the global level just imagine the difficulty again of achieving a kind of consensus given that there would be so many diverse participants and and the
participants are unlikely to overcome problems that have played that have plagued strategy one in other words it's
going to be very hard to achieve consensus on anything other than platitudes and abstractions that do not
have the power to shape Global realities maybe it's worth trying that hasn't been
tried yet actually um but um frankly it's hard to be very
optimistic though I would still think it's a it's a strategy worth trying so what are some other possibilities
well here's another possibility well you have political theories of
global outlooks much more sensitive you know when I first started learning political Theory as an undergraduate at
McGill University in Montreal we had courses that are sometimes called Plato to Nato for us political Theory meant we
learned about the ancient Greeks from from Plato and then we move forward you know all the way through a mill uh and
and and and ending up with roles or NATO as a kind of hot joke the point is that it was a completely West Centric
curriculum and political theorists in the west hardly viewed non-western
Traditions such as Confucianism or Hinduism or Islam or Ubuntu and so on as
morally valuable so but today it's a different story more
and more if you have informed political theorists who who really try to
seriously engage with non-western traditions and think about which values are Universal and which ones are not
which ones are particular to put to to societies and one very inspiring thinker
to me is Michael waltzer um and he's a he's American extremely broad-minded and sensitive to cultural
difference and and he has he makes a very important distinction between what he calls thick and thin human rights and
he argues that only these thin human rights sometimes we use the language of negative rights against murder slavery
and torture and genocide should be viewed as universal no sane government
or frankly sane intellectual would object to those
um again you have crazy Theory uh terrorists who might do so I was about to say crazy theorists maybe also
um but generally speaking we can achieve consensus among these negative uh human
rights against murder slavery and torture of course they're done these rights are violated in practice but the
point is that at the level of public discourse uh they're endorsed and it's a
matter of exposing the gap between the reality and the ideal but at the level of Ideal there's really no dispute among
informed people from around the world on the value of these rights
but when it comes to other rights again Michael Walter calls them thick rice that are not these basic human rights
you know examples might include the right to private property um or ways of selecting leaders
um then we should allow for variation from a culture to culture we should allow for more more legitimate variation
I mean sometimes they're not more there's not more than legitimate variation you know if uh let's say a
government assumes powered by military coup or uh or by let's say genocide
um uh then obviously that's not more legitimate but if a government protects basic human rights like rights against
murder slavery and torture and so on and they're chosen by means of then competitive elections then we should
respect that as a as a kind of morally legitimate variation
now I think that's a promising approach but again it's a little still too West Centric in the sense that there's a
census on negative human rights as truly Universal but again if you look outside the west and you ask governments and and
most intellectuals and political reformers what are the universal rights
for you what are the truly most important rights or let's just say human interests
or needs and very often people say well it's right not to be poor or rights to
protect people from starvation or protect people or give provide decent Health Care and housing these are are
much more fundamental and Universal so it's not just a negative rights Against torture and slavery and murder but also
we can call them positive rights such as the government so the governments have a positive obligation to protect people
from starvation and to provide decent health care and how and and minimal housing these are also Universal rights
again we need much more dialogue uh to to think about what are the common
values but we also have to ask you know even the language of rice itself sometimes can be seen as a bit West
Centric I mean some traditions don't use a language of rice to express what's fundamental about human needs or
interests and we shouldn't necessarily be stuck on the language of human rights as the only legit limit language of
talking about common values we should allow for different vocabulary even if in substance there might not be much
difference so for example when we talk about the need for social harmony or protection of natural environment rights
language might not be necessarily the best language to make sense of those fundamental common values so again this
is more of an intuition because it's still an ongoing debate but if we think about different strategies for moving
beyond the universal Declaration of Human Rights and for thinking about which values are truly Universal what
are the common values that are shared by All Humans regardless of culture regardless of levels of economic
development quite likely we're going to settle Upon A minimal list we can say of
Human Rights although it won't always be expressed in this language of Human Rights including negative rights against
murder slavery torture and genocide and positive rights such as the obligation
of governments to provide for basic material needs protecting people from
starvation from decent and decent health care and also to protect the natural
environment I mean more and more it's so obvious now I mean climate change wasn't an issue when the universal Declaration
of Human Rights is being formulated but obviously now it's a common uh value
that should resonate with people around the world regardless of culture um or or
level of Economic Development so this is basically
um where where I think we would move uh if we're thinking about what are the common values um and we doesn't mean we need to reject the universe of that Christian human rights but certainly we need to build on
it and not regard as a sufficient document for thinking about common values I mean it was a it was a product of its time and perhaps now it's time to move on to something else that is much much more inclusive of non-western value systems um so that we can arrive at a
truly inclusive and universal view of what are the common values now I want to move on to the second part
of of this talk and I'm going to I won't spend too much time on it but there's
two parts here in this I think two important themes in our conference today and the first again again is what are
the common values but what are the second part is what is the plurality that we need to reject that we need to
respect and again this is I really do think that
the problem here is lies much more in the west than in the non-west I mean uh
whether it's the it's prob probably it's more a deeper problem in the United States but in other Western countries
you have a similar view that our political system is the best
and ultimately one that should set the model for the rest of the world
um and what do we mean by that we mean a political system a democratic political system where political leaders are
selected by means of one person one vote again that view also informs the universe Universal Declaration of Human
Rights um it's a relatively new uh view it's only in post-world War II that it became
a kind of dominant view you know the 19th century the British liberal Johnston Mill I mean he he said oh no
not everybody has equal capacity to make morally informed political judgment we should give extra both to educated
people he could make that claim and not be viewed as crazy but in the west today if you argue for alternatives to one
person one view one vote you're viewed as a defender of autocracy which is bad it's morally illegitimate now again
let's Place ourselves outside the west and course I've been working in China for many years so to me I have to ask
you know what is the dominant political ideal that informs the Chinese political system well it's we can call it
political meritocracy in Chinese it's shenang and this is the view that public
officials are supposed to be selected and promoted based on Superior ability
and virtue virtue means a willingness to serve the people ability means that kind of demonstrated ability to serve the
people and public officials are putting out put on through a decades-long process to select and promote uh to
select to be selected and be promoted now it's not a perfect system it's highly imperfect just as western style
democracy is highly imperfect you know in practice often it's not one person one vote it's one dollar one vote in the
in China highly imperfect you often have corrupt leaders who are selected and who are not filtered as they should be and
both so both systems have advantages and the end disadvantages you know it's the advantages of what one person vote is
that perhaps the problem political legitimacy is less serious um but the disadvantage the advantages
of the polygamer toxins that leaders can plan for the long term uh and without worrying about being replaced and so on
um but the point is that the both political systems have already political ideals that inform the practice and they
need to be improved based on their own political ideals so yes I mean we can
use western style elections as a standard for improvement in the West and we can use Chinese style political democracy as a standard for improvement in China always recognizing is a big gap between the idea and the reality and we should strive to minimize that Gap but the question is what standards should we use contrary to the universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the view that's so dominant and dogmatic in Western countries we should allow for diversity diverse ways of selecting and promoting public officials it depends on a country's well size for one thing on a
country's dominant political culture on dominant on levels of economic development these are all important
issues and we should offer plural ways of selecting leaders and not dogmatically assert that there's only one way of selecting leaders again it's not a problem in China I think that most Chinese intellectuals at least in my experience are recognize that there should be plural ways of selecting
leaders you know I haven't heard anybody who says that China any style polygamous toxic should be you know blindly exported outside of China to other countries regardless of culture and so
on but in the west it's still a problem where people still think that that the
so-called well I'm not going to say so-called western style elections is the only more legitimate way of selecting
leaders we should allow for legitimate variation here Hey where's another area where plurality is so important to
respect and I I make this point because it's on the one hand it's obvious on the one hand it's not obvious because it's
typically not it's the form plurality it's not typically respected here's another one
on the way of organizing economic life again if you read The Economist
um or the financial times or the Wall Street Journal typically speaking there's a view that there's only one
morally legitimate way of organizing the economy and that's a kind of capitalist form of life uh capitalist form of
economy where the right to property is respected and it's held to be fundamental well okay maybe in some
countries but other countries including China are strongly committed to socialist
ideals were that which were the strong priority of garment is to alleviate poverty now again it's both socialist idea that was not only socialists I mean the confusions ever since the early days including Confucius
you know Konza himself you know said that the first priority of government you know should be full you know basically to make people to provide for people's basic material needs and only then do you educate them Joe you know
these these this view is very has a very long history in China and it's not a
coincidence that the Socialist ideals uh became dominant to China because they could build on this earlier Valley system where which prioritized the uh the need to alleviate uh poverty above other uh uh values including the need to respect private property
um now again China it's in the Constitution it's also committed to Communism as the ultimate end goal what
does that mean well again it it sounds bad if you're kind of American but the Communist ideal is very beautiful ideal
it's the idea that Advanced Machinery does all this necessary labor so people are freed from the need to do a dirty
and unwanted labor and all humans have the equal opportunity to develop their
creative talents and not be bound by mind-dulling labor again it's a
beautiful idea and if it requires restricting private property to get
there then countries that are committed to socialism will do that I mean it's
not to say that we you know that countries should you know blindly uh take away people's property but sometimes when it comes to strong obligations to deal to alleviate poverty you know for example or land distribution might be necessary or to ultimately move on to a state where where Advanced communism or Advanced Machinery does all the necessary labor well then maybe there might be some legitimate restrictions on private property again we should allow for more legitimate variation I doubt that as it stands that communism can be Global ideal but it certainly can be an ideal that informs China's political system and other countries are just going to have to
recognize and live with that and recognize that there's a plural ways of thinking about how to organize economic
life well let me give one last example and this one is more comes from
countries that are often committed to Islam as a as a political form now again
the universal Declaration of Human Rights udhr strongly forms the freedom of religion in the way that it's manifested in contemporary Western societies
well yes I mean you know sometimes I agree that it's very important for people to have their freedom of religion
but it doesn't mean that all political communities everywhere should operate this should have exactly the same
distinction between you know private religion and public religion some political communities can legitimately
endorse the state religion and even Place constraints on the roles of other religions in public life and maybe even
on the freedom to change religious belief now I'm not saying that that's something that personally that I would
endorse but if countries that for example have a dominant Islamic value
system have policies along those lines or at least draw uh uh lines between what's
public and what's private in the religious sphere in ways that are different from Western societies well it's a form of morally legitimate
variation now I'm glad to report that in Western countries the the perhaps the
leading liberal philosopher John Rawls in his last work before he passed away
on the law of peoples he almost he recognized this point he said what
um he said that what he called is um he calls it decent article people
that respect basic human rights remember basic human rights rights Against torture and murder slavery genocide and
so on and I have we would also add some rights um uh to for the to provide basic
material well-being um but if those if countries or peoples organize themselves so that they have
played Constitutions are organized around a dominant religion whether it's Islam or another religion and even that
uh provides that only members of that religion are allowed to hold High political office well you know those
what he calls the Narco people should be tolerated by liberal societies when they
interact in the international Arena now my view is that it should be much more than Toleration it should be some sort
of mutual respect you know because sometimes we're Toleration English it sounds like you know you hold your nose and say okay I don't like what you guys
are doing but I'll I'll tolerate it you know just like you want it you might want to tolerate you know forms of well
anyway um but the point is that in the international sphere and I'm going to
summarize here before I conclude we should allow for morally legitimate variation when it comes to three
important things ways of selecting public officials and political leaders
ways of organizing economic life and ways of thinking about the role of
religion in politics and all of those three crucial areas there will not be
I'm almost certain common views and common values and we should allow for
morally legitimate variation I do think that if we have a world where we can endorse some common values like basic human rights against huge language of Human Rights rights Against torture murder slavery and genocide as well as positive rights rights for basic material well-being while respecting morally legitimate variation when it comes to ways of selecting political leaders ways of organizing the economy and ways of thinking about the role of religion in public life we would have a much more uh agreeable International order and one that allows us to solve problems so let me and here and I'm more than welcome
um critical views again these are ongoing ongoing disputes and probably 10 or 20 years from now we would have yet different views or maybe even within our discussion so let me in here thank you
wonderful can you hear me yeah I can hear you
thank you I'll turn off my right professor professor Bud thank you excellent uh I like to think I've I've listened to uh various speeches on this topic but I dare say that was probably one of the most enlightening and refreshing but also easy to understand uh so I'm hoping that uh this segment uh your speech will be wences conference is over we'll be listened to by hundreds of thousands even millions of people around the world so thank you so much and I was
particularly interested that you brought forward the ideas of how these
declarations were initiated in the first place uh particularly that uh if
indigenous populations have been included in the initial stages uh social harmony and protection of environment
would have taken on a very different role and then you talked about the the tyranny of vocabulary and particularly
what I call the tyranny of English uh the the in interpretation of things and
then to weaponize language in ways that almost we can't have any more conversations and I particularly also
like this your your three points the how do we select people uh the ways in which
we organize our societies and therefore economies and the role of beliefs religious beliefs and customs in in our
societies uh thank you very much I like you as I've said before uh please uh uh
stay on and we'd like to invite you to participate in in the first panel okay thank you and thank you for the the
recommending my little book too thank you so much
um what I'm going to do today is there's two parts of this theme the first is finding common values and the second is
plurality in the emerging World Order and I'm going to first ask the question is how do we find common values um and
what are they and I will make some suggestions and then I'll suggest areas where there is legitimate plurality that
should be respected by different societies around the world so let me first quit this the first part here finding common values now when you ask about that the first thing that often comes to mind when you ask people um whether it's especially government people or people working for ngos or
academics who work in law and international law for example you ask them what do we mean by common values
well they always say that's quite easy there's a response there's an answer to that it's the universal Declaration of
Human Rights which was passed by the United Nations in 1948 by the general
assembly as a common standard of achievement for All Peoples and Nations so we don't need to discuss anymore
about this issue what are common values it's already there it's enshrined and it was endorsed by the United Nations why
do we have to talk further well the reason why we have to talk
further and not take I'm going to say I'm going to see Universal Declaration of Human Rights it's udhr for short why is that not a sufficient document for thinking about common values well there's several reasons first reason is that it includes rights
that are very controversial today you remember this was 1948 shortly after the
Allies as they say defeated other countries in World War II and they were
very much um the document the universal Declaration of Human Rights very much expresses the dominant values of let's just be frank the Western Powers
um that were Victorious uh in World War II if you look at the document today it
includes articles that would clearly not be endorsed by for example the Chinese government and many governments around
the world for example one article makes it very clear I have it here on on on on
the slide it very it's it suggests that the only morally legitimate form of
government is one that is selected by the People by means of free and fair
elections or secret votes now obviously that's one way of selecting leaders but
it's not the only way nor is it the only morally legitimate way it's very controversial to claim that free and
fair elections today is the only morally legitimate way of selecting leaders and we can be quite sure that if there were
a general assembly today discussing this sort of document that that article would
not be endorsed as a kind of common value today or another article basically endorsing
the right to property that everyone has the right to own property alone well again in capitalist countries fair
enough you know that is a a the right to property is is almost held sacred often
but in countries that adhere to socialist uh economic uh ideals
including China it would be very very controversial and we can be sure that if there were deliberations today about
what our common values that the right to property would not would be highly
controversial and unlikely would not be endorsed today by the United Nations if
there were such a kind of discussion today so another problem with the udhr
again the udhr it's it's a very valuable document and I think it does help sometimes to promote human rights uh
where where people are oppressed but it's certainly not a sufficient document
when we think about what are the common values today a another problem with the
universal Declaration of Human Rights is that it doesn't prioritize between rights and provides no guidance in cases
of conflict I mean it's quite a long list of Rights some of them are not very controversial like the idea that nobody
should be held in slavery or servitude I mean uh very few if any governments
today would endorse that or intellectuals for that matter I mean there is still slavery sometimes but
it's done in a kind of secret way and not publicly endorsed or for example there is also the right to life you know
only queer crazy terrorists would object to that I mean those are Universal rights or interests and and and very few
would object to them but the universal Declaration of Human Rights also includes rights that are very
controversial and or at least characteristic of economically developed societies
for example this part of article 24 that everyone has the right to periodic holidays with pay I mean obviously
that's a good idea but in poor countries that have many other priorities you can't expect that to be uh uh endorsed
in a very strong way so there's a need to distinguish between the fundamental rights or let's just say fundamental
needs or interests that are true of people around the world regardless of culture regardless of a level of
Economic Development like the right not to be in slave for example or the right Against torture or the right to life
versus other rights that are quite controversial in particular and depend upon sometimes culture and sometimes
level of Economic Development and the universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn't distinguish between let's call
them basic important rights and those that are less important or let's say more particular so that's another problem why um the universal Declaration of Human Rights cannot be seen as a document
that represents common values today I mean for one thing even if it even if
some of these are endorsed at the level of principle some of them are difficult to implement um okay what's another problem another problem is that the udhr implicitly affirms an overly individualistic way of life and you have to remember again that the udhr represents pretty much the dominant outlooks of Western Powers after World War II um so you have you know capitalist defense of private property um and you have values and rights that are very important for individuals that seek individual autonomy Above All Else now that's a bit of an exaggeration so let me take back a little bit what I just said because there was one Chinese philosopher of course this is before the establishment of the People's Republic of China he was close to the uh kmt but he was also um a kind of adherent of Confucian values and he is said to have influenced the very first article of the universal declaration that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and this
is very important Point endowed with reason and conscience and the word conscience in Chinese is Liang Shin
which comes straight from mentions from monks and apparently PC Chang the
philosopher was influential in getting that endorsed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights so it's an exaggeration to say that it's kind of totally West Centric and individualistic um because there is this kind of confusion element that said admittedly we have to say that if the there had
been much greater representation of non Western cultures and religions and value systems not just Confucianism but for example Ubuntu and Indigenous Traditions
from around the world including First Nations where I am now in Canada um obviously the document would have
looked very different than what it is now there would have been much more sense on the importance of social harmony I mean social harmony as a value
in in capitalist Western countries it's not regarded as as so important and fundamental but in other value systems
including Confucianism and Ubuntu sub-Saharan African ethical system
clearly social harmony is sometimes reviewed as the mother of all values or
the protection for the environment I mean obviously of indigenous Traditions had been if representatives of
indigenous traditions and First Nations had been involved in deliberations there would have been much more emphasis on
protection for the environment as a fundamental human value as a common value unfortunately because again the
udhr is predominantly a product of the Victorious Western Powers after World
War II so um there is these this these kind of values are lacking let's call them so
for lack of a better term a non-western values which often are quite dominant if you look at the world's population
so what do we do then how do we move from here how do we find common values that are lacking arguably in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights well there's lots of things we can do and lots of things that have been done
one is to let's start a modern a new dialogue with leaders and
representatives of diverse ethical and religious Traditions from around the world so we have thinkers for example uh
Professor tueming who used to be at Harvard now he's at Peking University beta in China he's been part of many of
these we can call him civilizational dialogues and and these include so that the idea is to have a more inclusive
dialogue than was the case in the Universal education of Human Rights including participants of again Traditions that are not characteristic or dominant of Western capitalist countries um and this has led to some results the problem though is that the more inclusive the dialogue the greater the
number of participants and the greater the diversity of participants it turns out it's very hard to achieve consensus
on anything other than platitudes like one example I I've been part of these
dialogue they're much more common about 15 20 years ago because there was still hope that we could achieve something
meaningful but now frankly there's much more there's a bit more pessimism not just because of the geopolitics which
makes it more much more difficult to have you know rational and informed debate between let's say China and the
us but also just because it's hard to set to agree upon meaningful Global values that can have bite and that could
shape political reality so many of the abstractions are you know we should all strive to be good and avoid doing bad
but they're so abstract that they do not have the power to shape political realities which often involve contoursal
issues and how do we distribute scarce resources and and where do we prioritize so this is a bit of a problem so what do
we do these these inter-civilizational dialogues have not been very successful I regret to report what do we do then
well another proposal and this is at the national level you have a lot of these Global assemblies no
sorry National Assemblies of randomly selected citizens in in countries for example that PL that discuss issues and
formed by experts then come up with ideas for how to move forward and those are truly representative at the level of
the nation the problem is that if we do these assemblies at the global level just imagine the difficulty again of achieving a kind of consensus given that there would be so many diverse participants and and the
participants are unlikely to overcome problems that have played that have plagued strategy one in other words it's
going to be very hard to achieve consensus on anything other than platitudes and abstractions that do not
have the power to shape Global realities maybe it's worth trying that hasn't been
tried yet actually um but um frankly it's hard to be very
optimistic though I would still think it's a it's a strategy worth trying so what are some other possibilities
well here's another possibility well you have political theories of
global outlooks much more sensitive you know when I first started learning political Theory as an undergraduate at
McGill University in Montreal we had courses that are sometimes called Plato to Nato for us political Theory meant we
learned about the ancient Greeks from from Plato and then we move forward you know all the way through a mill uh and
and and and ending up with roles or NATO as a kind of hot joke the point is that it was a completely West Centric
curriculum and political theorists in the west hardly viewed non-western
Traditions such as Confucianism or Hinduism or Islam or Ubuntu and so on as
morally valuable so but today it's a different story more
and more if you have informed political theorists who who really try to
seriously engage with non-western traditions and think about which values are Universal and which ones are not
which ones are particular to put to to societies and one very inspiring thinker
to me is Michael waltzer um and he's a he's American extremely broad-minded and sensitive to cultural
difference and and he has he makes a very important distinction between what he calls thick and thin human rights and
he argues that only these thin human rights sometimes we use the language of negative rights against murder slavery
and torture and genocide should be viewed as universal no sane government
or frankly sane intellectual would object to those
um again you have crazy Theory uh terrorists who might do so I was about to say crazy theorists maybe also
um but generally speaking we can achieve consensus among these negative uh human
rights against murder slavery and torture of course they're done these rights are violated in practice but the
point is that at the level of public discourse uh they're endorsed and it's a
matter of exposing the gap between the reality and the ideal but at the level of Ideal there's really no dispute among
informed people from around the world on the value of these rights
but when it comes to other rights again Michael Walter calls them thick rice that are not these basic human rights
you know examples might include the right to private property um or ways of selecting leaders
um then we should allow for variation from a culture to culture we should allow for more more legitimate variation
I mean sometimes they're not more there's not more than legitimate variation you know if uh let's say a
government assumes powered by military coup or uh or by let's say genocide
um uh then obviously that's not more legitimate but if a government protects basic human rights like rights against
murder slavery and torture and so on and they're chosen by means of then competitive elections then we should
respect that as a as a kind of morally legitimate variation
now I think that's a promising approach but again it's a little still too West Centric in the sense that there's a
census on negative human rights as truly Universal but again if you look outside the west and you ask governments and and
most intellectuals and political reformers what are the universal rights
for you what are the truly most important rights or let's just say human interests
or needs and very often people say well it's right not to be poor or rights to
protect people from starvation or protect people or give provide decent Health Care and housing these are are
much more fundamental and Universal so it's not just a negative rights Against torture and slavery and murder but also
we can call them positive rights such as the government so the governments have a positive obligation to protect people
from starvation and to provide decent health care and how and and minimal housing these are also Universal rights
again we need much more dialogue uh to to think about what are the common
values but we also have to ask you know even the language of rice itself sometimes can be seen as a bit West
Centric I mean some traditions don't use a language of rice to express what's fundamental about human needs or
interests and we shouldn't necessarily be stuck on the language of human rights as the only legit limit language of
talking about common values we should allow for different vocabulary even if in substance there might not be much
difference so for example when we talk about the need for social harmony or protection of natural environment rights
language might not be necessarily the best language to make sense of those fundamental common values so again this
is more of an intuition because it's still an ongoing debate but if we think about different strategies for moving
beyond the universal Declaration of Human Rights and for thinking about which values are truly Universal what
are the common values that are shared by All Humans regardless of culture regardless of levels of economic
development quite likely we're going to settle Upon A minimal list we can say of
Human Rights although it won't always be expressed in this language of Human Rights including negative rights against
murder slavery torture and genocide and positive rights such as the obligation
of governments to provide for basic material needs protecting people from
starvation from decent and decent health care and also to protect the natural
environment I mean more and more it's so obvious now I mean climate change wasn't an issue when the universal Declaration
of Human Rights is being formulated but obviously now it's a common uh value
that should resonate with people around the world regardless of culture um or or
level of Economic Development so this is basically
um where where I think we would move uh if we're thinking about what are the common values um and we doesn't mean we need to reject the universe of that Christian human rights but certainly we need to build on
it and not regard as a sufficient document for thinking about common values I mean it was a it was a product of its time and perhaps now it's time to move on to something else that is much much more inclusive of non-western value systems um so that we can arrive at a
truly inclusive and universal view of what are the common values now I want to move on to the second part
of of this talk and I'm going to I won't spend too much time on it but there's
two parts here in this I think two important themes in our conference today and the first again again is what are
the common values but what are the second part is what is the plurality that we need to reject that we need to
respect and again this is I really do think that
the problem here is lies much more in the west than in the non-west I mean uh
whether it's the it's prob probably it's more a deeper problem in the United States but in other Western countries
you have a similar view that our political system is the best
and ultimately one that should set the model for the rest of the world
um and what do we mean by that we mean a political system a democratic political system where political leaders are
selected by means of one person one vote again that view also informs the universe Universal Declaration of Human
Rights um it's a relatively new uh view it's only in post-world War II that it became
a kind of dominant view you know the 19th century the British liberal Johnston Mill I mean he he said oh no
not everybody has equal capacity to make morally informed political judgment we should give extra both to educated
people he could make that claim and not be viewed as crazy but in the west today if you argue for alternatives to one
person one view one vote you're viewed as a defender of autocracy which is bad it's morally illegitimate now again
let's Place ourselves outside the west and course I've been working in China for many years so to me I have to ask
you know what is the dominant political ideal that informs the Chinese political system well it's we can call it
political meritocracy in Chinese it's shenang and this is the view that public
officials are supposed to be selected and promoted based on Superior ability
and virtue virtue means a willingness to serve the people ability means that kind of demonstrated ability to serve the
people and public officials are putting out put on through a decades-long process to select and promote uh to
select to be selected and be promoted now it's not a perfect system it's highly imperfect just as western style
democracy is highly imperfect you know in practice often it's not one person one vote it's one dollar one vote in the
in China highly imperfect you often have corrupt leaders who are selected and who are not filtered as they should be and
both so both systems have advantages and the end disadvantages you know it's the advantages of what one person vote is
that perhaps the problem political legitimacy is less serious um but the disadvantage the advantages
of the polygamer toxins that leaders can plan for the long term uh and without worrying about being replaced and so on
um but the point is that the both political systems have already political ideals that inform the practice and they
need to be improved based on their own political ideals so yes I mean we can
use western style elections as a standard for improvement in the West and we can use Chinese style political democracy as a standard for improvement in China always recognizing is a big gap between the idea and the reality and we should strive to minimize that Gap but the question is what standards should we use contrary to the universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the view that's so dominant and dogmatic in Western countries we should allow for diversity diverse ways of selecting and promoting public officials it depends on a country's well size for one thing on a
country's dominant political culture on dominant on levels of economic development these are all important
issues and we should offer plural ways of selecting leaders and not dogmatically assert that there's only one way of selecting leaders again it's not a problem in China I think that most Chinese intellectuals at least in my experience are recognize that there should be plural ways of selecting
leaders you know I haven't heard anybody who says that China any style polygamous toxic should be you know blindly exported outside of China to other countries regardless of culture and so
on but in the west it's still a problem where people still think that that the
so-called well I'm not going to say so-called western style elections is the only more legitimate way of selecting
leaders we should allow for legitimate variation here Hey where's another area where plurality is so important to
respect and I I make this point because it's on the one hand it's obvious on the one hand it's not obvious because it's
typically not it's the form plurality it's not typically respected here's another one
on the way of organizing economic life again if you read The Economist
um or the financial times or the Wall Street Journal typically speaking there's a view that there's only one
morally legitimate way of organizing the economy and that's a kind of capitalist form of life uh capitalist form of
economy where the right to property is respected and it's held to be fundamental well okay maybe in some
countries but other countries including China are strongly committed to socialist
ideals were that which were the strong priority of garment is to alleviate poverty now again it's both socialist idea that was not only socialists I mean the confusions ever since the early days including Confucius
you know Konza himself you know said that the first priority of government you know should be full you know basically to make people to provide for people's basic material needs and only then do you educate them Joe you know
these these this view is very has a very long history in China and it's not a
coincidence that the Socialist ideals uh became dominant to China because they could build on this earlier Valley system where which prioritized the uh the need to alleviate uh poverty above other uh uh values including the need to respect private property
um now again China it's in the Constitution it's also committed to Communism as the ultimate end goal what
does that mean well again it it sounds bad if you're kind of American but the Communist ideal is very beautiful ideal
it's the idea that Advanced Machinery does all this necessary labor so people are freed from the need to do a dirty
and unwanted labor and all humans have the equal opportunity to develop their
creative talents and not be bound by mind-dulling labor again it's a
beautiful idea and if it requires restricting private property to get
there then countries that are committed to socialism will do that I mean it's
not to say that we you know that countries should you know blindly uh take away people's property but sometimes when it comes to strong obligations to deal to alleviate poverty you know for example or land distribution might be necessary or to ultimately move on to a state where where Advanced communism or Advanced Machinery does all the necessary labor well then maybe there might be some legitimate restrictions on private property again we should allow for more legitimate variation I doubt that as it stands that communism can be Global ideal but it certainly can be an ideal that informs China's political system and other countries are just going to have to
recognize and live with that and recognize that there's a plural ways of thinking about how to organize economic
life well let me give one last example and this one is more comes from
countries that are often committed to Islam as a as a political form now again
the universal Declaration of Human Rights udhr strongly forms the freedom of religion in the way that it's manifested in contemporary Western societies
well yes I mean you know sometimes I agree that it's very important for people to have their freedom of religion
but it doesn't mean that all political communities everywhere should operate this should have exactly the same
distinction between you know private religion and public religion some political communities can legitimately
endorse the state religion and even Place constraints on the roles of other religions in public life and maybe even
on the freedom to change religious belief now I'm not saying that that's something that personally that I would
endorse but if countries that for example have a dominant Islamic value
system have policies along those lines or at least draw uh uh lines between what's
public and what's private in the religious sphere in ways that are different from Western societies well it's a form of morally legitimate
variation now I'm glad to report that in Western countries the the perhaps the
leading liberal philosopher John Rawls in his last work before he passed away
on the law of peoples he almost he recognized this point he said what
um he said that what he called is um he calls it decent article people
that respect basic human rights remember basic human rights rights Against torture and murder slavery genocide and
so on and I have we would also add some rights um uh to for the to provide basic
material well-being um but if those if countries or peoples organize themselves so that they have
played Constitutions are organized around a dominant religion whether it's Islam or another religion and even that
uh provides that only members of that religion are allowed to hold High political office well you know those
what he calls the Narco people should be tolerated by liberal societies when they
interact in the international Arena now my view is that it should be much more than Toleration it should be some sort
of mutual respect you know because sometimes we're Toleration English it sounds like you know you hold your nose and say okay I don't like what you guys
are doing but I'll I'll tolerate it you know just like you want it you might want to tolerate you know forms of well
anyway um but the point is that in the international sphere and I'm going to
summarize here before I conclude we should allow for morally legitimate variation when it comes to three
important things ways of selecting public officials and political leaders
ways of organizing economic life and ways of thinking about the role of
religion in politics and all of those three crucial areas there will not be
I'm almost certain common views and common values and we should allow for
morally legitimate variation I do think that if we have a world where we can endorse some common values like basic human rights against huge language of Human Rights rights Against torture murder slavery and genocide as well as positive rights rights for basic material well-being while respecting morally legitimate variation when it comes to ways of selecting political leaders ways of organizing the economy and ways of thinking about the role of religion in public life we would have a much more uh agreeable International order and one that allows us to solve problems so let me and here and I'm more than welcome
um critical views again these are ongoing ongoing disputes and probably 10 or 20 years from now we would have yet different views or maybe even within our discussion so let me in here thank you
wonderful can you hear me yeah I can hear you
thank you I'll turn off my right professor professor Bud thank you excellent uh I like to think I've I've listened to uh various speeches on this topic but I dare say that was probably one of the most enlightening and refreshing but also easy to understand uh so I'm hoping that uh this segment uh your speech will be wences conference is over we'll be listened to by hundreds of thousands even millions of people around the world so thank you so much and I was
particularly interested that you brought forward the ideas of how these
declarations were initiated in the first place uh particularly that uh if
indigenous populations have been included in the initial stages uh social harmony and protection of environment
would have taken on a very different role and then you talked about the the tyranny of vocabulary and particularly
what I call the tyranny of English uh the the in interpretation of things and
then to weaponize language in ways that almost we can't have any more conversations and I particularly also
like this your your three points the how do we select people uh the ways in which
we organize our societies and therefore economies and the role of beliefs religious beliefs and customs in in our
societies uh thank you very much I like you as I've said before uh please uh uh
stay on and we'd like to invite you to participate in in the first panel okay thank you and thank you for the the
recommending my little book too thank you so much
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