EDITOR’S NOTE: “Credit rights” – What a good idea! It is good because it fits the Dao of dynamic balance as has been recognized by the Chinese for thousands of years, balance between rights-holders and those involved in the rights relationship, between one’s rights and obligations, between individual freedom and social justice, etc. It is good because it explains why the atomistic natural rights theory has brought about such chaotic disruption of the world order today in its practice.

From this same Daoist point of view, the one thing in this essay that the editor cannot bring himself to second is the so-called “others-centeredness”, for what should be at the center is neither the atomistic self nor the monolithic others (as might be represented by the nominally collective but actually monarchic or oligarchic state) – the central concern should be a dynamic balance between all individual and group entities on all levels and in all dimensions.

Still, in spite of the above misstep in the other direction, this essay embodies a path-breaking effort in trying to formulate a more nearly truthful understanding of human social relations and turn round the dangerous currents of today’s prevailing political discourse. To be sure, our readers will be greatly enlightened by reading it.

THE TEXT (Technically edited by the website editor)

Human rights have become a new type of de facto religion in the West, though it bears no such names. The modern world had long lacked a super ideology until the concept of human rights has evolved into a new religion by assimilating the resources of Christianity and liberalism. Spreading to every corner of the world, the human rights religion has been doing so successfully what the Christianity has failed to do. But I see a big theoretical problem in human rights, probably leading to practical disorder in the future. So I have prepared a theory of credit rights in terms of neo-universalism, which is, by contrast, more reasonable than natural rights, for it preserves nearly all that is good in the latter while removing the risk of discarding justice. My argument runs like this: Human rights should be granted unconditionally and equally to everyone in terms of credit or "loan", but one will keep his rights only on condition that he would carry out his corresponding obligations as a return for his granted rights. In short, human rights are granted unconditionally but to enjoy conditionally. 

1.  Natural rights are not theoretically justified 

If a theory is supposed to be universally good, it must be responsible for its possible consequences arising there-from. So a theory is required to consider (1) its theoretical responsibility in that, given a theory T, T has to take in account all accessible and possible worlds and see if T is capable to cope with all the practical problems implied by T; and (2) its possibility in terms of "ontological cost", which says that T’s plans should be what the world could afford to let them be. Here I try to argue that the theory of natural rights is a theory of injustice and lack of theoretical justification. 

(1) The rights-based modernity replacing the virtues-based tradition in terms of the change from the priority of virtues to the priority of rights is not a change in values, but rather a deconstruction of any value. Rights find nothing as their justification but the wants when rights are considered priori to any virtue. And natural rights are essentially not the natural right grounded on virtues. The priority of rights implies a Wittgensteinian paradox running like this: All wants could be claimed as justified rights on the same reason on which some wants are claimed as rights. This paradox of rights theoretically prepares the confusion in values and the social disorder that has partly come true today in the spectacle of a world crowded with so many rights increasing at horrible speed. No possible world is so rich as to be able to afford so many rights. And the conflicting rights, in the case of rights against rights, will become inevitable in a world full of competitive wants invading the public sphere and even violating the individual rights, causing problems in the interpersonal relations as well as in the international ones.

(2) It is a wrong choice to recognize the physiological concept of human, or physical person, as the foundation for human rights.  Rights can never be found available in nature, but only be defined in the social game. The natural being of a person cannot justify his rights in that the value claim "p ought to be given the rights" cannot be inferred from the factual statement "p is a human"(Hume’s law). The concept of a physical person could only imply the natural freedom, but never political liberty. The concept of human that makes sense for human rights is the "moral person" rather than the "physical person", for the essence of humanity has to be found in what human does rather than is. The wrong concept of human underlying natural rights has misled people to the fabricated absolute rights for human beings qua natural beings, which would result in the dangerous consequences of the expansion of rights and of making the excuse for criminals to be free of punishment. 

 (3) The theory of natural rights contradicts the principle of justice and the concept of rights. Justice is one of the few transcendental principles of values, which could be proved in a transcendental argument, with its perfect structure of symmetry in quite a same way in the mathematical or logical equivalence，so that any choice in values cannot be justified if it is against justice. The theory of natural rights betrays justice as well as the concept of rights in taking it for granted that the individual rights are his unconditional entitlements justified only in terms of the individual-in-itself, as if the rights of an individual could be decided in the absence of others, while ignorant of the fact that obligations are the necessary conditions for any rights.

Obligations constitute something of the cost for rights as the payoff. The relationship between rights and obligations is justified only in its symmetry, that is, their reciprocal implications: person p has right R if and only if p recognizes his obligation O equivalent to R. If p enjoys much more or greater rights than his obligations, this means to grab more than his share at the expense of others in terms of interests. But the theory of natural rights, by regarding human rights as something unconditional, recognizes only that the rights of p imply the obligations of q to respect the rights of p (pR→qO). This implication conceals the problem of justification of rights. Given a game where everybody will remain always a rightful player no matter how indecent his behavior, there may be liberty, equality and fairness, but no justice. It is unlikely that such a game will last long. We are not supposed to represent others’ minds, for they may not agree on such and such rights for us while such and such obligations for them as we claim. Others may be thinking of other kinds of rights or different ranking of rights. Only after committing ourselves to our obligations and thereby making our rights justified, can we have reason to hold others obliged to respect our rights. Obligations are priori to rights so far as only obligations can support the legitimacy for rights, and never the converse. Hence the right relationship: the obligations accepted by p (pO) come first to imply his corresponding rights (pR), then further imply the obligations accepted by q (qO) to respect P’s rights pR, that is, (pO →pR) → qO. 

2. The theory of natural rights defines a bad game of life

According to natural rights, everyone has and keeps unconditional human rights all his life and in any case, so much so that one will never be deprived of his human rights even if he had committed the worst crimes. It thus means an extra reward for one who has committed terrible crimes but received slight punishments, doing great harm to the human rights of others while gaining much advantage for himself,. The wrong reward will encourage injustice, inequality and distorted conceptions of right and wrong, and make a very bad game of life in which unjustified behaviors by evil players will be dominant in competitions because of the decrease in the cost of crimes and the increase in payoffs. It is very likely that committing crimes will become the profitable dominating strategy to be imitated by more and more players and finally make a universal Nash’s equilibrium. We have to think seriously about what kind of strategy is really acceptable if to be universally imitated. To our sound rationality, a meta-rule of a good society should be that no one can benefit from his wrong deeds, or that one will lose more than he has gained from his wrong behaviors. If, on the contrary, the persons who have done terrible crimes should be protected from their deserved punishments in the name of natural rights, people will find it an absurd mistake to entrust their naturally right freedom of self-defense to the government as the agency in charge of justice to ensure their liberty and deserved payoff. Neither a usual game nor the game of human rights should have the right to break the rule of justice. 

3. Credit rights is better in its theoretical consistency 

The theory of credit rights is a better theory rather than one as opposed to natural rights. Natural rights theory works only in a perfect world where everyone is nice and kind. But we do not bet on a never world. The credit rights are equal to natural rights in a perfect world, and are capable of dealing with the problems that natural rights fail to solve in an imperfect world. It must be rational to choose a better theory since we cannot choose a better world. 

The theory of credit rights insists on the priority of justice qua natural rightness on the reason that, from the point of view of game theory, the world will be ruined if the strategies that betray justice are universally imitated. And it also highlights the priority of the others-centered views from the Chinese ontology of relationship, so leading to the definition of humanity in terms of what one does to others rather than he is, as well as the justification of one’s rights only by his obligations to others. With recognition of the priority of justice and of other people, a good game of life should have such meta-rules as the following: (1) An improved representation of the golden rule, i.e., Never do to others whatever others would not like you to do to them, instead of the traditional one: Never do to others whatever you would not like others to do to you. I have rewritten the golden rule from an others-centered point of view. (2) The game of life should be so designed as to favor the good and the just and to stop any one from benefiting from his crimes. 

Upon these reasons, the theory of credit rights could be claimed as an adjustment of human rights. It says that every person is born entitled to the equal credit rights unconditionally, but to enjoy them conditionally. One has to carry out his obligations, which will justify his credit rights given in advance, so as to keep his rights. And one will be regarded to have abandoned voluntarily and automatically his rights if he refuses to honor his obligations. In terms of justice in the rights-vs.-obligations symmetry, the claim of natural rights could be accused of betraying natural right-ness, workable only in a few possible worlds thus failing to be universal, whereas the theory of credit rights seem to work in all accessible possible worlds of human life, for it always keeps to the universal principle of justice.

(This author is Professor of Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.)