Other Philosophy Commons^™

Contemporary Confucian And Islamic Approaches To Democracy And Human Rights, Stephen Angle

Stephen C. Angle

Both Confucian and Islamic traditions stand in fraught and internally contested relationships with democracy and human rights. It can easily appear that the two traditions are in analogous positions with respect to the values associated with modernity, but a central contention of this essay is that Islam and Confucianism are not analogous in this way. Positions taken by advocates of the traditions are often similar, but the reasoning used to justify these positions differs in crucial ways. Whether one approaches these questions from an intra-traditional, cross-traditional, or multi-traditional perspective, the essay shows that there is great value in getting clear …