Li

Li is a key concept in Confucian thought and is variously translated as “ritual,” “rites,” “custom,” or “propriety.” It refers at the collective level to the time-honored code of ritual conduct that was to govern all social interaction in the ideal Confucian society. As an individual virtue, li is the ability to follow that code and to enter into each and every human relationship with a full awareness of one's position, rights, and duties toward the others involved and with a full recognition and acceptance of them as moral beings. Mastery of li was part and parcel of the formation of the noble person (junzi) and key to the full realization of his humanity—a humanity that could only be practiced and perfected in social interactions with others, as the Confucian tradition regards the human being as fundamentally social in nature. Thus, ritualized relationships served to learn and exercise virtue and to transmit it to others, as all parties in any relationship will be affected by the moral power emanating from authentically performed ritual. The noble person's leadership and authority thus acted upon others by ritual, a form of social interaction that does not enforce compliance but inspires allegiance by moral example.

The Confucian Classics contain three canonical works with a focus on ritual codes and discourses on li: the Record of Rites (Liji), the Ceremonies and Rites (Yili), and the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli). As part of the text corpus whose mastery was required for the civil service examinations in Imperial China, their notions of li deeply influenced the Chinese ruling elite throughout much of recorded Chinese history.

Contemporary philosophers have rediscovered li as central to an alternative philosophical approach to human rights. Instead of basing human rights on the individual's intrinsic entitlement, it has been proposed that we need to pay more attention to the social nature of humanity. Viewed from this perspective, an oppositional definition of the relationship of the group and the individual and of human rights as needing to be protected and enforced against the group does not adequately take into account that the individual can only realize his or her humanity within the group. Li as moral and humanizing social interaction provides an alternative basis for human rights as basic elements of human dignity that are recognized and respected as such by all members of a moral community. As humanity can only be realized socially, human rights can also only be construed within human connectedness, for which li in turn provides the standard. Combining Confucian and communitarian approaches, this perspective seeks to remedy what it regards as an overemphasis on individual rights in contemporary discourse.