Preserving One's Nature: - Primitivist Daoism and Human Rights

This paper contends that primitivist Daoism, particularly in its conception of human nature (xing), ideas of humane governance, and the socioeconomic conditions implied in its utopian ideal, presents us with "functional analogues" which could advance the priority interests of human rights internally, fulfilling its regulative role, without employing the conceptuality or mechanism of rights per se. The primitivists may provide a corrective to many recent challenges to human rights from a "Chinese perspective" by militating against precisely those conceptual features of Confucianism that have provided the philosophical fodder for decrying human rights in the name of cultural integrity.