Asian values and Human Rights - Essay Example

However, he pointed out that sometimes externalities result from these struggles. For example, upholding property rights has often resulted to the suppression of the masses by the relatively few wealthy individuals who actually owned these property rights. Problems encountered in the advocacy of "human rights" stem from its own structure. The idea of what is right and wrong is very subjective and often times depends on the cultural and value context of the point of view. The "Asian values" point of view further complicates the on going debate on the meaning of human rights.

Asian values, mainly Confucian values, question the increasing use of "bureaucratic-technical vocabulary emphasizing law, abstract logic, and the formation of policy statements" (Dallmayr 180) regarding human rights. Mote, as a student of China's civilization history, clearly admired the Chinese civilizations and their contribution to the modern society. However, he did criticize how the past is being regarded. He emphasised that the point of civilization, if ever there is one, is "to [realise] the maximum from this present moment, not to blindly repeat some past nor to forgo the present in preparation for some anticipated future" (Mote 6).

It is apparent that this belief was one of the underlying factors why Frederick Mote was fascinated by the Chinese civilizations. According to him all Chinese intellectual traditions shared this fundamental belief about the purpose of civilization and even that of the existence of man. This fundamental concept and belief helped the development of Buddhism in China which he said "frustrated Christianity" (Mote 6). Perhaps so, but the point is it appears that the Chinese civilizations were "unitary" in that they applied the same standards of value to all human activities, and hence the arts were expected to conform to the moral fabric as dictated by society.

This was the singular reason why the arts of these civilizations never developed the art-for-art's-sake which was a common element in Western fine arts within the same period. Nevertheless, these arts should be judged by the standards within the national norms of the past rather than through different norms.Economic PerspectivesMax Weber, A selection of texts, edited by S. Andreski. London: George Allen and Unwinn 1983, pp. 111-125. First, Andreski's selection of texts fro Max Weber's writings surprisingly present a very coherent Weber which is in contrast to his usual obscure and difficult to understand writings.

Clearly, Weber was very interested on the reasons why capitalism failed to developed in the Ancient World. Specifically, the text was concerned on why has modern capitalism emerged in the western world and not in the Ancient World, say China or India, at the same time For Max Weber, the Puritans believed only activity signifies and increases the glory of God, hence an