The Historical Position and Value Dimensions of Human Rights Civilization

LU Guangjin

Abstract: Human beings are the mainstay and the ultimate goal of civilization. The history of human civilization is a continuous struggle to realize the respect for, emancipation, protection, and development of human beings. Human rights are an achievement of humanity and a symbol of progress, and the human rights civilization is an important component of human civilization. Understanding and interpreting human rights from the perspective of human rights civilization means that human rights are not only a concept or an idea but also a grand historical and long-term social practice. Up to now, the development of human rights civilization has roughly experienced four awakening eras: initialization, revolution, popularization, and globalization. In terms of its value dimensions, it has the characteristics of progressiveness, diversity, commonality, inclusiveness, indivisibility, openness, and so on. The historical position of human rights civilization and the development of its value dimensions have shown to the world that human rights are the common wealth of humanity, and human rights belong to all mankind; human rights are historical, concrete, and developmental; the concept of human rights is constantly evolving, and its connotations and categories are constantly expanding; achieving the free and well-rounded development of every person is the highest value realm of human rights civilization. The Chinese modernization endows Chinese civilization with modern strength and opens up new horizons for human rights civilization. The new pattern of human rights civilization to be created by Chinese modernization not only possesses the common characteristics of human rights civilization but also enjoys Chinese characteristics based on its own national conditions, enriching and developing the diversity of human rights civilization for all mankind.

Keywords: human rights civilization · four awakening eras of human rights · value dimensions of human rights · Chinese modernization · new pattern of human rights civilization with Chinese characteristics