Chinese thought influenced the Enlightenment thinkers who shaped Western human rights ideas.

Evidence

Chang, who earned a PhD in the United States studying with the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, was committed to ensuring the declaration avoided metaphysical presuppositions and reflected both the diversity and the interpenetration of cultures and traditions. In a drafting meeting in June 1948, he drew attention to the influence of Chinese thought on Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Quesnay and Diderot, who had embraced China as a model of a moral order without superstition. Resisting the idea that ‘European civilisation’ was hermetically sealed, he told the drafters that ‘Chinese ideas had been intermingled with European thought and sentiment on human rights at the time when that subject had first been speculated upon in modern Europe.’ — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 101

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: ‘the East wrote the West’s rights’ — a reversal essay on how Chinese philosophy shaped the very Enlightenment ‘universalism’ that postcolonial critics reject, with Chang as the figure who knew it at the source.
• XREF: Connects to debates about universalism versus cultural relativism in human rights, and to the claim that ‘Western’ rights discourse is itself already hybrid. — connects to: Enlightenment thinkers idealized China rather than viewing it as a savage Other; Orientalism once fueled Enlightenment critiques of dogmatic Christianity.

Broader Connections

• Enlightenment thinkers idealized China rather than viewing it as a savage Other #corroborates (0.90)
• Orientalism once fueled Enlightenment critiques of dogmatic Christianity. #expands (0.85)