 Another potential contrast arises from the focus in modern Western moralities on individual rights to liberty and to other goods, where the basis for attributing such rights to persons lies in a moral worth attributed to each individual independently of what conduces to individual’s responsibilities to self and others. Confucianism lacks a comparable concept, given its assumption that the ethical life of responsibility to others and individual flourishing are inextricably intertwined (Shun, 2004). A frequent criticism from the Western side is that Confucianism fails to provide adequate protection to those legitimate interests an individual has that may conflict with community interests. On the other side, some advocates of Confucian ethics criticize rights-focused moralities for ignoring the social nature of human beings and of portraying human life in an excessively “atomistic” or “individualist” conception of persons (e.g., Rosemont, 1986). Against those who argue that Confucianism does not protect the individual enough, it could be replied that the Confucian framework of responsibilities to others can afford significant protections to the individual and arguably addresses the human need for community and belonging better than rights frameworks (Rosemont, 1991a, 2004). Another criticism from the Western side is that the dignity of the individual cannot be honored without recognition of individual rights. It has been replied, however, that dignity can lie in one’s human capacity to participate in the distinctively human life of relationship and in living up to one’s responsibilities to others (Ihara, 2004). Moreover, it is possible that rights in some sense can play a role in the Confucian tradition, even if such rights are not grounded in the idea of the independent moral worth of the autonomous individual. Within that tradition, rights may be seen as necessary for protecting individuals’ interests when the right relationships of care irretrievably break down (Chan, 1999). Rights in the sense of justified claims to be protected in one’s speech even when protest and dissenting against authority can be justified as conducive to the health of the community (Wong, 2004a). Mencius recognized a right to revolution against tyrannical kings (1B8); he furthermore advised kings to attach more weight to the opinions of his people than to those of his ministers and officers in making certain crucial decisions (1B7). Xunzi recognized the need for subordinates to speak their views freely to their superiors (Xunzi, Zigong, Way of the Son). If we carry the reasoning in Mencius and Xunzi one step further, we see the need to protect a space in which they may speak freely without fear of suppression, and hence a derive a right in the “thin” sense of what one has whenever one has justifiable claims on others to assure one’s possession of things or one’s exercise of certain capacities. (This article focuses on rights in relation to classical Confucianism. For a detailed discussion of rights discourse in seventeenth and eighteenth century Confucianism, see Angle, 2002). On the other side, one must be wary of oversimplifications of Western rights-oriented ethical codes. The social nature of persons is not denied by all such codes (of the major theories only Hobbes seems to take an unambiguously “atomistic” view of human beings, and Rousseau and Locke seem to require no such view).