LITMIR.BIZ

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awareness of three constitutive facts of being human: every person is a creature capable of feeling pain, and is a free agent capable of having a free being, of living a life that is one’s own and not somebody else’s idea of how a life should be lived, and is a moral agent capable of acknowledging that what one claims for oneself as a right one can claim only as an equal to everyone else.”¹⁵ The idea makes clear and immediate sense. Major human rights declarations and manifestos acquire a new coherence when they are understood in terms of security, autonomy, inviolability, and equality.

      In distinguishing between public and philosophical conceptions of human rights, I do not mean to disparage the latter. To review: a public conception justifies human rights by reference to a widely (not universally) shared set of principles but suspends inquiry into the justification of those principles themselves. A philosophical conception seeks to supply human rights with a deeper and more rigorous justification. (Both approaches may be contrasted with a “superficial” approach that forswears justification altogether.) The disadvantage of each approach corresponds to the strength of the other. The benefit of a public conception is that it commands wider (though of course not universal) agreement. This benefit is enormously significant, because human rights become more secure as more people believe in them. Widespread principled agreement allows us to get on with the task of teaching, promoting, defending, implementing, and enforcing human rights. The cost is that deeper inquiry into the meaning of human rights is suspended. While the cost of a philosophical conception is the narrowing of consensus, the potential gain is enhanced understanding, which may improve and bolster the public conception over the long term (but which is valuable even if it does not). Moreover, we face difficult questions when it comes to the full specification of human rights, and philosophical conceptions may help us arrive at the best answers. Though I rely on a public conception of human rights in this discussion, philosophical conceptions are also needed in public deliberation.¹⁶ Both approaches are needed; both influence and inform each other; and it would be impossible to draw a sharp line between them.¹⁷

       The Relativist Challenge

      Is the idea of universal human rights undermined by appeal to cultural relativism? The claim would be that it shows insufficient respect for cultural diversity. Packed into that claim are several premises: (1) that the world contains distinct cultures; (2) that some cultures reject the idea of human rights, at least in part; and (3) that it is wrong or unreasonable to assert the universality of human rights over the dissent of particular cultures.

      I believe each of these premises is mistaken. The third premise presupposes that cultures should have the final say on questions of morality. But every culture is a mixture of good and bad. The aspects of a culture that permit or require human rights violations are among the aspects that ought to be reformed. Awareness that cultures are flawed is one reason why cultures can change from within—why, for example, feminists have made progress in challenging patriarchal norms embedded in their own cultures. If one denies that cultures contain anything bad, one must say that internal criticism of a culture is always mistaken and that no reform achieved through internal criticism, for example, the promotion of sex equality, represents progress. These claims are implausible.

      The problem with the second premise (that some cultures reject human rights) is that it presupposes the first (that the world contains distinct cultures). Reference to “cultures” in the plural¹⁸ conveys a picture of a world in which social groups (typically defined by nation, region, tribe, ethnicity, or religion) are the bearers of stable, coherent, and distinctive systems of belief. Implied is an essentialist understanding of culture—culture as a belief system that one inherits along with one’s group membership. (Individuals may switch cultures, along with group membership, but this is the exception, and requires special effort.) Individuals receive their beliefs from the groups to which they belong.¹⁹

      This is a misleading picture. It denies or discounts the ability of individuals to learn from, influence, and be influenced by members of other groups. Worse, it denies the ability of individuals to think for themselves, to question and sometimes reject the views of local authorities. Yet these things happen, and they make a cumulative impact. The observable result is heterogeneity of belief within groups and overlap of belief across groups.²⁰ The longer the process unfolds, the less meaningful it becomes to speak of “cultures” as corresponding to social groups defined by nation, region, tribe, ethnicity, and religion. (Moreover, some people prefer not to be identified with ascriptive groups at all.)

      Cultural essentialism is least persuasive when it claims that the idea of human rights is culturally bounded. Belief in human rights travels with particular ease: wherever human rights can be discussed without threat of violence or sanction (and sometimes even in the face of these threats), there will be people who believe in human rights. If some of us believe in freedom of religion or the wrongness of the death penalty while local religious or political authorities believe the opposite, what is the position of “our” culture? So long as “culture” refers to our nation, region, tribe, ethnicity, or religion, there is no coherent answer to the question. To avoid such indeterminacy, cultural essentialism tends to associate culture with authority and tradition. It carries a conservative bias, and does not seem bothered that the traditional views are often shored up by coercion.

      Why are people still drawn to cultural relativism? One reason is the grip of cultural essentialism. Once the picture takes hold of the world as a mosaic of different cultures, it appears difficult to shake. I would mention two other factors: (1) group identity, and (2) a generalized reluctance to pass moral judgment.

      First, group identity. The thought is that if human rights are a “Western concept,” non-Westerners cannot embrace the idea as their own. To this we should reply that human rights are not a Western concept: they are an idea understood and embraced by people all over the world. Yet someone might answer back that, if fully worked-out theories of human rights first emerged in the West, that is enough to mark the idea as Western: a non-Westerner strongly identifying with his or her non-Western group therefore has reason to regard the idea as alien.²¹ Such a preoccupation with the historical pedigree of ideas, though unnecessary and unfortunate, exerts surprising influence (and is a major source of cultural essentialism).

      Second, some people are shy about making moral assertions in the face of potential disagreement. They fear that there is something arrogant about passing judgment on the behavior of others. Yet urgent matters are at stake. Should prisoners be spared cruel and humiliating treatment? Do the accused have the right to a fair trial? Should girls be educated? To withhold judgment is to act from a misplaced sense of decorum. When those otherwise withholding judgment have their attention drawn to actual people whose lives are affected by these questions, their principled detachment tends to fade (as it should).

      Behind the reluctance to condemn or dismiss views contrary to human rights may lie a worthy impulse, namely, an openness to dissent and disagreement. Trouble emerges when, striving to be humble, we allow dialogue to become deference, and when, in deference to “what other people think,” we no longer challenge each other to think harder, or no longer encourage thinking at all. An “emperor’s new clothes” aspect can creep into these discussions. The worst is to subsume people under their “cultures,” and to defer to cultures rather than people. The practice becomes internalized when people refuse to think for themselves, and leave all thinking to be done by their “culture.”

      Cultural relativism about human rights is sometimes related to guilt over the history of Western crimes against non-Western peoples. Guilt is appropriate, but rejecting universal human rights is not, since the crimes were themselves massive violations of human rights, and need to be condemned as such. It is of course true that efforts to promote human rights transnationally can become self-defeating or destructive when the local context is poorly understood or when talk of human rights masks a hidden agenda (and not only then). There is a potential for human rights discourse to abet overbearing, even imperialist, policies, and indeed policies that entail serious violations of human rights. I do not think this problem is a reason to reject human rights per se, but it obliges us to think more carefully about the responsible promotion of human rights.²² My book is intended as one contribution to this effort. I argue that one check on the danger of overbearing policies is

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