Objecting to Human Rights – Relativism

Spring 2013

Cultural Relativism/ Moral Relativism

• Cultural relativism: patterns of conduct are relative to cultures

• Moral relativism: underlying values are relative to cultures

Cultural relativism does not entail moral relativism:

often differences in behavior due to differences in circumstances

Cultural Relativism

Relativism: the Attractions

• easily motivated: “different peoples live according to different norms; when in Rome do as the Romans do”

• “the aims that guide the life of every people are self-evident in their significance to that people” (AAA, p 542)

• “What is held to be a human right in one society may be regarded as anti-social by another people” (p 542)

• “who is to judge:” enlightened, appropriately modest

American Anthropological Association (1947)

• Principle 3: Standards and values are relative to the culture from which they derive so that any attempt to formulate postulates that grow out of the beliefs or moral codes of one culture must to that extent detract from the applicability of any Declaration of Human Rights to mankind as a whole. (p 542)

And: relativity of simultaneity

Relativism: Intuitive Problems

• cannot bring up any moral criticism of other cultures or even assess changes within our own

• Could assess what is right or wrong just by consulting standards of “moral network”

• Connection to tolerance tenuous

Just a minority losing out?

Nothing right or wrong here?

Remember

Reductio ad absurdum?

(a)There are no universal principles.

(b) One ought to act in accordance with the principles of one’s own group.

(c) Principle (b) is a universal moral principle

Reductio ad absurdum?

No incoherence emerging here because no commitment to (b) is required. Instead:

(a) There are no universal principles. (b*) People think they ought to act in

accordance with the principles of their own group.

Goal now:

• To formulate different responses to advocates of view that cultural relativism implies specifically the impossibility of universal human rights

• responses will not show that all particular rights on UDHR should be accepted – instead address concern that there could not be universal rights to begin with

Response 1: Cultural Differences and the distinctively human existence

• persons across cultures share vulnerabilities: suffer from physical pain, require food/water to survive, are susceptible to disease, malnutrition

• common goods: bodily health; bodily integrity; desire to be treated with some respect in one’s affiliations

• not culture-bound: distinctively human existence

Moral engagement across cultures: often possible

Two points come together powerfully, as critical tools:

(a) common vulnerabilities and common goods

(b) reasoning that categorically restricts scope of fundamental moral values, or range of what is morally important, to particular cultures or circles inevitably draws on reasoning that is hard to defend

explains why most cultures generate forms of universalist thinking, although it may not be dominant

Too Western?

• particular human rights discourse is Western in origin

• But concerns about protection of individuals against the state (and other powerful entities) are very common

• Often conflict between rights and common good is overstated to draw contrast between “the West and the rest”

• Cultural traditions of course are inherently diverse

Response 2: Cultural differences –

look who’s talking

• Those who speak of “value imperialism” and in support of relativism are often those in power

• Those who reject moral relativism generally focus on standpoint of victims

• In light of victims’ standpoint, moral relativism looks much less plausible

“We do things differently around here”

• argument often rests on attribution of unanimity that does not exist

• In case of egregious human right violations: no “we” on whose behalf anybody could speak

• victims have complaints that are intelligible to us and on whose behalf we can speak up

What if “victims” agree with the practices? – Scanlon

• “But even if the victims did take the view that they have no rights against what is is done to them (…) couldn’t they be wrong in thinking this?”

• “[W]hich is the more objectionable form of cultural superiority, to refuse to aid a victim on the ground that “they live like that – they don’t recognize rights as we know them,” or to attempt to protect the defenseless even when they themselves feel that suffering is their lot and they have no basis to complain of it?” (P 119)

Which is more objectionable form of cultural superiority?

(1) to refuse to aid a victim on the ground that “they live like that – they don’t recognize rights as we know them,”

(2) or to attempt to protect the defenseless even when they themselves feel that suffering is their lot and they have no basis to complain of it?

Often aid: (2) is more problematic, whereas (1) seems like an enlightened attitude

But: (1) can easily be the more objectionable form of cultural superiority – because people can be brainwashed

Must apply with extreme caution

• False consciousness: people have been persuaded to support a regime that is to somebody else’s benefit

• Brain washing -- severe Manipulation

• Population itself, once through the transition, would presumably approve

But if this applies…

• Then this indeed is the more troublesome attitude of cultural superiority:

to refuse to aid a victim on the ground that “they live like that – they don’t recognize rights as we know them”

Response 3: Interconnectedness

• question of how we ought to live together and what we ought to do vis-à-vis each other simply does arise for us

• cannot help be negotiate common arrangements, at least to some extent

• have irreversibly “encountered each other”

We do not live like this (any more)

But like this:

Connected to them

And to them

And to them as well

Remember: • Now, Therefore THE GENERAL

ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.