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ABSTRACT
Human rights as an international political project are closely tied to claims of universality. Attacks on the universality of human rights, however, are also widespread. And some versions of universalism are indeed theoretically indefensible, politically pernicious, or both. This essay explores the senses in which human rights can (and cannot) be said to be universal, the senses in which they are (and are not) relative, and argues for the "relative universality" of internationally recognized human rights.
INTRODUCTION
This essay explores several different senses of "universal" human rights. I also consider, somewhat more briefly, several senses in which it might be held that human rights are "relative." I defend what I call functional, international legal, and overlapping consensus universality. But I argue that what I call anthropological and ontological universality are empirically, philosophically, or politically indefensible. I also emphasize that universal human rights, properly understood, leave considerable space for national, regional, cultural particularity and other forms of diversity and relativity.
Cultural relativism has probably been the most discussed issue in the theory of human rights. Certainly that is true in this journal. I have been an active participant in these debates for a quarter century, arguing for a form of universalism that also allows substantial space for important (second order) claims of relativism.1 I continue to insist on what I call the "relative universality" of human rights. Here, however, I give somewhat more emphasis to the limits of the universal.
In the 1980s, when vicious dictators regularly appealed to culture to justify their depredations, a heavy, perhaps even over-heavy, emphasis on universalism seemed not merely appropriate but essential. Today, human rights are backed by the world's preponderant political, economic, and cultural powers and have become ideologically hegemonic in international society. Not only do few states today directly challenge international human rights, a surprisingly small number even seriously contend that large portions of the Universal Declaration do not apply to them. An account that gives somewhat greater emphasis to the limits of universalism thus seems called for, especially now that American foreign policy regularly appeals to "universal" values in the pursuit of a global ideological war that flouts international legal norms.
1. CONCEPTUAL AND SUBSTANTIVE UNIVERSALITY
We can begin by distinguishing the conceptual universality implied...