Debating relativism versus universalism misses how judgments justify violence

Evidence

Human rights are often declared to be a “universal ideal” in opposition to “cultural relativism” and the latter regarded as little more than an excuse for condoning local cruelties. My discussion of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King is intended in part to show how closely intertwined the two languages—the culturally specific language of prophecy and the universalist language of human rights—have become in the global moral project of America. This needs to be stressed because pitting “relativism” against “universalism” is not, I think, helpful for understanding human rights. Of course everybody generally has an opinion about the customs and beliefs of other people (“other cultures”), regarding them as good, bad, or indifferent. But in my view that fact is less interesting than the question of the kind of violence (moral, legal, military) that judgments justify. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 715

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stance in the vault on universalist moral claims masking particular power interests, resonating with Cooper’s critique of neutral-sounding frameworks that privilege specific norms. — connects to: Relation reframes violence and opacity as the central questions for non-Western thought — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 355