The relativism-universalism dispute obscures what really matters in human rights

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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The issues on which countries divided along civilizational lines included: universality vs. cultural relativism with respect to human rights; the relative priority of economic and social rights including the right to development versus political and civil rights; political conditionality with respect to economic assistance; the creation of a U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights; the extent to which the nongovernmental human rights organizations simultaneously meeting in Vienna should be allowed to participate in the governmental conference; the particular rights which should be endorsed by the conference; and more specific issues such as whether the Dalai Lama should be allowed to address the conference and whether human rights abuses in Bosnia should be explicitly condemned. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 522 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Bandung resolved the human-rights dispute with a deliberate ambiguity — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 277; Treating human rights as endlessly polyvalent masks the systemic constraints shaping them. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 62; The universalist-contextualist dispute concerns liberal democracy’s universal validity — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 284 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Debating relativism versus universalism misses how judgments justify violence #corroborates (0.92) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 715
• The universality of human rights versus cultural relativism is the core civilizational divide #complicates (0.85) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 522