Buffalo Human Rights Law Review Volume 13 Article 6 9-1-2007 Moral Relativism and Human Rights Torben Spaak Uppsala University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/bhrlr Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, and the Human Rights Law Commons Recommended Citation Torben Spaak, Moral Relativism and Human Rights, 13 Buff. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 73 (2007). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/bhrlr/vol13/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Buffalo Human Rights Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Moral Relativism and Human Rights Torben Spaak* 1. INTRODUCTION Politicians, human rights activists, scholars, and others disagree about whether human rights are universally true or valid or only true or valid relative to a given culture.1 Jack Donnelly, for example, defends (what he refers to as) the moral universality of human rights: If human rights are the rights one has simply because one is a human being, as they are usually thought to be, then they are held "universally," by all human beings. They also hold "universally" against all other persons and institutions. As the highest moral rights, they regulate the fundamental structures and practices of political life, and in ordinary cir- cumstances they take priority over other moral, legal, and political claims. These distinctions encompass what I call 2 the moral universality of human rights. Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab, on the other hand, appear to believe that human rights can only be valid relative to a given culture.3 The * Associate Professor in Jurisprudence, Department of Law, Uppsala University (Sweden). This article reports research carried out under the auspices of The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. I would like to thank Erik Carlson, Claes Lemestedt and Sia Spiliopoulou-Akermark for helpful comments on the article. I would also like to thank the participants in a seminar at Riga Graduate School of Law in May 2004 as well as the participants in a seminar organized by SIFIR at the Department of Law, Uppsala University in November 2004 for comments on my presentation of some of the ideas put forward in this article. Finally, I would like to thank Robert Carroll for checking my English. The usual caveat applies: the author alone is responsible for any remaining mistakes and imperfections. I Donald Puchala, "The Ethics of Globalism", available at http://www.yale.edu/ acuns/publications/95Holmes-Lecture.htmil. See also Guyora Binder, Cultural Rel- ativism and Cultural Imperialism in Human Rights Law, 5 BUFF. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 211 (1999). Cf Christina M. Cema, Universality of Human Rights and Cul- tural Diversity: Implementation of Human Rights in Different Socio-Cultural Con- texts, 16 HUM. RTS. Q. 740 (1994). 2 JACK DONNELLY, UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 1 (2d ed. 2003). See also Jeremy Waldron, How to Argue for a Universal Claim, 30 COLUM. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 305, 313 (1998-99). 3 Adamantia Pollis & Peter Schwab, Human Rights: A Western Construct with Limited Applicability, HUMAN RIGHTS: CULTURAL AND IDEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 74 BUFFALO HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW Vol. 13 authors maintain that the political philosophy on which the Universal Dec- laration of Human Rights is based is distinctively Western, and that efforts to impose the Declaration as it stands on people in the non-Western world ' 4 amount to "moral chauvinism and ethnocentric bias. I take it that critics such as Pollis and Schwab believe that wes- terners ought to tolerate (what they consider to be) human rights violations in other parts of the world, since such violations may be morally acceptable in light of the moral values and standards accepted by the people involved. True, Pollis and Schwab themselves do not speak of tolerance, but they do object to moral chauvinism on the part of the enforcers of the Declaration (or other similar documents); and it seems to me that tolerance would be the alternative to moral chauvinism. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it appears to be pre- mised on the assumption that the theory of moral relativism enjoins toler- ance of other moral views or that acceptance of such relativism is otherwise likely to bring about such tolerance. I shall, however, argue that the theory of moral relativism does not enjoin tolerance of other moral views, that there is no reason to believe that moral relativism is otherwise likely to bring about tolerance, and that therefore it does not matter to this debate whether moral relativism is a true (or defensible) theory. I begin by distinguishing three types of moral relativism, including so-called meta-ethical relativism, and argue that meta-ethical relativism is at the core of the cultural relativism/universalism debate.5 I then offer some arguments in support of meta-ethical relativism. 6 Having done that, I pro- ceed to consider the relation between meta-ethical relativism and tolerance7 and between meta-ethical relativism and the importance of moral considera- tions.8 The article concludes with some reflections on the prerequisites of cultural imperialism 9 and the enforcement of international human rights law.1 0 1 (Adamantia Pollis & Peter Schwab eds. 1979). See also Chandra Muzaffar, From Human Rights to Human Dignity, DEBATING HUMAN RIGHTS 25 (Peter van Ness ed. 1999). 4 Pollis & Schwab, supra note 3, at 14. See also Puchala, supra note 1, at 3. 5 See infra Part II. 6 See infra Part III. 7 See infra Part IV. 8 See infra Part V. 9 See infra Part VI. 10 See infra Part VII. 2007 MORAL RELATIVISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS 75 2. MORAL RELATIVISM Philosophers often distinguish between cognitive and moral relativ- ism.1 Cognitive relativists maintain (i) that truth, or knowledge, or rational- ity, or even reality itself is relative to a certain starting point, such as a person's or a group's conceptual scheme, and (ii) that no such starting point is truer than any other. Thomas Kuhn, for example, maintains that one can only say that one scientific theory is better than another within a certain paradigm, that no one paradigm is truer than any other, and that therefore scientific change can only be explained by reference to psychological or 12 sociological factors. Cognitive relativism is different from cognitive nihilism understood as the denial that there is such a thing as truth, reality, etcetera, and from cognitive skepticism understood as the denial that we can have about knowledge of truth, reality, etcetera. Cognitive relativists maintain that there is indeed truth, reality, etcetera and that we can have knowledge of it. Of course, they mean by 'truth' or 'knowledge' relative truth or knowledge, 13 which means that they owe us an account of these notions. Moral relativism comes in at least three distinct forms, namely de- scriptive, normative, and meta-ethical relativism.1 4 According to descriptive relativism, different people accept different fundamental moral views. Rich- ard Brandt states the following: The values, or ethical principles, of individuals conflict in a fundamental way ... A special form of this thesis, called "cultural relativism," is that such ethical disagreements often follow cultural lines. The cultural relativist empha- sizes the cultural tradition as a prime source of the individ- ual's views and thinks that most disagreements in ethics among individuals stem from enculturation in different eth- ical traditions, although he need not deny that some ethical disagreements among individuals arise from differences of 11 See, e.g., PAUL O'GRADY, RELATIVISM 4 (2002); Cf Michael Krausz & Jack W. Meiland, Introduction, RELATIVISM: COGNITIVE AND MORAL 1 (Michael Krausz & Jack W. Meiland eds. 1982). See also Louis P. Pojman, Relativism, THE CAM- BRIDGE DICTIONARY OF PHILOSOPHY 790 (2d ed. 1999). 12 THOMAS S. KUHN, THE ESSENTIAL TENSION 290 (1977). 13 , See Chris Swoyer, True for, RELATIVISM, supra note 5, at 84, for an analysis of the idea of relative truth. 14 See Richard Brandt, Ethical Relativism, MORAL RELATIVISM: A READER 25 (Paul K. Moser & Thomas L. Carson eds. 2003). See also WILLIAM K. FRANKENA, ETHICS 109-10 (1973). 76 BUFFALO HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW Vol. 13 innate constitution or personal history between the individuals.15 16 Most writers seem to accept the thesis of descriptive relativism, though some question whether the moral differences that do exist are really fundamental, that is, they question whether in at least some cases the differ- ences are not due to factual disagreements.' 7 Normative relativism differs from descriptive relativism in that it holds that a person ought to act in accordance with his own or his group's views on some issue. As Richard Brandt explains, whereas individual nor- mative relativism has it that an individual's moral view is correct if he thinks it is correct, social group normative relativism maintains that an indi- vidual's moral view is correct if it is in keeping with the moral views of his social group. 8 The latter is the most common type of normative relativism. Meta-ethical relativism, finally, holds that moral truth or validity is relative to a given moral framework, and that no such framework is truer or more valid than any other framework. As Gilbert Harman puts it, "moral right and wrong (good and bad, justice and injustice, virtue and vice, etc.) are always relative to a choice of moral framework. What is morally right in relation to one moral framework can be morally wrong in relation to a dif- ferent moral framework.