of the values underlying what I call the “public conception.” All the same, they tend to place heavy demands on our intellects—that is, they can be difficult to understand, and each is premised on the denial of at least some of the others. So focusing on these deeper justifications can bring uncertainty and dissension. It is worth recalling the existence of an “overlapping consensus”13 on a set of core principles that make sense of, help explain, and render coherent the human rights idea, even if the search for reasons behind the principles leaves us perplexed and divided.
Some people, struck by the clash of different people’s philosophical and religious worldviews, may say that collective human rights discourse should avoid talk of justification altogether. This goes too far in the opposite direction, and threatens to make belief in human rights seem accidental, arbitrary, contingent, and optional. Without a public justification, we cannot explain to one another the point of human rights, or have a shared basis for determining which items do and do not belong in a list of human rights, and our confidence that people really have human rights may begin to fade.
The fact is that we do care about people’s vulnerability to calamity, and people’s ability to make their own choices in life (not have others decide for them). We care that people be spared the most severe griefs, terrors, and humiliations. We care that their capacity to think, decide, and act not be forced down by the overriding preferences of others. For some of us, this is a moral starting point; for others, an inference from prior moral, religious, or philosophical premises. In either case, these are robust convictions, difficult to shake, which we have little reason to doubt, and which supply their own motivating power.
As befits a public conception of human rights, nothing about this story is original. The idea that security and autonomy are the two fundamental interests underpinning human rights has been invoked by many thinkers, though in different ways. Ronald Dworkin writes, “Government must treat those whom it governs with concern, that is, as human beings, who are capable of suffering and frustration, and with respect, that is, as human beings who are capable of forming and acting on intelligent conceptions of how their lives should be lived.”14 George Kateb echoes this idea, though he notes as a third feature of the human condition our capacity to treat others as equals: “Public and formal respect for rights registers and strengthens awareness of three constitutive facts of being human: every person is a creature capable of feeling pain, and is a free agent capable of having a free being, of living a life that is one’s own and not somebody else’s idea of how a life should be lived, and is a moral agent capable of acknowledging that what one claims for oneself as a right one can claim only as an equal to everyone else.”15 The idea makes clear and immediate sense. Major human rights declarations and manifestos acquire a new coherence when they are understood in terms of security, autonomy, inviolability, and equality.
In distinguishing between public and philosophical conceptions of human rights, I do not mean to disparage the latter. To review: a public conception justifies human rights by reference to a widely (not universally) shared set of principles but suspends inquiry into the justification of those principles themselves. A philosophical conception seeks to supply human rights with a deeper and more rigorous justification. (Both approaches may be contrasted with a “superficial” approach that forswears justification altogether.) The disadvantage of each approach corresponds to the strength of the other. The benefit of a public conception is that it commands wider (though of course not universal) agreement. This benefit is enormously significant, because human rights become more secure as more people believe in them. Widespread principled agreement allows us to get on with the task of teaching, promoting, defending, implementing, and enforcing human rights. The cost is that deeper inquiry into the meaning of human rights is suspended. While the cost of a philosophical conception is the narrowing of consensus, the potential gain is enhanced understanding, which may improve and bolster the public conception over the long term (but which is valuable even if it does not). Moreover, we face difficult questions when it comes to the full specification of human rights, and philosophical conceptions may help us arrive at the best answers. Though I rely on a public conception of human rights in this discussion, philosophical conceptions are also needed in public deliberation.16 Both approaches are needed; both influence and inform each other; and it would be impossible to draw a sharp line between them.17
The Relativist Challenge
Is the idea of universal human rights undermined by appeal to cultural relativism? The claim would be that it shows insufficient respect for cultural diversity. Packed into that claim are several premises: (1) that the world contains distinct cultures; (2) that some cultures reject the idea of human rights, at least in part; and (3) that it is wrong or unreasonable to assert the universality of human rights over the dissent of particular cultures.
I believe each of these premises is mistaken. The third premise presupposes that cultures should have the final say on questions of morality. But every culture is a mixture of good and bad. The aspects of a culture that permit or require human rights violations are among the aspects that ought to be reformed. Awareness that cultures are flawed is one reason why cultures can change from within—why, for example, feminists have made progress in challenging patriarchal norms embedded in their own cultures. If one denies that cultures contain anything bad, one must say that internal criticism of a culture is always mistaken and that no reform achieved through internal criticism, for example, the promotion of sex equality, represents progress. These claims are implausible.
The problem with the second premise (that some cultures reject human rights) is that it presupposes the first (that the world contains distinct cultures). Reference to “cultures” in the plural18 conveys a picture of a world in which social groups (typically defined by nation, region, tribe, ethnicity, or religion) are the bearers of stable, coherent, and distinctive systems of belief. Implied is an essentialist understanding of culture—culture as a belief system that one inherits along with one’s group membership. (Individuals may switch cultures, along with group membership, but this is the exception, and requires special effort.) Individuals receive their beliefs from the groups to which they belong.19
This is a misleading picture. It denies or discounts the ability of individuals to learn from, influence, and be influenced by members of other groups. Worse, it denies the ability of individuals to think for themselves, to question and sometimes reject the views of local authorities. Yet these things happen, and they make a cumulative impact. The observable result is heterogeneity of belief within groups and overlap of belief across groups.20 The longer the process unfolds, the less meaningful it becomes to speak of “cultures” as corresponding to social groups defined by nation, region, tribe, ethnicity, and religion. (Moreover, some people prefer not to be identified with ascriptive groups at all.)
Cultural essentialism is least persuasive when it claims that the idea of human rights is culturally bounded. Belief in human rights travels with particular ease: wherever human rights can be discussed without threat of violence or sanction (and sometimes even in the face of these threats), there will be people who believe in human rights. If some of us believe in freedom of religion or the wrongness of the death penalty while local religious or political authorities believe the opposite, what is the position of “our” culture? So long as “culture” refers to our nation, region, tribe, ethnicity, or religion, there is no coherent answer to the question. To avoid such indeterminacy, cultural essentialism tends to associate culture with authority and tradition. It carries a conservative bias, and does not seem bothered that the traditional views are often shored up by coercion.
Why are people still drawn to cultural relativism? One reason is the grip of cultural essentialism. Once the picture takes hold of the world as a mosaic of different cultures, it appears difficult to shake. I would mention two other factors: (1) group identity, and (2) a generalized reluctance to pass moral judgment.
First, group identity. The thought is that if human rights are a “Western concept,” non-Westerners cannot embrace the idea as their own. To this we should reply that human
