idea understood and embraced by people all over the world. Yet someone might answer back that, if fully worked-out theories of human rights first emerged in the West, that is enough to mark the idea as Western: a non-Westerner strongly identifying with his or her non-Western group therefore has reason to regard the idea as alien.21 Such a preoccupation with the historical pedigree of ideas, though unnecessary and unfortunate, exerts surprising influence (and is a major source of cultural essentialism).
Second, some people are shy about making moral assertions in the face of potential disagreement. They fear that there is something arrogant about passing judgment on the behavior of others. Yet urgent matters are at stake. Should prisoners be spared cruel and humiliating treatment? Do the accused have the right to a fair trial? Should girls be educated? To withhold judgment is to act from a misplaced sense of decorum. When those otherwise withholding judgment have their attention drawn to actual people whose lives are affected by these questions, their principled detachment tends to fade (as it should).
Behind the reluctance to condemn or dismiss views contrary to human rights may lie a worthy impulse, namely, an openness to dissent and disagreement. Trouble emerges when, striving to be humble, we allow dialogue to become deference, and when, in deference to “what other people think,” we no longer challenge each other to think harder, or no longer encourage thinking at all. An “emperor’s new clothes” aspect can creep into these discussions. The worst is to subsume people under their “cultures,” and to defer to cultures rather than people. The practice becomes internalized when people refuse to think for themselves, and leave all thinking to be done by their “culture.”
Cultural relativism about human rights is sometimes related to guilt over the history of Western crimes against non-Western peoples. Guilt is appropriate, but rejecting universal human rights is not, since the crimes were themselves massive violations of human rights, and need to be condemned as such. It is of course true that efforts to promote human rights transnationally can become self-defeating or destructive when the local context is poorly understood or when talk of human rights masks a hidden agenda (and not only then). There is a potential for human rights discourse to abet overbearing, even imperialist, policies, and indeed policies that entail serious violations of human rights. I do not think this problem is a reason to reject human rights per se, but it obliges us to think more carefully about the responsible promotion of human rights.22 My book is intended as one contribution to this effort. I argue that one check on the danger of overbearing policies is the construction of reciprocal human rights regimes in which participating countries understand that standards applied to others can also be applied to themselves.
The human rights idea, as has often been pointed out, is not a totalizing doctrine. It is not a comprehensive blueprint for what to think or how to live. It deliberately leaves many areas open for individual and collective judgment, valuing people’s ability to decide important matters on their own. It is therefore compatible with a wide range of ethical, political, and religious viewpoints. All it does is erect certain limits: not to impose great suffering, not to stifle individual autonomy, not to treat persons as mere means, and not to deny equality of moral status.
Of course not everyone believes in human rights. Personal freedom is the value most frequently contested—whether in the name of tradition, community, or religion. Some of the fiercest and most determined opposition comes from religious fundamentalists who believe themselves authorized to coerce others into scripturally required forms of belief and behavior. This is a tyrannical attitude, rightly resisted, because it forces other people to conform their own lives to religious views they do not share. On the other hand, the conflict between autonomy and tradition is sometimes exaggerated. The right to autonomy does not prohibit individuals from adopting traditional lifestyles; it prohibits their being forced to do so. To those readers who might question a universal human right to autonomy, I would ask: Would you be willing to give up the right to autonomy, to let someone else dictate how you should live your life? If not, why would you be willing to deny that right to others?
It is a curious fact that arguments against universal human rights often draw inspiration from a principle central to the human rights idea. The principle is autonomy: living according to one’s own values. The idea of universal human rights is accused of being coercive, by imposing some people’s values on others. This gets things backwards. The human rights idea claims that individuals should be allowed to pursue their own vision of a good life.23 Insisting on universal human rights is not about imposing some people’s values on others. It is about preventing the imposition of some people’s values on others.24
The Force of a Human Rights Claim
Some people claim that human rights routinely or frequently conflict.25 For example, it is claimed that the right to privacy conflicts with the right to freedom of expression, or that the right to economic subsistence conflicts with the right to private property, or that the right to be presumed innocent conflicts with the right to protection from violent assault. However, I do not think this is the best way to understand human rights.
We name human rights by the interests they protect, but the content of a human right is defined by (1) the moral permissions granted to the rights bearer (“correlative permissions”) and (2) the duties assigned to other people (“correlative duties”). Neither correlative permissions nor correlative duties are unlimited. My right to life implies that I may defend myself from a violent attacker, that you have a duty not to kill me, and that a nearby police officer has a duty to protect me from being killed. But it does not permit me to raid other people’s bodies for their organs. Nor does it give you a duty to donate your liver or to block the assassin’s bullet with your body. Your reasonable interest in staying alive and remaining healthy limits the risk and sacrifice you must bear for the sake of my life. Diverse moral considerations extending beyond the interests of the rights bearer determine the content of the correlative permissions and duties.
When we say that someone’s human rights have been violated, our exact meaning is not that the rights bearer is unable to enjoy the substance of his or her right but rather that someone else has violated a correlative duty owed to the rights bearer. (Correlative duties tend to be more salient than correlative permissions in human rights discourse, because we usually have our attention drawn to human rights by the fear that they will be violated.) The concept of human rights violations refers not to prima facie rights (defined by the interest of the rights bearer) but to all-things-considered rights (defined by the boundaries of the right, that is, the reach of the correlative permissions and duties).26 The key point is that the characterization of an all-things-considered right, and therefore the definition of a human rights violation, is preceded by a consideration of all relevant moral factors. This is why human rights claims have a morally conclusive character. To cite a human rights violation is to classify the behavior and policy in question as morally unacceptable. Defenses are not allowed, because all defenses were considered prior to our classification of the behavior as a violation of human rights.
The articles of famous human rights charters sometimes limit themselves to the statement of a prima facie right. An example is the right to life in the Universal Declaration. Article 3 states: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” While the correlative duties are not spelled out, there is a tacit understanding that we know and agree what some of them are and could uncontroversially state them if asked. We find a more complete (though not fully complete) description of correlative duties in human rights treaties, constitutional bills of rights, legislative statutes, and judicial rulings. Even in the major charters, however, some correlative duties are spelled out. For example, Article 4 of the Universal Declaration states, “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude,” while Article 5 states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” This means that it is always wrong to practice slavery or inflict torture or ill-treatment. Note, however, that this is not all that the articles convey, because state officials have additional positive duties to protect persons from being enslaved and
