Throughout the readings, I was heavily inclined to write a blog post about how Sen's arguments in chapter 6 were extremely similar to Brettschneider's. Really no surprise there. However, upon reading chapter 10, I felt somewhat disappointed by Sen's defense against the "Asian" values and wanted to know if others felt the same. In this chapter, Sen outlines three main critiques to the systematic implementation of human rights. One of these he calls the cultural critique. While presenting this critique, it seems that it would be a serious contender in challenging the idea of human rights through such questions as "what if some cultures do not regard rights as particularly valuable, compared to other prepossessing virtues or qualities?" (228). This was a question that was brought up in seminar on Tuesday as well.
Sen then proceeds to say that "perhaps the most prominent of these is based on the idea of the alleged skepticism of Asian values toward human rights" (228). Furthermore, he devotes several pages to attempt to illustrate how there really are no strictly "Asian" values because of the diversity in people in Asia as well as the ideas throughout the countries, and even those that we typically view as Asian views, such as Confucianism, are not necessarily anti-human rights. On its own, I believe this to be a successful defeat of the idea of Asian values as an obstacle in the way of human rights. And yet, I think that the question of what if some cultures do not value human rights has been left unanswered.
All that Sen has done here, in my eyes, is point out that this is not really as big of a problem as we think it is. We are coincidentally lucky that none of the cultures that we are examining are fundamentally opposed to human rights. And through globalization and the sharing of ideas, this threat will become smaller and smaller. This is all well and good, but what if the threat unexpectedly raises its head? What if we do come across a country or culture, no matter how small, that is fundamentally opposed to human rights? What answer has Sen given us to still assert the universality of human rights against this culture's will?
Hey Kyla!
ReplyDeleteI love this question: what if a culture utterly rejects human rights? Does this defeat human rights or say something else?
It actually reminds me of our discussion of Strawson regarding what morality is. To be moral is to be human. To be outside of that community, to be psychopathic, would be to lack some sort of basic human empathy. It seems, part of Sen's argument for universality is that freedom is, universally, innately human. Sen's inductive argument was quite persuasive in demonstrating that across cultures and over human history tolerance and freedom was being preached. Certainly, Sen acknowledges that leaders often are the ones espousing the values of the authoritarian mindset, but he argues that freedom is not unique to any culture, it is what makes us human. Perhaps, the answer to your question would be similar to our conclusion regarding Strawson: they would be lacking in some sort of fundamental humanity; they would be outside the moral community. We would be forced to be intolerant of intolerance. The word "culture" comes from the latin root "colere" which means to "tend" or "cultivate." I'm not sure a "culture" -- not in the minds of its leaders, but in the moral fibers of its members -- that is fundamentally opposed to something innately human could be considered a culture at all.