Human rights: Both universal and relative (A Reply to Michael Goodhart)

Human Rights Quarterly

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 194-204

  Donnelly, Jack ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF DENVER   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 39749129898     PISSN: 02750392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2008.0001     Document Type: Note

References (45)

1. Michael Goodhart, Neither Relative nor Universal: A Response to Donnelly, 30 HUM. RTS. Q. 183 (2008), hereinafter referred to as "MG."
2. Jack Donnelly, The Relative Universality of Human Rights, 29 HUM. RTS. Q. 281 (2007), hereinafter referred to as "JD."
3. Oxford English Dictionary. The American Heritage Dictionary has almost identical definitions, although this, which is third in the Oxford, is first in the American Heritage, and the first Oxford definition is second in the American Heritage.
4. MG at 184.
5. MG at 185.
6. Id.
7. MG at 192.
8. MG at 185.
9. I worry when Goodhart writes of my "defense of human rights universality." MG at 190. I do not defend "universality" without adjectives. And I "defend" particular forms of universality only because internationally recognized human rights today are in fact universal in these senses. For the same reason, though, I "defend" (certain kinds of) relativity.
10. Id.
11. JD at 282.
12. Goodhart also objects to my conceptual claim that human rights are held by all humans. MG at 186., noting that "this feature is not common to all accounts of human rights." But I was trying to describe not the full range of philosophical accounts but the ordinary sense of the term. The first four definitions of "human" as an adjective in the OED are: "Of, belonging to, or characteristic of mankind; " "Of the nature of humans." "Belonging or relative to human beings;" "Having or showing the qualities or attributes proper to or distinctive of humans." And The American Heritage Dictionary defines "human rights" as "The basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled." In other words, my account is completely standard. (Even Goodhart draws attention to the fact that human rights are "available to anyone" (MG at 191, 193) - which I at least take to mean that he in fact agrees that everyone (all humans) have them.) And rights held by all humans clearly are universal in the sense of extending over an entire class.
13. MG at 186.
14. Id.
15. JD at 281.
16. JD at 292.
17. JD at 282 (emphasis added).
18. MG at 187.
19. JD at 288.
20. MG at 187,
21. JD at 287-288.
22. JD. at 284-85 n. 3-13 cites several examples of such arguments.
23. MG at 188.
24. Id.
25. If human rights were anthropologically universal, that universality would be contingent and relative (and incomplete). This is quite irrelevant, though, to whether human rights are anthropologically universal.
26. MG at 188.
27. MG at 189.
28. Id.
29. Id.
30. See supra note 12.
31. MG at 189.
32. Id.
33. Id.
34. Id.
35. Elsewhere as well (MG at 185, 186) Goodhart claims, with no argument or ontological warrant, that something I am talking about "really" is something else.
36. MG at 189.
37. Id.
38. See, e.g., Andrew J. Nathan, Universalism: A Particularistic Account, in NEGOTIATING CULTURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS (Lynda Bell, Andrew J. Nathan & Ilan Peleg eds., 2001); Ann-Belinda S. Preis, Human Rights as Cultural Practice: An Anthropological Critique, 18 HUM. RTS. Q. (1996); Bhikhu Parekh, Non-ethnocentric Universalism, in HUMAN RIGHTS IN GLOBAL POLITICS (Tim Dunne & Nicholas J. Wheeler eds., 1999); Eva Brems, Reconciling Universality and Diversity in International Human Rights Law, in HUMAN RIGHTS WITH MODESTY: THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALISM (András Sajó ed., 2004); Fred Halliday, Relativism and Universalism in Human Rights: The Case of the Islamic Middle East, 43 POL. STUD. 152 (1995); David R. Penna & Patricia J. Campbell, Human Rights and Culture: Beyond Universality and Relativism, 19 THIRD WORLD Q. 7 (1998).
39. MG at 193.
40. My article could be read as implying that the sources of functional, overlapping consensus, and international legal universality go a long way towards explaining the contemporary appeal of internationally recognized human rights.
41. MG at 185, 190.
42. MG at 185. Goodhart also repeatedly speaks of the legitimacy of human rights, in the singular. See, e.g., MG at 189, 190, 191, 192, 193.
43. JD at 289-91; JACK DONNELLY, UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 18-21, 40-43, 51-53 (2d ed. 2003).
44. Goodhart claims that overlapping consensus and convergence are very different things. MG at 187 n.19. "Converge," however, in the first two definitions in the OED, means "'To tend to one point from different places'; to tend to meet in a point; to approach nearer together," and "To tend to meet in a common result or point of operation." To tend to one point from different places and to tend to meet in a common result is exactly what occurs in an overlapping consensus.
45. I might not object were Goodhart to unpack the idea of global appeal, identifying different grounds of appeal to different groups, in a way analogous to my separation of various forms of universality and relativity. My problem is with his undifferentiated appeal to a single factor that ostensibly is enough alone.