Towards an Intercultural Conception of Human Rights

In recent years, a number of Asian governments, most prominently those of China, Malaysia, and Singapore, have proclaimed the existence of a set of values specific to Asia. Deep cultural and value differences between Asia and the West, they declare, make it impossible to judge governments around the world by the same standards. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, among others, have offered Asian values as justification for the curtailment of “Western-style” human rights in the name of economic development and social harmony.

The autocratic natures of the regimes that promote the idea of Asian values certainly provide grounds for dismissing the Asian values argument as politically inspired sophism. Yet, there are serious intellecutual issues at stake. They include disputes regarding the merits of moral relativism versus universalism and of communitarianism versus liberalism, as well as the empirical question of whether a liberal, rights-based political system is detrimental to economic development. The importance of these debates is borne out by a glance at the list of contributors to The East Asian Challenge For Human Rights, which features distinguished contemporary thinkers, such as Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen and eminent political philosopher Charles Taylor.

The East Asian Challenge, a collection of fourteen essays edited by Joanne R. Bauer and Daniel A. Bell, effectively highlights assumptions, aspirations, and problems of the Asian values debate. It is the product of a multi-year dialogue on human rights among prominant intellectuals from North America and East Asia. In a series of workshops the participants examined “such issues as the relationships among development, regime type, and human rights; the role of cultural traditions in both shaping conceptions of human rights and protecting human rights; competition among rights, especially during times of economic and political instability, and how conceptions of democracy and human rights are affected by entrenched political cultures.” The volume is distinguished by its comprehensive nature as well as the diversity of voices and approaches it represents. As such, it will be of interest not only to those studying Asia and human rights, but also to those interested in fields as diverse as political theory, globalization, or economic development.

The first three contributions by Inoue Tatsuo, Jack Donnelly, and Amartya Sen, assess the arguments against human rights most often put forth by proponents of Asian values. The core of these arguments is moral relativism: the denial that it is possible to determine the truths of moral beliefs. Two assumptions are critical to the argument. First, all ethical judgments are conditioned or determined by a culture’s particular social, economic, and political history, and this limits their validity to the social and cultural context in which they originated. Advocates of Asian values often point to the relationship between individuals and community as one such historically determined difference. In Asia, they claim, the community takes precedence over individuals, and the Western conception of human rights, with its individualistic assumptions, is destructive to Asia’s social fabric.

The second assumption underlying the case for moral relativism contends that it is impossible to establish any universally acceptable criterion for measuring and comparing values. Hence, all value systems are to be regarded as having equal validity. In fact, it is argued, rights are to be considered a matter of national sovereignty. The West’s attempt to apply universal standards of human rights to developing countries is thus denounced as disguised cultural imperialism.

False Dichotomies

Professor Inoue’s chapter eloquently demonstrates the inauthenticity of the Asian values discourse and criticizes its underlying dichotomies. The argument about Asian values is usually presented as one between Asia and the West. To maintain that there is one single set of Asian values, however, is absurd. Not only are there numerous Asian traditions with fundamentally differing value systems, but for many of these traditions there are competing interpretations. Consequently, Inoue argues that “the concept of Asian values does not convey Asian voices in their...