Human Rights and the Westernizing Illusion Amartya Sen

 

[AMARTYA SEN is Master of Trinity College at Cambridge University and former Lamont University Professor at Harvard. This article is a revised version of the Commencement Address given at Bard College on May 24, 1997. It originally appeared in the Harvard International Review, Summer 98, Vol. 20 Issue 3.]

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Is it right, the question is often asked, that non-Western societies should be encouraged and pressed to conform to "Western values of liberty and freedom"? Is this not cultural imperialism? The answer, of course, is that the notion of human rights builds on the idea of a shared humanity. These rights are not derived from citizenship of any country, or membership of any nation, but taken as entitlements of every human being. The concept of universal human rights is, in this sense, a uniting idea. Yet the subject of human rights has ended up being a veritable battleground of political debates and ethical disputes, particularly in their application to non-Western societies. Why so?

The explanation for this is sometimes sought in the cultural differences that allegedly divide the world, a theory referred to as the "clash of civilizations" or a "battle between cultures." It is often asserted that Western countries recognize many human rights, related for example to political liberty, that have no great appeal in Asian countries. Many people see a big divide here. The temptation to think in these regional and cultural terms is extremely strong in the contemporary world.

Are there really such firm differences on this subject in terms of traditions and cultures across the world? It is certainly true that governmental spokesmen in several Asian countries have not only disputed the relevance and cogency of universal human rights, they have frequently done this disputing in the name of "Asian values," as a contrast with Western values. The claim is that in the system of so- called Asian values, for example in the Confucian system, there is greater emphasis on order and discipline, and less on rights and freedoms.

Many Asian spokesmen have gone on to argue that the call for universal acceptance of human rights reflects the imposition of Western values on other cultures. For example, the censorship of the press may be more acceptable, it is argued, in Asian society because of its greater emphasis on discipline and order. This position was powerfully articulated by a number of governmental spokesmen from Asia at the Vienna Conference on Human Rights in 1993. Some positive things happened at that conference, including the general acceptance of the importance of eliminating economic deprivation and some recognition of social responsibility in this area. But on the subject of political and civil rights the conference split through the middle, largely on regional lines, with several Asian governments rejecting the recognition of basic political and civil rights.

If one influence in separating out human rights as specifically "Western" comes from the pleading of governmental spokesmen from Asia, another influence relates to the way this issue is perceived in the West itself. There is a tendency in Europe and the United States to assume, if only implicitly, that it is in the West--and only in the West--that human rights have been valued from ancient times. This allegedly unique feature of Western civilization has been, it is assumed, an alien concept elsewhere. By stressing regional and cultural specificities, these Western theories of the origin of human rights tend to reinforce, rather inadvertently, the disputation of universal human rights in non- Western societies. By arguing that the valuing of toleration, personal liberty, and civil rights is a particular contribution of Western civilization, Western advocates of these rights often give ammunition to the non-Western critics of human rights. The advocacy of an allegedly "alien" idea in non-Western societies can indeed look like cultural imperialism sponsored by the West.

How much truth is there in this grand cultural dichotomy between Western and non-Western civilizations on the subject of liberty and rights? I believe there is rather little sense in such a grand dichotomy. Neither the claims in favor of the specialness of "Asian values" by governmental spokesmen from Asia, nor the particular claims for the uniqueness of "Western values" by spokesmen from Europe and America can survive much historical examination and critical scrutiny.

In seeing Western civilization as the natural habitat of individual freedom and political democracy, there is a tendency to extrapolate backwards from the present. Values that the European Enlightenment and other recent developments since the eighteenth century have made common and widespread are often seen, quite arbitrarily, as part of the long- run Western heritage, experienced in the West over millennia. The concept of universal human rights in the broad general sense of entitlements of every human being is really a relatively new idea, not to be much found either in the ancient West or in ancient civilizations elsewhere.

There are, however, other ideas, such as the value of toleration, or the importance of individual freedom, which have been advocated and defended for a long time, often for the selected few. For example, Aristotle's writings on freedom and human flourishing provide good background material for the contemporary ideas of human rights. But there are other Western philosophers (Plato and St. Augustine, for example) whose preference for order and discipline over freedom was no less pronounced than Confucius' priorities. Also, even those in the West who did emphasize the value of freedom did not, typically, see this as a fight of all human beings. Aristotle's exclusion of women and slaves is a good illustration of this non-universality.

In this excellent article Amartya Sen rebuts the notion that human rights require the adoption of "Western values" and argues the values and concepts that underpin human rights as we currently understand them are really universal.

It is well worth reading the whole article.

Read more on my blog, Barnabas Quotidianus.