Žmogaus teisių dichotomija: universalija ar partikuliarizmas?

Abstract

On the basis of comparative, philosophical and criticism methods, human rights dichotomy is analysed in the paper as a distinctive feature of human rights in the 21st century, underlying the conflict between the conceptions of Western and Eastern human rights.
In the contemporary world the idea of human rights poses the appropriate legal requirements, even though their claiming for being universal is problematic. The universality of human rights is the fruit of the European history. However, the Eastern societies have a great number of specific faiths and values, which are in confrontation with the traditional individualistic system of values of the liberal conception of human rights. The critics of human rights from the Moslem and Asian countries assert that there is an alternative for the existing conception of human rights and that it would be better if their standpoints become universally prevalent. In the opposite case, the ethnic and religious tension will ruin the traditional social structure of the said countries, and individualism as a central axis of the Western conception of human rights will lead to destruction. Thus, a discussion arises whether a conception of human rights is universal and general, whether each cultural tradition may have separate and individual conceptions of human rights. A question is raised whether a conflict exists between the liberal doctrine of the universal human rights and respect for the cultural diversity, i.e. whether the human rights should be universal or not.
Standpoints, criticising the uniform adaptation and validity of human rights, are specified as cultural relativism. They are based on two theses. The first one, the thesis of diversity and difference, denotes that the world is divided into separate, determined, uniform internally and sufficiently different cultural units. The second thesis, that of dependence, asserts that customary, moral convictions and the conception of human rights are predetermined by the initial and necessarily different cultural obligations.
It is possible to discern the contradiction between the West and the East when human rights in their modern form are considered to be created by the West and adapted to the limited number of non-western countries, and the contradiction between the North and the South, foreseeing the collision between the Western Christian and the Eastern Islamic civilisation.
Approaches of the representatives of cultural relativism are greatly diverse. The adherents of strong relativism maintain that human rights are the ideal of the Western civilisation and therefore they are not suitable in the same way for the non-western civilisations. The supporters of the form of weak relativism accept formally human rights as universal values, but they state that cultural diversities should be enforced among the representatives of the culture – acknowledging that cultures have valuable norms and insights, and seeking an intercultural understanding, we may enrich the diversity of contexts and concepts of human rights and pass over to a new form of universality.
The universality of human rights is disputed at several levels: concerning the essence and contents of human rights, concerning different interpretations of human rights, concerning specific differences of forms in implementing human rights in different cultures.
The paper seeks to justify the doubt that cultural relativism responds to the questions what human rights, arising out of the non-liberal societies, would look like and how, in the presence of the radically different forms of the humanity existence, it is possible to decide what values should outweigh and oust other values. In law, like in the society, the existing political and ethnic framework cannot encompass the diversity of all the groups and subjects, for which the law system should serve. The diversity of culture and cultural traditions, the diversity of economic and political activity spheres, the rate of social and economic changes, transforming the society, allows the assertion to be made that we cannot distinguish one (Asian) cultural perspective. Since culture cannot cover, fix all the values and convictions that are considered as internal properties of that culture, culture cannot also undertake future obligations and standpoints. Thus, a conflict between universalism and cultural relativism is exaggerated. Human rights are universal intercultural values; therefore the concept of human rights is universal and general, i.e. a universal value.