Ethics, Human Rights and Culture Their Compatibility and Inter-Dependence

by Li, Xiaorong

• ISBN13: 9781403985484
• ISBN10: 1403985480
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-03-17
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book engages with crucial topics within ethics: whether values are universal or culturally relativistic, and whether any shared human values are real or can only be imagined. It approaches these topics with an inventive and original understanding of culture as developed in recent anthropological work. One outcome is the revelation of a possibility to validate certain common ethical standards (such as human rights) despite culturally incongruent perspectives. By questioning their presumptions about culture, it undermines the case for normative cultural relativism and moral skepticism. Another outcome is a plausible case for the so-called 'oxymoron': cultural human rights. Essential to this case is the realization that efforts to implement common ethical norms must invest in the development of cultural capital. Giving thriving cultural communities their due in their capacity to sustain protection of human rights, however, must not overshadow such communities' dependency on certain basic civil liberty rights for survival. The historically contingent movement toward a 'one-world', that is nonetheless culturally colorful, presents a compelling case for taking seriously a set of shared minimalist human values. Reflecting on a range of real-life ethical scenarios, from honor-killing to torture, where different traditions or foreign customs are a factor, the author raises challenging questions and takes readers to uncharted territories within ethical debate. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Xiaorong Li is Research Scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland at College Park

Table of Contents

List of Figures	ix
Acknowledgements	x
Introduction	xiii
Part I Living with Cultural Paradoxes	1	(72)
Paradoxes of Culture	3	(22)
Why 'culture?'	3	(6)
A consensus view	9	(5)
Three paradoxes	14	(5)
Cultural 'community' and 'tradition'	19	(6)
The Ethical Significance of Culture	25	(29)
Qualifying ethical significance	25	(4)
The ethical significance of tradition	29	(4)
Of character traits	33	(5)
Of cultivated sentiments	38	(9)
Of community	47	(7)
A Cultural Critique of Cultural Relativism	54	(19)
Case closed?	54	(3)
Discontents with philosophers' critiques	57	(7)
The cultural critique	64	(5)
Case against irrational cultural relativism	69	(4)
Part II Transcending Dichotomies	73	(46)
Destructive of Cultural Community?	75	(27)
The collapse of 'individual vs. collective'	76	(9)
Human rights to culture: an oxymoron?	85	(7)
Prerequisites for viable communities	92	(10)
Intolerant of Cultural Pluralism?	102	(17)
Pluralism with moral purpose	104	(7)
The intolerance of toleration	111	(8)
Part III Validating Rights: The View from Anywhere	119	(92)
Cross-Cultural Via the Inter-Subjective	121	(22)
The return to the ordinary	121	(6)
Between objectivity and subjectivity	127	(4)
Identifying effective equivalents	131	(4)
Uncovering core functions	135	(5)
Ruling out corrupt judgments	140	(3)
From Human Values to Inherent Rights	143	(23)
Ask us why we all agree	143	(12)
The leap of conscience	155	(4)
Constructing rights	159	(7)
From Practical Reasons to Extrinsic Rights	166	(19)
Rights as instruments	166	(6)
Integrity and trade-off	172	(10)
Contingent universality	182	(3)
An Unfair Utopia?	185	(26)
'Unrealistic,' 'Unfair,' and other criticisms	185	(5)
'Centrifugal circles' of duties	190	(9)
Fairness, impartiality, and institutions	199	(12)
Postscript	211	(7)
Notes	218	(34)
Bibliography	252	(12)
Index	264