Introduction to Political Theory

Intuition and consensus (Donnelly)

Jack Donnelly, in his book Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (2003),

defends what he terms weak cultural relativism, which entails strong universalism.

Weak cultural relativism assumes that human rights are universally applicable but

allows that ‘the relativity of human nature, communities and rules checks potential

excesses of universalism’. Strong cultural relativism holds that culture is the principal

source of the validity of a right or rule, and ‘at its furthest extreme, strong cultural

relativism accepts a few basic rights with virtually universal application but allows

such a wide range of variation that two entirely justifiable sets of rights might overlap

only slightly’ (Donnelly, 2003: 90).

The looseness of the language of the UDHR Donnelly regards as a strength. The

UDHR is a general statement of orienting value, and it is at this level – and only

at this level – that a moral consensus exists. For example, Articles 3–12 ‘are so

clearly connected to basic requirements of human dignity, and are stated in

sufficiently general terms, that virtually every morally defensible contemporary form

of social organization must recognize them’ (Donnelly, 2003: 94). Below we discuss

the ‘rational entailment’ argument, of which there are several versions, but the

central idea is that certain standards of treatment can be derived from the conditions

which humans require for action, and as such a society cannot deny those standards

without also denying the preconditions for its own existence. Donnelly’s statement

has the appearance of such an argument, but in fact he then goes on to appeal to

human intuition. By ‘intuition’ is meant a strong sense of, or belief in, the rightness

or wrongness of something, but without the ability to give a complete explanation

of that sense or belief. Donnelly identifies the intuition that people should be treated

in a certain way irrespective of their culture by means of a question:

In twenty years of working with issues of cultural relativism, I have developed

a simple test that I pose to sceptical audiences. What rights in the Universal

Declaration, I ask, does your society or culture reject? Rarely has a single full

right (other than the right to private property) been rejected.

(Donnelly, 2003: 94)

He recalls a visit to Iran in 2001, where he posed the above question to three

different audiences. In all three cases discussion moved quickly on to the issue of

freedom of religion, and in particular to atheism, and to apostasy by Muslims, which

the UDHR permits, but Iran prohibits. Donnelly observed that the discussion

was not about freedom of religion, but rather about Western versus Islamic

interpretations of that right.

Particular human rights are like ‘essentially contested concepts’ in which there

are differing interpretations but strong overlap between them. So long as ‘outliers’

are few, we can talk about a consensus around human rights. Such ‘outliers’ would

be cultures that do not accept a particular human right. The fact that increasing

numbers of states are prepared to sign up to the UDHR, and to later, and more

specific, United Nations conventions Donnelly takes to be evidence of a dynamic

consensus in favour of human rights. He also observes that when Western states

criticise non-Western states for apparently barbaric practices that criticism is

sometimes accompanied by a serious lack of self-awareness; in 1994 18-year-old

Chapter 18 Human rights 411