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Jack Donnelly: Cultural Relativism And Universalism On Human Rights

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The article of Jack Donnelly is an attempt to explain and link two different theories: cultural relativism and universalism when concerning human rights. At first glance those two are contradictory and one approach must necessarily exclude the another. The author explains that they may be linked and convergent as long as both radical variations are condemned and viewed as irrelevant. Jack Donnelly is a strong opponent of and rejects any radicalism and in his article he seeks an intermediate position, which will open the way for – from the one side - admitting cultural diversity (and its importance) and enforcing basic human rights from the another. He states that radicalism in any form is indefensible and presents various arguments for this supposition. Human rights are universal by definition, they are based on the concept of dignity of every human being - when discussing the issue it is the first assumption of the very concept of it. Radical universalism presume that the nature of every human being is the same and we can derive from that fact some sorts of values and rights which should be protected worldwide. On the other hand, the author states while defending relativists ' position, we cannot deny the fact that culture (which differs from place to place) has a great impact on human nature. Traditions and customs affect it even on the biological level – for instance trends in choosing a marriage partner with specific qualities …show more content…

Those two are presented as the end points of the continuum and between them there are two varieties of relativism: weak cultural relativism (which responds to strong univeralism) and its strong modification (which is the equivalent of weak universalism). The author explains the assumptions of each variety but he also reveals that that he is a strong advocate of weak

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