31. The Relativity and Ethnocentricity of Human Rights-32. Human Needs, Human Rights推荐.pdf

31 The Relativity and Ethnocentricity of Human Rights* James Griffin I. Ethical Relativity Ethical relativism, as I shall understand it, makes two claims: first, that ethical judge- ments are made within a framework of basic evaluations, which may take the form of beliefs, preferences, sentiments, and so on; and, second, that there are divergent frame- works for judgements on the same matter, no one framework being most authorita- tive.1 We can then specify the framework further case by case—the basic evaluations of individual persons, of social groups, of cultures, and so on. Ethical relativism, as most commonly expressed, is universal: all ethical judgements are relative to a framework. Its contradictory is therefore particular negative: some are not. I have already argued2 that some ethical judgements—namely, judgements about basic human interests—are objective, where ‘objective’ means dependent not upon a person’s subjective states but upon considerations that would lead all successfully rational persons to the same conclusion. So universal ethical relativism is, I conclude, false. But philosophers tend to treat values as if they were uniform: all are objective, or none is; all are a matter of knowledge, or none is; all are relative to a framework, or none is. But I have also questioned this assumption of uniformity.3 Some complex moral norms, such as ‘Don’t deliberately kill the innocent’, have an element of policy to them, and so lack empirical truth-value, whereas the judgements that a particular human interest is or is not met have one. Relativism need not take a universal form. Consider relativity to the evaluative framework of individuals, based on their different desires and sentiments. Value beliefs can be subjected to criticism b