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Conversing with Straw Men While Ignoring Dictators: A Reply to Roger Ames
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2012
Abstract
In a rebuttal of Ames's critique of his conception of universal human rights, Donnelly asserts that Ames has misrepresented his arguments, creating a straw man from Ames's own preconceived notion of the Western liberal tradition while ignoring the substantive debates. In response to Ames's cultural approach to human rights, Donnelly argues that culture cannot be viewed as static. Structural, political, and economic factors have significant effects upon culture and the rights of each citizen. Donnelly concludes that the more significant cause of China's failure to recognize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not Confucian culture but rather China's own corrupt and dictatorial regime; thus the international community must continue to condemn China's violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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- Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1997
References
1 See Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), chs. 3–8Google Scholar.
2 Forthcoming in Joanne Bauer and Daniel A. Bell, eds., The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights. The essay was originally presented at a 1995 conference in Hakone, Japan on “The Changing Conceptions of Human Rights in East Asia,” convened by the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. Although I am somewhat uncomfortable being forced to defend what is clearly a work in progress, I stand by what I wrote there. In what follows, however, I rely wherever possible on my published workGoogle Scholar.
3 See, for example, Freeman, Michael, “The Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 16 (August 1994), 491–514CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 See, for example, Universal Human Rights, 57–73Google Scholar. Thus I conclude my general theoretical chapter on cultural relativism by noting that “human rights are, to use an appropriately paradoxical phrase, relatively universal” (p. 124).
5 Universal Human Rights, 26Google Scholar.
6 Universal Human Rights, 71Google Scholar.
7 Universal Human Rights, 71 and ch. 5Google Scholar.
8 , “Natural Law and Right in Aquinas' Political Thought,” Western Political Quarterly 33 (December 1980), 520–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A briefer and somewhat more general version of the argument appears in The Concept of Human Rights (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), 45–51Google Scholar. In this same volume (which Ames does cite), I also give detailed consideration to Locke, Burke, Bentham, and Marx. And in Universal Human Rights I devote chapter 5 to Locke.
9 See especially Universal Human Rights, chs. 2, 6, 7Google Scholar.
10 The only particular point Ames makes is to mention in passing (p. 183) my argument that if the rights one has are contingent on or inseparable from social duties, they are not human rights. I stand by that argument: such a view of “human rights” seems to me both conceptually misguided (“wrong”) and politically dangerous, especially in contemporary China. Does Ames accept this definition? If so, let him defend it. But he does no such thing here. He simply criticizes me for arguing against itGoogle Scholar.
11 I should also note that, although cultural identity has not been a central concern, I do attempt to set out my views on the subject briefly in Universal Human Rights, 154–60Google Scholar.
12 Almost as troubling is the fact that Ames does not attempt to convince us that Confucianism is a better way to confront the depredations of China's Stalinist bureaucrats than the internationally recognized human rights of the Universal DeclarationGoogle Scholar.
13 The selective reliance on agreeable elements of the past while ignoring almost every problematic or disagreeable element in either the Chinese past or present also undercuts Ames's appeal for Americans to learn and borrow from China. If the “malaise [that] pervades American life” (p. 179) is indeed rooted in the “expansion of the national government structure” (p. 180), I can think of few less likely sources for a remedy than contemporary China, ruled by the CCP and the PLA. If the problem in America is inadequate respect for and attention to civil liberty (p. 180), are there more than a handful of less promising places to look for a remedy than totalitarian China?Google Scholar