¹ Arnold, Matthew, Culture and Anarchy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 6.Google Scholar

² On the transition from the “humanist” to the “anthropological” conception of culture, see Stocking, George W. Jr., “Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of Invention,” American Anthropologist, vol. 65, no. 4 (08 1963), pp. 783–99.Google Scholar See also Williams, Raymond, Culture and Society, 1780–1850 (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1959), pp. xiv–xvGoogle Scholar; and Linton, Ralph, The Cultural Basis of Personality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1947), pp. 19–25.Google Scholar

³ See, e.g., Malinowski, Bronislaw, A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), chs. 4, 8–10Google Scholar; and Kluckhohn, Clyde, “Universal Categories of Culture,” in Anthropology Today, ed. Kroeber, A. L. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 516.Google Scholar

⁴ See Geertz, Clifford, The interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 37–43Google Scholar; and Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology: Culture Patterns and Processes (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1963), p. 120.Google Scholar

⁵ Kroeber, A. L. and Kluckhohn, Clyde, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of American Archeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 1952), p. 32.Google Scholar See also Williams, , Culture and Society, pp. 126–39.Google Scholar

⁶ See, e.g., Freeman, Derek, Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).Google Scholar This is a critique of Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1928).Google Scholar See also Rabinow, Paul and Sullivan, William M., eds., Interpretive Social Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).Google Scholar

⁷ For a full statement of the argument, together with replies to objections, see Gewirth, Alan, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), chs. 1–3.Google Scholar For briefer versions of the argument, see Gewirth, , “The Basis and Content of Human Rights,” in Nomos XXIII: Human Rights, ed. Pennock, J. R. and Chapman, J. W. (New York: New York University Press, 1981), pp. 119–47Google Scholar, reprinted in Gewirth, , Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 41–67Google Scholar; Gewirth, , “The Epistemology of Human Rights,” Social Philosophy & Policy, vol. 1, no. 2 (Spring 1984), pp. 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gewirth, , “The Justification of Morality,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 53 (1988), pp. 245–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ The argument for the PGC has received extensive discussion and criticism, to much of which I have replied. For an acute and thorough examination of just about every published objection (to July 1990) that has been brought against the argument, see Beyleveld, Deryck, The Dialectical Necessity of Morality: An Analysis and Defense of Alan Gewirth's Argument to the Principle of Generic Consistency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).Google Scholar

⁹ For a statement and defense of the relativist view here criticized, see Harman, Gilbert, “Moral Relativism Defended,” Philosophical Review, vol. 84 (01 1975), pp. 3–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harman, , “Relativistic Ethics: Morality as Politics,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 3 (1978), pp. 109–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harman, , “Justice and Moral Bargaining,” Social Philosophy & Policy, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Autumn 1983), pp. 114–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Elsewhere, Harman says: “According to the moral relativist, the successful criminal may well have no reason at all not to harm his or her victims” (Harman, , “Is There a Single True Morality?” in Morality, Reason, and Truth, ed. Copp, David and Zimmerman, David [Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985], p. 36).Google Scholar

¹⁰ See the essays collected in Wilson, Bryan R., ed., Rationality (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970)Google Scholar; Hollis, Martin and Lukes, Steven, eds., Rationality and Relativism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982)Google Scholar; and Krausz, Michael and Meiland, Jack W., eds., Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982).Google Scholar See also Gellner, Ernest, Reason and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).Google Scholar

¹¹ See, e.g., Karl Popper's claim that the “rationalist attitude,” with its emphasis on “argument and experience,” rests on an “irrational faith in reason,” in Popper, , The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), vol. 2, pp. 230–31Google Scholar; emphasis in original. See also such critiques of deductive inference as Carroll, Lewis, “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles,” Mind, vol. 4 (1895), pp. 278–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prior, A. N., “The Runabout Inference Ticket,” Analysis, vol. 21 (1960), pp. 38–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dummett, M. A. E., “The Justification of Deduction,” Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 59 (1973).Google Scholar Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein's remark that “the laws of inference can be said to compel us; in the same sense, that is to say, as other laws in human society,” in Wittgenstein, , Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1956), 1, 116, p. 34.Google Scholar The appeal to contradiction in my argument for the PGC has been criticized by Davis, Michael, “Gewirth and the Pain of Contradiction,” Philosophical Forum, vol. 22, no. 3 (Spring 1991), pp. 211–27.Google Scholar I have replied in “Ethics and the Pain of Contradiction,” Philosophical Forum, vol. 23, no. 4 (Summer 1992), pp. 259–77.Google Scholar

¹² Pollis, Adamantia and Schwab, Peter, Human Rights and Cultural Perspectives (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1979), p. 1.Google Scholar See also Milne, A. J. M., Human Rights and Human Diversity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 2–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, for more general discussions, Renteln, Alison Dundes, International Human Rights: Universalism Versus Relativism (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1990), chs. 3,4Google Scholar; and Nickel, James W., Making Sense of Human Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), ch. 4.Google Scholar

¹³ See MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 204ff.Google Scholar; Sandel, Michael J., Liberalism and the limits of Justice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 158ff., 179ff.Google Scholar; and Milne, , Human Rights and Human Diversity, p. 4.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See Hart, H. L. A., “Are There Any Natural Rights?” Philosophical Review, vol. 64 (1955), pp. 176–77, 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berlin, Isaiah, Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 129.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Gewirth, , Reason and Morality, pp. 98–102Google Scholar; Gewirth, , “Human Rights and Conceptions of the Self,” Philosophia (Israel), vol. 18 (1988), pp. 139–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gewirth, , “Rights and Virtues,” Review of Metaphysics, vol. 38 (1985), pp. 745–51.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Gewirth, , Reason and Morality, pp. 98–102.Google Scholar See also Adkins, A. W. H., Moral Values and Political Behaviour in Ancient Greece (London: Chatto and Windus, 1972), p. 104Google Scholar and passim; Tierney, Brian, “Tuck on Rights: Some Medieval Problems,” History of Political Ttiought, vol. 4 (1983), pp. 429–41Google Scholar; and Tiemey, , “Origins of Nalural Rights Language: Texis and Contexts, 1150–1250,” History of Political Thought, vol. 10 (1989), pp. 615–46.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, Book 3, chs. 1–5Google Scholar; Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, 1.2, qus. 6–17.Google Scholar See Donagan, Alan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” in Kretzmann, Norman et al. , eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 642–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ In addition to texts cited below, in n. 28, see, e.g., Cranston, Maurice, What Are Human Rights? (London: Bodley Head, 1973), pp. 66ff.Google Scholar; and Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 29–35.Google Scholar

¹⁹ I have dealt with some of these issues in Reason and Morality, pp. 217–30, 312–27Google Scholar; “Human Rights and Conceptions of the Self”; “Economic Rights,” Philosophical Topics, vol. 14 (1986), pp. 169–83Google Scholar; and “Private Philanthropy and Positive Rights,” Social Philosophy & Policy, vol. 4, no. 2 (Spring 1987), pp. 55–78.Google Scholar

²⁰ I have dealt with the last two problems in some detail in the sections of Reason and Morality on “The Completeness of the Principle,” pp. 327–38Google Scholar, and “Conflicts of Duties,” pp. 338–54.Google Scholar See also my “Ethical Universalisai and Particularism,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 85 (1988), pp. 283–302.Google Scholar

²¹ Malinowski, Bronislaw, “Culture,” in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, eds. Seligman, E. R. A. and Johnson, A. (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1931), vol. 4, p. 645 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

²² Malinowski, Bronislaxv, Freedom and Civilization (New York: Roy Publishers, 1944), pp. 172, 322.Google Scholar See ibid., pp. 191, 201. See also the references to some cultures as upholding slavery and fostering “spiritual frustration,” in Sapir, Edward, “Culture, Genuine and Spurious,” in Sapir, Culture, Language, and Personality: Selected Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), pp. 90, 93.Google Scholar Anthropologists, fearing for their “scientific” objectivity, have generally been very reluctant to criticize other cultures in the name of human rights. Even in the face of the horrors of Nazi Germany revealed after World War II, the American Anthropological Association could produce only an intellectually ineffectual document which asserted that “no technique of qualitatively evaluating cultures has been discovered.… Standards and values are relative to the culture from which they derive” (“Statement on Human Rights,” American Anthropologist, vol. 49 [10–12 1947], pp. 539–43).Google Scholar

²³ See my Reason and Morality, sections on “The Minimal State,” pp. 280–304Google Scholar, “The Method of Consent,” pp. 304–11Google Scholar, and “The Supportive State,” pp. 312–27.Google Scholar See also Gewirth, Alan, “Starvation and Human Rights,” in Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications, pp. 197–217Google Scholar; and “Economic Rights.”

²⁴ Westermarck, Edward, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (London: Macmillan and Co., 1908), vol. 2, p. 742.Google Scholar

²⁵ Shweder, Richard A., Thinking Through Cultures (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1991), p. 16.Google Scholar

²⁶ See Mill, J. S., On Liberty, ch. 3, para. 1.Google Scholar

²⁷ On this issue, which is, of course, the object of a vast literature, see, for a representative discussion, Gittell, Marilyn, “Cultural Pluralism in Higher Education,” Social Policy, vol. 5, no. 4 (11–12 1974), pp. 38–45.Google Scholar

²⁸ See Van Dyke, Vernon, “The Individual, the State, and Ethnic Communities in Political Theory,” in Human Rights and American Foreign Policy, ed. Kommers, D. P. and Loescher, G. D. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 36–62Google Scholar; Waldron, Jeremy, “Can Communal Goods Be Human Rights?” Archives Européennes de Sociologie, vol. 27 (1987), pp. 296–321CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Donnelly, Jack, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), ch. 8.Google Scholar See also Raz, Joseph, “Right-Based Moralities,” in Theories of Rights, ed. Waldron, Jeremy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 182–200.Google Scholar The question of the reducibility of “group rights” to individual rights also reflects the debates over “methodological individualism”: whether and in what way the facts about social wholes can be reduced to facts about their individual members. On this issue, see the essays collected in Modes of Individualism and Collectivism, ed. O'Neill, John (London: Heinemann, 1973), parts 3 and 4.Google Scholar

²⁹ I have discussed some of these issues in “Human Rights and Academic Freedom,” in Morality, Responsibility, and the University: Studies in Academic Ethics, ed. Cahn, Steven M. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 8–31.Google Scholar