Human rights and cultural diversity: Rawls, Taylor, Habermas

This dissertation develops an approach to human rights that is sensitive to both the need for a global rule of law and to cultural difference. I argue that intercultural dialogue is an essential part of working out an interpretation of human rights that is acceptable to a broad range of cultures. I develop this position through critical engagement with three recent philosophical approaches to the intercultural validity of human rights: John Rawls's Law of Peoples, Charles Taylor's dialogical and hermeneutic approach, and Jurgen Habermas's discourse theory.; Chapter 1 introduces some of the contemporary cultural challenges to human rights and distinguishes different strands of universality in the idea of universal human rights.; Chapter 2 examines Rawls's idea of a "political conception" of human rights, which attempts to make human rights more acceptable to non-Western perspectives. I argue that his minimalist account undermines the credibility of human rights and that although he attempts to seriously consider non-Western perspectives, his non-dialogical account fails to adequately engage them.; Chapter 3 turns to Taylor's hermeneutic approach; he emphasizes the need for cultures to remain open to critical reformulation and cross-cultural dialogue. A hermeneutic perspective is essential to analyzing the process of constructing a global consensus. However, I argue that this approach threatens to undermine the normative authority and conceptual determinacy of human rights, and fails to adequately address their legal and institutional side.; Chapter 4 builds on Habermas's discourse theory of law and morality to overcome this institutional deficit. It situates the intercultural dialogue within the context of social modernity and the globalization of legal and political structures. Despite the advantages of Habermas's approach, I argue that his universalism needs to be more systematically reconciled with cultural pluralism. I draw on a pragmatic reading of discourse theory to argue for a global agreement on human rights that does not require the type of rationally motivated agreement that is grounded in the same reasons. This provides the basis for a middle position between the ideal of rational agreement in Habermas and the account of overlapping consensus in Rawls and Taylor.