by Sen, Amartya
THE LEGITIMACY CRITIQUE
The legitimacy critique has a long history. It has been aired, in different forms, by many skeptics of rights-based reasoning about ethical issues. There are interesting similarities as well as differences between different variants of this criticism. There is, on the one hand, Karl Marx’s insistence that rights cannot really precede (rather than follow) the institution of the state. This is spelled out in his combatively forceful pamphlet “On the Jewish Question.” There are, on the other hand, the reasons that Jeremy Bentham gave for describing “natural rights” (as mentioned before) as “nonsense” and the concept of “natural and imprescriptible rights” as “nonsense on stilts.” But common to these—and many other—lines of critique is an insistence that rights must be seen in postinstitutional terms as instruments, rather than as a prior ethical entitlement. This militates, in a rather fundamental way, against the basic idea of universal human rights.
Certainly, taken as aspiring legal entities, pre-legal moral claims can hardly be seen as giving justiciable rights in courts and other institutions of enforcement. But to reject human rights on this ground is to miss the point of the exercise. The demand for legality is no more than just that—a demand—which is justified by the ethical importance of acknowledging that certain rights are appropriate entitlements of all human beings. In this sense, human rights may stand for claims, powers and immunities (and other forms of warranty associated with the concept of rights) supported by ethical judgments, which attach intrinsic importance to these warranties.
In fact, human rights may also exceed the domain of potential, as opposed to actual, legal rights. A human right can be effectively invoked in contexts even where its legal enforcement would appear to be most inappropriate. The moral right of a wife to participate fully, as an equal, in serious family decisions—no matter how chauvinist her husband is—may be acknowledged by many who would nevertheless not want this requirement to be legalized and enforced by the police. The “right to respect” is another example in which legalization and attempted enforcement would be problematic, even bewildering.
Indeed, it is best to see human rights as a set of ethical claims, which must not be identified with legislated legal rights. But this normative interpretation need not obliterate the usefulness of the idea of human rights in the kind of context in which they are typically invoked. The freedoms that are associated with particular rights may be the appropriate focal point for debate. We have to judge the plausibility of human rights as a system of ethical reasoning and as the basis of political demands.
THE COHERENCE CRITIQUE
I turn now to the second critique: whether we can coherently talk about rights without specifying whose duty it is to guarantee the fulfillment of the rights. There is indeed a mainstream approach to rights that takes the view that rights can be sensibly formulated only in combination with correlated duties. A person’s right to something must, then, be coupled with another agent’s duty to provide the first person with that something. Those who insist on that binary linkage tend to be very critical, in general, of invoking the rhetoric “rights” in “human rights” without exact specification of responsible agents and their duties to bring about the fulfillment of these rights. Demands for human rights are, then, seen just as loose talk.
A question that motivates some of this skepticism is: How can we be sure that rights are realizable unless they are matched by corresponding duties? Indeed, some do not see any sense in a right unless it is balanced by what Immanuel Kant called a “perfect obligation”—a specific duty of a particular agent for the realization of that right.1
It is, however, possible to resist the claim that any use of rights except with co-linked perfect obligations must lack cogency. In many legal contexts that claim may indeed have some merit, but in normative discussions rights are often championed as entitlements or powers or immunities that it would be good for people to have. Human rights are seen as rights shared by all—irrespective of citizenship—the benefits of which everyone should have. While it is not the specific duty of any given individual to make sure that the person has her rights fulfilled, the claims can be generally addressed to all those who are in a position to help. Indeed, Immanuel Kant himself had characterized such general demands as “imperfect obligations” and had gone on to discuss their relevance for social living. The claims are addressed generally to anyone who can help, even though no particular person or agency may be charged to bring about the fulfillment of the rights involved.
It may of course be the case that rights, thus formulated, sometimes end up unfulfilled. But it is surely possible for us to distinguish between a right that a person has which has not been fulfilled and a right that the person does not have. Ultimately, the ethical assertion of a right goes beyond the value of the corresponding freedom only to the extent that some demands are placed on others that they should try to help. While we may be able to manage well enough with the language of freedom rather than of rights (indeed it is the language of freedom that I have been mainly invoking in Development as Freedom), there may sometimes be a good case for suggesting—or demanding—that others help the person to achieve the freedom in question. The language of rights can supplement that of freedom.
THE CULTURAL CRITIQUE AND ASIAN VALUES
The third line of critique is perhaps more engaging, and has certainly received more attention. Is the idea of human rights really so universal? Are there not ethics, such as in the world of Confucian cultures, threatend to focus on discipline rather than on rights, on loyalty rather than on entitlement? Insofar as human rights include claims to political liberty and civil rights, alleged tensions have been identified particularly by some Asian theorists.
The nature of Asian values has often been invoked in recent years to provide justification for authoritarian political arrangements in Asia. These justifications of authoritarianism have typically come not from independent historians but from the authorities themselves (such as governmental officers or their spokesmen) or those close to people in power, but their views are obviously consequential in governing the states and also in influencing the relation between different countries.
Are Asian values opposed—or indifferent—to basic political rights? Such generalizations are often made, but are they well grounded? In fact, generalizations about Asia are not easy, given its size. Asia is where about 60 percent of the total world population live. What can we take to be the values of so vast a region, with such diversity? There are no quintessential values that apply to this immensely large and heterogeneous population, none that separate them out as a group from people in the rest of the world.
Sometimes the advocates of “Asian values” have tended to look primarily at East Asia as the region of particular applicability. The generalization about the contrast between the West and Asia often concentrates on the land to the east of Thailand, even though there is a more ambitious claim that the rest of Asia is also rather “similar.” For example, Lee Kuan Yew outlines “the fundamental difference between Western concepts of society and government and East Asian concepts” by explaining, “when I say East Asians, I mean Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, as distinct from Southeast Asia, which is a mix between the Sinic and the Indian, though Indian culture itself emphasizes similar values.”2
In fact, however, even East Asia itself has much diversity, and there are many variations to be found among Japan and China and Korea and other parts of East Asia. Various cultural influences from within and outside the region have affected human lives over the history of this rather large territory. These influences still survive in a variety of ways. To illustrate, my copy of Houghton Mifflin’s international Almanac describes the religion of the 124 million Japanese in the following way: 112 million Shintoist and 93 million Buddhist.3 Different cultural influences still color aspects of the identity of the contemporary Japanese, and the same person can be both Shintoist and Buddhist.
Cultures and traditions overlap over regio
ns such as East Asia and even within countries such as Japan or China or Korea, and attempts at generalization about “Asian values” (with forceful—and often brutal—implications for masses of people in this region with diverse faiths, convictions and commitments) cannot but be extremely crude. Even the 2.8 million people of Singapore have vast variations of cultural and historical traditions. Indeed, Singapore has an admirable record in fostering intercommunity amity and friendly coexistance.
THE CONTEMPORARY WEST AND CLAIMS TO UNIQUENESS
Authoritarian lines of reasoning in Asia—and more generally in non-Western societies—often receive indirect backing from modes of thought in the West itself. There is clearly a tendency in America and Europe to assume, if only implicitly, the primacy of political freedom and democracy as a fundamental and ancient feature of Western culture—one not to be easily found in Asia. It is, as it were, a contrast between the authoritarianism allegedly implicit in, say, Confucianism vis-à-vis the respect for individual liberty and autonomy allegedly deeply rooted in Western liberal culture. Western promoters of personal and political liberty in the non-Western world often see this as bringing Occidental values to Asia and Africa. The world is invited to join the club of “Western democracy” and to admire and endorse traditional “Western values.”
In all this, there is a substantial tendency to extrapolate backward from the present. Values that European Enlightenment and other relatively recent developments have made common and widespread cannot really be seen as part of the long-run Western heritage—experienced in the West over millennia.4 What we do find in the writings by particular Western classical authors (for example, Aristotle) is support for selected components of the comprehensive notion that makes up the contemporary idea of political liberty. But support for such components can be found in many writings in Asian traditions as well.
To illustrate this point, consider the idea that personal freedom for all is important for a good society. This claim can be seen as being composed of two distinct components, to wit, (1) the value of personal freedom: that personal freedom is important and should be guaranteed for those who “matter” in a good society, and (2) equality of freedom: everyone matters and the freedom that is guaranteed for one must be guaranteed for all. The two together entail that personal freedom should be guaranteed, on a shared basis, for all. Aristotle wrote much in support of the former proposition, but in his exclusion of women and slaves did little to defend the latter. Indeed, the championing of equality in this form is of quite recent origin. Even in a society stratified according to class and caste, freedom could be seen to be of great value for the privileged few (such as the Mandarins or the Brahmins), in much the same way freedom is valued for nonslave men in corresponding Greek conceptions of a good society.
Another useful distinction is between (1) the value of toleration: that there must be toleration of diverse beliefs, commitments, and actions of different people; and (2) equality of tolerance: the toleration that is offered to some must be reasonably offered to all (except when tolerance of some will lead to intolerance for others). Again, arguments for some tolerance can be seen plentifully in earlier Western writings, without that tolerance being supplemented by equality of tolerance. The roots of modern democratic and liberal ideas can be sought in terms of constitutive elements, rather than as a whole.
In doing a comparative scrutiny, the question has to be asked whether these constitutive components can be seen in Asian writings in the way they can be found in Western thought. The presence of these components must not be confused with the absence of the opposite, viz., of ideas and doctrines that clearly do not emphasize freedom and tolerance. Championing of order and discipline can be found in Western classics as well. Indeed, it is by no means clear to me that Confucius is more authoritarian in this respect than, say, Plato or St. Augustine. The real issue is not whether these nonfreedom perspectives are present in Asian traditions, but whether the freedom-oriented perspectives are absent there.
This is where the diversity of Asian value systems—which incorporates but transcends regional diversity—becomes quite central. An obvious example is the role of Buddhism as a form of thought. In Buddhist tradition, great importance is attached to freedom, and the part of the earlier Indian theorizing to which Buddhist thoughts relate has much room for volition and free choice. Nobility of conduct has to be achieved in freedom, and even the ideas of liberation (such as moksha) have this feature. The presence of these elements in Buddhist thought does not obliterate the importance for Asia of ordered discipline emphasized by Confucianism, but it would be a mistake to take Confucianism to be the only tradition in Asia—indeed even in China. Since so much of the contemporary authoritarian interpretation of Asian values concentrates on Confucianism, this diversity is particularly worth emphasizing.
INTERPRETATIONS OF CONFUCIUS
Indeed, the reading of Confucianism that is now standard among authoritarian champions of Asian values does less than justice to the variety within Confucius’s own teachings.5 Confucius did not recommend blind allegiance to the state.6 When Zilu asks him “how to serve a prince,” Confucius replies, “Tell him the truth even if it offends him.”7 Those in charge of censorship in Singapore or Beijing might take a very different view. Confucius is not averse to practical caution and tact, but does not forgo the recommendation to oppose a bad government. “When the [good] way prevails in the state, speak boldly and act boldly. When the state has lost the way, act boldly and speak softly.”8
Indeed, Confucius provides a clear pointer to the fact that the two pillars of the imagined edifice of Asian values, namely loyalty to family and obedience to the state, can be in severe conflict with each other. Many advocates of the power of “Asian values” see the role of the state as an extension of the role of the family, but as Confucius noted, there can be tension between the two. The Governor of She told Confucius, “Among my people, there is a man of unbending integrity: when his father stole a sheep, he denounced him.” To this Confucius replied, “Among my people, men of integrity do things differently: a father covers up for his son, a son covers up for his father—and there is integrity in what they do.”9
ASHOKA AND KAUTILYA
Confucius’s ideas were altogether more complex and sophisticated than the maxims that are frequently championed in his name. There is also a tendency to neglect other authors in the Chinese culture and to ignore other Asian cultures. If we turn to Indian traditions, we can, in fact, find a variety of views on freedom, tolerance, and equality. In many ways, the most interesting articulation of the need for tolerance on an egalitarian basis can be found in the writings of Emperor Ashoka, who in the third century B.C. commanded a larger Indian empire than any other Indian king (including the Mughals, and even the Raj, if we leave out the native states that the British let be). He turned his attention to public ethics and enlightened politics in a big way after being horrified by the carnage he saw in his own victorious battle against the kingdom of Kalinga (what is now Orissa). He converted to Buddhism, and not only helped to make it a world religion by sending emissaries abroad with the Buddhist message to east and west, but also covered the country with stone inscriptions describing forms of good life and the nature of good government.
The inscriptions give a special importance to tolerance of diversity. For example, the edict (now numbered XII) at Erragudi puts the issue thus:
… a man must not do reverence to his own sect or disparage that of another man without reason. Depreciation should be for specific reason only, because the sects of other people all deserve reverence for one reason or another.
By thus acting, a man exalts his own sect, and at the same time does service to the sects of other people. By acting contrariwise, a man hurts his own sect, and does disservice to the sects of other people. For he who does reverence to his own sect while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own, with intent to enhance the splendour of his own sect, in reality by such conduct inflicts
the severest injury on his own sect.10
The importance of tolerance is emphasized in these edicts from the third century B.C., both for public policy by the government and as advice for behavior of citizens to one another.
On the domain and coverage of tolerance, Ashoka was a universalist, and demanded this for all, including those whom he described as “forest people,” the tribal population living in preagricultural economic formations. Ashoka’s championing of egalitarian and universal tolerance may appear un-Asian to some commentators, but his views are firmly rooted in lines of analysis already in vogue in intellectual circles in India in the preceding centuries.
It is, however, interesting to look in this context at another Indian author whose treatise on governance and political economy was also profoundly influential and important. I refer to Kautilya, the author of Arthashastra, which can be translated as “the economic science,” though it is at least as much concerned with practical politics as with economics. Kautilya was a contemporary of Aristotle, in the fourth century B.C., and worked as a senior minister of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya, Emperor Ashoka’s grandfather, who had established the large Maurya empire across the subcontinent.