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HERBERT HANREICH
Some concluding remarks on culturally vested human rights
One may ask if those regionalized versions were intended to provide an alternative
view meant to replace present universal models, or whether they were merely
intended to present a complementary position that should be taken into account
in addition to ‘Western’ models. Reading those regional versions, however, one has
to come to the conclusion that it is the alternative view, not the complementary
one that reflects the political intentions of those regional groups. Again: why else
would they stress the adjective human in their documents whenever referring
to regional or faith-based particularities that, as they seem to think, essentially
‘encumber’” individuals?
One cannot help but conclude that they indeed mean that this is exactly what
human beings are by nature: they are by nature cultural beings. Since cultures
and their values are manifold we need to assume that we only have — by nature,
so-to-speak — culturally indexed human beings, legitimizing, therefore, some (self¬
appointed) representatives of given cultures to assess the nature of this culture,
which — now as ‘nature’ — can be imposed upon (in this way) culturally defined
individual beings. But cultures (can) change.
This collation of culture and nature is an ideological concept. It offers free
tickets for those in power to define one’s culture so as to draw political conclusions
in their own favor. Both documents meant to replace the UDHR are perversions
of modern human rights.
III. KANT’S MORAL FOUNDATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS?
Most commentators agree that Kant did not provide a strict foundational basis
for modern human rights. The German term for human rights — Menschenrechte
— hardly occurs in his writings. He uses similar phrasings which, however, do not
exactly match modern concepts of human rights."
Despite this lack of an explicit terminology there is an ongoing discussion
whether or not Kant’s philosophy is supportive of a present-day understanding of
human rights, especially in his moral philosophy.
7 Michael Sandel, Justice, New York, NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, 220, speaks of
‘encumbered selves’, as opposed to individualistic views, co-opting thereby implicitly the
Asian model for his own communitarian views.
18 Otfried Hoeffe, Das angeborene Recht ist nur ein einziges. Hat Kant eine Philosophie der
Menschenrechte?, in Reza Mosayebi (ed.), Kant und Menschenrechte, Berlin, Boston, MA,
Walter de Gruyter, 2018, 37; Stefan Gosepath, Das Problem der Menschenrechte bei Kant,
in Mosayebi (ed.), Kant und Menschenrechte, 179.
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