Human Rights Review 15 (3):329-347 (2014)
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Abstract |
The belief that human rights are culturally relative has been reinforced by recent attempts to develop more plausible conceptions of human rights whose philosophical foundations are closely aligned with culture-specific ideas about human nature and/or dignity. This paper contests specifically the position that a conception of human rights is culturally relative by way of contesting the claim that there is an African case in point. That is, it contests the claim that there is a unique theory of rights. It analyses three examples of what often passes as African conception of human rights arguing that they have little or nothing to do with human rights, are simply inadequate or are not African in the sense at issue in a cultural relativism. Along the way, it distinguishes between two meanings of the term African contending that to the extent that the practice of prizing the ‘community’ higher than any other value is definitive of African, the idea of African human rights remains suspect.
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Keywords | Personhood Human rights African Relativism Universalism |
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DOI | 10.1007/s12142-013-0302-2 |
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References found in this work BETA
Multiculturalism: Expanded Paperback Edition.Kwame Anthony Appiah, Charles Taylor, Jürgen Habermas, Stephen C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer & Susan Wolf - 1994 - Princeton University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
A Defence of Moderate Communitarianism: A Place of Rights in African Moral-Political Thought.Motsamai Molefe - 2018 - Phronimon 18:181 - 203.
Personhood and a Meaningful Life in African Philosophy.Motsamai Molefe - 2020 - South African Journal of Philosophy 39 (2): 194-207.
View all 6 citations / Add more citations
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