Cultural Relativism

Journal of W orld Philosophies Articles/99
The Racism of Philosophy’s Fear of Cultural Relativism∗

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SHUCHEN XIANG
Institute of Foreign Philosophy, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Peking
University, China (shuchen.xiang@pku.edu.cn)
By looking at a canonical article representing academic philosophy’s orthodox view against cultural
relativism, James Rachels’ “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism,” this paper argues that current
mainstream western academic philosophy’s fear of cultural relativism is premised on a fear of the racial
Other. The examples that Rachels marshals against cultural relativism default to the persistent,
ubiquitous, and age-old stereotypes about the savage/barbarian Other that have dominated the history of
western engagement with the non-western world. What academic philosophy fears about cultural
relativism, it is argued, is the barbarians of the western imagination and not fellow human beings. The
same structure that informs fears of cultural relativism, whereby people with different customs are reduced
to the barbarian/savage of the western imagination, can be seen in the genesis of international law which
arose as a justification for the domination of the Amerindian (parsed as “barbarians”). It is argued that
implicit in arguments against cultural relativism is the preservation of the same right to dominate the
Other. Finally, it is argued that the appeal of the fear of cultural relativism is that, in directing moral
outrage at others, one can avoid reflecting on the failures of one’s own cultural tradition.
Key words: racism; barbarian; moral universalism; cultural relativism; James Rachels;
Amerindian; international law
1 Introduction
This paper will illustrate how the structure of mainstream western philosophy’s fear of cultural
relativism can be understood as a continuation of the pervasive racist beliefs that have
dominated much of western history. I focus on a representative expression of why western
philosophy takes cultural relativism to be anathema—James Rachels’ “The Challenge of Cultural
Relativism” (2012)1—as a key example of how the basic structures and assumptions that underlie
racist ideology are still very much present in modern philosophical discourse. Although there are
many dimensions to racism and this paper cannot possibly address them all, there are a few key
features of racist ideology that I focus on. Generally, we can consider western racism to involve
two key features. The first is ontology. The idea of “race,” i.e., the belief in the existence of
discrete, hierarchical groups among human beings, involves assumptions about the natural world
that date back (at least) to Greek society.2 As I will explain more below, the Greek man, who
understood himself to be “rational,” also understood himself to be the highest on a hierarchy of
different races and relatedly, to transcend nature. The idea of “race,” then, is fundamentally an
interpretation of what things “are” (in this case: human beings). In other words, it provides an
accurate descriptive account of these things. But the structure of the idea of race does not stop
∗
I would like to thank the editors of this journal, Dr. Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach and Dr. Amy
Donahue, for their extensive comments and insightful feedback on previous versions of this paper
and for their surpassing professionalism. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers
whose comments helped improve my work. I would also like to thank Jacob Bender for reading
previous drafts of this paper. His input has greatly helped clarify my argument.
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Journal of World Philosophies 5 (Summer 2020): 99-120
Copyright © 2020 Shuchen Xiang.
e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.5.1.07
there. In the western context, because “white men” considered themselves to be the highest on
the racial hierarchy and to transcend nature, they then believed that they had the right to (or,
strictly speaking, the telos) to dominate the other races (who represent merely nature) and in this
case, the non-Greek, whom as it will be shown, was equated with the barbarian and “natural
slave.”
The locus classicus of these two features that I describe can be found in Aristotle’s theory
of natural slavery. In this enormously influential statement (which, as will be shown below,
formed the basis of the Spanish justification for colonizing the Americas), Aristotle equates non-
Greeks with barbarians and barbarians with natural slaves such that non-Greeks are natural slaves.
A natural slave is one who is incapable of reason on his own and must be subjugated by a
rational (i.e., male, Greek) agent in order to partake of reason:
There is another sort of monarchy not uncommon among foreigners, which nearly
resembles tyranny. But this is both legal and hereditary. For foreigners, being more
servile in character than Hellenes, and Asiatics than Europeans, do not rebel against a
despotic government. Such kingships have the nature of tyrannies because the people are
by nature slaves; but there is no danger of their being overthrown, for they are hereditary
and legal. For the same reason, their guards are such as a king and not such as a tyrant
would employ, that is to say, they are composed of citizens, whereas the guards of tyrants
are mercenaries. For kings rule according to law over voluntary subjects, but tyrants over
involuntary; and the one are guarded by their fellow-citizens, the others are guarded
against them (Pol.1285a18-1285a2).
From this it can be seen that: (1) the proper telos and the only telos of the slave is to be a slave.
Even his physical nature is commensurable with his end: the natural slave is built for hard labor
and the freeman for political life. As Aquinas later explains, the slave is “almost an animated
instrument of service” (quoted in Pagden 2015: 104).3 And (2) the master and slave have the
same interest because the slave can partake of reason by imitating his master; in his natural state
he is incapable of fulfilling his proper telos. Each thing has one telos, and the slave’s telos is to be
ruled by rational men. The slave, like the animal, is all body and no mind, and as such should be
ruled by those who possess reason. That the slave should be dominated is part of the natural
hierarchy, because the rational dominates the non-rational. The relationship between the master
and slave as described in Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery has historically been applied to that
between conqueror and conquered. Augustine’s City of God quotes Cicero’s de Republica as saying
that the ruling of the provinces is just as “servitude may be advantageous to the provincials”
because as “they became worse and worse so long as they were free, they will improve by
subjection” (quoted in Isaac 2004: 183). This subjection of the provincials operates in the same
way as the soul’s rule over the body and reason’s rule over the passions and other vicious parts
of the soul.
In sum, there are two parts to the racist structure that is exemplified in Rachels’
argument: (1) The idea of “race” always involved unempirical myths/fantasies about the natural
world (i.e., “is”), and (2) on the basis of this ontological framework, this system and its (racist)
participant further make claims about how “rational” persons should behave considering these
racial differences (i.e., “ought”). When looking at Rachels’ argument, as I hope to illustrate below,
there are clear examples of (1) basic racist myths/fantasies used to support his thesis, as if these
stories were somehow accurate historical accounts, and (2) implicit in this assumption of
ontological difference/hierarchy is the further claim about what “ought” to happen (on the basis
of the assumption of ontological difference/hierarchy between different kinds of humans). What
“ought” to happen is that rational persons ought to restrain, according to objective moral truths
that only they can understand, those who are (culturally) different, as cultural difference is a sign
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of ontological difference and ontological difference is necessarily parsed hierarchically.

Historically, one only assumed cultural incommensurability if one assumed that cultural difference is a
symptom of ontological incommensurability, i.e., different races. The assumption of cultural (parsed as
ontological) incommensurability and the concomitant fear of cultural (parsed as ontological)
difference/relativism are distinctive features of racist ideology.
A related problem is that, although some of Rachels’ examples are not racist myths, these
examples still illustrate the problematic structure of how cultural difference was and is
interpreted through a racist lens (i.e., cultural difference is assumed to be “incommensurable” or
“inexplicable” and “antithetical” because it is understood as a sign of ontological
difference/hierarchy). In other words, part of the history of racism in “western”4 countries
involved seeing cultural difference as representing or expressing an underlying ontological
difference/hierarchy and therefore as reasons to enslave, oppress, and kill native populations.
Although Rachels does not explicitly claim that other cultures that participate in certain practices
are inferior to those of the west, the asymmetrical structure of his argument implies this. Rachels’
argument is asymmetrical in the sense that he only employs the moral failures of other cultures
to evidence global issues, such as sexism. This exclusive focus on the moral failure of others,
simultaneous with his lack of self-critique and reflection on the same global issues within his own
society, betrays the asymmetrical assumption that it is only ever the racial Other who is, by default,
morally suspect. The structure of Rachels’ argument follows a classic structure of western racism.
Traditionally, western moral universalism proved its universalism through fantasizing about the
perverse behaviors of the “barbarian” as a negative proof of why its own values are universal.
For the legal scholar of American Indian law, Robert A. Williams Jr., “Without this dark-sided
version of the idea of the savage, the mythic warrior-hero, as imagined by the West since the
time of Homer and the ancient Greeks, might never have been invented” (Williams Jr. 2012:
25).5 The west has always needed the savage for its own self-definition and self-affirmation.
Similarly, as the authors of the manifesto Barbaric Others: A Manifesto on Western Racism write,
For centuries Europe had nurtured an anxiety-ridden perception about Other People,
those beyond its actual touch and reach, and about the natural world. Woven in
monstrous and phantasmagoric detail, based primarily on fears, fantasies and demons
inhabiting the Western mind from Herodotus to Pliny, and from St Augustine to
Columbus, this perception had become an integral part of Europe’s self-identity (Sardar,
Nandy, and Wyn Davis 1993: 1).6
An example of this self-definition through the barbarian is Montesquieu’s observation about

African slaves: “It is impossible for us to suppose that these creatures to be men, because,
allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians”
(Montesquieu 1989: 250).7 This other-directed morality is simultaneous with the avoidance of
self-critique. We see this same structure of directing moral outrage at a Manichean Other and
lack of reflection on one’s own actions in Rachels’ paper. Nowhere does he critique the failures
of his own society (the USA/the west) and its responsibility for global injustice. In section 3, I
briefly describe the structure of much of western racism as this kind of resentment—a racist
resentment that merely critiques “others” as the source of suffering and ill-fortune in human
society whilst avoiding self-critique. Rachels’ moral outrage at the practices of the racial Other
and his simultaneous lack of critique of the moral failures of his own society follows the classic
structures of scapegoating a racial Other for the ills of society. The problem with reducing other
human beings to symbols of iniquity is that one puts the Other beyond the pale of hermeneutic
understanding, thus desensitizing us to how similar we in fact are. This is not to say that every
position that suggests that there may be an incommensurability between cultural values is just a
continuation of western racist history. In Rachels’ article, however, there are grounds for arguing
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that the many (exclusively non-western) examples of moral failure he cites as reasons for needing
moral universalism are a part of this racist structure and history.
It is with an understanding of the structure of racism that we can better critique Rachels’
argument. There are two central claims made by Rachels: (1) accepting cultural relativism would
mean that we cannot make objections about morally repugnant practices, and (2) the empirical
existence of cultural difference does not mean that this difference is legitimate. With regard to
the first point, and as detailed in section 1, the examples Rachels uses as evidence of the “horrific”
practices that an espousal of cultural relativism would prohibit us from objecting to are all racial
stereotypes about the “barbarian” Other created by the western imagination as antitheses to
what is western and “properly human.” In response to Rachels’ second argument against cultural
relativism, a brief survey of the genesis of international law (section 3) will help to clarify how
claims of moral universalism have been historically involved with the project of domination of
the (racial) Other. International law—the “universal law governing all peoples”—arose out of
the first European encounter with radical difference: the European encounter with the
Amerindians. The European scholastics of the time argued for the universality of their customs,
delegitimizing the empirical existence of (cultural) difference, in order to dominate the
Amerindian. The first time the Europeans encountered radical difference—the Amerindians—
they parsed those who were different as the barbarian/natural slave of the western imagination
who had to be dominated by “international” (i.e., European) law. The genesis of international
law illustrates how the fear of differences in cultures has been historically inextricable from
reducing other human beings to the status of the subhuman, racial Other. Finally, section 4
answers concerns, such as Rachels’, that moral universalism is the only thing saving us from
moral malfeasance. Here, it is argued that often what has historically led to moral progress isn’t
necessarily a progress of our morals or more humans adopting certain moral systems, but an
increasingly critical evaluation of our unempirical metaphysical assumptions.
It should not be controversial to state that mainstream western philosophy assiduously
avoids taking on its own burden of self-reflection with regard to its historical racism and
colonialism. Where, for example, in John Rawls’ defining work of twentieth century political
philosophy, A Theory of Justice, is there any mention of the justice owed to the black slaves who
contributed so much to the American economy? 8 There is no hope for cross-cultural
philosophical engagements between the west and the “rest” before we (both the west and the
non-west) are cognizant of how racism is still so deeply embedded in its philosophical worldview.
Rachels’ paper against cultural relativism is a barometer of academic philosophy’s willingness to
engage with other cultural traditions. In sum, the non-western tradition is still parsed as the
barbarian Other that must be controlled by the west’s moral universalism. Rachels’ paper can be
read as a statement of mainstream academic philosophy’s reasons for refusing to engage with
non-western traditions.9
2 The Racist Stereotypes in Rachels’ “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism”
James Rachels’ article “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism” is a canonical text that expresses
the orthodox position on cultural relativism in the discipline today.10 As David Wong writes,
“The aim of most philosophical discussions of relativism [like Rachels’] is to establish its
manifest falsity” (Wong 2006: xi).11 As Wong explains, cultural relativism
is overwhelmingly a term of condemnation, frequently of scorn or derision, a term for

putting one’s opponent immediately on the defensive: “You sound like a relativist—
explain yourself!” or “You are a relativist—shame on you!” […] Some liberals in turn
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accuse multiculturalists of moral relativism for not defending the universality of […]
rights (Wong 2006: xi).
As Wong writes elsewhere,
The commitment to defending the existence of a single true morality often takes the
status of a fundamental commitment in philosophy, meaning that it will be among the
last to go in the face of disconfirming evidence that requires change in the body of one’s
beliefs (Wong 2014: 337).12
In sum, in mainstream western academic philosophy, it is taboo to espouse the position of

cultural relativism. What has not been noted is that the examples Rachels employs to counter
cultural relativism are all racist stereotypes about cultures conventionally perceived in the west to
be primitive and barbaric: female genital mutilation (henceforth “FGM”) in Africa, stoning to
death of a woman in Nigeria because of outdated sexual mores, excessive penal laws in
Indonesia, lashing a woman in Saudi Arabia because of taboos on female sexuality (Rachels 2012:
27-8), and the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989. In sum, the picture Rachels paints is one of
“medieval barbarism” in exotic countries and fits the usual (racist) stereotype of “oriental”
cultures as uncivilized, primitive, depraved, and generally iniquitous. In this section, I will focus
on Rachels’ examples of Indian cannibalism, Eskimo cultural practices, the Tiananmen Square
incident of 1989, and penal law in Indonesia. We will address his moral outrage at FGM, the
contemporary Indian caste system, and Saudi Arabia in section 4.
In using Herodotus’ example of endocannabalism of an Indian tribe (the “Callatians”)
from his History, Rachels seeks to make the point that “What is thought right within one group
may horrify the members of another group, and vice versa” (Rachels 2012: 14). Herodotus,
however, is already filtered by (if not being one of the earliest sources of) the very fear of the
Other that drives fears about cultural relativism. Historians and classicists have shown that for
Herodotus there was an essential difference between east and west, Asia and Europe (Isaac 2004:
258, footnote 3; Starr 1991: 284f.).13 As the historian J. B. Bury notes,
The theme of Herodotus—the struggle of Greece with the Orient—[…] was the contact
and collision of two different types of civilisation; of […] contest between the slavery of
the barbarian and the liberty of the Greek, between Oriental autocracy and Hellenic
constitutionalism, […] the contrast of Hellenic with Oriental culture pervades the whole
work [the History]; it informs the unity of the external theme with the deeper unity of an
inner meaning. It is the keynote of the History of Herodotus (Bury 1909: 44).14
Throughout the History, Herodotus describes exotic peoples according the “the idea of the
savage [i.e., non-Greek] as the most extreme form of the difference from the Greeks” (Williams
Jr. 2012: 63). Cannibalism was one of the signifiers of an antithetical Other. Herodotus describes
the people in the Pontus areas as “Man-eaters”: “Their customs are utterly bestial […] they alone
of these peoples, eat human flesh” (quoted in Isaac 2004: 208). Aristotle follows Herodotus and
speaks of their “bestial disposition” and “inclination to murder and cannibalism” (Politics 1338b,
19–22). As Williams Jr. writes, for Herodotus cannibalism is “an effective and readily recognized
categorical marker for identifying the most extreme forms of the barbarian’s degeneracy from
the civilized norms and values of the Greeks” and was assumed to exist among distant (and
therefore savage) parts of the world (Williams Jr. 2012: 65). Fantastic stories about savage
peoples practicing cannibalism occur in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics15 and Politics, and as Isaac
notes, Aristotle was merely generalizing an established opinion (Isaac 2004: 207). Cannibalism
became the ascription non plus ultra throughout European history for reducing the racial Other
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into the role “barbarian” (i.e., those antithetical to human civilization). The Amerindians, for
example, were described by contemporary Europeans as cannibals, although scholars have not
been able to find any evidence of the practice (Pagden 1982: 225-6, footnote 154). 16
“Cannibalism” under this historical context is a signifier for barbaric otherness. It functioned as
a racial slur. As the historian of European imperialism Anthony Pagden writes, the European
interest in cannibalism “amounts almost to an obsession.” The trope of cannibalism throughout
European history was meant to de-humanize “the outsider,” as the eating of other humans was a
marker of being non-human (Pagden 1982: 81). The attribution of cannibalism in historical texts
should thus be read critically against an understanding of the context in which this term was
deployed. In the case of Herodotus’ History, one cannot use a racist’s racial stereotyping of the
racial Other as a true account about that racial Other. The “persistence and pervasiveness of the
idea of the savage in the history of the West’s relations with the non-westernized world”
(Williams Jr. 2012: 9) means we should never assume that western accounts of the cultural
practices of the Other aren’t already distorted by racial prejudices about the savage. This point
bears stressing: if it is acceptable to point out the racist structures in historical cultures such as
Greek and Conquistador cultures, then the same should apply to contemporary discourses which
bear the same racist structures.
Rachels’ source stories from “explorers” of the “early and mid-20th century” (Rachels
2012: 15) about the sexual promiscuity, infanticide, and lack of care to the dying elderly in the
culture of the “Eskimos” (Rachels 2012: 14-5) are thus also problematic. There is a long history
of depicting the “Eskimos”17 as an inferior, primitive race. The earliest descriptions of Eskimos
by Richard Hakluyt used the same familiar tropes of savagery as “brute beasts” eating raw meat
and practitioners of cannibalism (quoted in Fienup-Riordan 1990: 12). 18 As the cultural
anthropologist Ann Fienup-Riordan writes, in the nineteenth century “Eskimos” were described
as “savages […] brutes, rude, ugly, and barbaric” (Fienup-Riordan 1990: 14). They were
understood as sub-human “children of nature,” who because they lived within nature, were
“decidedly inferior” (Fienup-Riordan 1990: 14) and low on the racial hierarchy (as they were
unable to escape the “state of nature”). “Depictions of Eskimos bear witness to the western
debate about human nature and Euro-American ambivalence concerning the encounter with
non-western peoples” (Fienup-Riordan 1990: 14). The “disturbing revelation” about the
practices of the “Eskimos” that Rachels thinks one must accept under cultural relativism should
again be read critically against this overwhelming history of the idea of the savage in western
cultural history.19 Just like Herodotus’ accounts of the “Callatians,” there are grounds to believe
that the practices attributed to the “Eskimos” are more ideological (i.e., racist) than empirical. In
making other cultures more horrifying than they are, by reducing them to the barbarian of the
European consciousness, other peoples and cultures are portrayed as more repugnant than they
actually/truly are. Rachels’ arguments against cultural relativism are thus founded on a false
premise: the cultural practices of the racial Other are accurately depicted through the source
stories he uses, and so the racial Other is the barbarian of the European consciousness.
Another symbol which Rachels appeals to is oriental despotism, embodied in the figure
of Chinese government, and specifically the Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989:
[T]he Chinese government has a long history of repressing political dissent within its
own borders. At any given time, thousands of political prisoners in China are doing hard
labor, and in the Tiananmen Square episode of 1989, Chinese troops slaughtered
hundreds, if not, thousands, of peaceful protestors. Cultural Relativism would preclude
us from saying that the Chinese government’s policies of oppression are wrong. We
could not even say that a society that respects free speech is better than Chinese society,
for that would also imply a universal standard of comparison. The failure to condemn
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these practices does not seem enlightened; on the contrary, political oppression seems
wrong wherever it occurs (Rachels 2012: 19).
It should be borne in mind that foundational to Greek self-identity was the dualistic antithesis of
the barbarian Other.20 As we have already seen in Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery, one of the
characteristics of this barbarian Other is “oriental despotism.” The idea that the non-west is
unfree and suffers under “oriental despotism” is foundational to Greek and subsequent western
identity. That “Hellenic constitutionalism” and the liberty of Greek civilization is locked in a
struggle against the slavishness of the “oriental autocracy” of the barbarian has, since ancient
times, been essential to western self-identity. As Edith Hall writes, “The most important
distinction Athenian writers draw between themselves and barbarians is […] political. Greeks are
democratic and egalitarian; the barbarians are tyrannical and hierarchical” (Hall 1989: 2). 21
Aristotle himself uncritically took up this view and based his idea of natural slavery on the
assumption that “Asiatics” live under despotic/tyrannical government because they are natural
slaves (i.e., they are servile by nature and so do not revolt). Hellenes, being masters by nature,
live under democracies (Pol.1285a18-1285a2). The idea that non-Greeks (and later non-
Europeans) cannot organize themselves under “legitimate” forms of governance and therefore
need rulership by the Greeks (and later Europeans) is a well-known racist trope justifying
colonialism, named by Aimé Césaire as a “dependency complex” (Césaire 2000: 59).22 This trope
about the political illegitimacy of the non-Greek/European was used throughout European
history to characterize non-Europeans, including the Chinese, and so legitimize their
colonization.23 As the great idealist philosopher Ernst Renan (1823-1892) wrote, “Nature has
made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity and almost no
sense of honor” and are thus “crying aloud for foreign conquest” (quoted in Césaire 2000: 38).
The phrase “Yellow Peril” (die gelbe Gefahr) itself, it should be remembered, was coined at the end
of the century by Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany to justify Germany’s grab for concessions in
China. To illustrate his point, in 1895 the Kaiser commissioned a painting of the nations of
Europe, dressed as female warriors, defending Christendom from the Yellow Peril24 (Lee 1999:
246, footnote 4).
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Reinforcing racist stereotypes about the Chinese tradition as tyrannical, and its peoples
unfree, very conveniently plays into the political mythology of the west as “gentle civilizers”25 of
the world. It reinforces the racist trope foundational to Greek/European identity that “Asiatics”
are “crying aloud for foreign conquest” so that they may be “gently” civilized. When Rachels
uses the Chinese government and the Tiananmen Square Incident as examples of why cultural
relativism is flawed, he is, in effect, talking about preserving the right of the west to pass
comment on “oriental despotism” without obligation to assess its own flaws. Notice that one of
the biggest objections Rachels has to cultural relativism is that, “We could no longer say that the
customs of other societies are morally inferior to our own” (Rachels 2012: 19). Just as James Baldwin
accused the American liberal of only being able to “deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim
but had no sense of him as a man” (Baldwin 1998: 320),26 so has there been a failure, by and
large, of the western imagination to deal with China as anything other than a symbol and victim
of the west’s making. “Such is the ‘East,’” writes the sinologist and philosopher François Jullien
“or rather its mirage, the eternal, exotic East that the ‘West’ has chosen to represent as its polar
opposite that so conveniently fuels its own fantasies and that it constantly exploits to
compensate for its own failings”27 (Jullien 2004: 84-5). And so was “the Chinese world defiled
and perverted for a good century” (Césaire 2000: 74). This reduction of those who are different
to a polar Other so as to exploit it and thereby affirm its own values makes “of them criminals
and monsters” (Baldwin 1998: 386).
One might question if Rachels’ examples were a rhetorical strategy that wishes to show
that a reader sympathetic to cultural relativism actually does judge other cultures in
objectivist/universalist terms. But if this were a rhetorical strategy then it is self-defeating. To
focus solely on other cultures when the problems Rachels points to are universal is racist or at
least culturally chauvinistic. Further, whilst it might be true that the examples Rachels uses are
not concocted aspersions, that does not make them non-racist. Whilst it might be true that
lashing women in Saudi Arabia is empirically true, to only use the example of Saudi Arabia to
make a point about the global problem of misogyny ends up perpetuating the same structure of
racism. If you wish to point out the moral failures of misogyny, then point out the instances of
campus rape in the United States—an example, which, in fact, would be closer to home. Talk
about how one in five women are sexually assaulted on college campuses in the USA28 and the
institutional failures to protect women when these crimes are reported. 29 To illustrate the
problem of misogyny via the example of a culture that is, relative to the dominant, elite White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture of the United States, radically Other, is the very example of the
other-directed morality that I problematize. Note, however, that I do not wish to claim that
Rachels is a racist. Rather, I would like to contend that his examples are problematic in that they
perpetuate racist stereotypes and racist structures.
Any person who holds so obsessively onto their moral universalism betrays their lack of
faith in the humanity of the Other. If one held the assumption that human nature was basically
the same everywhere and that human motives were all mutually intelligible given adequate
context, then one would not be concerned with the possibility that there existed radically
incommensurable practices, which, as has been shown, were traditionally parsed as a sign of
ontological difference and so an incommensurable essence/difference. We would, under this
view, all be human, and what different choices we made in life would be hermeneutically legible
and translatable once we were informed of our respective motives and circumstances. One
espouses racism/racist ideology when one assumes (1) the existence of ontological/essential
difference, i.e., the barbarian Other, and (2) that the existence of the barbarian “justifies the right”
to dominate the barbarian Other. If we did not assume this (racist) structure, then the different
practices that we observe, which under a racist ontology would be parsed as a sign of essential
difference/radical incommensurability, will become hermeneutically legible given adequate
context.
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We can take the Indonesian penal law, which Rachels believes evidences a society
misunderstanding what is “really true” and committing a moral “error,” in which an Australian
woman was sentenced to 20 years in prison for smuggling nine pounds of marijuana into
Indonesia (Rachels 2012: 27), as an example of how a sympathetic understanding of an Other
rehabilitates them from a mere symbol of moral depravity/moral incomprehensibility/moral
sociopathy to a fellow human being. Before concluding that the Indonesian penal code is
“morally erroneous,” let us take stock of the situation, specifically, the history of drugs as an
instrument of western colonialism in Asia. By 1850, the British opium trade in China accounted
for 15 to 20 percent of the British Empire’s revenue (Bradley 2015: 17)30 and was “the single
largest commodity trade of the nineteenth century” (Bradley 2015: 14). By 1850, “the entire
commercial infrastructure of European trade in Asia was built around opium” (Trocki 1999:
52).31 The historical scale of the western drug trade, its debilitating effects on Asian states, and its
association with colonialism is the context for the contemporary harsh penal drug laws in Asian
countries. Given this context, would we still be inclined to conclude that that the Indonesians
were committing a moral error in their sentencing of the Australian drug smuggler? In sum, there
are two types of racist stereotypes that Rachels makes use of: (1) racist fictions about the racial
Other that are literally myths/mythic stereotyping according to tropes of barbarism that are as
old as Greek/western civilization itself, and (2) treatment of different cultural practices as
radically incommensurable because one assumes such practices are a sign of ontological
incommensurability (i.e., the dualistic Other-barbarian-savage). Rachels’ example of misogyny in
Saudi Arabia, for example, would fall under this latter type of racist stereotyping. This second
point will be explored in more detail in the following section.
3 International Law: Dominating the Savage
As was outlined in the introduction, Rachels’ article is orientated around two claims. The first
claim was dealt with in the previous section. In this section we will look at the second claim: the
empirical existence of cultural difference does not mean that this difference should exist. It will be
argued here the claim that one’s own customs are universal has historically been preceded by the
motivation to dominate those (culturally) different from oneself, as cultural differences were
assumed to be a sign of ontological difference/inferiority. As David Stannard reminds us, the
Puritans, in the seventeenth century, justified the extermination of New England’s native
populations on the basis of God, and the Spanish legitimated genocide in Meso- and South
America on the basis of Christian Truth (Stannard 1992: 153). In this section, through the
example of the history of the genesis of international law, I will outline how western claims to
universalism have historically been a camouflage for the domination and exploitation of the
Other.
For many “third world” legal scholars, such as R. P. Anand, Mohammed Bedjaoui, and T.
O. Elias, international law is the product of imperialism and the means by which European
interests were maintained. As the legal scholar Anthony Anghie writes, “It is now hardly
disputable that classical international law was complicit in the imperial project and the
exploitation which accompanied it” (Anghie 2004: 8). 32 The genesis of international law is
indebted to sixteenth-century jurist Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546), who, in the aftermath of
the discovery of the Americas, tried to establish an international legal framework. In his “On the
American Indians” (De Indis), one of earliest texts of international law, Vitoria described the
Amerindians as deficient humans. As Anthony Pagden summarizes, for Vitoria, the Amerindian
is:
_______________
some variety of fully grown child whose rational faculties are complete but still potential
rather than actual. Indians have to be trained to perceive what other men perceive
without effort, to accept what other men regard as axiomatic without prior reflection.
[…] They were not free agents, they had, as Vitoria observed, no access to the natural
law, and they shared the same social status as the slave. […] [H]e [the Amerindian] must,
for his own benefit, remain in just tutelage under the king of Spain, his status now slave-
like, but not a slave (Pagden 1982: 104).
The “barbarism” of the Amerindian—their supposed unreflective, passion-dominated, half-

reasoning man-child nature—gave the Spanish the legitimate right of political dominium over
them (Pagden 1982: 105). As Anghie summarizes, Vitoria characterized the Amerindians as
primitive and so lacking in full legal personality in order to justify the Spanish “civilizing mission”
in which they govern the Americas on behalf of the Amerindians (Anghie 2004: 9). Those being
dominated—the Amerindians—are the natural slaves that Aristotle described in the Politics. The
effect of this argument is to say that foreigners require domination. In sum, “the Indian is
excluded from the sphere of sovereignty” and “it is the Indian who acts as the object against
which the powers of sovereignty may be exercised in the most extreme ways” (Anghie 2004: 28).
Similarly, for the Italian jurist Alberico Gentili (1552-1608)—another jurist named as a father of
international law—the Amerindians “are alien to humanity and to all religion, these he [a
conquering Christian monarch] may most justly compel to change conduct which is contrary to
nature” (quoted in Williams Jr. 2012: 190). The genesis of international law in the Spanish
justification of the colonization of the Americas shows that the reduction of the racial Other to
sub-human status goes hand in hand with the claim to (moral) universalism that justifies a
colonial takeover.
The justification of conquest lies in the creation of a sub-human Other to whom the full
force of “law” needs to be applied. From the earliest legal discussions on the rights of the
Spanish to colonize the Amerindians, we find a whole catalogue of ills attributed to the
Amerindian to prove their status as the natural slaves that needed Spanish wardenship. For
Vitoria, the Indians are obviously mentally incapacitated as, “The Indians have neither laws nor
magistrates that are adequate (convenientes); nor are they capable of governing the household (rem
familiarem) satisfactorily” (quoted in Pagden 1982: 79-80). For Vitoria, the different cultural
practices of the Amerindians justified Spanish “disciplinary measures of war, which is directed
towards effacing Indian indemnity and replacing it with the universal identity of the Spanish”
(Anghie 2004: 29). For Vitoria, the Amerindians were not sovereign because they were pagans
(Anghie 2004: 29). In Libellus de insulanis oceanis (Book on the Oceanic Islands) the jurist Palacio
Rubios observes that as the Indians formed matrilineal societies, they were not real communities
but a mere horde (Pagden 1982: 52-4). On the basis of these customs, Palacio Rubio concludes
that they are “so inept and foolish that they do not know how to rule themselves.” They may
thus, “broadly speaking, be called slaves as those who are almost born to be slaves” (quoted in
Pagden 1982: 54). Likewise, by insisting that violations of the law of nations “granted the right to
any state, or individual, to exact punishment and thus wage a just war against the violators,”
Gentili was, in effect, “handing the European powers a license to conquer virtually any peoples
whose behavior did not conform to the codes established by our [i.e., European] jurists” (Pagden
2015: 92). The motivation for Vitoria and Gentili’s claiming that European law was universal was
to discredit the customs and sovereignty of the Amerindians and so legally legitimate a colonial
takeover.
It should be noted that European claims that the “international” law legitimating their
colonial takeover of the Americas were universal were only ever claims. As the Dutch legal
scholar J. H. W. Verzijl (1888-1987) writes, “the actual body of international law, as it stands
today, is not only the product of the conscious activity of the European mind, but has also
_______________
drawn its vital essence from a common source of European beliefs, and in both these aspects is
mainly of western European origin” (cited in Bedjaoui 1991: 9).33 Both Vitoria and Gentili—the
fathers of international law—took European customs as universal. The logic went something like
this: the universal law of nature = law of nations = European customs ergo European customs =
universal. The source of the principles behind Vitoria’s proto-international law were “all western
and thoroughly Christo-Eurocentric in their normative orientation,” i.e., Roman law, Holy
Scripture, and classical writers such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas (Williams Jr. 1990: 106).34
Likewise, Gentili, as the first writer to develop Vitoria’s arguments on the issue of the
justification for universal empire, saw Roman law as the civil expression of the law of nature.
Roman law was thus not simply the accumulated customs of all the peoples of the entire world
but was the ontological structure of reality itself: Roman law was natural law per se (Pagden 2015:
83-4). Claiming universalism to dominate the Manichean Other, of course, was not invented in
the sixteenth century. The experience of the Crusades had already given Europeans a
systematically elaborated legal discourse on colonization. The universal right asserted by popes
and Christians princes in enforcing “Christianity’s vision of ‘civilization’ and natural law
legitimated and dignified the conquest, dispossession, and enslavement of non-Christian peoples
throughout the non-European world” (Williams Jr. 1990: 15). There is a long history of the west
claiming universalism to oppress those—the racial Other—it deemed to be on the wrong side of
its universals.
It is against this historical context of western claims to universalism being inseparable
from the domination of the Other that one must place Rachels’ defence of moral universalism.
To his caution that “we must bear in mind the difference between what a society believes about
morals and what is really true” (Rachels 2012: 27), we might say that western claims to
universalism have historically been an instrument of conquest. We might remind him that the
same argument about Amerindians not knowing what is really true was used to wrest the
Americas from their native inhabitants. To his anxiety that “to say that the moral code of one’s
own society ‘is merely one among many,’ seems to deny the possibility that one moral code
might be better or worse than some others” (Rachels 2012: 28), we might remember the projects
of domination with which western claims to universalism have been associated. As Frantz Fanon
puts it:
But it so happens that when the native hears a speech about western culture he pulls out
his knife—or at least he makes sure it is within reach. The violence with which the
supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the
victory of these values over the ways of life and of thought of the native mean that, in
revenge, the native laughs in mockery when western values are mentioned in front of
him (Fanon 1963: 34).35
The problem of cultural relativism is but the latest manifestation of the fear of the barbarian
Other which was concomitant with the use of universals for the project of domination. The legal
history of the genesis of international law exemplifies how western claims to universalism have
been concomitant with, if not motivated by, the desire to dominate the racial Other. This history
shows the lie in Rachels’ assertion that, “There is a difference […] between (a) judging a cultural
practice to be deficient and (b) thinking that we should announce that fact, apply diplomatic
pressure, and send in the troops” (Rachels 2012: 26). The historical record shows that in practice,
one’s intellectual worldview is not easily separable from one’s actions; it’s hard not to act on a
sincerely held belief. Likewise, David Harvey (in a discussion on Kant’s racist geography)
remarked that condescending moral judgments on the Other lead to practical consequences on
the ground:
_______________
Popular geographical and anthropological knowledges in the public domain (in the
United States in particular) are […] of a similar prejudicial quality to that which Kant
portrayed. Stereotypes about geographical “others” abound and prejudicial commentary
can be heard daily in casual conversations even in elite circles (listen in to any
conversation about Mexicans, sub-Saharan Africans, or Arabs in university common
rooms let alone upon the street, and see how quickly stereotypes are invoked only to
usually pass unchallenged). It then becomes all too easy for the U.S. government to
portray itself as the bearer of universal principles of justice, democracy, liberty, freedom,
and goodness (as Former President George W. Bush did on such a persistent basis) while
in practice he operated in an intensely discriminatory way against others judged different,
unfamiliar or in some sense lacking in proper qualifications or human qualities (Harvey
2011: 281).36
Just as the Spaniard’s belief that the Amerindian was the barbarian of the western imagination
motivated their practical act of colonizing the Americas, likewise, racial stereotypes easily fall into
racialized violence. It is possible that Rachels and defenders of Rachels and his type of argument
would argue that his examples of cultural difference do not imply a racial Other. The issue is,
however, that he comes to the conclusion of radical incommensurability on the basis of
examples that can be easily rendered hermeneutically legible given a historical context.
In his preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Sartre wrote of the racist
humanism of the west, which pretended to the highest universalistic ideals without the
commensurate actions to deserve the esteem that it claimed:
Chatter, chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity, love, honour, patriotism and what have you.
All this did not prevent us from making anti-racial speeches about dirty niggers, dirty Jews
and dirty Arabs. High-minded people, liberal or just soft-hearted, protest that they were
shocked by such inconsistency; but they were either mistaken or dishonest, for with us
there is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since the European has only been
able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters (Fanon 1963: 22).
The same dissonance between the esteem the west claims for its universals and the lack of
corresponding demonstrable actions that prove its universalism has compelled Baldwin to
declare, “All of the western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended
humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the west has no
moral authority” (Baldwin 1998: 404).
The continued presence of Rachels’ paper in standard ethics textbooks is deeply
troubling for the following reasons. Rachels argued for moral universalism against cultural
relativism seemingly unaware (1) of the conspicuous western history of parsing difference in the
tropes of barbarism, (2) that many of his sources are foundational elements of the history of
othering, racializing, or orientalizing other peoples, (3) that in characterizing other cultures in
these same barbaric terms he is perpetuating oppressive racist structures, and (4) of the
problematic European history of equating cultural difference with ontological difference/inferiority
that has then served as a pretext for deeply violent if not genocidal “just war” campaigns of
domination justified through “moral universals.” This four-point summary of the west’s
problematic history with different cultures is well known. Many celebrated postcolonial scholars,
such as Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, have made the point better than I. It’s troubling that a
canonical text about cultural relativism does not even acknowledge the existence of such serious
critiques of the history of western moral universalism as an instrument of oppression. It is
further troubling that a defense of moral universalism evidently saw no need to qualify how its
version of moral universalism will avoid the flaws with which moral universalism has been so
_______________
deeply implicated. It is further unsettling how, in the three decades since the paper’s publication,
mainstream academic philosophy has either sincerely not noticed the problems in Rachels’
argument or deemed it unworthy of mention. Instead of attributing ulterior motives to Rachels
for these problematic absences in his paper and to the mainstream philosophical community for
passing over these problematic absences, let me conclude that this epistemology of ignorance
that Rachels and the mainstream philosophical community display is deeply injurious to the
cause of cross-cultural understanding.
4 Avoiding Self-Critique
The fear of cultural relativism that leads to the canonization of arguments such as Rachels’ or, to
put it positively, the main attraction of moral universalism as a necessary foundation for cross-
cultural dialogues, can be understood via a terse but profound statement from James Baldwin’s
The Fire Next Time: “And the passion with which we loved the Lord was a measure of how
deeply we feared and, in the end, hated almost all strangers, always, and avoided and despised
ourselves” (Baldwin 1998: 310). We can replace “Lord” here with moral universalism. What I
take Baldwin to be saying is this: the psychology that motivates an espousal of universal
principles betrays a fear of reflecting on one’s own actions. To safeguard the universalism of
one’s own position, those peoples with different values are reduced to a Manichean Other with
whom there is no possibility of sympathetic understanding. To engage with others different from
ourselves is to make ourselves fallible and to open the way to potential understanding of how
and why others differ from ourselves and thus open the possibility of re-assessing our own
values. The fear of making ourselves vulnerable in this way and so having to reflect on our
received values and actions puts an iron curtain between ourselves and empathetic engagement
with the perspectives of others. The more we hold onto our own universal principles (thus
avoiding self-critique and being potentially fallible), the more we reduce other human beings to,
and scapegoat them as, the Manichean Other beyond sympathetic engagement, and the less we
reassess our putatively universal principles. In this way, our avoidance of ourselves, our love of
universalism, and our hatred of strangers become mutually implicating and self-fulfilling, not to
mention self-destructive. Historically, this structure is a sign of racism, and this same structure
arguably shapes Rachels’ discourse.
One prominent example of scapegoating others so as to avoid self-critique in Rachels’
paper is his use of FGM, which for Rachels is a horrific practice we would have to accept if we
accepted cultural relativism. In discussions of cultural relativism, the evocation of FGM operates
much like Godwin’s Law: it demarcates an ultimate evil at which meaningful discourse has to
respectfully end. FGM has been turned into a symbol of barbarism, with its history and context
rendered unintelligible. This is the way that this symbol operates: it symbolizes an ultimate evil
that is demarcated as beyond the boundaries of anything we “rational peoples” can and should
understand. A typical broadside of this sentiment has it that FGM is a “torture so hideous that
most of humanity does not even want to think about it” (quoted in Gollaher 2000: 188).37 The
western paroxysm of outrage at (non-western) female genital mutilation is simultaneous with the
pervasive practice and promotion of (western) male genital mutilation. According to the WHO,
the vast majority of American males are circumcised (75.5%). As one headline goes, America is
“addicted to circumcision.”38 The numbers are 60% for Australian males, 32% for Canadian
males, and 8.5% for British males.39 FGM as the standard bearer of barbarism is simultaneous
with the widespread western cultural practice of male genital mutilation (henceforth “MGM”),
which is, in fact, vehemently defended in the USA (by the “pro-circumcision lobby”40). Infant
circumcision of white American boys is not the poster-child of human rights violations in the
same way that infant circumcision of little black girls in African slums are. The schizophrenia (to
_______________
put it charitably) or hypocrisy (to put it less charitably) that the west displays with regard to
infant genital mutilation demonstrates how, in the process of turning them into the barbaric
Other, the practitioner of an other-directed moral universalism becomes blind to just how
similar we all are. The fact that the promoters of infant MGM argue that it is very different from
FGM 41 is only another sign of this schizophrenia inherent to an other-directed moral
universalism. It makes human beings with commensurable habits into symbols of radical alterity
and so blinds itself to our commensurability. FGM functions as a symbol of inhumanity; it
signifies an incomprehensible, inhuman action.42 Its reduction into a symbol of perversity can be
likened to the reduction of the Jew under Judeophobia into an abstract symbol of all that is anti-
human:
Thus, at the intellectual heights [Luther, Abraham a Sancta Clara] as in the lower depths
of European society, the Jew had by the dawn of modernity, long ceased to be a living
human being—he had become ineluctably transformed into a theological abstraction of
truly diabolical perversity and malice (Wistrich 1999: 5).43
The symbolization of the Jew into an abstraction of “diabolical perversity and malice” makes the
Judeophobe forget that the Jew is ultimately a human being like himself. As this mere symbol of
non-western depravity and barbarism, FGM like the Jew (under Judeophobia) is an abstraction
of “diabolical perversity and malice.” Just as the Jew as a mere symbol makes the Judeophobe
blind to how the Jew is ultimately a human being like himself, so does FGM as a mere symbol
blind the west to how FGM is directly comparable to its own practices, MGM. To put the issue
another way, why is the practice of infant mutilation obvious in one context as a moral problem
and not in another? This hypocrisy/double standard indicates that the Other is not afforded the
same status; such a double standard is racist.
The existence of a Manichean Other towards whom one can direct moral outrage
simultaneously allows one to demand from others rigorous order and for oneself disorder
without responsibility. In his example of the unfair treatment of women in Saudi Arabia (Rachels
2012: 27-8), for example, if Rachels did not assume that Saudis exemplify the irrational,
barbarian Other, then he would not allow himself such an intellectually lazy explanation—they
do not understand what is “really true.” Instead, he would perhaps realize that the United States
and Europe are instrumental in the continued existence of Saudi Arabia as a political entity. In
directing all of his moral criticisms against other cultures, Rachels is able to direct moral outrage
at a Manichean Other and thereby conveniently direct attention away from the fact that
misogyny is normalized in his own culture.44 The assiduousness with which Rachels avoids self-
reflection can be seen in the reason he gives for why it is bad that, under cultural relativism, “We
could no longer criticize the code of our own society” (Rachels 2012: 20). Here, instead of
actually criticizing his own society’s (the United State’s!) racial inequalities, he uses the example
of how an Indian would not be able to criticize their caste system. Similarly, in characterizing the
Chinese government in terms of the tropes of oriental despotism, Rachels conveniently does not
have to mention that, since its founding, the USA has been at war in 226 out of 242 years. He
does not have to think about how, as we saw in the case of international law, his own country
was founded on the genocide of the Amerindians—how European settlement on the American
continent necessitated “the most extensive and most violent programs of human eradication,
that this world has ever seen” (Stannard 1992: 54). This eradication program has led to the
decimation of 95 percent of the native Amerindian population in what one historian now calls
“the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world”45 (Stannard 1992: x). Nor does
Rachels have to mention that Hitler himself explicitly modelled his own Lebensraum plans on the
European precedent of the genocide of the Amerindians. In a 1932 speech, Hitler “explicitly
located his Lebensraum project within the long trajectory of European racial conquest”
_______________
(Finkelstein 1995: 53).46 He does not have to mention that demographers have argued that
slavery may have halved Africa’s population through exportation and deaths on the continent
itself (Bayly 2004: 409). 47 Or that, according to Louise Marie Diop-Maes, the slave trade
amounted to at least 400 million human losses to Africa (Diop-Maes 1996: 272).48 He does not
have to think about how reparations the USA owes to historic slave labour in 2009 dollars have
been estimated to range from $5.9 to $14.2 trillion (Craemer 2015: 639).49 To put this number in
perspective, the size of the American economy was $19.39 trillion in 2017. Taking into
consideration the fact that United States was built on land illegitimately expropriated from the
Amerindians, it is feasible to say that the entirety of American GDP is not sufficient to cover the
reparations that it owes. Nor does Rachels have to mention how, since 1945, the USA has either
overthrown or interfered in the government, assassinated the leaders, dropped bombs, or
suppressed a populist or nationalist movement in 71 countries (i.e., more than a third of the
world) and in this process has ended the lives of millions of people as well as condemning many
millions more to a life of misery (Blum 2013: 2).50 He does not have to think about how
domestically, the disproportionate number of incarcerated African-American males has led one
scholar to call this contemporary caste system “the New Jim Crow” (Alexander 2012).51 In
directing his moral outrage at a Manichean Other, Rachels conveniently forgets that, as Aimé
Césaire reminded us in Discourse on Colonialism, “Europe is responsible before the human
community for the highest heap of corpses in history” (Césaire 2000: 45). The hypocrisy of
western claims to universalism allows Rachels to talk as if it were only ever racial others who are
morally suspect and, in the process, ignore just how much responsibility the west itself has to
bear for global injustice. Telling oneself that it is only ever racial others who are transgressional is
a psychological subterfuge to avoid confronting one’s own failures, to allow oneself disorder
without responsibility but to simultaneously demand rigorous order for others. Once the idea of
the barbarian is rendered unavailable as an explanation of the existence of (moral) difference and
moral imperfections in the world, then the philosopher is pushed to think, by way of explanation,
about the contexts that resulted in these differences and whether she/he herself/himself shares a
burden of responsibility for having contributed to environments that resulted in these less than
perfect human beings and behaviors.
5 Do We Need Moral Universals?
Rachels’ argument against cultural relativism is two-fold: he charges cultural relativism as falling
foul of the is-ought fallacy (i.e., it is logically invalid to derive moral relativism from the existence
of cultural differences in morals), followed by a three-part critique of the undesirable
consequences of adopting moral relativism. This three-part critique involves the following: if we
adopt moral relativism, then three morally undesirable things follow: (1) we could no longer say
that the customs of other societies are morally inferior to our own, for example, the anti-
Semitism of Nazi Germany; (2) we could no longer criticize the code of our own society; and (3)
the idea of moral progress is called into doubt.
There are many metaethical and epistemological ways to critique Rachels’ argument, and
it will take another paper to fully explore them. Here, I will only give two examples. First, the is-
ought distinction that Rachels assumes is arguably a culturally contingent one. One only arrives
at the idea of the is-ought distinction under certain philosophical assumptions. Daoism or
Confucianism, for example, would not assume a disjunction between is and ought.52 Second, and
relatedly, Rachels does not recognize that what often impedes moral behavior and moral
progress is not a lack of moral universals but a lack of recognition of the metaphysics that frame
moral judgements. The concept of race in western history is a good example of this. In deploying
racial stereotypes, Rachels and others who make use of such stereotypes, such as the Spanish
_______________
who colonized the Amerindians, deny moral status to the racial Other. As such, racism is a
metaphysical (mis)interpretation that takes precedence before any moral system. In sum, morality
is dependent upon ontology. In his work The Invasion of America, for example, the historian
Francis Jennings writes of how to the Europeans colonizers, the Amerindian was considered to
be beyond the pale of moral concern:
To invade and dispossess the people of an unoffending civilized country would violate
and transgress the principles of international law, but savages were exceptional. Being
uncivilized by definition, they were outside the sanctions of both morality and law
(Jennings 1975: 60).53
As the ontological status of the Amerindian was determined to be the barbarian/natural slave of
which Aristotle spoke, the Amerindian was deemed as having no moral status. Similarly, as
Anthony Pagden writes, for the Spanish scholastics who justified the conquest of the Americas,
“Any judgment on the nature of the Indians” had to necessarily be rooted “in a scheme which
offered an explanation for the structure of the whole world of nature and the behaviour of
everything, animate or inanimate, within it” (Pagden 1982: 28). The idea that other races were
not even subjects of moral concern or had no moral status under European colonialism is
detailed by Charles Mill’s The Racial Contract. Here, Mills uses the idea of a nonideal or naturalized
racial contract as a theoretical concept for recognizing, describing, and understanding how
racism actually structures the polities of the west and elsewhere. Under the racial contract, we
have been living under a two-tiered moral code, with one set for whites and another for
nonwhites (Mills 1997: 23). Under the racial contract, “non-whites” were not considered to have
“intrinsic” moral value. At best, they were only “instrumentally valuable,” i.e., as property or
objects, and never fully subjects or agents. As such, any conduct towards or dealing with a “non-
white” person could at best be “accidentally” moral in the sense that, for example, the harm
done to a slave could only ever be a wrong towards their owner and never a moral wrong against
the slave as subject. For the “racial contract,” morality was dependent upon ontology. As such,
the “progress” of understanding non-whites as having moral status is not merely a progress of
“morality” but the correct critique of certain metaphysical assumptions or claims (mis-
interpretations of the world). To Rachels’ anxiety that without moral universals we could not
critique ourselves or others or recognize moral progress, we could therefore say that even with
moral universals we might not be able to or have not historically been able to achieve any moral
progress. Pointing out the flaws in our metaphysical assumptions, for one, might have been
more useful. The issue of race is an example of how, in practice, the is-ought distinction is
collapsed. Judgments on the ontological nature of the Amerindian led to judgments on how the
Spanish ought to have behaved. The metaphysical judgment that the Amerindians were not fully
human led to their having no moral status in the eyes of the Spanish.
In sum, none of the three undesirable consequences that Rachels takes to be attendant
upon a lack of moral universalism necessarily follows. Without moral universals one can still
criticize one’s own culture and other cultures as well as have measures for gauging moral
progress. One can simply point out that one’s own or another culture’s metaphysical
assumptions are inaccurate, and one can measure moral progress in terms of how naturalistic a
certain culture’s metaphysics are. The example of FGM is a case in point. One does not have to
default to moral strictures in confronting the phenomenon. One can instead point out that
biologically, FGM serves none of the hygiene functions its practitioners believe it to serve.
_______________
6 Conclusion
Rachels’ argument can be summarized and problematized as follows: (1) Rachels assumes that
what “is” given is the existence of the barbarian of the western imagination who is radically
antithetical to civilization. It was shown that these assumptions were based on unempirical and
racist stereotypes. Without this assumption of the barbarian (and cultural incommensurability),
cultural differences/variation would be trivial. Once Rachels correctly recognizes the “is”—that
we are all human and the differences between us are not so incommensurable that dialogue
cannot resolve them—there would be no fear of cultural relativism.
This paper has argued that James Rachels’ canonical paper representing academic
philosophy’s orthodox opinion on cultural relativism rests on the same structures of an Other-
directed moral universalism. Central to this racist humanism is the creation of the barbarian
Other whose existence serves, via a negative proof, to affirm the universalism of the morality of
its promoters. This paper has contextualized academic philosophy’s phobia of cultural relativism
against the persistent and enduring history of European parsing of the racial Other in terms of
barbarism. Academic philosophy’s phobia of cultural relativism, it was argued, springs from this
western tradition’s/philosophy’s assumption of the racial Other as the barbarian subhuman. The
thought goes that without the universal moral law to dominate this savage, the savage would be
practicing all kinds of immoral actions. This paper has argued that there is nothing special to fear
from fellow human beings who differ from ourselves; the fear that drives the phobia against
cultural relativism is the deep-seated racism which projects the idée fixe of the barbarian/savage in
European culture onto fellow human beings. What is feared is a figment of the west’s
imagination. The best example of how the fear of cultural relativism turns other human beings
into the savage of the west’s own fantasies is, as we have shown, in the genesis of international
law, in which the Amerindian was parsed as the barbarian/natural slave that Aristotle described.
Their status as barbarians meant that they required domination by the moral law. The genesis of
international law also exemplifies our point that historically, the kind of moral universalism that
does not tolerate difference has been motivated by the desire to dominate others. For those who
wish to defend moral universalism, the onus is on them to find instances of cultural difference in
moral codes that are (1) not racist fictions and (2) not explainable and justifiable given adequate
historical situation or context—i.e., the other’s motivations are intelligible and completely
commensurable given the right context. As I have mentioned at the beginning of this paper,
there is scarcely any hope for cross-cultural philosophical engagement before academic
philosophy is aware of how age-old racist tropes about the Other still structure its perception of
other cultures. Until it becomes aware of its prejudices, it will continue to treat (those of) other
cultures as the subversive, Manichean Other of its own imagination.
This paper has also problematized a sine qua non of moral philosophy in mainstream
western academic moral philosophy: that the only thing saving us from moral failures such as
Nazism is moral universalism. This paper has described how, even if that were the case, our love
of universals needs to be judged against the moral failures with which they have historically been
implicated, if not allowed for. The awareness of the conspicuous failures with which moral
universalism have historically been implicated should qualify mainstream western academic
philosophy’s uncritical commitment to moral universalism. What should further qualify this
unquestioning assumption is the fact that, as was detailed in section 4, moral universalism
arguably never did much for human moral progress anyway. So, given the deeply problematic
past failures of moral universalism, its evident vulnerability to abuse, and the fact that human
beings can arguably be moral without it, its infallible status as the sine qua non of morality bears
scrutiny.
_______________
Shuchen Xiang is assistant professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and

Religious Studies at Peking University. She specializes in comparative philosophy between the
Chinese and western traditions. She received her PhD (summa cum laude) jointly from the
Department of Philosophy at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and King’s College London.
Her first monograph, based on her dissertation, A Philosophical Defence of Culture: Perspectives from
Confucianism and Ernst Cassirer, is forthcoming with the State University of New York Press. She is
the translator of History of Chinese Philosophy through Its Key Terms, which is forthcoming with
Springer Verlag.
1
James Rachels, “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism,” in The Elements of Moral Philosophy. 7th ed.
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), 14–31.
2 On the idea that racism is indebted to the Greek heritage please see Benjamin Isaac’s The Invention
of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). Although Isaac uses
the term “proto-racism” in this work, he drops this qualifying pretext as potentially misleading of
his original meaning in his later co-edited volume, The Origins of Racism in the West (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009). He clarifies his position in his contribution to this volume,
“Racism: a Rationalization of Prejudice”: “Thus it is clear that proto-racism, as the prototype of
racism is not meant to be just a weakened form of racism. It is racism in the full sense, but it is an
early form which precedes Darwin, based on pre-modern scientific concepts” (Isaac 2009: 33).
“It may be appropriate here to note that my introduction of the term ‘proto-racism’ was rather
tentative. While I would and will defend the reality of early forms of racism in antiquity, I shall
not insist on calling them proto-racism rather than simply racism” (Isaac 2009: 34). For a
summary of the consensus around the Greek origins of racism please see Charles Mills’ “Critical
Philosophy of Race” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology (New York: 2016), 711–12.
I am personally of the view, following Isaac, that the main elements of the idea of race and
racism already have their origins in the Greek worldview. Key to my interpretation of race and
racism as essentially indebted to its Greek origins, as I described in my two-part paper “Why the
Confucians had no Concept of Race,” is the essentialist conception of personhood in the Greek
context. Please see my papers “Why the Confucians Had No Concept of Race (Part I): The Anti-
Essentialist Cultural Understanding of Self,” Philosophy Compass, DOI: 10.1111/phc3.12628 and
“Why the Confucians Had No Concept of Race (Part II): Cultural Difference, Environment and
Achievement,” Philosophy Compass, DOI: 10.1111/phc3.12627. In Aristotle’s theory of natural
slavery, whereby an equation is made between foreigners and barbarians (who are only quasi-
rational), we already see the most defining characteristics of (later) racism: (1) foreigners (the
barbarian) are ontologically inferior and this cannot be changed, (2) they should be ruled by
Greek or western men, (3) the foreigner/barbarian improves through the process of what Aimé
Césaire would later call a “dependency complex” (explained below). That is, the
foreigner/barbarian is able to achieve his/her telos only through being ruled by Greek or western
men. This means that, for me, as all the most defining elements of the racial worldview is already
present in the Greek context, the qualifier of “proto” is arguably unnecessary. As Isaac writes, “I
tend to say that it is not very significant whether we speak of proto-racism or racism in the
classical world, as long as we recognize the phenomenon for what it is: a pattern of recurring
efforts to ascribe to groups of human beings common characteristics on seemingly logical and
presumed scientific grounds from the later fifth century BC to late antiquity” (Isaac 2009: 5).
David Stannard is also of the opinion that the idea of “race” is as old as the Greek tradition.
David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992), 164–65.
3 Anthony Pagden, The Burdens of Empire: 1539 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015).
4 By “western countries,” I refer specifically to all those political entities that colonized, i.e.,
subjugated, peoples they deemed to be inferior to themselves since the “Age of Discovery” and
so are most responsible for global inequality in the world today. This definition of the “west”
_______________
overlaps to a great extent with the definition of the “west” as those who were formed by a
Greco-Christian heritage and converges geographically with the Western European countries and
the Anglo-Saxon countries (USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) appropriated through
colonization. In case the reader feels that I am essentializing the west, it should be borne in mind
that it was the “west” who first essentialized or defined themselves in this way—that is, as
superior to the darker races and so bear “the white man’s burden” to free, in Rudyard Kipling’s
words, the “new-caught, sullen peoples, / Half-devil and half-child.” I am therefore only citing
the “west’s” own self-definition of itself.
5 Robert A. Williams, Jr., Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012).
6 Zia Sardar, Ashis Nandy, and Merryl Wyn Davis, Barbaric Others: A Manifesto on Western Racism
(London and Boulder, Colorado: Pluto Press, 1993).
7 Baron de Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, ed. and transl. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller, and
Harold Samuel Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
8 I was reminded of this fact by Charles Mill’s The Racial Contract (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1997), 77.
9 I speak of the dominant approach in western philosophy. I recognize that there are, of course,
exceptions to this generalization/rule—for example, the works of David Wong, Owen Flanagan,
Jesse Prinz, and J. David Velleman. Please see, in particular, David Wong’s Natural Moralities: A
Defense of Pluralistic Relativism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) and Owen Flanagan’s The
Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility (Oxford University Press, 2017). Their works,
however, are exceptions that prove the rule.
10 Another canonical text that reiterates themes similar to that of Rachels’ paper is Harry J.
Gensler’s “Cultural Relativism” in Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2011),
8–16.
11 David Wong, Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006).
12 David Wong, “Integrating Philosophy with Anthropology in an Approach to Morality,”
Anthropological Theory 14, no. 3, (2014): 336–35.
13 Chester G. Starr, A History of the Ancient World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
14 J. B. Bury, The Ancient Greek Historians (Harvard Lectures) (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1909).
15 The Achaeans and the Heniochi “eat raw meat and human flesh” (NE, 1148 b 22-3).
16 Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative
Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
17 Note that the term “Eskimo” is today considered by many to be derogatory as it was used by
non-Inuits to refer to Inuits and was thought to mean “eater of raw meat.”
18 Ann Fienup-Riordan, Eskimo Essays: Yup’ik Lives and How We See Them (New Brunswick and
London: Rutgers University Press, 1990).
19 For an excellent account of how the idea of the barbarian is foundational to the self-identity of
western civilization, please see Williams, Jr. (2012).
20 Please see Williams Jr. (2012: 31–82).
21 Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1989). Clearly, the Greek belief about the both barbarian and themselves was not empirical.
Greek society was only democratic to a degree as it was not egalitarian. Racism is based on
fictions about what both the self and other are.
22 Césaire Aimé, Discourse on Colonialism, transl. Joan Pinkham (New York: Monthly Review Press,
2000).
_______________
23 It would be naïve to think that colonialism of China was a thing of the past. According to John
Pilger’s documentary, The Coming War on China, “more than 400 American military bases encircle
China with missiles, bombers, warships and, above all, nuclear weapons.”
https://newint.org/features/2016/12/01/the-coming-war-on-china.
24 By Hermann Knackfuss – Self-scanned, Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/
index.php?curid=3885756
25 I use this term ironically in reference to Martti Koskenniemi’s The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The
Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
26 James Baldwin, James Baldwin: Collected Essays (New York: Library Classics of the United States,
1998).
27 François Jullien, A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking (Honolulu: University of
Hawai‘i Press, 2004).
28 https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2015/06/12/1-in-5-women-say-they-were-
violated/?utm_term=.2045ad739080; https://www.aau.edu/key-issues/aau-climate-surveysexual-
assault-and-sexual-misconduct-2015 (last accessed May 11, 2020).
29 https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than-percent-rapes-lead-felony-
convictions-least-percent-victims-face-emotional-physical-consequences/ (last accessed May 11,
2020).
30 James Bradley, The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia (New York, Boston,
London: Little, Brown, and Company, 2015).
31 Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade,
1750–1950 (New York: Routledge, 1999).
32 Anthony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004).
33 ed. Mohammed Bedjaoui, International Law: Achievements and Prospects (Dordrecht, Boston, and
London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1991).
34 Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourse of Conquest
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
35 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, transl. Constance Farrington (New York, Grove Press,
1963).
36 David Harvey, “Cosmopolitanism in the Anthropology and Geography,” in Reading Kant’s
Geography, ed. Stuart Elden and Eduardo Mendieta (Albany: SUNY Press, 2011), 267–84.
37 David Gollaher, Circumcision: A History of The World's Most Controversial Surgery (New York: Basic
Books, 2000).
38 https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/foreskin-wars-why-is-the-united-states-so-addicted-
to-circumcision-gmp/ (last accessed May 11, 2020).
39 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19072761 (last accessed May 11, 2020).
40 As a doctor in the 2012 article, “Ugly, Messy and Nasty Debate Surrounds circumcision” in the
Canadian Medical Association Journal, puts it, “[a]dvocates for [male] circumcision use medical
literature to promote their cause and don’t give a damn if it’s true or not.” In the past 140 years
removal of the male foreskin has be touted as a cure for paralysis, restless sleep, bad digestion,
masturbation, and recently penile cancer and HIV. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/
PMC3255195/ (last accessed May 11, 2020).
41 Examples of this kind of argument are: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/mens-
health/10998633/Dont-compare-male-circumcision-with-FGM.html (last accessed May 11,
2020). As the medical ethicist Brian D. Earp summarizes, “You often hear that genital mutilation
and male circumcision are very different.” That, “anyone who tried to compare the two [MGM and
FGM] on ethical (or other) grounds would be making a serious mistake—anatomically, at the
_______________
very least.” https://aeon.co/essays/are-male-and-female-circumcision-morally-equivalent (last

accessed May 11, 2020).
42 There are, arguably, very simple explanations for the prevalence of FGM among certain societies,
for example: poverty, lack of education, sexism, and beliefs about hygiene. To take one of these
examples, poverty, surveys have found FGM to be most common in underdeveloped,
impoverished, uneducated, war-torn countries. “Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A Statistical
Overview and Exploration of the Dynamics of Change.” New York, 2013, 28, 40, 41.
http://data.unicef.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/FGMC_Lo_res_Final_26.pdf (last
accessed May 11, 2020). These are countries that fit under the rubric of what Edward Said called
the “endless instability of ‘primitive’ societies” that western countries have major responsibility
for. Please see Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage Books, 1994). The ranking
of countries by prevalence of FGM reads like a “who’s who” list of countries destroyed by
western intervention/exploitation: Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan. “United Nations
Children’s Fund, Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A Global concern” (New York, 2016, 2.
https://www.unicef.org/media/files/FGMC_2016_brochure_final_UNICEF_SPREAD.pdf,
last accessed May 11, 2020). Given that there is such a strong correlation between FGM and the
destruction of culture, civil society, access to education, and thus resultant poverty, it is simply
wrongheaded to frame the question of FGM in such simple moralizing terms, as has tended to be
the case, and is exemplified by Rachels. It is the wrong question to ask whether or not we should
tolerate FGM, because if the complex culture and society which once existed was not
continuously undermined (if not destroyed) in the first place, then FGM might not have become
as tenacious a problem as it is today. Again, the issue is to understand the other’s historical context,
not to frame the other in terms of moral dualisms, see below.
43 ed. Robert S. Wistrich, Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, Racism, and Xenophobia (Harwood
Academic Publishers, 1999).
44 Whilst it is true that Rachels points approvingly to the civil rights activism of Martin Luther King
Jr., I would argue that this does not count as a criticism of his own culture. A real critique of his
own society would involve more than just name-dropping Martin Luther King Jr., or any other
deceased revolutionary figure who, shorn of their political power, is no longer a threat to the
status quo and now functions as a status symbol signifying one’s liberal credentials without
requiring any real ethical commitment. A real critique of his society would have been actually
marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama; it would be, although this is
anachronistic, taking a knee with Colin Kaepernick; it would be drawing attention to the
American history of sponsoring dictators in Latin American countries throughout the post-war
period—Rachels’ own lifetime, for example.
45 By Stannard’s count, close to 100 million peoples were killed during the “American Holocaust.”
By the end of the nineteenth century, writes Stannard, native Americans had undergone the
“worst human holocaust the world had ever witnessed, roaring across two continents non-stop
for four centuries and consuming the lives of countless tens of millions of people” (Stannard
1994: 146).
46 Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (London: Verso, 1995).
47 Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons
(Malden, MA: Blackwell: 2004).
48 Louise Diop-Maes, Afrique noire, sol, démographie et histoire: Une analyse pluridisciplinaire et critique (Paris:
Editions Présence Africaine, 1996).
49 Thomas Craemer, “Estimating Slavery Reparations: Present Value Comparisons of Historical
Multigenerational Reparations Policies,” Social Science Quarterly 96, no. 2, (2015): 639–55.
50 William Blum, America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy: The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything
Else (New York: Zed Books, 2013).
51 Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press,
2012). As Alexander writes, “Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label
_______________
people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. […] As
a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in
Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it” (Alexander 2012: 2).
52
Interested readers can see: Jeeloo Liu, “The Is-Ought Correlation in Neo-Confucian Qi-Realism:
How Normative Facts Exist in Natural States of Qi,” Contemporary Chinese Thought 43, no. 1,
(2011): 60–77; Jeeloo Liu, “Wang Fuzhi’s Philosophy of Principle (Li) Inherent in Qi,” in Dao
Companion to Neo-Confucian Philosophy, ed. John Makeham (New York: Springer Verlag, 2010), 355–
80; A.T. Nuyen, “Confucianism and the Is-Ought Question,” in Searle’s Philosophy and Chinese
Philosophy: Constructive Engagement, ed. Bo Mou, (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 273–93; Steven
Burik, “Invaluable Justice: Heidegger, Derrida, and Daoism Thinking on Values and Justice,” in
Value and Values: Economics and Justice in an Age of Global Interdependence, ed. Roger T. Ames and
Peter D. Hershock (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015), 400–17.
In passing, I would also like to mention that Hegel not only characterized “oriental”
cultures as being unable to make the is-ought distinction, he systematically excluded Chinese
philosophy because he deemed it incapable of making such a distinction. The is-ought distinction,
under the Hegelian view, is something that only characterizes western religions as it is only the
Caucasian race who have subjective capacity for freedom (Hoffheimer 2005: 198). In the
appendix to the introduction of his lectures on the Philosophy of World History, for example, Hegel
talks of the oriental realm as one still immersed in external nature and so being able to “attain the
inward conditions of subjective freedom” (Hegel 1975: 202). As such, within the oriental realm,
“Ethical life has an immediate and lawless character” (Hegel 1975: 198). On the basis that
philosophy arose only in Greece with the historical dawning of self-consciousness, Hegel
(following Kant), excluded Asia from the philosophical canon (Park 2013: 114). The lack of the
is-ought distinction in Chinese philosophy, quite tragicomically, was part of the reason for the
exclusion of Chinese philosophy from “Philosophy.” See: G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy
of World History. Introduction: Reason in History, ed. Maurice Cowling, E. Kedourie, G. R. Elton, J. R.
Pole, and Walter Ullmann, transl. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975);
Peter K. J. Park, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical
Canon, 1780-1830 (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013); Michael H. Hoffheimer, “Race and Law in
Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion,” in Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy, ed. Andrew Valls (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 194–216.
53 Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest (New York and
London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975).
_______________
Andreas Benl
Cultural Relativism and Antisemitism:
History, Encounters, and Consequences of
Ethno-Religious Identity Politics in the
Orient and the West
Right-wing populist identity politicians and left-liberal multiculturalists seem to
agree on one thing: the chaos in the Middle East and religious-political struggles
in Western migration societies are essentially a clash between static cultures.
While the former see restrictions on Muslim immigration as a magic cure against
Islamist terrorism, the latter define political Islam as the identity of all Muslims
and the headscarf for women as its main and most important symbol. Since the
revolution in Iran in 1979, political Islam has become a global political power
factor. It was more successful than other ethno-religious movements—such as
European fascism and National Socialism—in presenting itself as an authentic
expression of the values of certain societies, their so-called “cultural difference.”
In this essay I argue that this relative “success” is not just a result of the vic-
tory of political Islam in Iran but that it is also related to the emergence of a new
ideological trend in the West. I will outline the history of this development and
its determinants—the interconnection between Western cultural relativism and
its eastern counterparts: Islamism and its identitarian intellectual predecessors
and fellow travelers.
Particularly interesting as a vanishing point is the transformation of tradi-
tional European antisemitism tabooed in the Cold War that took place in this de-
velopment and the role played by anti-Zionism as a common denominator of cul-
tural relativism and Islamism.
Finally, an outlook will shed light on the current constellation between the
West and the Orient as well as Iran, Israel, and its Arab neighbors. This outlook
will also allude to present and future conflict lines and possible alliances in the
confrontation with Islamism and despotism.
“Islam Is Desirable … for other People”

Cultural relativism is the antithesis to ethical, political, and sociological univer-
salism. According to this concept, cultures are to be understood only from their
own values and their own history. The eighteenth-century German philosopher
OpenAccess. © 2021 Armin Lange, Kerstin Mayerhofer, Dina Porat, Lawrence H. Schiffmann, published by
De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671964-007
90 Andreas Benl
Johann Gottfried Herder could be seen as one of its founding fathers, opposing
the universalism of the enlightenment by stressing the cultural particularities of
every nation. Herder refused the evolving theories of races and their differences,
but his approach served as a basis for conservative cultural theories.
After World War II, the cultural relativist approach was defined as opposed
to German and European ethnocentrism and racism. In 1952, Claude Lévi-Strauss
wrote the book Race and History for UNESCO. In this book he rejected the idea of
different races but at the same time condemned the self-understanding of the Eu-
ropean Enlightenment, which in his eyes looked down on other cultures:
Modern man […] [attempts] to account for the diversity of cultures while seeking, at the
same time, to eradicate what still shocks and offends him in that diversity.¹
Since then, cultural relativist theories have evolved mainly within the academic
sphere of post-modern theories in cultural and gender studies and within the
new social movements since the 1970s. Though opposed to biological determin-
ism, cultural relativism tends to transform the discourse of race into a cultural
determinism, legitimizing contested cultural practices like for example the Is-
lamic burka as authentic expressions of the diversity of cultures.² Thinkers of
the extreme right, like the French writer Alain de Benoist, have tried to capitalize
on cultural relativism, coining the term “ethnopluralism” and legitimize ethno-
religious segregation of different cultures with supposed equal rights.³
The political constellation which I try to depict here is unique and complex:
While Islamists and other ethno-religious fundamentalists speak in their own
name and that of their supposed culture, Western cultural relativists are speak-
ing in the name of “the Other,” even if the “Others” protest against being sub-
sumed under a certain culture or identity.
A controversy from the late 1970s can serve as an illustration of this constel-
lation: In 1978 a polemic broke out between Michel Foucault and an Iranian writ-
 C. Lévi-Strauss, Race and History (Paris: UNESCO, 1952), 13.

 Judith Butler, for example, stated: “the burka can be a way of negotiating shame and sexuality
in a public sphere, or preserving a woman’s honor, and even a way of resisting certain western
modes of dress that signify a full encroachment of fashion and commodity dress that signifies
the cultural efforts to efface Islamic practice.” J. Butler, “Feminism Should not Resign in the Face
of such Instrumentalization,” interview by R. Solbach, IABLIS: Jahrbuch für europäische Pro-
zesse 5 (2006): https://www.iablis.de/iablis_t/2006/butler06.html.
 T. Bar-On, “Alain de Benoist: Neo-fascism with a Human Face?” conference paper, conference
“Entgrenzter Rechtsextremismus? Internationale Perspektiven und Gegenstrategien,” Bundes-
zentrale für politische Bildung, Munich, February 9 – 10, 2015, https://m.bpb.de/system/files/
dokument_pdf/Bar-On-DeBenoist-Fascismwithhumanface-2015.pdf.
Cultural Relativism and Antisemitism 91
er living in Paris—the first of many following controversies in which oriental free-

thinkers were and are criticized by Western liberals or leftists for a supposed ha-
tred of Islam. Foucault had just written a series of articles about the nascent rev-
olution in Iran, in which he strongly favored the Islamist current of the
revolutionaries. An Iranian woman with the pseudonym Atoussa H. wrote in re-
sponse to Foucault’s enthusiasm for the perspective of a future Islamic govern-
ment in Iran and life under Sharia law:
It seems that for the Western Left, which lacks humanism, Islam is desirable … for other
people. Many Iranians are, like me, distressed and desperate about the thought of an “Is-
lamic” government. […] The Western liberal Left needs to know that Islamic law can be-
come a dead weight on societies hungering for change. The Left should not let itself be se-
duced by a cure that is perhaps worse than the disease.⁴
Foucault wrote in a short reply published in the magazine Nouvel Observateur a

week later that the “intolerable” in Atoussa H.’s letter was that it “merges togeth-
er all the aspects, all the forms, and all the potentialities of Islam within a single
expression of contempt.” He concluded by lecturing Atoussa H. that “in order to
approach it [Islam] with a minimum of intelligence, the first condition is not to
begin by bringing in hatred.”⁵
Foucault’s arguments may seem familiar from the current debates on so-
called Islamophobia and would hardly produce public outcry today. However,
following the revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s terror campaign
against women, homosexuals, and political opponents in 1979 mobilized prom-
inent figures such as Simone de Beauvoir against the new regime in Iran and
brought harsh criticism from other leftist intellectuals against Foucault.
The renowned Marxist orientalist Maxime Rodinson warned of Islamism as a
kind of “archaic fascism” and compared Khomeini’s concept of an Islamic gov-
ernment with the Spanish Inquisition. Without mentioning Foucault, he spoke of
“Europeans convinced of the vices of Europe and hoping to find elsewhere (why
not in Islam?) the means of assuring a more or less radiant future.”⁶ Former Mao-
 A. H., “An Iranian Woman Writes,” in Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Se-
ductions of Islamism, ed. J. Afary and K. B. Anderson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2005), 209 – 10.
 M. Foucault, “Foucault’s Response to Atoussa H.,” in Foucault and the Iranian Revolution:
Gender and the Seductions of Islamism, ed. J. Afary and K. B. Anderson (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2005), 210.
 M. Rodinson, “Islam resurgent?,” in Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Se-
2005), 233, 236.
92 Andreas Benl
ists Jacques and Claudie Broyelle accused Foucault of honoring a murderous re-
gime.⁷
During the remaining years of the Cold War and in part in the following dec-
ade, the attitude of many Western intellectuals toward Islamist terror and the Ira-
nian regime remained critical. In 1989, the so-called Rushdie Affair—Khomeini’s
Death Fatwa against the British writer for his book Satanic Verses—sent shock
waves through European capitals. This event marks a turning point. Initially,
many liberal and leftist intellectuals showed their solidarity with Salman Rush-
die, while mainstream media and institutions often hesitated and imposed state
realpolitik over freedom of speech.⁸
But Khomeini’s fatwa also challenged the leftist self-image. During the Cold
War, the Western New Left had declared its solidarity even with the most regres-
sive national liberation movements—but always in the name of universal values.
The particular should only be the form of universalistic content. Now Khomeini
formulated an attack on freedom of expression in the name of Islamic particular-
ism: the form became the content. With the collapse of so-called “real socialism”
in Eastern Europe, Islamism began its ideological expansion in the West, fusing
a particularist ideology with the remnants of anti-imperialism: anti-Americanism
and anti-Zionism.
From Oriental Cultural Relativism to Islamism as

a Form of Antimodern Modernity
In many societies shaped by the religion of Islam, attempts were made in the first
decades of the twentieth century to separate religion and state. Especially in Tur-
key and Iran, secularism was practiced as a state mission from above. In Iran
after 1905, there had even been a liberal-bourgeois revolution that demanded
the separation of religion and state.
 Cf. C. and J. Broyelle, “What Are the Philosophers Dreaming About? Was Michel Foucault Mis-
taken about the Iranian Revolution?,” in Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Se-
2005), 247– 49. For a defense of Foucault’s writings on Iran, see T. Lemke, “‘Die verrückteste
Form der Revolte’—Michel Foucault und die Iranische Revolution,” accessed August 25, 2018,
http://www.thomaslemkeweb.de/publikationen/Iran%20II.pdf; and B. Bargu: “Foucault and
Iran,” accessed August 25, 2018, http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/uprising1313/banu-bargu-on-
behrooz-ghamari-tabrizis-foucault-in-iran/.
 Cf. K. Malik, From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy (London: Atlantic Books,
2009).
At that time, religious figures who resisted secularization were clearly in re-
treat. The Islamic clergy proved to be flexible in order to preserve its influence.
The prominent Shiite cleric Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani first allied with the
modernist monarch Reza Shah Pahlavi, was arrested by the British occupying
forces in World War II as an enemy of the anti-Hitler coalition, briefly supported
the reformist anti-imperialist Mohammad Mossadegh in the early 1950s, then
forged an alliance with Reza Pahlavi’s son Mohammed Reza to overthrow Mos-
sadegh.⁹ His political foster son Ruhollah Khomeini only broke with Shah Mo-
hammad Reza Pahlavi in the early 1960s, when the monarch introduced a
land reform and women’s suffrage.
Khomeini never shared the modernist goals of the Shah’s liberal and left-
wing opponents in Persia, but he eventually gained a reputation among the sec-
ular anti-imperialists who were frustrated with the failure of Mossadegh. These
intellectuals had barely done a thorough and critical analysis of the role of reli-
gion in Iranian history and were thus vulnerable to the idea of an Islamic refor-
mulation of their agenda.
Khomeini also introduced antisemitism and anti-Zionism as religious-politi-
cal propaganda tools. In the 1960s and 70s, he did not endorse the propagand-
istic distinction later made by him and many Islamists, between Jews and Zion-
ists.¹⁰ He speculated whether the Shah was a Jew because of the good relations
between Iran and Israel. In the introduction to his most important work, The Is-
lamic State from 1970, he presents the Jews as conspirators against Islam.¹¹
While Khomeini eventually became the charismatic leader of Islamism, two
Iranian intellectuals built bridges for the transformation from secular to religious
anti-imperialism and cultural relativism in the 1960s and 1970s: One of them was
the ex-member of the Communist Tudeh Party Jalal Al-e Ahmad with his essay
Gharbzadegi from 1962. Gharbzadegi has been translated as “Westoxification,”
“Occidentosis” or “Plague from the West.”
In this essay, Jalal Al-e Ahmad condemns an alleged cultural colonization of
Iranian society by Western capitalism, which he sees as the soulless culture of
 Cf. M. Küntzel, Die Deutschen und der Iran: Geschichte und Gegenwart einer verhängnisvollen
Freundschaft (Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Jr., 2009), 106 – 9; A. Milani, Eminent Persians: The Men
and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941 – 1979 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008),
343 – 49.
 For this shift, see a speech held after the revolution and distributed by Iranian state broad-
cast PressTV, “Imam Khomeini on Jews and Zionists,” filmed August 20, 2012, YouTube video,
0:28, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fhF_UuiSq8.
 Cf. R. Khomeini, Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, trans.
H. Algar (Berkeley: Mizan, 1981), 180, 27.
94 Andreas Benl
the machine. Islam is being introduced as a possible means of resisting this de-
velopment, albeit less at a theological or spiritual level but rather instrumentally
as part of a cultural empowerment for modernizing the East, in concert with
other emerging eastern countries to counter Western capitalism. Cultural relativ-
ism serves here as a kind of metapolitical foundation of an oriental, anti-univer-
salist anti-imperialism.
In the foreword of the book, he refers to the German nationalist revolution-
ary writer Ernst Jünger. Al-e Ahmad apparently saw the German pre-fascist writer
as a soulmate for an oriental conservative revolution because of his anti-liberal
and anti-Western writings.¹²
It may come as a surprise that Al-e Ahmad traveled to Israel in 1963 and
wrote an enthusiastic report.¹³ The re-release of excerpts in the run-up to the nu-
clear deal with the Islamic Republic caused quite a stir.¹⁴ On the one hand, the
work has been interpreted as the glimpse of a possible understanding between
Iranian reformist Islamists and the State of Israel.¹⁵ Others saw in Al-e Ahmad’s
admiration of the State of Israel a symptom of Persian anti-Arab nationalism and
evidence of the similarity of the Israeli state to the Iranian theocracy.¹⁶
But for Al-e Ahmad, Israel was above all an ideological projection surface
for a supposed entry into modernity with no or reduced Western influence—
a similar fantasy product as Islam as a vehicle for an autonomous development.
Supposedly a religious guardian state and at the same time a socialist utopia:
this was an image that the real State of Israel could never match. This is why
Al-e Ahmad, after the Six-Day War of 1967, changed fronts in favor of the “Pales-
tinian cause” with equal ease as many intellectuals in Western Germany. The
travelogue was published in 1984 by Al-e Ahmad’s brother Shams in the Islamic
Republic of Iran. At the end of the report, there is an anonymous anti-Zionist ti-
 Cf. J. Al-e Ahmad, Occidentosis: A Plague from the West, trans. R. Campbell (Berkeley: Mizan,
1983), 25.
 Cf. J. Al-e Ahmad, The Israeli Republic: An Iranian Revolutionary’s Journey to the Jewish State
(New York: Restless Books, 2017).
 See, for example, B. Avishai, “Among the Believers: What Jalal Al-e Ahmad Thought Iranian
Islamism Could Learn From Zionism,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2014, https://www.foreign
affairs.com/articles/iran/2014- 02-12/among-believers.
 Cf. E. Shuman, “The Israeli Republic of Iran: On a Book by a Persian Writer who Viewed the
Jewish State as Entirely Harmonious with the Islamic Republic,” The Times of Israel, April 10,
2014, http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-israeli-republic-of-iran/.
 Cf. A. Shams, “Next Year in Tehran: An Iranian Intellectual’s Trip to Israel in the 1960s Re-
vealed the Strange Appeal of Secular Republicanism to Religious Ethno-Supremacists,” The New
Enquiry, February 20, 2014, http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/next-year-in-tehran/.
rade with antisemitic undertones from 1967, according to Shams a text by Jalal
Al-e Ahmad.
Al-e Ahmad’s quest for meaning is in some ways reminiscent of the tourism
of revolutionaries by Western Leftists to Third World countries. The difference
being that his writings were the forerunner of the Islamist future of Iranian soci-
ety, not only a reflection of the “culture of the Other” enjoyed from a distance by
Western intellectuals. The political price of ideological fantasies in Iran was
much higher than in the West.
The sociologist Ali Shariati added anti-imperialist dynamic to the cultural
critique of Jalal Al-e Ahmad. Shariati criticized the conservative, quietist tradi-
tion of Islam and offered a social-revolutionary reinterpretation of Islamic histo-
ry. From his studies in Paris, he knew Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism and the
anti-colonial writings of Frantz Fanon. At the same time he was a fierce critic of
Marxism, which he saw as the culmination of humanist “Western Fallacies.”¹⁷
While Jalal Al-e Ahmad used Islam as a tool for the alleged return to oriental cul-
tural heritage, Shariati, on the other hand, defined the desire for “authentic cul-
tural values” as a bridge to Islam, which he saw as the only possible savior of
these values.
His work Hajj defines sacrifice and martyrdom as central values of a revolu-
tionary Islam that is opposed to the “alienation of mankind” through consumer-
ism and worldly rationalist thinking.¹⁸ In his essay Fatima is Fatima from 1971, he
criticizes the traditional role of women at home and hearth on the one hand, and
feminist, individual, “Western” emancipation on the other hand. Instead, women
should have the opportunity to be active members of society—but only if they are
willing to do so as female soldiers of Islam and join the fight against an imag-
ined Western cultural invasion.¹⁹
Khomeini had more specific problems as the practitioner of the Islamic Rev-
olution, since he had to prove that an Islamic state based on the religious laws of
the Koran was a possibility of the twentieth century. He mocked the idea of sec-
ular Iranians that Islamists are opposed to the technological achievements of
modernity—on the contrary, they should rather be used for the establishment
of Islamic theocracy.
While the Nazis re-enacted the dynamics of capital as a social Darwinist ra-
cial war and antisemitic rage, Islamism at first sight seems to mean a total stag-
nation and rejection of history since the era of Muhammad. But with the concept
 A. Shariati, Marxism and Other Western Fallacies: An Islamic Critique, trans. R. Campbell
(Berkeley: Mizan, 1980).
 Cf. A. Shariati, Hajj (The Pilgrimage) (Nottingham: Jubilee, 1993).
 Cf. A. Shariati, Fatima Is Fatima (Tehran: The Shariati Foundation, 1971).
96 Andreas Benl
of Velayat-e faqih, the guardianship of the Islamic jurist, Khomeini introduced a

major innovation: centrality shifts from sacred texts to religious leaders as me-
diators between God and the masses. In a Machiavellian turn, Khomeini said
that in the event of a state of emergency, the religious leader could even suspend
religious tradition and Sharia law.²⁰
Here Islam is less a term of a religious and more of political theology, rem-
iniscent of the terms of the Crown Jurist of the Third Reich, Carl Schmitt. Schmitt
had defined the political sphere as a distinction between friend and enemy and
sovereign power as the authority that decides on the state of emergency.²¹ In the
Islamic Republic, this is the religious leader commissioned by God. Even more
important than the religious laws or the definition of the content of a particular
religious orthodoxy is the identification of metaphysical enemies—on top of the
list are Jews, Zionism, and the State of Israel.
Only a few months after taking power in the summer of 1979, Khomeini in-
troduced the Quds / Jerusalem Day and declared:
Quds Day is an international day, it is not a day devoted to Quds alone. It is the day for the
weak and oppressed to confront the arrogant powers, the day for those nations suffering
under the pressure of American oppression and oppression by other powers to confront
the superpowers; it is the day when the oppressed should arm themselves against the op-
pressors and rub their noses in the dirt; it is the day when the hypocrites will be distin-
guished from the true believers. For the true believers acknowledge this day as Quds
Day and do what they must do. The hypocrites, however, those who are secretly affiliated
 “In a letter to then president Khamenei, Khomeini stated, ‘the government has the right to
unilaterally terminate its religious contracts with the people, if those contracts are against the
interests of the country and Islam. The government has the right to prevent anything, whether
related to religious rituals or not, as long as it is against the interests of Islam. The hajj [pilgrim-
age], which is one of the important religious tasks, can be prevented temporally by the govern-
ment if it regards it against the expediency of the Islamic Republic.’ He emphasized that if a rul-
ing jurist had to make decisions based only on Islamic law, the religious government and his
absolute authority would be meaningless. Therefore, the ruling jurist is not necessarily the jurist
who understands Islamic law better than others, but he is the jurist who has the ability and au-
thority to understand the interests of Islam and the Islamic Republic beyond the sacred text of
Islamic law.” M. Khalaji, Apocalyptic Politics: On the Rationality of Iranian Policy, Policy Focus 79
(Washington: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2008), 27– 28, https://www.wash
ingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Documents/pubs/PolicyFocus79Final.pdf.
 Cf. C. Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen: Text von 1932. Mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollar-
ien (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1963), 26 ff.; and Schmitt, Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur
Lehre von der Souverä nitä t (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2004), 13.
with the superpowers and are friends of Israel, are either indifferent on this day or do not
allow the people to hold demonstrations.²²
Khomeini tried to establish a global Muslim duty to gather against Israel and the
West, merging anti-imperialist oppressor versus oppressed rhetoric with Islamist
anti-Zionism. In this way, he wanted to create a clear-cut separation between the
“true Muslims” who rise up against Israel and those who have been denounced
as infidels and traitors in the Muslim world. Anti-Zionism has a similar impor-
tance as a guideline for the definition of friends and enemies in the foreign pol-
icy of the Islamic Republic as antisemitism had as guiding principle for the en-
mity of Nazi Germany against Western democracies and the Soviet Union.
Dynamics of Cultural Relativism and anti-Zionism

during and after the End of the Cold War
In the 1960s, thinkers of anti-colonialism, such as Frantz Fanon, attempted to
create a revolutionary culture of the oppressed against the colonial oppressors.
In his essay The Defeat of the Mind in 1987, the French philosopher Alain Fin-
kielkraut criticized Fanon, claiming that his attempt to escape European philos-
ophy had failed and had only led him to German national romanticism, as advo-
cated by Johann Gottfried Herder, who thought in closed, unchanging national-
cultural units.²³
It is important to note that cultural relativist and anti-universalist postures
remained controversial within the global left during the Cold War. Edward
Said introduced the “linguistic turn” to anti-imperialism in 1978 with his book
Orientalism. ²⁴ When he condemned Marx’s writings on the Orient as part of West-
ern imperialist “Orientalism,” he was, for example, criticized by the left-wing Sy-
rian thinker Sadik al-Azm for an “Orientalism in Reverse.” Al-Azm accused Said
of turning negative Western stereotypes about the Orient into an affirmed entity
of “the Other.”²⁵
 R. Khomeini, “Quds Day is the Day for the Weak and Oppressed to Confront the Oppressors,”
issued August 7, 1979, accessed May 3, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20041204224048/
http://www.irib.ir/worldservice/imam/palestin_E/10.htm.
 Cf. A. Finkielkraut, The Defeat of the Mind (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
 Cf. E. Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1979).
 Cf. S. J. Al-’Azm, “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse,” Khamsin: Journal of Revolution-
ary Socialists of the Middle-East 8 (1980): https://libcom.org/library/orientalism-orientalism-re
verse-sadik-jalal-al-%E2%80%99azm.
98 Andreas Benl
Since the attacks of 9/11, the panorama has changed: we are hardly talking
anymore about a plurality of cultures seen as static entities but of a dualism—the
West against Islam or Islamism. While it was possible to try to mix ethnology and
Marxism in the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements during the Cold
War, this was no more conceivable after 1989 and even less after 9/11.
The competition is no more between two secular, universalist alliances com-
peting around the worldly terms of the French Revolution: freedom on the one
hand, equality on the other. There is no alternative economic system like the for-
mer Eastern Bloc but only remaining oil rent states like Iran, Russia, and Vene-
zuela challenging Europe and the United States. The focus of political competi-
tion between the Great Powers has shifted away from Latin America and Asia to
the Middle East. In the past, it was the Soviet Union which supported nationalist
or religious anti-Western movements in the Third World on a tactical basis. Ven-
ezuela’s “Socialism of the 21st century,” on the contrary, is maintained with
counter-insurgency assistance by Iranian revolutionary guards, not the other
way round.²⁶
Within this political-ideological dynamic, anti-Zionism gets to the center of
the stage. An anti-Zionist attitude was not always prevalent in the Left. Socialist
Labor Zionism once was the strongest current within the Jewish national move-
ment. Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw the Zionists initially as competitors within
the orbit of the workers movement.²⁷ In 1947, the Soviet Union was even very sup-
portive of the creation of a Jewish state,²⁸ hoping it would form an alliance with
the USSR.²⁹
That attitude changed dramatically once Stalin’s hopes to gain a new satellite
state in the Middle East proved futile. Soviet anti-Zionist agitation now adopted a
paranoid, antisemitic tone. Zionism was no more seen as a political adversary but
as an international Jewish conspiracy against the “Socialist camp”—with deadly
consequences for the victims, who were persecuted in show trials in communist
 Cf. J. Humire, “Iran Propping up Venezuela’s Repressive Militias,” The Washington Times,
March 17, 2014, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/17/humire-irans-basij-props-
up-venezuelas-repressive-/?page=all#pagebreak.
 Cf. L. Poliakov, Vom Antizionismus zum Antisemitismus (Freiburg: Ca ira, 1992).
 Cf. A. Gromyko, “Remarks by Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to the UN Special
Committee on Palestine (14 May 1947),” United Nations, General Assembly, issued May 14,
1947, accessed April 13, 2020, https://israeled.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/1947.5.14-Gromy
ko-Speech.pdf.
 Cf. M. Kramer, “Who Saved Israel in 1947?” Mosaic Magazine, November 6, 2017, https://
mosaicmagazine.com/essay/israel-zionism/2017/11/who-saved-israel-in-1947/.
Eastern Europe in the 1950s.³⁰ The Soviet Union flooded the Middle East and other
countries with anti-Zionist propaganda, this attitude did not change until its dis-
solution in 1991.³¹
In contrast, among the post-war Western New Left there were intense feel-
ings of solidarity for the Jewish state, whose creation was seen in the context
of the struggle against Nazism, and this Left “regarded Great Britain and the feu-
dal Arab monarchies as the imperialists and the reactionaries of the Middle
East.”³²
Especially in Western Germany, initially there were strong sympathies
among leftist students for the Jewish state, which was seen as a consequence
of the Nazi past. That changed with the Six-Day War in 1967, when Western left-
ists discovered the Palestinians as part of the international anti-Imperialist strug-
gle in the framework of their opposition to the Vietnam War.³³
A deep hostility toward Israel was the least consequence, leftist terrorist
groups like the “Tupamaros West Berlin,”³⁴ the “Revolutionary Cells” but also
the Japanese “Red Army Faction”³⁵ even perpetrated deadly attacks against Isra-
eli and Jewish targets on their own or alongside Palestinian armed groups.³⁶
After the end of the Soviet Bloc 1989/91, for a significant part of the global
radical left, anti-Zionism is a kind of surrogate of the former global contention
between Western capitalism and so-called real socialism. For liberal multi-cul-
turalists, the conflict between Israel and Palestine embodies all the perceived in-
 Cf. M. Palomino, “‘Soviet Union’: The Doctors’ Plot 1953—Stalin’s Last Purge Plan,” Encyclo-
pedia Judaica, vol. 6 (1971), http://www.geschichteinchronologie.com/SU/EncJudaica_doktor
verschwoerung-1953-ENGL.html.
 Cf. I. Tabarovsky, “Understanding the Real Origin of that New York Times Cartoon: How anti-
Semitic Soviet Propaganda Informs Contemporary Left anti-Zionism,” The Tablet Magazine,
June 6, 2019, https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/285781/soviet-anti-semitic-car
toons.
 S. Linfield, “Zionism and the Left: An Interview with Susie Linfield,” interview by A. Johnson,
Fathom Journal, June 2019, http://fathomjournal.org/zionism-and-the-left-an-interview-with-
susie-linfield/.
 Cf. M. W. Kloke, Israel und die deutsche Linke: Zur Geschichte eines schwierigen Verhältnisses
(Hanau: Haag & Herchen, 1990).
 T. Fichter, “The anti-Semitism of the 68ers. Philipp Gessler and Stefan Reinecke talk with Til-
man Fichter about the bomb planted in Berlin’s Jewish Community Centre in 1969,” http://www.
signandsight.com/features/434.html; original in T. Fichter, “‘Wir haben das nicht ernst genom-
men’,” interview by P. Gessler and S. Reinecke, taz, October 25, 2005, https://taz.de/!527391/.
 “Wanted Japanese Red Army Member Maintains 1972 Airport Attack Wasn’t Terrorism,” The
Mainichi, May 31, 2017, https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170531/p2a/00 m/0na/011000c.
 Cf. J. Herf, Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967 –
1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
100 Andreas Benl
justices committed by the West against the oriental “Other.” A closer look makes
it possible to identify a history within the history dating back to before the Cold
War and beyond the orbit of the left. The solidarity with the Palestinian struggle
in Western European societies is formulated in relation to the colonial or fascist
past of the respective countries.
While in France and in Britain, anti-Zionism rose in the realm of anti-impe-
rialist and post-colonial concepts, in Germany and Austria it has been regularly
associated with the German past: To overcome the Nazi past is seen as an obli-
gation—not for solidarity with the Jewish state but with the Palestinian anti-
Zionism³⁷ of the alleged “victims of the victims.”³⁸
The British conservative historian Arnold J. Toynbee got to the heart of these
attitudes, when he accused the Jews of perpetrating political sins that the Euro-
peans supposedly had left behind them after 1945. He claimed that acts of vio-
lence committed by Zionists in the Israeli War of Independence resembled Nazi
crimes³⁹ and that the
East European Zionists have been practising Colonialism in Palestine […] at the very time
when the West European peoples have been renouncing their temporary rule over non-Eu-
ropean peoples.⁴⁰
 Austrian scholar Claudia Brunner has written a very emotional account of her reworking of
the genocidal Nazi past of her grand uncle Alois Brunner. In the end she tries to explain the shift
of her academic interest toward suicide bombers in the Middle East as a logical continuation of
her interest in the history of Nazism and her “close relationship with the family phantom [Alois
Brunner], but just under different conditions.” “In the course of research on the resistance of the
Palestinians against the Israeli policy, I finally get back on a personal, emotional level to the
dimension of the European / German / Austrian responsibility for the situation in the Middle
East, a responsibility I cannot and want not to oversee within a historical perspective.” C. Brun-
ner and U. von Seltmann, Schweigen die Täter reden die Enkel (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 2011),
82 f.
 J. Joffe, “Wir Wiedergutgewordenen,” Zeit Online, August 22, 2018, https://www.zeit.de/2018/
35/gute-deutsche-josef-joffe-israel/komplettansicht.
 Cf. Y. Rosenberg, “When an Israeli Ambassador Debated a British Historian on Israel’s Legiti-
macy—and Won,” The Table Magazine, January 31, 2014, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/
news/articles/herzog-toynbee-1961.
 A. J. Toynbee, Experiences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 266.
The Transformation of the Role of Antisemitism

in Europe and the Middle East
It seems easy to refute the absurdity of the anti-colonialist, anti-racist, and anti-
fascist attitudes of academics or politicians who are trying to whitewash Islam-
ism and anti-Zionism. In fact, the godfather of Palestinian anti-Zionism, the
Mufti of Jerusalem, was not a classic anti-colonialist, much less an antifascist.
Amin al-Husseini was first appointed by the British Mandate for Palestine,
and later on, he lived in Nazi Germany, where he was a fanatic supporter of
Nazi antisemitism. After 1945 there was Western cooperation with Islamists in
the Cold War.⁴¹ But these facts, suppressed by post-fascist and post-colonial
anti-Zionism, lead to another question: what has changed in antisemitic articu-
lations since the pre-Nazi era and why?
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno in the Dialectic of the Enlighten-
ment analyzed antisemitism as a blind and murderous ritual of the masses, a
psychological compensation for the deprivations suffered by the underprivileged
in a class society and as a tool of cynical manipulation in the interest of the
ruler.⁴² But the genocide committed by the Nazi national community transcends
the traditional political and class boundaries. After Auschwitz, antisemitism in
the West had lost its “good reputation.” At the same time however, the political
panorama that had formed in the Dreyfus Affair—the dichotomy of right-wing ex-
tremist antisemites and liberal and left-wing enemies of antisemitism—was put
into question.
After 1945, when it became clear that antisemitism was a destructive force
without borders, it became a taboo at least in Western Europe and the US to af-
firm eliminationist antisemitism. A complicated political-ideological division of
labor emerged. Anti-Jewish Western intellectuals and politicians expressed un-
derstanding of genocidal ideologies as expressions of Palestinian or Muslim vic-
tims. Such an approach poses a much smaller political risk to its protagonists
than if they had presented these ideologies and the inherent antisemitism in
their own name. For decades, the idea that Israel-Palestine is the mother of all
conflicts has been so engrained, that the bloodbath of Assad and his backers
 Cf. D. Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017);
K. Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten: Eine politische Biographie Amin
El-Husseinis (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007).
 Cf. M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 137– 72.
102 Andreas Benl
in Syria from 2011 on and the ascent of the “Islamic State” came as a surprise to
many.
Barack Obama’s Cairo speech of June 2009,⁴³ can serve as the culmination of
a cultural relativism, that under his presidency became a state program. In this
speech, he lamented headscarf bans but not the compulsion to wear the head-
scarf; he emphasized the freedom of religion but nowhere the right to be left
in peace by religion. In addition, he defined American interventions and Israeli
settlements as the main problems of the so-called Islamic world.
It is therefore logical that Obama’s dialogue with the Islamic world during
his presidency narrowed to one with the Islamic Republic of Iran—to the pro-
found horror of almost all of their neighbors. The Iranian regime is the only rel-
evant state actor that ideologically accelerates as well as violently enforces anti-
civilizational resentment, antisemitism, and religious community terror on a
global level as state doctrine. In modern times, the Islamic World that Obama
wanted to see acknowledged in its supposed cultural essence had never been
unified beyond some shared anti-Western resentments, which today are en-
shrined in Teheran’s slogans against the US and Israel.
The speech from Cairo was put to the test just a week later, when an uprising
in Iran started against the rulers of the Islamic Republic, the defenders of the
compulsory hijab. The American president had equated the Iranian people
and the leaders of the Islamic Republic. A conflict of life and death between
the two was not foreseen. Against this background, both the US government
and the governments of the European Union denied any substantial political
or even moral support for the democratic protest movement in Iran, which
brought millions to the streets. It appeared as a threat to the envisioned nuclear
deal with the mullahs.⁴⁴
In the Middle East, modernist political movements after World War II and
Israel’s War of Independence almost immediately had shown a hybrid character
that crossed left-wing anti-imperialism with an antisemitism, which was formerly
associated with the extreme Right. Anti-Zionism and antisemitism became the
common denominator and power instrument for Oriental despotisms of all
kinds. The destruction of Israel was a central success parameter of pan-Arabism
and other post-colonial movements in the region. When this goal was not ach-
ieved, the rise of the Islamists was logical: they accused even the most inade-
 Cf. B. Obama, “Text: Obama’s Speech in Cairo,” The New York Times, June 4, 2009, http://
www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html.
 Cf. E. Lake, “Why Obama Let Iran’s Green Revolution Fail: The President Wanted a Nuclear
Deal, Not Regime Change,” Bloomberg, August 24, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/ar
ticles/2016-08-24/why-obama-let-iran-s-green-revolution-fail.
quate and poorly organized advocacy of secular revolutionaries for social prog-
ress as a distraction from the war against the Jews and the West. The result was
the preservation of the backwardness and devastation of the whole region.⁴⁵
But this constellation has become precarious. For years, the most explicit
and loudest critics of Islamism have been intellectuals in the Middle East or im-
migrants with an oriental family background who had first-hand experience of
Islamism. On the other hand, Islamism, which fused Islamic history with West-
ern technology and elements of the anti-modern modernity of fascism and Naz-
ism, has made the passage to Europe. There is no geographical separation be-
tween what is politically associated with the Orient and what is associated
with the West anymore. The “War of Ideas” no longer runs along but on both
sides of the borders.⁴⁶
The catastrophic consequences of Western collaboration with the Iranian re-
gime in recent years, the war in Syria, and the rise of the “Islamic State” have led
to a new situation. Abandoned by the West, things are not looking good for Dem-
ocrats and real moderates in the region, to say the least. However, this situation
has increased enormously the pressure to challenge old dogmas on those who
do not share the goals of the Islamists. While in the past anti-Zionism was treated
as a regional folklore independent of all other political differences, its centrality
is now clearly linked to the Iranian regime and its Sunni-Islamist counterparts.
Unfortunately, they have enough economic and military resources to continue
their expansion. But their ideological hegemony over the region under the flag
of a Muslim-Arab struggle against Israel has been put into question.
To understand this, we must bear in mind: In order to preserve the reign of
the “Axis of Resistance” against Israel between Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria,
half a million Syrians had to die, and millions have been displaced. In the Mid-
dle East, therefore, there are even moments in which the self-destructive charac-
ter of anti-Zionism comes to consciousness. Be it among Syrian or Iraqi Opposi-
tion figures, Middle Eastern free thinkers or even within the leadership of Saudi-
 Hisham Melhem, Washington bureau chief of Al Arabiya News writes: “My generation of
Arabs was told by both the Arab nationalists and the Islamists that we should man the prover-
bial ramparts to defend the ‘Arab World’ against the numerous barbarians (imperialists, Zion-
ists, Soviets) massing at the gates. Little did we know that the barbarians were already inside
the gates, that they spoke our language and were already very well entrenched in the city.”
H. Melhem, “The Barbarians Within Our Gates: Arab Civilization Has Collapsed. It Won’t Recover
in My Lifetime,” Politico Magazine, September 18, 2014, https://www.politico.com/magazine/
story/2014/09/the-barbarians-within-our-gates-111116_full.html.
 Cf. S. Harris, “Winning the War of Ideas,” Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO), filmed Febru-
ary 3, 2017, YouTube video, 12:48, https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=FpNwlcePwug.
104 Andreas Benl
Arabia. As an Iraqi TV presenter put it in a furious exchange with a Shiite mili-

tiaman: “Palestine is not the cause of the Iraqis, we don’t want that Iranian rhet-
oric.”⁴⁷
Today one must decide whether one wants to help the Islamists to accom-
plish their work of destruction in the Middle East or whether one wants to pre-
serve what remains of the civilizational remnants of the societies in the region.
Making Israel responsible for upheavals, with which the Jewish state obviously
has nothing to do, is more difficult now than ever before.
This development has culminated in the recent uprisings in Iran since New
Year’s Eve 2017/2018: Its slogans against all the currents of the regime have
been much more radical than in 2009. While at that time apologists of the regime
claimed that the Iranian countryside is with the rulers, the protest against the
regime’s terrorist expansion has now been all over with chants like “No to
Gaza, no to Lebanon, my life only for Iran”⁴⁸ or “Let go of Syria, think of
us.”⁴⁹ The religious cities of Mashhad and Qom⁵⁰ became the focus of demon-
strations against the Islamic Republic. Even the most holy slogans of the Iranian
theocracy against the United States and Israel have been countered in the pro-
tests.⁵¹ In 2019, the protests in Iran were echoed by huge and enduring demon-
strations in Lebanon and Iraq against the corruption of the ruling elite and the
influence of the Islamic Republic on these societies.⁵²
In summary, the political frontlines have become much clearer in the last
five to ten years, and what Marx and Engels once described as a result of the his-
 “Sunni and Shiite Commentators Clash on TV over Military Campaign in Tikrit,” MEMRI TV,
issued March 13, 2015, video, 14:15, https://www.memri.org/tv/sunni-and-shiite-commentators-
clash-tv-over-military-campaign-tikrit.
 A. Nader (@AlirezaNader), “‘No Gaza, No Lebanon, my life is for Iran.’ Shiraz, #Iran,” Twit-
ter, August 2, 2018, https://twitter.com/AlirezaNader/status/1025017775331442689.
 A. Nader (@AlirezaNader), “Cell phone merchants protest in #Tehran and shout ‘Let go of
Syria, think of us.’,” Twitter, June 24, 2018, https://twitter.com/AlirezaNader/status/1010893744
944701440.
 H. Dagres (@hdagres), “Chants in the holy city of Qom tonight, the spiritual center of #Iran:
‘We don’t want an Islamic Republic!’,” Twitter, December 29, 2017, https://twitter.com/hdagres/
status/946824612238823424.
 H. Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi), “April 20 – Kazerun, southern #Iran Protesters turn Friday prayer
into a major anti-regime rally. ‘Our enemy is right here, they always say its America.’,” Twitter,
April 20, 2018, https://twitter.com/heshmatalavi/status/986213693980643328; “Protesters In Teh-
ran, Iran Shout ‘Death To Palestine’ In Anti-Government Rally,” filmed June 25, 2018, YouTube
video, 0:13, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukhrobSFnUA&feature=youtu.be.
 Cf. J. Spyer, “Behind the Lines: Revolt against Iran’s ‘System’ in Iraq and Lebanon,” The
Jerusalem Post, October 31, 2019. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/behind-the-lines-revolt-
against-irans-system-in-iraq-and-lebanon-606497.
torical-ideological triumph of the European bourgeoisie now applies to a very

different, dramatic context—the disillusionment created by the chaos in the Mid-
dle East: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is
at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his re-
lations with his kind.”⁵³ Thus the category of interest as a heroic driving force of
the theory of revolution of Marx and Engels has been transformed into some-
thing else—a categorical imperative to prevent the worst.
In the Middle East, the abyss between Islamists and other political forces is
growing, but resources are lacking to successfully fight the Islamists. The para-
doxical complement is the constellation in Germany, Europe, and to a certain de-
gree also in the USA. The technologically most advanced societies of the Western
world seem unable or unwilling to consider their own situation and their rela-
tionship with their southern neighbors soberly.
It is increasingly difficult for Europeans to maintain the phantasm of the
centrality of the Israel-Palestine conflict. But there is still no significant aware-
ness of the fatal consequences to democracy and security in Europe of the cre-
ation of an oriental fantasy world for the purpose of delegating antisemitic re-
sentment.
From the European Civil War to the Betrayal of

Solidarity and Enlightenment in the Name of the
Other—Conflict Lines and Possible Alliances
Between 1922 and 1945 bourgeois liberalism, socialism/communism, and fas-
cism/Nazism constituted three political currents in changing mutual alliance
constellations, which, however, ideologically represented only themselves. The
identitarian self-image of the right-wing extremists to represent Europe’s cultural
heritage was only put forward by themselves. Attempts to forge alliances with
them from the left and from the political center were easily identifiable as polit-
ical opportunism.
But the transformation of the Cold War confrontation into the masquerade
ball of identities of recent decades has fundamentally changed traditional ideo-
logical constellations. While tough anti-imperialists defend Islamists as long as
they serve their own anti-American and anti-Zionist needs, the academic left
 K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, accessed August 25, 2018, https://
www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007.
106 Andreas Benl
in particular has devised huge theoretical constructs in order to prove what the
radical right also claims to know: it is the cultural fate of the Muslim “Other” to
feel offended by the West and to sympathize with the Islamists. Anyone from a
Muslim family background who thinks differently, even vehemently opposes Is-
lamic fascism, is seen as a traitor to his or her culture—not only by Islamists but
also by the advocates of identity politics in the West.
Such positions are represented by intellectuals who themselves do not live
under Sharia law or want to wear the headscarf. They do not even receive praise
from the Islamists for their ideological advocacy. Western advertising for reli-
gious coercion appears as a free gift to the Jihadists. When Judith Butler honored
Hamas and Hezbollah in 2006 as part of the progressive left,⁵⁴ there was no ju-
bilation to be heard in Gaza or Beirut. Of course Hamas and Hezbollah are happy
about any propagandistic support, but the one who loves the betrayal, does not
necessarily love the traitor.
For the societies of the Middle East from Tel Aviv to Tehran, between Tunis
and Islamabad, the appropriate political positioning today means a matter of life
and death, at least on this many people in the region would certainly agree. No-
body can afford a policy “in the name of the other,” as it is advanced by Western
cultural relativism.
Western democracies in the twentieth century have only once relatively
spontaneously formed an alliance in a joint ideological opposition: in the dis-
pute with the Soviet Union about the heritage of secular enlightenment. Hitler,
on the other hand, forced the West into an anti-fascist alliance, which Europe
would have liked to avoid as it does today concerning a confrontation with Islam-
ism.
The biggest question marks lay therefore today in Europe. In case a reversal
of the so-called cultural dialogue and collaboration with Islamism would be
possible, the question of alliances is almost self-evident: it is not about a strug-
gle between ethno-religiously defined cultures but about a confrontation with
identity politics. And that is why the first and most-experienced partners of
any willing political forces in the West for an alliance against barbarism are
not politicians who want to contain Islamism only within its supposedly ances-
tral region. Instead, any meaningful and enduring partnership for a better future
in the Middle East and the West should be built with the dissidents of Islamist
 Cf. “Judith Butler on Hamas, Hezbollah & the Israel Lobby (2006), “ issued March 28, 2010,
accessed August 25, 2018, https://radicalarchives.org/2010/03/28/jbutler-on-hamas-hezbollah-is
rael-lobby/.
identity politics on the one hand, and the Jews and Israelis affected by their an-
tisemitic consequences on the other hand.
Andreas Benl is Senior Fellow and Head of Iran Research at the Mideast Free-
dom Forum Berlin. His research is focused on the encounters of political, social,
and intellectual movements in Iran, the Middle East, and the West: Islamism
and antisemitism on the one hand, the quest for freedom and emancipation on
the other. Among many other publications, he is co-author of the anthologies:
Iran—Israel—Deutschland. Antisemitismus, Außenhandel und Atomprogramm
(Berlin, 2017), Iran im Weltsystem (Innsbruck, 2010) and Der Iran. Analyse
einer islamischen Diktatur und ihrer europäischen Förderer (Innsbruck, 2008).
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Sociology International Journal
Review Article Open Access
Corps raciology and cultural relativism
Keywords: Corps, raciology, cultural, relativism, race, Volume 2 Issue 5 - 2018

anthropology
Jacques J Rozenberg
Introduction Department of sociology, French National Centre for Scientific
Research, France
Cultural relativism is born historically called the American
culturalist anthropology, between the two world wars, opposed mainly Correspondence: Jacques J Rozenberg, Department of
sociology, French National Centre for Scientific Research,
German. It clung to classify human “races” in order to emphasize France, Email jacrozenberg@gmail.com
the Aryan. The discovery of the Nazi genocide, after the Nuremberg
Trials, presented deeply question the idea of “race”.1 The international Received: September 02, 2018 | Published: September 19,
committees and the various pronouncements that followed these trials 2018
have sought to promote three ideals. First, the universal nature of human
rights that should apply to the whole of humanity. Then, consideration
and respect for all ethnic and cultural formations, of which sought There is a semantic change in terms of race. It not only refers to the
to establish equality. Finally, the regulation of experiments on the human body visible differences but, due to assimilation of language
human body, while requiring the voluntary consent of the subject. The families from ethnic families, a biological indelible mark. It was then
development of the second ideal in the form of cultural relativism, used to identify the body otherness in relation to a racial standard
did not fail to clash with the first and third ideals.2,3 On the one hand (the Aryan) to prove the inferiority of all “races” non-Aryan.10 In this
the Universalist claims of ethics related to human rights, does not transformation of the idea of race; social Darwinism played a key
sit well with the cultural relativity of values. Moreover, respect for theoretical role. Thus, anthropogeny haeckel promoted a selectionist
the human body and the person are often contradicted by numerous struggle between races to promote the elite of humanity.11
regional customs. Let’s try to understand what the historical and
theoretical foundations of cultural relativism are. Then try to assess Criticism of the West-centrism body
the conceptual content of ethical relativism. Finally, analyze the type In response to the racist tendencies of German anthropology,
of reports that anthropology has with bioethics. Franz Boas founded in the late nineteenth century American cultural
It may be recalled that Kant describes anthropology from a anthropology; by opposing evolutionism it dissociates the concept of
pragmatic point of view, highlighting a double paradox. The first is culture from that of “race”.12 His students will seek to demonstrate
that the human knowledge is always individualized, and endeavors the relativity of all cultural form. So Ruth Benedict has sought to
to describe the concrete characteristics. However, it presupposes uncover the “models” (patterns) that regulate specific behaviors
the same time a general knowledge without which the study is each company.13 Similarly, Margaret Mead was able to show the
still only fragmentary, unable to claim the status of science. The irrelevance of the Western conception of male/female ratios for
second paradox concerns the necessarily interpretative nature of Pacific societies14 and Ralph Linton15 sought, with Abram Kardiner,16
anthropological investigation, resulting from the fact that observation to analyze the differentiated cultural expressions apprehended through
is never that of the man as he is, but only as it appears to the observer, individualized forms of always consistencies. In all cases it was
and according the terms that the observed helping to bring.4 If this idiosyncratic elucidate the relationship of the individual to his culture,
double paradox persisted well after Kant, however, then it seems to however striving to develop common anthropological models, but still
have moved somewhat to the epistemological axiological plane when studied regionally.17
the anthropologist sought to identify the cultural universe of each The Nuremberg Trials have revealed the exact nature of the Nazi
population studied and the consideration of values it conveys. Note racial anthropology and its consequences regarding experiments on
the role has had in such a displacement, Herder, a contemporary of the human body. The reactions that these trials have driven on the
Kant, who in 1774 denounced the folly of European universalism one hand calling into almost total question of the concept of “race”,18
involving contempt for other cultures.5 and also promoted the strengthening of international institutions that
In fact, as recalled Dumont, this tension between universalism guarantee the rights of man and those patients subject to biomedical
and particularism is consubstantial to anthropology itself. It defines practices. UNESCO and published in 1951 and 1952, the brochures
two poles, the combination of which is the source of inextricable of Michel Leiris and Claude Levi-Strauss, respectively entitled Race
difficulties.6,7 These have arisen since the sixteenth century, with the and Civilization and Race and History, where the notion of racism
beginning of colonization that prompted the Europeans to realize was related to the more general question of Western ethnocentrism.
the strangeness body body-other non-Western, trying to locate The latter is related to perceiving cultural differences, shocking
the connection had a standard res of universal humanity. Until the Western values, through a pseudo-evolutionary scheme that sought
eighteenth century, the body (of) alien is gauged based on the concept to classify such differences under “stages or steps... a unique
of “race”. First associated with the idea of purity, the concept was development which, from the same point, must make them converge
to preserve the lineage of the nobility and prevent mesalliances. It towards the same goal”.19 Ethnic strangeness, as strong as it is,
was then used to identify foreign bodies to classify non-European must be resolved through a cumulative and reductionist approach to
populations. In the nineteenth century, with Renan8 and Gobineau.9 human history. A picture of the scale, illustrating the idea of human
progress, Levi-Strauss opposes that of failures for which rider made
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© 2018 Rozenberg. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.
Copyright:
Corps raciology and cultural relativism ©2018 Rozenberg 395
the move represents only one possibility among others.20 the cultural ethics” (multilevel view of ethics).35,36 To accomplish this task well, it
condition of each company is in fact a unique combination of factors should identify the differentiated role held every position on the body
that can be neither privileged nor devalued relative to other possible of another, through all the cultural behaviors considered. It is in fact
combinations. The relativistic conception resulting from the post- to promote a multidimensional perspective that takes into account the
Nuremberg anthropology, and endorsed the idea of a total respect for special relationship still that each company establishes between men
all cultures, and the illegitimacy of wear on one of them that Levi- and with the world.
Strauss would later call a “distant gaze”. 21
In line with research in cognitive anthropology, showing that the
The fundamental question then arose anthropology concerned constraints of physical reality are common to all cultures.37,38 We
his hermeneutic dimension. Insofar ethnographic investigation is also believe that the various forms of ethical and social constraints
still mediated by the consciousness of the observer, its interpretation are common to all of humanity. Indeed, as we were able to uncover
and its underlying motives criteria seem subjective to a large extent. stable sets of cultural and linguistic representations converge despite
Geertz saw fit to expand the own subjectivity to the anthropologist ethnic diversity,39,40 and it seems possible to identify vis-à-vis the lines
interpreted the content themselves and thus remove the idea of of another body, beyond their differences, define forms of competing
common sense all universal significance.22,23 reflection. Therefore, each culture should be seen as having a
specific performance system whose total remains invariant, while the
Alongside this surreptitious passage of the relativity of
combination of each of the exchange elements and sets each culture
interpretation process than its contents, anthropology has made
own.
a semantic shift of cultural relativism (for companies) to moral
relativism (concerning the attitude of subjects) and ethics (concerning Such a multidimensional approach, which remains largely
the nature of the acts). The so-called postmodernism has accentuated contextualist same time, seems particularly interesting for body
such a slip by proceeding from the 1980s, in a joint protest of cognitive anthropology. The anthropologist must take into account all the factors
objectivity and universality of values.24 Perceived as illusory and are that determine each cultural phenomenon studied in its specificity.
potent instruments of domination of the body, populations25 and also The Indian case of selective abortion based on sex carries a mixture of
of all ethnic and cultural diversity.26 traditional philosophical-religious formations, combined with socio-
economic considerations that Western technological development
Physical and cultural differentiation anthropology allowed expressing in a gynocide perspective. Our analysis suggests
Cultural differences on the perception of the body, its rights and that a contextual dimension, properly “anthropo-ex-centric” may
obligations have been there a few years at the center of debates about help to clarify the various aspects of the issue of body-other. In fact,
“Asian values” that include poorly integrate the concept of human each company sets up its own integration criteria “very body” and
rights.27,28 For the Asian thought, this concept has a very different individuality “normal,” while rejecting “other-body” and individuals
connotation to that proposed by Western culture. The evaluation of “deviant”. Cultural differences on the perception of the body, its rights
human actions, especially when they concern the body, presupposes and obligations have been central to the debate on non-European
what determined their place in the universe and the harmony they are values in general that such ill incorporate the concept of human
likely to promote it, in secondarisant notions of need and individual rights41 this concept has a very different connotation to that proposed
right.29,30 In general, the Western conception of human rights derived by Western culture. The evaluation of human actions, especially
from an unthought preeminence of the law on the duty, in fact, empty when they concern the body, presupposes déterùination space in the
the notion of right of any effectiveness. As Haim Cohn points out, the universe secondarisant the concepts of needs and individual duty.
rights established bythe Universal Declaration Human rights is a mere
statement of principle (leges nudae) has not missed being flouted at Acknowledgements
every opportunity. Own Western culture, the concept of human rights, None.
despite its necessity and its sublimity, concerns only abstract legal
body and not the actual individual bodies, asking to be guided by Conflict of interest
ethical behavior.31
The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
Research on bioethical implications of cultural diversity and their
different perceptions of the body have increased, especially since the References
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863085
research-article2019
JAS0010.1177/0021909619863085Journal of Asian and African StudiesMsuya
Original Article
JAAS
Journal of Asian and African Studies
2019, Vol. 54(8) 1145–1158
Concept of Culture Relativism and © The Author(s) 2019
Women’s Rights in Sub-Saharan Article reuse guidelines:

Africa sagepub.com/journals-permissions
https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909619863085
DOI: 10.1177/0021909619863085
journals.sagepub.com/home/jas
Norah Hashim Msuya

University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Abstract
This article discusses the challenges of the realization of women’s rights in relation to the concept of culture
relativism in sub-Saharan Africa. It examines how the concept of culture is misconstrued with a traditional
hierarchy and patriarchy approach that intervenes in the realization of women’s rights in sub-Saharan African
states. Many societies are concerned that the promotion of gender equality would interfere with local culture;
hence they feel that gender equality should not be promoted for ethical reasons. Women have been left
with the unpleasant situation of choosing between their rights or their culture. Through secondary analysis
and a critical review of the literature, the article engages in the debate on cultural diversity and gender
equality, to challenge the existing stereotypes in sub-Saharan African cultures. It argues that traditional and
cultural practices should adhere to the values of equality and human rights. The article proposes that cultural
considerations will have to yield whenever a clear conflict with human rights norms becomes apparent.
Keywords
Culture, relativism, human rights, women’s rights, gender equality, history
Introduction
Anthropologists refer to the term ‘culture’ to include ‘inherited ideas, beliefs, values, and knowl-
edge, which constitute the shared bases of social action’ (Ssenyonjo, 2016: 383). In this respect, it
refers to a society or group in which many people live and think in the same ways (Collins English
Dictionary, 1999: 385). It is a macro concept, which also incorporates religion as one of its aspects
(Raday, 2003; 663–677). Perceptions about the characteristics and behaviours appropriate for
women or men and about the relationships between women and men are shaped by culture (Otnes
and Tuncay-Zayer, 2010: 23). Among the critical aspects of culture are gender identities and gen-
der relations because they shape the way not only how daily life is lived in the family, but also in
the broader community and at the workplace. Gender, as similar to race or ethnicity, functions as
an establishing principle for society because of the cultural connotations given to being male or
female (Otnes and Tuncay-Zayer, 2010: 23). This is apparent in the division of labour according to
gender, as in many communities there are clear patterns of women’s duties and men’s duties both
Corresponding author:
Norah Hashim Msuya, School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, KwaZulu Natal 4041, South Africa.
Email: noranewtz@yahoo.com
1146 Journal of Asian and African Studies 54(8)
in the household and in the wider community (Zimmerman, 2002: 48). There are also cultural
reasons why those divisions of labour should be so. The patterns and the explanations vary among
communities and change from time to time (Zimmerman, 2002: 48).
Though the specific nature of gender relations differs among societies in sub-Saharan Africa,
the general pattern is that women have less personal independence, fewer resources at their dis-
posal, and limited influence over the decision-making processes that shape their communities and
their own lives (Msuya, 2017: 30). This pattern of difference based on gender is a human rights
issue (Volpp, 2001). The social change which has been experienced by people around the world in
recent decades, due to accelerated economic globalization and the attempt to fight against homog-
enization of all women’s experience within white middle-class feminism, has intensified the ten-
sions between cultural rights and women’s human rights (Aderinto, 2013; Namazie, 2001). People
have responded to experiences of economic dislocation, loss of livelihoods, migration and armed
conflict by invoking a rigid and monolithic conception of culture that is intended to reassert tradi-
tional power relations and to garner a sense of stability and continuity in the face of rapid social
transformations in many contexts (Namazie, 2001). In recent years, advocates for women’s human
rights from a broad spectrum of countries, religions, ethnicities and social sectors have worked to
emphasize the indivisibility of human rights and to reassert the interrelationships between cultural
rights and women’s human rights (Talpade, 1991: 57).
Likewise, cultural rights have been linked to the protection of women’s rights (United Nations,
2010). In almost every country, women are now working to demonstrate that cultural rights and
women’s rights can be mutually reinforcing (United Nations, 2010). They are trying to highlight
and build cultural practices and traditions that are supportive of the human rights framework
(Msuya, 2017: 21). They are articulating the centrality of cultural rights to the exercise of the col-
lective rights of indigenous peoples such as the right to territory, education, language, natural
resources, religious expression and self-determination (Okin, 1998). They argue that only the pro-
tection of those rights enables indigenous women and their families to enjoy the full range of their
human rights as women, including their right to a life free of violence (Okin, 1998). Because many
women’s rights infringements are justified by appeals to cultural or religious norms in sub-Saharan
Africa, both concepts of cultures and women’s rights come under scrutiny in this article (Okin,
1998). It is the aim of this study to provide an analysis of the human rights perspective on culture
and tradition in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of the ethnic groups in sub-Saharan African countries are
patriarchal in nature, and their cultures and tradition resemble each other. The study concludes with
observations and recommendations to address these issues for better efforts to respect, protect and
fulfil women’s rights in sub-Saharan Africa.
The concepts of culture and tradition under human rights law

Culture is critical to almost every area of society, but most especially the law (Irina, 2011). From a
legal perspective, it becomes essential to examine the conception of culture and its place within the
domain of human rights law. An encompassing definition of culture is provided in the Universal
Declaration on Cultural Diversity of 2001, which was developed by the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) governing body and adopted on 2 November
2001 in Paris. It defines the term ‘culture’ to cover those values, beliefs, convictions, languages,
knowledge and the arts, traditions, institutions and ways of life through which people or groups
express their humanity and the meaning they give to their existence and to their development.1 This
Declaration, which was the first of its kind within the international community, elevates cultural
diversity to the rank of the common heritage of humanity. The definition of culture in the UNESCO
Declaration aims to preserve cultural diversity as a living and thus renewable treasure that must not
Msuya 1147
be perceived as being an unchanging heritage, but as a process that guarantees the survival of
humanity (Foblets, 2010: 74). It also aims to prevent segregation and fundamentalism which, in the
name of cultural differences, would sanctify those differences and so counter the message of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Matsuura, 2002).
It is clear from the UNESCO definition that culture is no longer regarded as a mere commodity;
rather, it entails the ‘doing’ of human beings by virtue of being members of the community
(Matsuura, 2002). The Declaration construes culture as an expression of a person’s or a group’s
identity. The definition demonstrates two dimensions of culture. The first dimension relates to the
physical characteristics of a person or a group which can be observed externally; for example,
religion, language and custom. The second dimension is more subjective, as it relates to the way of
thinking and acting by a group (Irina, 2011). The Declaration makes it clear that each individual
must acknowledge both ‘otherness’ in all its forms and the ‘plurality’ of men’s or women’s own
identities within communities that are themselves plural.2 It has paved the way for the preservation
of cultural diversity as a capacity for expression, creation and innovation and as an adaptive pro-
cess. The Declaration has brought two approaches together and covers the debate between those
countries which would like to defend cultural goods and services as courses of identity, values and
meaning and those which would hope to promote cultural rights (Berman, 1995: 541). It thus high-
lights the causal link and unites both balancing attitudes by clarifying that one cannot exist without
the other.
The UNESCO Declaration also provides the main lines of an action plan which is an outstand-
ing tool for development that is capable of humanizing globalization (Berman, 1995: 541). Rather
than giving instructions (Matsuura, 2002), it provides general guidelines to be turned into ground-
breaking policies by member states in their specific contexts, in partnership with the private sector
and civil society. The Declaration also emphasizes the understanding of moving from cultural
diversity to cultural pluralism under Article 2, which states the following:
In our increasingly diverse societies, it is essential to ensure harmonious interaction among people and
groups with plural, varied and dynamic cultural identities as well as their willingness to live together.
Policies for the inclusion and participation of all citizens are guarantees of social cohesion, the vitality of
civil society, and peace. Thus defined, cultural pluralism gives policy expression to the reality of cultural
diversity. [As it is] dissociable from a democratic framework, cultural pluralism is conducive to cultural
exchange and to the flourishing of creative capacities that sustain public life. (Foblets, 2010: 74)
In addition, Article 3 of the Declaration delineates cultural diversity as a factor in development:
Cultural diversity widens the range of options open to everyone; it is one of the roots of development,
understood not simply in terms of economic growth, but also as a means to achieve a more satisfactory
intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual existence.3
Article 4 of the Declaration insists that cultural diversity should presuppose respect for human rights:
[T]he defense of cultural diversity is an ethical imperative, inseparable from respect for human dignity. It
implies a commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular the rights of persons
belonging to minorities and those of indigenous peoples. No one may invoke cultural diversity to infringe
upon human rights guaranteed by international law, nor to limit their scope.4
The approach of UNESCO through all its cultural conventions is firmly grounded on the principle
of the universal nature of human rights, which was established as international law in the UN
Charter for all without distinction (Berman, 1995: 541). Of importance is the understanding,
acknowledgement and tolerance of other cultures on the foundation of a binding global ethic that
originates from universal values and mutual respect across cultural boundaries (Berman 1995: 541).
Many important cultural rights are included in human rights, such as the right to participate in cul-
tural life and the enjoyment of one’s culture, which should be given equal attention. Yet, in accord-
ance with international law, those cultural rights are not unlimited,5 as they are limited at the point
where they infringe on another’s human rights.6 Thus, international treaties are universal; they are
supposed to be applicable in all countries which have signed those treaties and for that reason they
must prevail even when they are in conflict with cultural and religious practices (NGO Platform on
Diversity and Cultural Rights, 2005). A clarification of the definition of cultural rights within the
human rights system and an elucidation of the nature and consequences of their violation constitute
the best methods for preventing the use of cultural rights in favour of cultural relativism, something
which is contrary to the universality of all human rights (UNESCO, 2009: 40). It also prevents the
use of cultural rights as a pretext for setting communities, or even entire populations, against one
another (Palombella, 2007). Often, cultural rights lie outside or in opposition to human rights when
they essentially, according to the principle of indivisibility, form an integral part of these rights.7
The existence of the coherence of cultural rights is present, as such rights exist on the boundary
between economic, civil, political, social and cultural rights and the rights of minorities, and their
definitions remain incomplete (Meyer-Bisch, 2013: 49). This condition constitutes a dangerous
gap in the protection of all human rights, especially at a time when respect for cultural diversity
takes front of stage as an important issue in globalization and as a challenge for the universality of
human rights (Nabudere, 2005). Universality is the common challenge which needs to be taken on,
because it is not the smallest common denominator as it consists of cultivating a human condition
through permanently working out our ambiguities (Nabudere, 2005). Sustaining cultural diversity
and cultural rights is a highly sophisticated process. Cultural diversity is not just a matter of stitch-
ing together differences of culture, language, and so on, but it is a proactive attitude that has to be
promoted in terms of principles, standards and practices (Gbakwa, 2002). When cultural diversity
is only considered passively as a mere piecemeal of colours, it will slowly decrease as if those
colours were melting into one another; but when it is conceived in active terms as a process that
needs to be exercised, then it will flourish, as if the chromatic spectrum were opening up like a fan
(Geertz, 1973: 57). However, it has been argued that this definition has the inconvenience that it is
not operating in a human rights context. According to this perspective, a cultural activity relates
both to the intimacy of each person and to social relations (Meyer-Bisch, 2013: 49). The Declaration
thus elevates cultural diversity to the rank of the common heritage of humanity and promotes the
following principle:
Culture takes diverse forms across time and space. This diversity is embodied in the uniqueness and
plurality of the identities of the groups and societies making up humankind. As a source of exchange,
innovation and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature. In
this sense, it is the common heritage of humanity and should be recognized and affirmed for the benefit of
present and future generations.8
From a legal perspective, culture is generally considered as a quality possessed by the individual
that directly influences the ability to enjoy the rights and freedoms as recognized in international
human rights law in effective and meaningful ways (Almqvist, 2005: 40). The cultural dimension of
the individual in human rights, culture and the rule of law is represented by skills as cultural equip-
ment, cultural norms as an adiaphora, and ideology as a comprehensive doctrine, as noted by Jessica
Almqvist (2005: 40). She further explains that the notion of cultural equipment consists of things
such as skills, know-how and tools, while the category of adiaphora refers to cultural norms and
Msuya 1149
rules regulating human activities that are viewed as ultimately indifferent from the standpoint of
cosmopolitan law (Almqvist, 2005: 40). In her opinion, such activities include ways of dress, mar-
riage, death, divorce, caring for the elderly and sick, disposing of the dead, and so on. She explains
that the final aspect of culture captures political convictions of right and justice having their source
in ethical, religious and philosophical comprehensive doctrines (Almqvist, 2005: 41). She adds that
all facets of culture, such as skills, norms and ideology, have relevance and fundamental implica-
tions in advancing respect for human action. Together they constitute the cultural dimension of the
individual and are generally understood as the product of membership in society. Edward Tylor also
provides a classic definition of culture in these words: ‘Culture is that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man
as a member of society’ (Tylor, 1973: 1). Apart from being acquired and learned, culture is also
generally understood as fabricated and therefore not ‘natural’ (Kant, 2001: 262–263). It is a quality
possessed by individuals and organizations such as public, private, political, social, legal and cul-
tural dimensions (Kant, 2001: 262–263). However, the cultural dimensions of organizations might
not always accord with individual dimension. It might be that people are able to make effective use
of their rights in a significant way, but it depends a great deal upon the character of the social envi-
ronment as well as the culture in use by public institutions where people function in their places of
residence, work and life (Irina, 2011). The notions of public culture and social culture capture two
main types of culture that the individual is related to apart from his or her own culture. Social culture
is also called the background culture of civil society, which is the culture of daily life and its many
associations such as universities, churches, learned scientific societies and clubs (Kant, 2001: 262–
263). Thus the term ‘public political culture’ comprises the political institutions of a constitutional
regime and the public traditions of their interpretation, which include those of the judiciary and
historic texts as well as documents of common knowledge (Merryman, 1985: 2). It is important to
note that the individual’s culture may relate to social and public cultures, but the different cultures
may also diverge in the sense that the individual does not possess the skills, observe the cultural
norms, or affirm the ideological outlook that dominates public and social institutions in society at
present.
Culture can also be described as a set of attitudes, beliefs, morals, customs, values and practices
that are commonly shared by a certain group which may be defined in terms of their geographical,
political or regional ethnicity (Merryman, 1985: 2). There is also another form of culture that has
to do with activities undertaken by people and the product of those activities. These activities
reveal the intellectual, moral and artistic aspects of human life and are protected by the UNESCO
Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions of 2005.
Moreover, from a lawful viewpoint, various culture-related interests and concerns have been pro-
gressively brought forward and attached to the fabric of human rights law. For instance, the idea of
a right to culture as an individual right to take part in social life, which was perceived for the first
time in the UDHR, has been reaffirmed various times in global instruments as the right to take part
in cultural life, as the right of children to participate freely in cultural life and the arts, or as the right
to equal enjoyment and participation in cultural activities.9
Culture and women’s rights

The focus of the women and culture debate in the UN has largely been on women in the family and
the effect of culture on the enjoyment of their rights (United Nations, 1996: 7). Various issues
related to culture have continued to feature as impediments to the enjoyment of women’s rights,
even after the adoption of the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW) of 1979.10 Several general recommendations made by the Women’s Committee
have identified culture, among others, as being an impediment to the enjoyment of women’s rights
(Banda, 2005: 248). The normative political theory tends to employ culture in a more restive way
because political theorists are consumed by the question of justice, equity and autonomy from a
human rights perspective (Phillips, 2010: 58). They have been preoccupied with what rights, if any,
can be claimed by minority groups (Phillips, 2010: 58). They take a cultural group as more unified
and homogeneous than it really is (Talpade, 1991: 57).
However, the theories of multiculturalism focus on conflicts between majority and minority
groups, but do not sufficiently consider conflicts within each group such as age, gender or class.
They take these groups as entities as they are and play down the internal tensions that exist within.
This stance has recently been widely criticized, notably in feminist critiques on multiculturalism
debates (Talpade, 1991: 57). A familiar critique of gender essentials to make similar changes
against culture essentials has been extended by feminist literature. Feminist scholars question the
particular use of natural or cultural distinctions, arguing that they falsely present the body as a
perceived recipient of cultural meanings. They also argue that seemingly biological distinctions
between female and male are socially constructed as a gender distinction between men and women
(Volpp, 2001).
On establishing feminist arguments about recognizing women as agents and not victims and
applying it to the multicultural debate, Farida Shaheed, a UN expert in the field of cultural rights,
proposes that the paradigm that views culture merely as an obstacle to women’s rights should be
shifted to the right of women to seek equal enjoyment of cultural rights (UN Human Rights Office
of the High Commissioner, 2012). Traditions and culture should not be obstacles to the realization
of women’s rights, but they should rather be a means of paving the way for the right of women to
take part in cultural and traditional life. This right should include the right not to participate in
particular traditions and customs that infringe on human dignity and rights (UN Human Rights
Office of the High Commissioner, 2012). Another feminist scholar, A. Phillips, contemplates that
few people are driven by culture and argues that bad behaviour is mostly what constitutes the threat
to women’s rights (Phillips, 2010: 58). She further proposes that careful attention is needed to bal-
ance participation between men and women to ensure that cultural disadvantage is identified and
remedied. She also argues that the pre-assumption that people’s actions, values and attributes are
determined by membership of culture or a group should be rooted out. Women’s rights are rights,
just like any other rights of human beings. Thus, women need to be protected by all states regard-
less of the political, economic and cultural system in which they live.
Women’s rights under international conventions are universal norms to which all countries must
adhere and women, like men, are entitled to exercise their human rights, which include fundamen-
tal rights and freedoms within the family and society at large (Okin, 1998). Cultural relativism has
been condemned for ignoring violations of women’s rights and for actually legitimizing them
(Namazie, 2001). This fact not only makes it necessary to oppose any violations of women’s rights,
but it also makes it racist and against the maxim of freedom of choice (Sweetman, 1995). It is for
this reason that some human rights theorists and practitioners perceive cultural rights to be in ten-
sion with the human rights of women (Sweetman, 1995). In many societies in sub-Saharan Africa,
people are concerned that the promotion of gender equality would interfere with local culture, and
they therefore feel that gender equality should not be promoted for ethical reasons (Schalkwyk,
2000). In other cases, the cultural values of a particular area are described as a major constraint on
efforts for gender equality, and therefore action against this is considered to be difficult for practi-
cal reasons (Sweetman, 1995).
Women are the ones who have been tasked with the main responsibility for transmitting cultural
practices and group identity to succeeding generations in many sub-Saharan African communities
(Schalkwyk, 2000). This is because culture exists through, and is generated by, the lived
Msuya 1151
experiences of people (Schalkwyk, 2000). The role of women in transmitting culture also situates
them as creators and custodians of culture; consequently, many communities view women’s adher-
ence to and promulgation of cultural norms as essential to cultural survival (Babb, 2010). However,
in many communities the rights of individual women are subordinated to upholding women’s role
as the carriers of group identity. So, women are often denied the right to make autonomous deci-
sions regarding their own sexuality, marriage and childbearing, and even their children’s religion,
nationality and citizenship (Babb, 2012). Then again, women’s primary role in transmitting and
creating culture serves as a basis for protecting and enhancing women’s status within their families
and society at large (Babb, 2012).
The ongoing efforts to attain women’s rights have been undermined by the articulation that posi-
tions culture as static, sacred, monolithic and outside history (Speed, et al., 2006: 48). Cultural
change happens as societies and households respond to social and economic shifts associated with
globalization, environment, new technologies, pressures, armed conflict, development projects, and
so on (Bourque and Warren, 1981: 103). Therefore, customary laws, like any other living law, are
not supposed to be static; they are dynamic aspects of the life of a country and its social fabric and
therefore have to change (Bourque and Warren, 1981: 103). Negotiations between traditional law
and custom and new forms of legal protection have occurred through international advocacy
(Allison, 2015: 18). Most people advocating for women’s rights view those kinds of rights as inter-
dependent and mutually constitutive (International Indigenous Women’s Forum, 2005: para. 13).
What was considered a culture yesterday may not be so tomorrow, and today’s innovation may turn
up to be a tradition in future days International Indigenous Women’s Forum, 2005: para. 13). They
are formed and reformed through daily practices and exchanges in social, political and cultural are-
nas. Culture and tradition must be therefore reviewed so that they do not violate the fundamental
rights and freedom of women. There can never be a culture that is not mediated by multiple axes of
inequality which must themselves be mapped against the larger economic, political and social con-
ditions of a state (Ewelukwa, 2002). From this perspective, respect for cultural differences exists
simultaneously with the belief that cultural practices and beliefs can and do change over time.
Those who defend human rights violations in the name of culture have a habit of putting the
framework of human rights in opposition to culture. This thinking assumes that it is culture that
subordinates women and that modernism, in the form of universal human rights, constitutes the
legal protection that liberates them. This suggests that beliefs that underpin a human rights frame-
work do not find their origin in other value systems. In fact, a wide range of cultures puts forward
notions of rights and human dignity upon which to condemn violence and oppression (United
Nations, 1999). However, some women who are experiencing human rights violations on the basis
of both gender and culture explain that it is not a culture that lies at the root of women’s oppression,
but practices and norms that deny women’s education, gender equity, resources, and political and
social power (United Nations, 2006: paras 47 and 55). In this context, the UN Special Rapporteur
on Violence against Women 3 (1996) declares:
It is important to emphasize that not all customs and traditions are not protective of human rights …
However, those practices that constitute definite forms of violence against women cannot be overlooked nor
justified on the grounds of tradition, culture or social conformity. (United Nations, 2006: paras 47 and 55)
It is therefore true that some aspects of culture may be used to violate women’s human rights,
whereas other aspects of culture may be used to promote a human rights framework in sub-Saharan
Africa. For instance, before colonialism, many sub-Saharan African indigenous communities prac-
tised relatively democratic gender relations and reproduced worldviews that defined gender roles
as complementary rather than hierarchical.11 Women were teachers, instilling knowledge and
traditional values in children (Mba, 1982: 27), playing a vital role in teaching moral beliefs and
traditions by caring for their families. Women were also the first teachers of trapping, hunting and
fishing. Older women, drawing on experience and wisdom, trained children to be respectful, thank-
ful, and gentle with animals. Women promoted African culture through dance, music, art and cloth-
ing (Mba, 1982: 27). The survival of communities was dependent upon women, as they had a broad
knowledge of herbs and traditional medicine. Women also gathered food for their families. In some
areas, like Kikuyu in Kenya, women were the major food producers, choosing how to cultivate the
land (Msuya, 2017: 35).
The African kinship system enabled women to be economically independent. Women’s respon-
sibilities for managing the home and raising children caused them to be seen as heads of their
households (Hakansson, 1994). Another excellent example of a woman with great political power
is the Nguni King of Mozambique’s widow, the priestess in charge of the shrine in the burial place
of her deceased husband (Hakansoon, 1994). She was even consulted by the reigning king on
various important matters. Other women occupied the position of head of state. In West Africa
there was a female member of the Alafin’s council – judiciary body called the Iyalode in Yoruba
(Fyle, 1999). She was the spokesperson at the Alafin’s meetings, responsible for women’s rights.
By the 19th century in Sierra Leone, women were selected as heads of towns and sub-regions
among the Mende and Sherbro people, one of them being Madame Yoko (Day, 1994a). Therefore,
for indigenous women, cultural preservation as an element of cultural rights may be a strategy for
transmitting values that support women’s human rights (UN Human Rights Office of the High
Commissioner, 2014: 67).
Some generally recognized cultures have specific gender-related forms of abuse that were not
recognized as typical human rights abuses in the past. Such an abuse is, for instance, slavery, which
is generally recognized as a fundamental violation of human rights, but the practice of parents giv-
ing their daughter in marriage in exchange for money has not typically been seen as an instance of
slavery. If a husband marries his wife without her adult consent or if he beats her for disobedience
or misfortune, or if he confines her to their home, forbids her to work for pay or appropriates her
wages, these manifestations of slavery may not be recognized as violations of human rights in
many cultures. In some societies, these acts are regarded as normal, appropriate behaviour in par-
ents or husbands (UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, 2014: 67).
How far an African woman should go in asserting her rights is a major concern in sub-Saharan
Africa. There is a silent notion that women can enjoy their rights within certain boundaries, nor-
mally drawn when man starts to feel threatened (Akumu, 2015). Once an African woman crosses
those boundaries, she will then be considered to have over-enjoying rights to the ‘point of becom-
ing un-African’ (Akumu, 2015). Rather, many customs have been revolutionized into harmful
practices of individuals who use culture as a scapegoat when it benefits their intentions. A large
number of harmful traditional practices in sub-Saharan Africa are based on a perception of male
superiority, and women suffer many human rights abuses in the name of culture. The reality is that
harmful traditional practices to which women are subjected benefit male perpetrators to a large
extent (Msuya, 2017: 223). Female sexual control by men and the economic and political subordi-
nation of women perpetuate the inferior status of women and inhibit structural and attitudinal
changes that are necessary to eliminate gender inequality.
Cultural practices, such as forcing young girls into ritual servitude, Trokosi (slaves to the Gods),
Wahaya (fifth wife), Ukuthwala (kidnapping girls for marriage), payments of dowry, male domi-
nance, female genital cutting, ghost marriage (nyumba-ntobhu), widows’ inheritance, domestic
violence and cleansing, and child marriage, perpetuate the violation of women’s rights and that the
issue of culture continues to feature as an impediment of women’s ability to enjoy equal rights with
men (Msuya, 2017: 223). The above-mentioned cultures have been evidenced in numerous ethnic
Msuya 1153
groups from the eastern, western and southern parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Most women’s rights
infringements occur in the private circle of family life and are justified by appeals to society to
adhere to cultural norms. Consequently, women experience less personal independence, have
fewer resources at their disposal and have limited influence over the decision-making processes
that shape their communities and their own lives (Msuya, 2017: 223). They are left in the unpleas-
ant situation where they have to choose between their rights or their culture; yet as mothers they
are tasked with the main responsibility of transmitting cultural practices and group identity to suc-
ceeding generations. Hence, their rights are subordinated to upholding their role as the carriers of
group identity.
Until recently there has been little acknowledgement of women’s particular vulnerability to pov-
erty and the need for basic social services such as health care, because their biological reproductive
capacity and their greater responsibility for children are recognized in virtually all societies (Tripp,
2013). Even some human rights activists, until recently, have been unwilling to recognize the many
culturally sanctioned abuses and instances of neglect of women as serious violations of human
rights (Human Rights Watch, 2013: 77). It can be contended that the spirit and purpose of interna-
tional instruments that should safeguard societies have not been put into practice in some sub-
Saharan African countries, particularly at grassroots level. Some of the pieces of legislation in use
in sub-Saharan African states are those that were enacted during colonial times (Msuya, 2017: 34).
It has been observed that it is often not easy to implement new legislation in sub-Saharan Africa, as
many cultural practices no longer reflect their origin or the original customs that provoked them
(Msuya, 2017: 34). Some African human rights proponents justify those abuses under the argument
of cultural relativism, arguing that it is possible for Africa to have a different interpretation of human
rights from the rest of the world (Msuya, 2017: 34). Blind adherence to these discriminating cul-
tures, combined with the government’s inaction to curb or eradicate these practices, has made large-
scale violence against women possible (Human Rights Watch, 2013: 78). It is pitiful to note that
some customary practices that are perpetuated by culture and religion and that are harmful to women
are still protected by law in many sub-Saharan African countries (Human Rights Watch, 2013: 78).
There is less political will in some sub-Saharan African states to amend discriminating legislation,
as the same rulers who agree that some cultures which violate women’s rights are unacceptable have
found a new way to replace them ‘in the glass ceiling called African culture’ (Akamu, 2015). The
situation as it is does not accommodate culture as it used to be practised in sub-Saharan Africa. The
need for cultural practices to review and abolish in line with human rights requirements cannot be
avoided. This means that there has to be a limit to the practice of some customs so that they can
accommodate gender equality (Oyewumi, 1997: 12). Most women in sub-Saharan Africa are not
aware of their basic human rights, and the state’s inaction ensures their acceptance of ‘the way it is’;
consequently, the perpetuation of harmful traditional practices affects and corrodes women’s well-
being. There is a stubborn persistence of negative cultural norms that are in conflict with and under-
mine the implementation of the provisions of the constitutions and international human rights
standards in sub-Saharan Africa (Alston, 1994: 86).
Recommendations
Cultural obstacles in sub-Saharan African states are intensely entrenched and most countries have
not adopted immediate and effective measures, mainly in the arenas of education, teaching and
information, to combat gender bias as a prerequisite of both CEDAW12 and the Protocol to the
African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa of 2003.13 States
need to take ‘appropriate measures’ to amend ‘social and cultural patterns of conduct’ to eradicate
biases and harmful practices based on the idea of stereotyped roles of the subordination of women.14
It does not matter how high the obstacles are; transformation is possible. The inequality which is
rooted deeply in sub-Saharan African states may be uprooted or changed, through public educa-
tion. The stereotypical gender roles can be challenged through academic instruction, textbooks and
patterns of engaging in the education method. Constant education will overcome entrenched forms
of resistance, embolden the participation of women and change certain harmful practices. Education
is important for the formation of a culture where women’s rights are understood, appreciated and
promoted. Many women in sub-Saharan Africa have not heard about the existence, not to mention
the content, of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights which protects
Women in Africa. This enlightenment leads to the majority of the women in sub-Saharan African
supporting practices that discriminate against them. Therefore, it is essential for the sub-Saharan
African states to give urgent consideration to the general duty of states to make changes to the
social and cultural arrays of conduct of their citizens through public education.
However, the focus on available international human rights laws to eradicate harmful cultures
may at face value appear as a western pressure for change in sub-Saharan Africa. Such a focus is
sometimes criticized as being heavy handed and insensitive and is often perceived as culturally
imperialistic in most sub-Saharan African countries. It is argued that efforts to change discrimina-
tive cultures are most effective when they originate from within the culture that practises them.
Struggles to alter or eradicate harmful cultures thus require the cooperation and understanding of
local community leaders, policy-makers, and the people who have experienced or witnessed the
hardships caused by harmful practices within their societies. These people will be of assistance in
promoting upright conduct and respect for human dignity. Religious and traditional leaders have a
great influence on customs and practices and are therefore vital in efforts to change society’s atti-
tudes in sub-Saharan Africa (Msuya, 2017: 227). They usually have a say in how people live their
lives and how they are governed. Therefore, empowering and enabling local leaders in advocating
for the abolishment of harmful practices is likely to be an effective way of bringing about change.
It is a strong argument that, if traditional leaders support the abolition of harmful practices, then
people in their communities are likely to do the same. These leaders will be useful in dispelling the
myths that are attributed to the continuation of harmful practices, particularly those that affect
women and girls. Continuing to use their services will, in the end, change many harmful traditional
practices for a better dispensation in sub-Saharan African societies.
Traditions and culture should not be obstacles to the realization of women’s rights, but rather a
means of paving the way for women to obtain their rights. In this context, the right to take part in
cultural activities and practices and in traditional life includes the right not to participate in particu-
lar traditions and customs that infringe on human dignity and rights. Governments in sub-Saharan
Africa need to strengthen their domestic laws and policies that protect women from a culture of
violence against them. Positive traditional methods and practices must be used to eradicate the
harmful ones for a better understanding of rural social realities. For example, traditional dances and
rituals such as ngoma can be used to discourage harmful traditional cultural practices and eliminate
discrimination against women. We can encourage dialogues about human rights in different tradi-
tional systems that comprise different cultures and religions to challenge negative aspects of our
culture in our communities. Indigenous languages should also be used to address harmful traditional
and cultural practices and gender discrimination, as sub-Saharan African societies have many lan-
guages in which to convey strong and positive messages. We can capitalize on that advantage and
use native languages as an asset instead of a liability to clearly communicate the need to eliminate
discriminative and harmful cultural practices. Harmful traditions can effectively be addressed
through a grassroots approach, which would take cognisance of all aspects of a particular culture by
trying to work within that system of beliefs to eradicate the harmful ones. The United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA) refers to this as the ‘culture lens’ approach (Scorgie, 2002: 55). This
Msuya 1155
approach is an analytical programming tool that helps policy-makers and development practitioners
to understand and utilize positive cultural values in order to reduce resistance to change.
Useful cultural practices that traditionally protected women and girls should be considered in
designing programmes to address gender inequality and to eradicate harmful cultures. The uphold-
ing of human rights must be done in such a way that communities do not feel that the integrity of
their culture is being compromised. In this way, parents and society as a whole will be able to feel
that they are not losing their heritage, but that women’s rights will be preserved. It is important for
communities to feel that their traditions and cultures are not being disregarded. The community
should also be included in the process. When educating the society about harmful traditional prac-
tices, the focus should be on the negative consequences rather than on human rights or legal
aspects. In this way, people will be more likely to accept what they are being taught.
Conclusion
It is important to be culturally sensitive, but this does not mean that respect for culture warrants
uncritical and insensitive adherence when cultural, traditional or religious practices are invoked.
Culture or tradition as a rationale for discrimination against a vulnerable group should not be
accepted; rather, both sub-Saharan African societies and governments should look for opportuni-
ties to counteract prejudice and its consequences. Sensitivity to and respect for culture would be
better demonstrated by adherence to the values of equality and women’s rights as espoused by the
international community in relation to issues of women’s position in society. Cultural values are
therefore required to take a back seat when they do not adhere to human rights norms.
The assumption that cultural values are static and inalienable ignores the reality that they con-
flict with human rights and requires urgent change. This assumption has thus disregarded the many
worthwhile and forward-looking efforts by international and national societies that question dis-
criminating cultural values to work effectively towards equality. It is crucial and useful to view
culture as a dynamic aspect of sub-Saharan African societies. It was established by Steiner that
‘[c]ulture is plastic, made and remade through the course of history, not unshakable and essentialist in
character but in many respects contingent, open to evolution and to more radical change through purposeful
human agency informed by human rights ideals’ (2006: 753, 777). If culture can be viewed in this context,
practices that are harmful to women will be grasped not as static objects, but as historical processes.
Decisions about what aspects of culture and tradition to protect are not for outsiders to make. Customary
laws which are not discriminating and human rights should complement each other rather than being
exclusive. While it is essential to uphold traditional life and diversity, it is equally crucial to uphold the
human dignity of all men and women, on the basis of equality. Although it is imperative that we draw
attention to the fact that most Western understandings of African traditional law are influenced by their
negative attitudes towards all things in Africa, it is important to realize that African theory and practice
have been influenced by and have become part of the global movement for the globalization of human
rights. By enthusiastically joining international human rights instruments and adopting African instruments
such as the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in
Africa, states are embracing the international human rights movement and its universality. All in all,
cultural values are supposed to be continually reinterpreted in response to new needs and conditions. Some
values will be reaffirmed in this process, whereas others will be challenged as no longer appropriate
(Speed et al., 2006: 48).
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Norah Hashim Msuya https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4117-8003
Notes
1. Article 2(a) of UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity of September 2001. It was made
official by the large definition of culture that was adopted in Mexico in 1982 and by the Convention on
the Protection and Promotion of Diversity of Cultural Expression of 2005.
2. Article 2 of UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity of September 2001.
3. Article 3 of UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity of September 2001.
4. Article 4 of the of UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity of September 2001.
5. See note 4.
6. See note 4.
7. It was also reaffirmed by the Human Rights Council in Resolution A/HRC/6/L.3/Rev.1 that cultural rights
are an integral part of human rights which are universal, indivisible, interrelated and interdependent.
8. Article 1 of the UNESCO Declaration.
9. International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 16 December 1966, Art 1, GA
Res 2200A (XXI); 21 UN GAOR 21st Sess., Supp No. 16, UN Doc. A/6316 (1966); International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 21 December 1965, opened
for signature 7 March 1966, 660 UNTS 195 (entered into force on 4 January 1969); Convention
on the Rights of the Child, 20 November 1989, Art. 31, 1577 UNTS 44, 49 entered into force on 2
September 1990.
10. This matter has been voiced on different platforms and in various resolutions and conferences such as:
Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women in the year 2000 in Nairobi (1985) UN
Doc. A/ CONF. 116/28 REV. 93−121; the International Conference on Population and Development
(ICPD) in Cairo (1994), 4.4 (c); Vienna Declaration on the Programme for Action (1993) (II), 38−49;
Beijing Platform Critical Area of Concern (1995), 42; Beijing Platform+5 outcome document (2000)
UN doc A/S – 23/10/ Rev.1 92(1); Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development (2002), 20;
Copenhagen Declaration on Sustainable Development (2002) 20.
11. Bringing Indigenous Perspectives to the International Arena: An Indigenous Women’s Conference.
International Indigenous Women’s Forum Declaration, New York (2005). See para 5. The Final Report
on the 49th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women E/CN.6/2005/11.
12. Article 5(a) of The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women of 1979.
13. Articles 2 and 12 of Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of
Women in Africa of 2003.
14. See note 13.
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Author biography
Dr. Norah Hashim Msuya is an academician and Advocate of High Court of Tanzania and Subordinate Court
therein. She is a legal Lecturer of Mzumbe University Tanzania. She has published and lectured widely on
public international law, human rights, administrative law, as well as children and women‘s rights. Norah is
also a coordinator and founder member of the Tanzania Legal Aid Organization for Women and Children, a
non-governmental organization which provides legal assistance and education to women and children in
Tanzania. Currently, she is doing Postdoctoral Research in the College of Law and Management Studies at
University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs and practices should be understood based on that
person's own culture. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one
culture should not be evaluated using the norms and values of another.[1]
It was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the
20th century and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "civilization is not
something absolute, but...is relative, and...our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization
goes."[2] However, Boas did not coin the term.
The first use of the term recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary was by philosopher and social theorist
Alain Locke in 1924 to describe Robert Lowie's "extreme cultural relativism," found in the latter's 1917
book Culture and Ethnology.[3] The term became common among anthropologists after Boas' death in
1942, to express their synthesis of a number of ideas he had developed. Boas believed that the sweep of
cultures, to be found in connection with any subspecies, is so vast and pervasive that there cannot be a
relationship between culture and race.[4] Cultural relativism involves specific epistemological and
methodological claims. Whether or not these claims necessitate a specific ethical stance is a matter of
debate.
Contents
In antiquity
As a methodological and heuristic device
As a methodological tool
As a heuristic tool
As a critical device
Comparison to moral relativism
Vertical and horizontal relativism
Statement on human rights
Current debates
Post-colonial politics
Political critique
Defence by Clifford Geertz
Governmental usage
See also
References
Further reading
In antiquity
Herodotus (Histories 3.38) observes on the relativity of mores (νόμοι):
If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations
in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably—after careful
considerations of their relative merits—choose that of his own country. Everyone without
exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the
best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things.
There is abundant evidence that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one's
country.
— translated by Aubrey de Selincourt
He mentions an anecdote of Darius the Great who illustrated the principle by inquiring about the funeral
customs of the Greeks and the Callatiae, peoples from the extreme western and eastern fringes of his
empire, respectively. They practiced cremation and funerary cannibalism, respectively, and were each
dismayed and abhorred at the proposition of the other tribes' practices.
The works of the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus detail ancient Greek arguments for cultural
relativism as part of the tenth of the Ten Modes of Aenesidemus.[5]
As a methodological and heuristic device

According to George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer:[6]
20th century social and cultural anthropology has promised its still largely Western readership
enlightenment on two fronts. The one has been the salvaging of distinct cultural forms of life
from a process of apparent global Westernization. With both its romantic appeal and its
scientific intentions, anthropology has stood for the refusal to accept this conventional
perception of homogenization toward a dominant Western model.
Cultural relativism was, in part, a response to Western ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism may take obvious
forms, in which one consciously believes that one's people's arts are the most beautiful, values the most
virtuous, and beliefs the most truthful. Franz Boas, originally trained in physics and geography, and heavily
influenced by the thought of Kant, Herder, and von Humboldt, argued that one's culture may mediate and
thus limit one's perceptions in less obvious ways. Boas understood "culture" to include not only certain
tastes in food, art, and music, or beliefs about religion; he assumed a much broader notion of culture,
defined as:[7]
[T]he totality of the mental and physical reactions and activities that characterize the behavior
of the individuals composing a social group collectively and individually in relation to their
natural environment, to other groups, to members of the group itself, and of each individual to
himself.
This view of culture confronts anthropologists with two problems: first, how to escape the unconscious
bonds of one's own culture, which inevitably bias our perceptions of and reactions to the world, and
second, how to make sense of an unfamiliar culture. The principle of cultural relativism thus forced
anthropologists to develop innovative methods and heuristic strategies.
As a methodological tool
Between World War I and II, cultural relativism was the central tool for American anthropologists in this
rejection of Western claims to universality, and salvage of non-Western cultures. It functioned to transform
Boas' epistemology into methodological lessons.
This is most obvious in the case of language. Although language is commonly thought of as a means of
communication, Boas called attention especially to the idea that it is also a means of categorizing
experiences, hypothesizing that the existence of different languages suggests that people categorize, and
thus experience, language differently (this view was more fully developed in the hypothesis of Linguistic
relativity).
Thus, although all people perceive visible radiation the same way, in terms of a continuum of color, people
who speak different languages slice up this continuum into discrete colors in different ways. Some
languages have no word that corresponds to the English word green. When people who speak such
languages are shown a green chip, some identify it using their word for blue, others identify it using their
word for yellow. Thus, Boas's student Melville Herskovits summed up the principle of cultural relativism
thus: "Judgements are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his
own enculturation."
Boas pointed out that scientists grow up and work in a particular culture, and are thus necessarily
ethnocentric. He provided an example of this in his 1889 article, "On Alternating Sounds"[8] A number of
linguists at Boas' time had observed that speakers of some Native-American languages pronounced the
same word with different sounds indiscriminately. They thought that this meant that the languages were
unorganized and lacked strict rules for pronunciation, and they took it as evidence that the languages were
more primitive than their own. Boas however noted that the variant pronunciations were not an effect of
lack of organization of sound patterns, but an effect of the fact that these languages organized sounds
differently from English. The languages grouped sounds that were considered distinct in English into a
single sound, but also having contrasts that did not exist in English. He then argued the case that Native
Americans had been pronouncing the word in question the same way, consistently, and the variation was
only perceived by someone whose own language distinguishes those two sounds. Boas's student, the
linguist Edward Sapir, later noted also that English speakers pronounce sounds differently even when they
think they are pronouncing the same sound, for example few English speakers realize that the sounds
written with the letter ⟨t⟩ in the words tick and stick are phonetically different, the first being generally
affricated and the other aspirated—a speaker of a language where this contrast is meaningful would
instantly perceive them as different sounds and tend not to see them as different realizations of a single
phoneme.
Boas's students drew not only on his engagement with German philosophy. They also engaged the work of
contemporary philosophers and scientists, such as Karl Pearson, Ernst Mach, Henri Poincaré, William
James, and John Dewey in an attempt to move, in the words of Boas's student Robert Lowie, from "a
naively metaphysical to an epistemological stage" as a basis for revising the methods and theories of
anthropology.
Boas and his students realized that if they were to conduct scientific research in other cultures, they would
need to employ methods that would help them escape the limits of their own ethnocentrism. One such
method is that of ethnography: basically, they advocated living with people of another culture for an
extended period of time, so that they could learn the local language and be enculturated, at least partially,
into that culture.
In this context, cultural relativism is an attitude that is of fundamental methodological importance, because it
calls attention to the importance of the local context in understanding the meaning of particular human
beliefs and activities. Thus, in 1948 Virginia Heyer wrote, "Cultural relativity, to phrase it in starkest
abstraction, states the relativity of the part to the whole. The part gains its cultural significance by its place
in the whole, and cannot retain its integrity in a different situation."[9]
As a heuristic tool
Another method was ethnology: to compare and contrast as wide a range of cultures as possible, in a
systematic and even-handed manner. In the late nineteenth century, this study occurred primarily through
the display of material artifacts in museums. Curators typically assumed that similar causes produce similar
effects; therefore, in order to understand the causes of human action, they grouped similar artifacts together
—regardless of provenance. Their aim was to classify artifacts, like biological organisms, according to
families, genera, and species. Thus organized museum displays would illustrate the evolution of civilization
from its crudest to its most refined forms.
In an article in the journal Science, Boas argued that this approach to cultural evolution ignored one of
Charles Darwin's main contributions to evolutionary theory:
It is only since the development of the evolutional theory that it became clear that the object of
study is the individual, not abstractions from the individual under observation. We have to
study each ethnological specimen individually in its history and in its medium.... By regarding
a single implement outside of its surroundings, outside of other inventions of the people to
whom it belongs, and outside of other phenomena affecting that people and its productions, we
cannot understand its meanings.... Our objection...is, that classification is not explanation.[10]
Boas argued that although similar causes produce similar effects, different causes may also produce similar
effects.[11] Consequently, similar artifacts found in distinct and distant places may be the products of
distinct causes. Against the popular method of drawing analogies in order to reach generalizations, Boas
argued in favor of an inductive method. Based on his critique of contemporary museum displays, Boas
concluded:
It is my opinion that the main object of ethnological collections should be the dissemination of
the fact that civilization is not something absolute, but that it is relative, and that our ideas and
conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes.[10]
Boas's student Alfred Kroeber described the rise of the relativist perspective thus:[12]
Now while some of the interest in (so called solial culture science) anthropology in its earlier
stages was in the exotic and the out-of-the-way, yet even this antiquarian motivation ultimately
contributed to a broader result. Anthropologists became aware of the diversity of culture. They
began to see the tremendous range of its variations. From that, they commenced to envisage it
as a totality, as no historian of one period or of a single people was likely to do, nor any analyst
of his own type of civilization alone. They became aware of culture as a "universe", or vast
field in which we of today and our own civilization occupy only one place of many. The result
was a widening of a fundamental point of view, a departure from unconscious ethnocentricity
toward relativity. This shift from naive self-centeredness in one's own time and spot to a
broader view based on objective comparison is somewhat like the change from the original
geocentric assumption of astronomy to the Copernican interpretation of the solar system and
the subsequent still greater widening to a universe of galaxies.
This conception of culture, and principle of cultural relativism, were for Kroeber and his colleagues the
fundamental contribution of anthropology, and what distinguished anthropology from similar disciplines
such as sociology and psychology.
Ruth Benedict, another of Boas's students, also argued that an appreciation of the importance of culture and
the problem of ethnocentrism demands that the scientist adopt cultural relativism as a method. Her book,
Patterns of Culture, did much to popularize the term in the United States. In it, she explained that:
The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been
violently opposed. In the first place any scientific study requires that there be no preferential
weighting of one or another items in the series it selects for its consideration. In all the less
controversial fields like the study of cacti or termites or the nature of nebulae, the necessary
method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms
and conditions. In this way we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of
the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the study of man himself that the major
social sciences have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization.[13]
Benedict was adamant that she was not romanticizing so-called primitive societies; she was emphasizing
that any understanding of the totality of humanity must be based on as wide and varied a sample of
individual cultures as possible. Moreover, it is only by appreciating a culture that is profoundly different
from our own, that we can realize the extent to which our own beliefs and activities are culture-bound,
rather than natural or universal. In this context, cultural relativism is a heuristic device of fundamental
importance because it calls attention to the importance of variation in any sample that is used to derive
generalizations about humanity.
As a critical device
Marcus and Fischer's attention to anthropology's refusal to accept Western culture's claims to universality
implies that cultural relativism is a tool not only in cultural understanding, but in cultural critique. This
points to the second front on which they believe anthropology offers people enlightenment:
The other promise of anthropology, one less fully distinguished and attended to than the first,
has been to serve as a form of cultural critique for ourselves. In using portraits of other cultural
patterns to reflect self-critically on our own ways, anthropology disrupts common sense and
makes us reexamine our taken-for-granted assumptions.[6]
The critical function of cultural relativism is widely understood; philosopher John Cook observed that "It is
aimed at getting people to admit that although it may seem to them that their moral principles are self-
evidently true, and hence seem to be grounds for passing judgement on other peoples, in fact, the self-
evidence of these principles is a kind of illusion."[14] Although Cook is misconstruing cultural relativism to
be identical to moral relativism, his point still applies to the broader understanding of the term. Relativism
does not mean that one's views are false, but it does mean that it is false to claim that one's views are self-
evident.
The critical function was indeed one of the ends to which Benedict hoped her own work would meet. The
most famous use of cultural relativism as a means of cultural critique is Margaret Mead's research of
adolescent female sexuality in Samoa. By contrasting the ease and freedom enjoyed by Samoan teenagers,
Mead called into question claims that the stress and rebelliousness that characterize American adolescence
is natural and inevitable.
As Marcus and Fischer point out, however, this use of relativism can be sustained only if there is
ethnographic research in the United States comparable to the research conducted in Samoa. Although every
decade has witnessed anthropologists conducting research in the United States, the very principles of
relativism have led most anthropologists to conduct research in foreign countries.
Comparison to moral relativism

According to Marcus and Fischer, when the principle of cultural relativism was popularized after World
War II, it came to be understood "more as a doctrine, or position, than as a method." As a consequence,
people misinterpreted cultural relativism to mean that all cultures are both separate and equal, and that all
value systems, however different, are equally valid. Thus, they argue that people came to use the phrase
"cultural relativism" erroneously to signify "moral relativism".
People generally understand moral relativism to mean that there are no absolute or universal moral
standards. The nature of anthropological research lends itself to the search for universal standards
(standards found in all societies), but not necessarily absolute standards; nevertheless, people often confuse
the two. In 1944 Clyde Kluckhohn (who studied at Harvard, but who admired and worked with Boas and
his students) attempted to address this issue:
The concept of culture, like any other piece of knowledge, can be abused and misinterpreted.
Some fear that the principle of cultural relativity will weaken morality. "If the Bugabuga do it
why can't we? It's all relative anyway." But this is exactly what cultural relativity does not
mean. The principle of cultural relativity does not mean that because the members of some
savage tribe are allowed to behave in a certain way that this fact gives intellectual warrant for
such behavior in all groups. Cultural relativity means, on the contrary, that the appropriateness
of any positive or negative custom must be evaluated with regard to how this habit fits with
other group habits. Having several wives makes economic sense among herders, not among
hunters. While breeding a healthy scepticism as to the eternity of any value prized by a
particular people, anthropology does not as a matter of theory deny the existence of moral
absolutes. Rather, the use of the comparative method provides a scientific means of
discovering such absolutes. If all surviving societies have found it necessary to impose some of
the same restrictions upon the behavior of their members, this makes a strong argument that
these aspects of the moral code are indispensable.[15][16]
Although Kluckhohn was using language that was popular at the time (e.g. "savage tribe") but which is
now considered antiquated and coarse by most anthropologists, his point was that although moral standards
are rooted in one's culture, anthropological research reveals that the fact that people have moral standards is
a universal. He was especially interested in deriving specific moral standards that are universal, although
few if any anthropologists think that he was successful.[15]
There is an ambiguity in Kluckhohn's formulation that would haunt anthropologists in the years to come. It
makes it clear that one's moral standards make sense in terms of one's culture. He waffles, however, on
whether the moral standards of one society could be applied to another. Four years later American
anthropologists had to confront this issue head-on.
Vertical and horizontal relativism
It was James Lawrence Wray-Miller who provided an additional clarification tool, or caveat, of the
theoretical underpinnings of cultural relativism by dividing it into two binary, analytical continuums:
vertical and horizontal cultural relativism. Ultimately, these two analytical continuums share the same basic
conclusion: that human morality and ethics are not static but fluid and vary across cultures depending on the
time period and current condition of any particular culture.
Vertical relativism describes that cultures, throughout history (vertical—i.e., passage through past and
future), are products of the prevailing societal norms and conditions of their respective historical periods.
Therefore, any moral or ethical judgments, made during the present, regarding past cultures' belief systems
or societal practices must be firmly grounded and informed by these norms and conditions to be
intellectually useful. Vertical relativism also accounts for the possibility that cultural values and norms will
necessarily change as influencing norms and conditions change in the future.
Horizontal relativism describes that cultures in the present (horizontal in time—i.e., the present period of
the culture) are products of the prevailing norms and conditions developed as a result of their unique
geographies, histories, and environmental influences. Therefore, moral or ethical judgments, made during
the present, regarding a current culture's belief system or societal practices must account for these unique
differences to be intellectually useful.
Statement on human rights
The transformation of cultural relativism as a heuristic tool into the doctrine of moral relativism occurred in
the context of the work of the Commission of Human Rights of the United Nations in preparing the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
Melville J. Herskovits prepared a draft "Statement on Human Rights" which Executive Board of the
American Anthropological Association revised, submitted to the Commission on Human Rights, and then
published. The statement begins with a fairly straightforward explanation of the relevance of cultural
relativism:[17]
The problem is thus to formulate a statement of human rights that will do more than phrase
respect for the individual as individual. It must also take into full account the individual as a
member of a social group of which he is part, whose sanctioned modes of life shape his
behavior, and with whose fate his own is thus inextricably bound.
The bulk of this statement emphasizes concern that the Declaration of Human Rights was
being prepared primarily by people from Western societies, and would express values that, far
from being universal, are really Western:
Today the problem is complicated by the fact that the Declaration must be of world-wide
applicability. It must embrace and recognize the validity of many different ways of life. It will
not be convincing to the Indonesian, the African, the Chinese, if it lies on the same plane as
like documents of an earlier period. The rights of Man in the Twentieth Century cannot be
circumscribed by the standards of any single culture, or be dictated by the aspirations of any
single people. Such a document will lead to frustration, not realization of the personalities of
vast numbers of human beings.
Although this statement could be read as making a procedural point (that the Commission must involve
people of diverse cultures, especially cultures that had been or are still under European colonial or imperial
domination), the document ended by making two substantive claims:
1. Even where political systems exist that deny citizens the right of participation in their
government, or seek to conquer weaker peoples, underlying cultural values may be called
on to bring the peoples of such states to a realization of the consequences of the acts of their
governments, and thus enforce a brake upon discrimination and conquest.
2. Worldwide standards of freedom and justice, based on the principle that man is free only
when he lives as his society defines freedom, that his rights are those he recognizes as a
member of his society, must be basic.
These claims provoked an immediate response by a number of anthropologists. Julian Steward (who, as a
student of Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie, and as a professor at Columbia University, was situated
firmly in the Boasian lineage) suggested that the first claim "may have been a loophole to exclude Germany
from the advocated tolerance", but that it revealed the fundamental flaw in moral relativism:[18]
Either we tolerate everything, and keep hands off, or we fight intolerance and conquest—
political and economic as well as military—in all their forms." Similarly, he questioned
whether the second principle means that anthropologists "approve the social caste system of
India, the racial caste system of the United States, or many other varieties of social
discrimination in the world.
Steward and others argued that any attempt to apply the principle of cultural relativism to moral problems
would only end in contradiction: either a principle that seems to stand for tolerance ends up being used to
excuse intolerance, or the principle of tolerance is revealed to be utterly intolerant of any society that seems
to lack the (arguably, Western) value of tolerance.[19] They concluded that anthropologists must stick to
science, and engage in debates over values only as individuals.[19]
Current debates
The debates over the "Statement on Human Rights", then, was not merely over the validity of cultural
relativism, or the question of what makes a right universal. It forced anthropologists to confront the question
of whether anthropological research is relevant to non-anthropologists. Although Steward and Barnett
seemed to be suggesting that anthropology as such should restrict itself to purely academic affairs, people
within and without the academy have continued to debate the ways non-anthropologists have used this
principle in public policy concerning ethnic minorities or in international relations.
Political scientist Alison Dundes Renteln has argued that most debates over moral relativism misunderstand
the importance of cultural relativism.[20] Most philosophers understand the Benedictine–Herskovitz
formulation of cultural relativism to mean:
[W]hat is right or good for one individual or society is not right or good for another, even if the
situations are similar, meaning not merely that what is thought right or good by one is not
thought right or good by another...but that what is really right or good in one case is not so in
another.[21]
Although this formulation clearly echoes the kinds of example anthropologists used in elaborating cultural
relativism, Renteln believes that it misses the spirit of the principle. Accordingly, she supports a different
formulation: "there are or can be no value judgements that are true, that is, objectively justifiable,
independent of specific cultures."[22]
Renteln faults philosophers for disregarding the heuristic and critical functions of cultural relativism. Her
main argument is that in order to understand the principle of cultural relativism, one must recognize the
extent to which it is based on enculturation: "the idea that people unconsciously acquire the categories and
standards of their culture." This observation, which echoes the arguments about culture that originally led
Boas to develop the principle, suggests that the use of cultural relativism in debates of rights and morals is
not substantive but procedural. That is, it does not require a relativist to sacrifice his or her values. But it
does require anyone engaged in a consideration of rights and morals to reflect on how their own
enculturation has shaped their views:
There is no reason why the relativist should be paralyzed, as critics have often asserted.[23] But
a relativist will acknowledge that the criticism is based on his own ethnocentric standards and
realizes also that the condemnation may be a form of cultural imperialism.
Renteln thus bridges the gap between the anthropologist as scientist (whom Steward and Barnett felt had
nothing to offer debates on rights and morality) and as private individual (who has every right to make
value judgements). The individual keeps this right, but the scientist requires that the individual
acknowledge that these judgements are neither self-evident universals, nor entirely personal (and
idiosyncratic), but rather took form in relation to the individual's own culture.
Post-colonial politics
Boas and his students understood anthropology to be a historical, or human science, in that it involves
subjects (anthropologists) studying other subjects (humans and their activities), rather than subjects studying
objects (such as rocks or stars). Under such conditions, it is fairly obvious that scientific research may have
political consequences, and the Boasians saw no conflict between their scientific attempts to understand
other cultures, and the political implications of critiquing their own culture. For anthropologists working in
this tradition, the doctrine of cultural relativism as a basis for moral relativism was anathema. For
politicians, moralists, and many social scientists (but few anthropologists) who saw science and human
interests as necessarily independent or even opposed, however, the earlier Boasian principle of cultural
relativism was anathema. Thus, cultural relativism came under attack, but from opposing sides and for
opposing reasons.
Political critique
On the one hand, many anthropologists began to criticize the way moral relativism, in the guise of cultural
relativism, is used to mask the effects of Western colonialism and imperialism. Thus, Stanley Diamond
argued that when the term "cultural relativism" entered popular culture, popular culture co-opted
anthropology in a way that voided the principle of any critical function:
Relativism is the bad faith of the conqueror, who has become secure enough to become a
tourist. Cultural relativism is a purely intellectual attitude; it does not inhibit the anthropologist
from participating as a professional in his own milieu; on the contrary, it rationalizes that
milieu. Relativism is self-critical only in the abstract. Nor does it lead to engagement. It only
converts the anthropologist into a shadowy figure, prone to newsworthy and shallow
pronouncements about the cosmic condition of the human race. It has the effect of mystifying
the profession, so that the very term anthropologist ("student of man") commands the attention
of an increasingly "popular" audience in search of novelty. But the search for self-knowledge,
which Montaigne was the first to link to the annihilation of prejudice, is reduced to the
experience of culture shock, a phrase used by both anthropologists and the State Department to
account for the disorientation that usually follows an encounter with an alien way of life. But
culture shock is a condition one recovers from; it is not experienced as an authentic redefinition
of the personality but as a testing of its tolerance ... The tendency of relativism, which it never
quite achieves, is to detach the anthropologist from all particular cultures. Nor does it provide
him with a moral center, only a job.[24]
George Stocking summarized this view with the observation that "Cultural relativism, which had buttressed
the attack against racialism, [can] be perceived as a sort of neo-racialism justifying the backward techno-
economic status of once colonized peoples."[25]
Defence by Clifford Geertz
By the 1980s many anthropologists had absorbed the Boasian critique of moral relativism, and were ready
to reevaluate the origins and uses of cultural relativism. In a distinguished lecture before the American
Anthropological Association in 1984, Clifford Geertz pointed out that the conservative critics of cultural
relativism did not really understand, and were not really responding to, the ideas of Benedict, Herskovits,
Kroeber and Kluckhohn.[26] Consequently, the various critics and proponents of cultural relativism were
talking past one another. What these different positions have in common, Geertz argued, is that they are all
responding to the same thing: knowledge about other ways of life.
The supposed conflict between Benedict's and Herskovits's call for tolerance and the
untolerant passion with which they called for it turns out not to be the simple contradiction so
many amateur logicians have held it to be, but the expression of a perception, caused by
thinking a lot about Zunis and Dahomys, that the world being so full of a number of things,
rushing to judgement is more than a mistake, it is a crime. Similarly, Kroeber's and Kluckholn's
verities – Kroeber's were mostly about messy creatural matters like delirium and menstruation,
Kluckholn's were mostly about messy social ones like lying and killing within the in-group,
turn out not to be just the arbitrary personal obsessions they so much look like, but the
expression of a much vaster concern, caused by thinking a lot about anthrōpos in general, that
if something isn't anchored everywhere nothing can be anchored anywhere. Theory here – if
that is what these earnest advices about how we must look at things if we are to be accounted
as decent should be called – is more an exchange of warnings than an analytical debate. We
are being offered a choice of worries. What the relativists – so-called – want us to worry about
is provincialism – the danger that our perceptions will be dulled, our intellects constricted, and
our sympathies narrowed by the overlearned and overvalued acceptances of our own society.
What the anti-relativists – self-declared – want us to worry about, and worry about and worry
about, as though our very souls depended on it, is a kind of spiritual entropy, a heat death of
the mind, in which everything is as significant, and thus as insignificant, as everything else:
anything goes, to each his own, you pays your money and you takes your choice, I know what
I like, not in the couth, tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.
Geertz concludes this discussion by commenting, "As I have already suggested, I myself find provincialism
altogether the more real concern so far as what actually goes on in the world." Geertz' defense of cultural
relativism as a concern which should motivate various inquiries, rather than as an explanation or solution,
echoed a comment Alfred Kroeber made in reply to earlier critics of cultural relativism, in 1949:[27]
Obviously, relativism poses certain problems when from trying merely to understand the world
we pass on to taking action in the world: and right decisions are not always easy to find.
However, it is also obvious that authoritarians who know the complete answers beforehand
will necessarily be intolerant of relativism: they should be, if there is only one truth and that is
theirs. I admit that hatred of the intolerant for relativism does not suffice to make relativism
true. But most of us are human enough for our belief in relativism to be somewhat reinforced
just by that fact. At any rate, it would seem that the world has come far enough so that it is
only by starting from relativism and its tolerations that we may hope to work out a new set of
absolute values and standards, if such are attainable at all or prove to be desirable.
Governmental usage
Several countries have used cultural relativism as a justification for limiting the rights in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, despite the World Conference on Human Rights rejecting it as a refutation of
human rights violations.
A 2011 study by international legal expert Roger Lloret Blackburn, examining the Universal Periodic
Reviews, distinguishes several different groups of nations:[28]
One group consists of nations where the current regime has been installed by revolution,
and that deny the need for political plurality: China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cuba, and Iran.
Another group are certain Islamic nations that adhere to sharia and certain traditional
practices: Yemen, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan.
A third possible group is nations that give special rights to specific groups: Malaysia,
Mexico, Indonesia, and Colombia.
See also
Cultural Revolution
Emotivism
Ethnocentrism
Emic and etic
Global justice
Historical particularism
Intercultural competence
Moral relativism
Multiculturalism
Political correctness
Relativism
Situational ethics
Universality (philosophy)
Xenocentrism
References
1. "Cultural relativism" (http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/140048). The Encyclopedia of
World Problems and Human Potential. 12 December 2017. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
2. Boas, Franz. 1887. "Museums of Ethnology and their classification." Science 9:589.
3. Lowerie, Robert. 1917. Culture and Ethnology. New York: Douglas C. McMurtrie.
4. Glazer, Mark (December 16, 1994). "Cultural Relativism" (https://web.archive.org/web/20070
613222929/http://www.utpa.edu/faculty/mglazer/Theory/cultural_relativism.htm). Texas:
University of Texas-Pan American. Archived from the original (http://www.utpa.edu/faculty/m
glazer/Theory/cultural_relativism.htm) on June 13, 2007. Retrieved June 13, 2007.
5. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhnism I.xiv 145–63
6. Marcus, George, and Michael M.J. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: The
Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 1.
7. Boas, Franz. [1911] 1963. The Mind of Primitive Man. New York: Collier Books. p. 149.
8. Boas, Franz. 1889. "On Alternating Sounds." American Anthropologist 2:47-53
9. Heyer, Virginia 1948 "In Reply to Elgin Williams" in American Anthropologist 50(1) 163-166
10. Boas, Franz 1974 [1887] "The Principles of Ethnological Classification", in A Franz Boas
reader ed. by George W. Stocking Jr. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-
226-06243-0. page 62,62
11. Boas, Franz 1887 "Museums of Ethnology and their Classification", in Science 9: 587-589.
12. Kroeber, Alfred. 1948. "Anthropology." New York: Harcourt Brace. p. 11.
13. Ruth Benedict 1959 [1934] Patterns of Culture Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, page 3
14. Cook, John. 1978. "Cultural Relativism as an Ethnocentric Notion." In The Philosophy of
Society.
15. Kluckhohn, Clyde 1944 Mirror For Man
16. Caleb Rosado. "Cultural Relativism" (https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/80-241/guided_in
quiries/articles/cultural_rel.html).
17. Herskovits, Melville J. 1947. "Statement on Human Rights." American Anthropologist
49(4):539–43.
18. Steward, Julian. 1948. "Comments on the Statement of Human Rights." American
Anthropologist 50(2):351–52.
19. Barnett, H. G. "On Science and Human Rights" in American Anthropologist 50(2) 352–355.
June 1948.
20. Renteln, Alison 1988 "Relativism and the Search for Human Rights" in American
Anthropologist 90(1) 56–72
21. Frankena, William 1973 Ethics
22. Schmidt, Paul. 1955. "Some Criticisms of Cultural Relativism." Journal of Philosophy
52:780–91.
23. Hartung, Frank 1954 '"Cultural Relativity and Moral Judgements" in Philosophy of Science
21: 11–125
24. Stanley Diamond 2004 [1974] In Search of the Primitive New Brunswick: Transaction
Publishers page 110
25. Stocking, George W. Jr., 1982. "Afterward: A View from the Center" in Ethnos 47: 172–286
26. Geertz, Clifford. 1984. "Anti-Anti-Relativism." American Anthropologist 86(2):263–78.
27. Kroeber, Alfred. 1949. "An Authoritarian Panacea." American Anthropologist 51(2):318–20.
28. Blackburn, Roger Lloret. September 2011. "Cultural Relativism in the Universal Periodic
Review of the Human Rights Council (https://www.upr-info.org/sites/default/files/general-doc
ument/pdf/-blackburn_upr_cultural_relativism.09.2011.pdf)," (ICIP Working Papers: 2011/3).
Barcelona: Institut Català Internacional per la Pau. ISSN 2013-5793 (https://www.worldcat.or
g/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:2013-5793).
Further reading
Ankerl, Guy. 2000. Global Communication without Universal Civilization. vol.I: Coexisting
Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western. Geneva: INU
PRESS, ISBN 2-88155-004-5
Barzilai, Gad. 2003. Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Herskovitz, Melville J. 1958 "Some Further Comments on Cultural Relativism" in American
Anthropologist 60(2) 266-273
Herskovitz, Melville J. 1956 Man and His Works
Jarvie, I. C. 1995 "Cultural Relativism" (http://www.yorku.ca/jarvie/online_publications/CultR
el.pdf) (a critique)
Mathews, Freya 1994 "Cultural Relativism and Environmental Ethics (http://www.freyamathe
ws.com/?p=PG&cri=9) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20090914114604/http://www.fr
eyamathews.com/?p=PG&cri=9) 2009-09-14 at the Wayback Machine" IUCN Ethics
Working Group Report No 5, August 1994.
Murphy, Robert F., 1972 Robert Lowie
Nissim-Sabat, Charles 1987 "On Clifford Geertz and His 'Anti Anti-Relativism'" in American
Anthropologist 89(4): 935-939
Rachels, James, 2007, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-
282574-X
Sandall, Roger 2001 The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays ISBN 0-8133-
3863-8
Wong, David, 2006, Natural Moralities, A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism, Oxford UP,
ISBN 978-0-19-530539-5
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Journal of W orld Philosophies Articles/99

The Racism of Philosophy’s Fear of Cultural Relativism∗

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Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cultural_relativism&oldid=1048602758"

This page was last edited on 6 October 2021, at 23:01 (UTC).

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