Abstract
Cultural relativists criticize human rights naturalism as untenable and outmoded. However, at the very least, a radical version of cultural relativism seems to rely on false premises itself and goes too far when it neglects any foundation of human rights in human nature. The purpose of this essay is to show why human rights are both conceptually and empirically based on the natural human faculty of empathy. The argument begins with an analysis of the concept of human rights, understood as expressing a certain minimal standard of morality that, in turn, implies an altruistic motivation. Both analytical arguments and neuropsychological findings suggest that original altruistic behaviour may only be explained by compassion, which ultimately requires empathy. Empathy is a natural and universal human faculty, cross-culturally developed in early childhood, and rooted in neurophysiological mirroring mechanisms. However, a naturalistic account of human rights – as proposed in this essay – does not necessarily imply any reductionism. It is further incapable of providing any logical argument for the validity of human rights. After all, besides showing that radical cultural relativism is wrong, it may at least provide some discursive support for human rights claims.
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Notes
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These thought experiments go back to the work of Philippa Foot (1967) and Judith Jarvis Thomson (1976). The trolley dilemma roughly goes as follows: Suppose a runaway trolley is going to kill five men working on a track. The only way for you (as you are in control of the switch) to prevent this from happening is to steer the trolley from one track to another, on which one person is standing who will then surely die. What should you do?
In the footbridge dilemma, you have the parallel case that a train is going to kill five workers. But now you don’t have two tracks but only one. Instead of operating the switch, you may now save the five persons by throwing a fat man from a bridge and in front of the train. The fat man will be killed, but the trolley will be stopped by the man’s weight.
Interestingly, although the outcome is the same, the majority of people judge the action in the trolley dilemma as permissible or even obligatory and the action in the footbridge dilemma as morally wrong. Greene explains the difference in subject’s evaluations by pointing out that the position in the first scenario was rather detached and abstract, while the second situation was “up close and personal,” cf. Greene et al. (2011, 2106).
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In usage (2), Batson moreover refers to a fourth—neural—dimension. However, this usage seems fallacious. Although the matching of neural states may well be what’s happening on the neural level when somebody feels empathy for someone else, only persons, not brains, can feel empathy. Cf. Bennett/Hacker (2003, 73) on the “mereological fallacy”.
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Cf., Hunt (2007) for an intriguing historical account of how the rise of the modern novel in the eighteenth century may have nourished a culture of empathy which in turn may have opened the path for the establishment of human rights.
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For a study on Chinese and American children cf. Borke (1973).
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Lack of empathy is most prominently studied in individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or psychopathy. However, only the latter may be affected by a true lack of (affective) empathy, while the former may only have deficits in cognitive empathy (perspective taking or mind reading), cf. Blair (2005, 711).
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On the evolutionary perspective, see also: de Waal (2006). Here, de Waal assumes a functional role of empathy in the process of natural selection (mainly in the relations between mothers and their offspring and between members of groups) and describes how different stages in the development of empathy (e.g. emotional contagion and mental state attribution) may correspond to different stages in the evolution of morality (e.g. moral sentiments and reasoned judgment). Evolutionary psychology, however, remains a controversial field and the value of such arguments may be questioned. For a more detailed discussion see von Harbou (2012) and Mahlmann (2008).
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Luhmann (2001, 76 et seqq.), for example, depicts the legal system as largely autonomous and autopoetic, referring to its self-created elements.
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von Harbou, F. (2014). The Natural Faculty of Empathy as a Basis for Human Rights. In: Albers, M., Hoffmann, T., Reinhardt, J. (eds) Human Rights and Human Nature. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 35. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8672-0_7
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