Human Rights and Cosmopolitan Liberalism

Abstract

It may be suggested that much of what goes by the name of contemporary cosmopolitanism is liberalism envisioned at the global level. It has become a common claim that the liberalism which provides the ethical content for cosmopolitanism is not tolerant enough of diverse ways of living; that liberalism’s claim to be a just referee between competing conceptions of the good life in fact hides a failure to treat diverse forms of life with an egalitarian hand. This essay argues this is a correct observation that is in principle a good thing, not something to be derided. At least from the liberal point of view, part of the misunderstanding lies in the tendency to translate liberalism’s claim to be egalitarian towards all individuals into the claim that this means liberalism must be egalitarian towards all the conceptions of the good life that are held by these individuals. Such an extension of liberalism’s tolerance and egalitarianism would in fact undermine liberalism’s core values and render the cosmopolitan project a series of contradictions in terms.

Key Words:

• Human rights
• liberalism
• cosmopolitanism
• pluralism

Acknowledgments

This paper was originally written for a Symposium on Human Rights, Global Justice and Cosmopolitan Democracy at the University of Queensland in 2005, organised by Richard Shapcott. My thanks to Richard for his formal response to my paper at the symposium, and to others present for their comments and questions. Thanks also go to my colleague George Crowder for reading an early draft of this paper, to Nigel Rapport who was kind enough to read a draft after I questioned him during his visit to the 2005 Adelaide Festival of Ideas, and to the reviewers and editor of CRISPP for their constructive criticism.

Notes

1. Authors who would be comfortable with one or more of these criticisms of liberalism would include John Gray, William Connelly, Bhinku Parekh and Stanley Hauerwas, John Kekes, Charles Taylor.

2. For a detailed example of a liberal theorist who tries to accommodate concrete and pluralist concerns, in the process critiquing traditional abstract individualist liberalism, but then ends up defending something that looks remarkably similar, see Gould 2004, chapter two. My elaboration of the problem, and Gould’s response, can be found in Langlois and Soltan, in preparation.