Universality and Cultural Relativity in the International Human Rights

The challenge between cultural relativism and universal human rights has been proposed for a long time, and the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and then the next two generations of the international human rights have been its milestone. Analyzing the fundamentals and the history of this confrontation, this paper examines the concealed assumptions of any one of the opposing arguments. Many empirical evidences of cultural relativism are indisputable, but on the one hand, relativity of values and ethics are not logically and instinctively defensible. This paper shows that these two views do not necessarily conflict with each other in practice; rather, there are ranges of theoretical and practical concepts on both sides, which have the potential for overlapping and peaceful coexistence. The distinction between universal and conceptual universality, universality in the realization of human rights, historical and anthropological universality, legal-international universality, functional universally as well as methodological and essential cultural relativism, contribute to the conceptual coexistence of these two perspectives. Also, adopting an interdisciplinary perspective on this challenge over the past decade, including cultural, philosophical, historical, legal and political studies has an important role in resolving the ambiguities, the interpretation of the dimensions of universality, and the cultural relativism of the human rights.