The Ambiguities of Democracy and Human Rights
(On the occasion of Prof. Raymond Geuss' lecture 'The Authority of Democracy and Human Rights' and a research seminar in which he discussed his paper “Does criticism always have to be constructive?” the next morning)
We live in a really threatening, unsurveyable and infinitely complex world. It is a world in which many different individuals who value and aspire many different things have somehow found a way to live together; it is a world in which we continue to be baffled by forces of nature and the intricate web of human relations: it is a difficult world to make sense of. As such, it is natural for us to simplify it in terms of abstract schemata that allow us to somehow order the world. These schemata, stresses the Cambridge professor of philosophy Raymond Geuss, once in place, often take the form of dogmas. This is not a problem, as long as we realise that they are ultimately human constructs with limited applicability. It is especially important that we realise that this is also the case with two of the central dogmas of Western political thought: the belief in the inherent value and universal applicability of democracy and human rights. “It is natural to structure the world such that what you are best in appears pivotal,” explains Geuss, “[but] we ought to resist fetishizing good working schemata by abstracting them and projecting them on other structures.” Vividly illustrating why it is a mistake to take these dogmas for somehow deeply, inherently justified ideas with universal aspirations, professor Geuss then sets out to expose the ambiguities and incompatibility of the terms ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights.’
When we speak of democracy, he warns, we are not speaking of a uniquely specified phenomenon. Numerous models of democracy have been proposed and enacted throughout history, each different from the other. The direct democracy practised in the Ancient Greek poleis, for example, is vastly different from the representative democracies we now know in for example The Netherlands, yet both forms of government carry the same name. However, that two different interpretations of a particular concept appropriate the same name does not necessarily imply that either one of them is wrong, or, in this case, undemocratic. It is important here, states Geuss, to distinguish between two fundamentally different senses in which the term democracy is typically used. Usually, it is taken to be a descriptive empirical term describing a particular organisation of society and its institutions. When I contrasted the Ancient Greek democracy with the contemporary Dutch one, I used the term in a descriptive manner. However, if I were to criticise either one of the regimes I mentioned above by contrasting them with a non-existent ideal type of democracy, I am using the word in an altogether different sense as a “highly theoretical interpretation of what ought to be going on.” Used this way, the word has a strong normative connotation. When someone speaks of democracy, therefore, we ought to ask ourselves whether he or she is using the term in a descriptive or normative manner: we ought to remember that it is an ambiguous concept that can be interpreted in numerous ways.
Although the two senses of democracy under discussion are analytically different, explains Geuss, they are often used in conjunction and sometimes conflated with each other. Over the course of the last decades, particularly since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, the term democracy has undeniably come to be regarded as normatively positive by the Western public. Somehow, we get the impression that when someone speaks of democracy, it is clear that he or she is speaking of an inherently valuable and deeply justified form of government with universal aspirations. Yet, as we have seen, the term 'democracy' may denote many different things. Therefore, if we attach the label 'democracy' to our own institutional arrangement of society and take this as sufficient justification for spreading it as a state model, we are conflating the descriptive and normative element of the term democracy. This is problematic, because, as Geuss argues, the fact that democracy works well for us does not necessarily imply that it works well elsewhere. Moreover, he points out, it is likely that 'true democracy' does not exist if we take it to mean a form of government in which the 'people' exercise power. Firstly, because this notion posits a unitary people somehow capable of exercising power, while in reality societies are composed of numerous individuals with often conflicting interests. Secondly, because in most modern democracies the power to rule is not vested in the people, but in separate structures that operate beyond the direct control of a state's citizens. In fact, the modern state's reason of being seems to be the institutionalisation of power and, as such, they are by definition undemocratic. “Democracy, then,” Geuss concludes, “is not a good conceptual tool to analyse contemporary politics.”
The second and equally problematic central dogma of Western political thought that Geuss discusses in his lecture is that of human rights. Like democracy, the term human rights is widely regarded as an undeniably valuable concept with universal aspirations. They are thought to be rights that every human being possesses on account of his or her humanity. Hence, they are not rights assigned to individuals through political processes, but they are rights that exist independently of human interference. That is, they are natural rights. This notion becomes problematic when we subject the term 'rights' to closer evaluation. The concept of 'rights' is only useful if these rights can be enforced. Otherwise, they lose their meaning. For human rights to be a meaningful concept, therefore, there must be someone or something capable of enforcing them. In Locke's theory of natural rights, there was a deity to take care of this job. However, if we do not believe in the presence of a God, it is also difficult to think of natural rights as a useful concept. As soon as we, humans, start taking the role of enforcing them, they are no longer independent of human interference and hence lose their status as somehow transcendental rights. Furthermore, it is very ambiguous what natural rights are in the first place. “The context-given interpretation of natural rights,” states Geuss, “is very important.” Though we now all agree that holding slaves is a direct violation of human rights, this was not a problem for the Founding Fathers who signed the U.S. Constitution in which they proclaimed that every man is born equal. What is and is not a human right, then, is a highly political matter that somehow depends on personal interpretation. Which personal interpretations we take to be most accurate in describing human rights depends on who we believe to be in the right authority to evaluate them and is therefore highly subjective. The concept of human rights, by consequence, is not a clear “cognitive tool to assess modern societies.”
If, taken on their own, the concepts of human rights and democracies are problematic, they are even more so taken together. Much of modern political theory, Geuss points out, is devoted to showing that both concepts are somehow compatible. Yet, he maintains, this is an impossible task: while democracy “vests final power, legitimacy and authority in the 'people',” the concept of human rights “posits the individual bearer of such rights as the final origin and locus of authority.” Hence, we may have to re-think the way we think about democracy and human rights. They are dogmas among other dogmas, and we should not overgeneralise them. If we accept this, it is no problem that democracy and human rights are incompatible concepts, for they are not the somehow “deep, inherently justified ideas” that we sometimes perceive them to be. Accepting this, moreover, implies that we have come one step closer to “resisting fetishizing good working schemata by abstracting them and projecting them on other structures.” Even if the he terms democracy and human rights worked well for us to think about society (a contention that we may have to reconsider after Prof. Geuss' talk), they would not for that reason be equally useful elsewhere. At any rate, we should not aspire to export our state model throughout the world. For, as we have seen, we live in an infinitely complex world, and the world view that appeals to us most likely does not appeal to everyone.
Barend de Rooij (LUC, 2nd year student)
5-10-2011
