Cultural relativity is an undeniable fact; moral rules and social institutions evidence an astonishing cultural and historical variability. Cultural relativism is a doctrine that holds that (at least some) such variations are exempt from legitimate considerations by outsiders a doctrine that is strongly supported by notions of communal autonomy and self determination. Moral judgments, however, would seem to be essentially universal, as suggested not only by Kant’s categorical imperative but also by the common sense distinction between principled and self-interested action. And if human rights are, literally, the rights, (every)one has simply because one is a human being, they would seem to be universal by definition.
