个人权利和文化共存

如何在尊重不同人类群体的文化情绪之时，使个体权利相谐并举？对于美国人类学家梅尔维尔·赫斯科维茨（Melville Herskovits，1895—1963年）而言，这是制定世界人权宣言所面临的主要难题。在这篇题为“人权声明”的节选中，他详细阐述了这个两难困境。此文是他对联合国教科文组织人权哲学基础调研的答复，于1947年发出。

梅尔维尔·赫斯科维茨

探讨联合国人权委员会在制定《人权宣言》时面临的问题，必须从两种观点出发。第一种观点是构想宣言时的基本依据，它关乎尊重个体人格及其作为社会一员实现最充分发展的权利。然而，在世界秩序中，尊重不同人类群体的文化同样重要。

这是同一问题的两个方面，因为群体由个体组成，而人是社会的一个组成部分，脱离社会则无法正常行事，这是自明之理。因此，问题在于制定一项人权声明，该声明不仅应当在言辞上宣称尊重作为个体的个人，它还必须充分考虑到社会群体的成员——个人，他们受到约束的生活方式塑造了他们的行为，因此，社会群体的命运与个人命运纠缠在一起，无法挣脱。

由于在现代世界中，众多社会密切接触，又因为它们的生活方式多种多样，所以《人权宣言》制定者面临的首要任务，就其本质而言，是解决以下问题：宣言如何能够适用于所有人，而不是一项仅根据西欧国家和美国的主流价值观构思的权利声明？

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人权瓦解

在过去50年，世界各地人类学家的研究广泛记录了人解决生存、社会生活、群体生活的政治管制、与宇宙实现和谐共存并满足其审美驱动问题的多种方式。所有民族都实现了这些目的。但是，没有任何两个民族采取了完全相同的做法，某些民族采取的方式各不相同，甚至常常大相径庭。

这就出现了一个困境。由于学习过程的社会背景，个人不得不相信自己的生活方式最为可取。相反，除了他认为可取的源自文化内部和外部的变化外，他在总体上也同样认识到，在一定程度上与自己的方式有所差异的其他方式，与他所熟悉的方式相比更不可取。价值判断便由此产生，它们本身以既有信仰为依托。

这些价值判断在何种程度上转化为行动，取决于人们思想中的基本规约。大体而言，人们愿意容己容人，他们对异己群体的行为表现出某种宽容，特别是在生存领域互不冲突的情况下。然而，在西欧和美国历史上，经济扩张、军备管制及福音传教的宗教传统已将对文化差异的认识转化为行动号令。在价值观和目的领域强调绝对性的哲学体系，使这一点更为突显。自由的定义、人权性质及诸如此类概念的界定因此变得狭隘。在对非欧洲民族建立控制权之处，其他界定方式遭到诋毁和压制。文化间相似性的内核一直被忽视。

这种观点引起的后果，对人类来说是灾难性的。“白人的负担”这一理论被用于实施经济剥削和对世上千百万人的事务掌控权的否定，在这种情况下，欧洲和美国的扩张并不意味着简单的族群灭绝。西方世界认定这些民族的文化是低等文化，或认定他们的“原始心智”发育迟缓而理应由上等人对他们进行监护，从而以此由进行扩张，导致霸权之下民族的人格堕落和人权瓦解……

具有全球影响力的宣言

在18世纪，起草一份《人权宣言》所面临的问题相对简单，因为这不是一个人类权利问题，而是人们在单一社会所立规约框架之内的权利问题。即使在那时，如美国《独立宣言》或《权利法案》这样崇高的文件，在奴隶制被视为社会秩序的一部分的国度，亦可由自身为奴隶主的人写成。“自由、平等、博爱”的口号，其革命性在将其推广到法国蓄奴殖民地之时最为明显。

如今，这个问题非常复杂，因为宣言必须在全世界适用。它必须接受和认可诸多不同生活方式的正当性。如果它与以前的这类文件处于同一层次，则很难令印度尼西亚人、非洲人、印度人、中国人信服。20世纪的人权不能由任何单一文化的标准加以界定，或顺从任何单一民族的愿景。这样一份文件将挫伤而非实现众多人类的个性。

这些人，因其在生活中所秉持的价值观是狭隘的宣言未曾正视的，将不能自由地全面参与他们所了解的唯一正当合宜的生活方式，构成其特定社会文化的体制、规约和目标。

即便存在着否定公民的参政权或寻求征服弱小民族的政治制度，基本的文化价值观也可能让这些国家的各个民族认识到政府行为的后果，从而迫使其停止歧视和征服，因为一个民族的政治制度只是其整体文化的一小部分。

人只有按照所在社会定义的自由来生活，才是自由的，其权利是作为社会一员所承认的那些权利。基于这一原则，自由和正义的普遍标准必定是基本标准。相反，除非社会各组成单位的成员个性得到自由发挥，并从不同个性相互作用所产生的多样性中汲取力量，否则，有效的世界秩序无从产生。

在公布《大西洋宪章》的有限适用范围之前，全世界为之欢呼，证明在文化上千差万别的各民族，都理解并寻求自由。只有当按照自己的传统生活的人的权利声明被纳入拟议宣言，才能在现今关于“人”的科学认识的坚实基础上迈出下一步，从而界定彼此认定的人类群体的权利和义务。

图片：Alessandro Gatto

Melville Jean Herskovits

The problem faced by the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations in preparing its Declaration on the Rights of Man must be approached from two points of view. The first, in terms of which the Declaration is ordinarily conceived, concerns the respect for the personality of the individual as such, and his right to its fullest development as a member of his society. In a world order, however, respect for the cultures of differing human groups is equally important.

These are two facets of the same problem, since it is a truism that groups are composed of individuals, and human beings do not function outside the societies of which they form a part. The problem is thus to formulate a statement of human rights that will do more than just phrase respect for the individual as an individual. It must also take into full account the individual as a member of the social group of which he is a part, whose sanctioned modes of life shape his behaviour, and with whose fate his own is thus inextricably bound.

Because of the great numbers of societies that are in intimate contact in the modern world, and because of the diversity of their ways of life, the primary task confronting those who would draw up a Declaration on the Rights of Man is thus, in essence, to resolve the following problem: How can the proposed Declaration be applicable to all human beings, and not be a statement of rights conceived only in terms of the values prevalent in the countries of Western Europe and America? [...]

Over the past fifty years, the many ways in which man resolves the problems of subsistence, of social living, of political regulation of group life, of reaching accord with the Universe and satisfying his aesthetic drives has been widely documented by the researches of anthropologists among peoples living in all parts of the world. All peoples do achieve these ends. No two of them, however, do so in exactly the same way, and some of them employ means that differ, often strikingly, from one another.

Yet here a dilemma arises. Because of the social setting of the learning process, the individual cannot but be convinced that his own way of life is the most desirable one. Conversely, and despite changes originating from within and without his culture that he recognizes as worthy of adoption, it becomes equally patent to him that, in the main, other ways than his own, to the degree they differ from it, are less desirable than those to which he is accustomed. Hence valuations arise, that in themselves receive the sanction of accepted belief.

The degree to which such evaluations eventuate in action depends on the basic sanctions in the thought of a people. In the main, people are willing to live and let live, exhibiting a tolerance for behaviour of another group different than their own, especially where there is no conflict in the subsistence field. In the history of Western Europe and America, however, economic expansion, control of armaments, and an evangelical religious tradition have translated the recognition of cultural differences into a summons to action. This has been emphasized by philosophical systems that have stressed absolutes in the realm of values and ends. Definitions of freedom, concepts of the nature of human rights and the like, have thus been narrowly drawn. Alternatives have been decried, and suppressed where controls have been established over non-European peoples. The hard core of similarities between cultures has consistently been overlooked.

The consequences of this point of view have been disastrous for mankind. Doctrines of the "white man's burden" have been employed to implement economic exploitation and to deny the right to control their own affairs to millions of peoples over the world, where the expansion of Europe and America has not meant the literal extermination of whole populations. Rationalized in terms of ascribing cultural inferiority to these peoples, or in conceptions of their backwardness in development of their ''primitive mentality" that justified their being held in the tutelage of their superiors, the history of the expansion of the western world has been marked by demoralization of human personality and the disintegration of human rights among the peoples over whom hegemony has been established. [...]

The problem of drawing up a Declaration of Human Rights was relatively simple in the eighteenth century, because it was not a matter of human rights, but of the rights of men within the framework of the sanctions laid by a single society. Even then, so noble a document as the American Declaration of Independence, or the American Bill of Rights, could be written by men who themselves were slave-owners, in a country where chattel slavery was a part of the recognized social order. The revolutionary character of the slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" was never more apparent than in the struggles to implement it by extending it to the French slave-owning colonies.

Today the problem is complicated by the fact that the Declaration must be of worldwide applicability. It must embrace and recognize the validity of many different ways of life. It will not be convincing to the Indonesian, the African, the Indian, the Chinese, if it lies on the same plane as like documents of an earlier period. The rights of Man in the twentieth century cannot be circumscribed by the standards of any single culture, or be dictated by the aspirations of any single people. Such a document will lead to frustration, not realization of the personalities of vast numbers of human beings.

Such persons, living in terms of values not envisaged by a limited Declaration, will thus be excluded from the freedom of full participation in the only right and proper way of life that can be known to them, the institutions, sanctions and goals that make up the culture of their particular society.

Even where political systems exist that deny citizens the right of participation in their government, or seek to conquer weaker peoples, underlying cultural values may be called on to bring the peoples of such states to a realization of the consequences of the acts of their governments, and thus enforce a brake upon discrimination and conquest. For the political system of a people is only a small part of their total culture.

Worldwide standards of freedom and justice, based on the principle that man is free only when he lives as his society defines freedom, that his rights are those he recognizes as a member of his society, must be basic. Conversely, an effective world order cannot be devised except insofar as it permits the free play of personality of the members of its constituent social units, and draws strength from the enrichment to be derived from the interplay of varying personalities.

The worldwide acclaim accorded the Atlantic Charter, before its restricted applicability was announced, is evidence of the fact that freedom is understood and sought after by peoples having the most diverse cultures. Only when a statement of the right of men to live in terms of their own traditions is incorporated into the proposed Declaration, then, can the next step of defining the rights and duties of human groups as regards each other be set upon the firm foundation of the present-day scientific knowledge of Man.

Known for his humanistic and relativistic study of culture, American anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits (1895-1963) is noted for opening up the study of the New World Negro as a new field of research. A specialist in African-American cultural and social issues, he taught at Columbia University, Howard University and at Northwestern University, Chicago, where he held the first chair of African Studies in the United States (1951).

Photo: Alessandro Gatto