I was debating for a long time whether or not to bother posting on this topic, because Walter Woon’s attack on human rights ‘fanatics’ was so obviously ludicrous that it seemed like bait to draw out angry responses (which would then justify his original label).

I bookmarked Today’s report on his speech and then decided not to bother blogging about it. Until I read the column by Lydia Lim in Saturday’s ST (Insight section) on the same issue. While, as is typical of ST columns, it took a much more conciliatory tone towards human rights advocates than Walter Woon did, in substance, it still used the same fallacious arguments and baseless smears. The ‘if you want to continue fighting for human rights then you’re just being troublesome and nasty‘ tone of the column got on my nerves enough that I decided I had to write something.

A summary of my main problems with Woon and Lim’s ‘arguments’:

1. Vague and overly broad use of the term ‘fanatic’.
2. Subsequent use of that term as a pejorative term. Together with 1., this allows them to imply that a broad swathe of their ideological opponents are Bad People. However, if they have indeed defined ‘fanatic’ too broadly, then this is a disingenuous insinuation.
3. A complete misunderstanding of what universal human rights are. Or if not that, then a deliberate attempt to ignore the terms of the debate about universal human rights. (Siew Kum Hong has made a similar point.)
4. Using relativism and then rejecting it as and when it suits their rhetorical purposes.

Here are the various sense of ‘fanatic’ that I can gather from Lim and Woon’s statements. Lim writes:

…a fanatic is one with whom it is very difficult to have a reasoned discussion. Such an individual is so extreme and fixed in his world view that he does not tolerate perspectives different from his own.

and

So the warning against fanaticism is a warning against close-mindedness and intolerance.

and

[Prof Woon’s] criticism was aimed not at human-rights activists but at those who are fanatical, that is, extreme, in their views.

And on Woon’s part:

You have, like in some religions, the fanatics. And it’s all hypocrisy and fanaticism (for these people) to set the views, as the leading spokesmen, of what is acceptable and what’s not.

and

…I said that for some people human rights has become a religion. This religion, like so many others, has its fanatics who display all the hypocrisy and zealotry of religious bigots.
They believe that there is only one permissible view of human rights — theirs. They assume that when they decide what human rights are, that decision is for the rest of humanity.

and

Human rights fanatics think that their opinion is the standard to which the rest of humanity must conform to and that they are entitled to issue reports criticising those who hold a different view. These are people who evidently believe that they and their values represent the apex of human moral development.
There is no one solution that will fit all societies.

and

I have never dismissed the sincerely-held views of anyone who is genuinely interested in dialogue.

From all the above, I gather the following characteristics of ‘fanatics’:

• Someone with whom reasoned discussion is impossible and who is not ‘genuinely interested in dialogue’.
• Someone with an extreme world view.
• Someone with a fixed world view. (This goes with ‘close-mindedness’.)
• Someone who thinks there exists a moral standard to which the rest of humanity must conform.

It should be clear by this point that those four characteristics do not always come together. For example, someone can believe in a universal principle of equal opportunities regardless of gender. Surely this does not qualify as an extreme world view. Rather, it would seem to be more common, even in Singapore, to think of male/female chauvinists as the extremists. One could of course rebut that whether a certain view is extreme depends on the prevailing social and cultural values of the society one happens to be in, and hence is a highly culture-relative concept. But that only serves to further undermine Woon’s point, for if the very charge of extremism is relative to what society one is situated in, then the only way one can not be an extremist is to bend with the prevailing wind — to adopt most of the dominant values of his/her society. People who were (say) against slavery in the 19th century were considered extremists, yet I suspect that even someone like Woon would have to admit that in some sense these people were right, despite not having held the socially dominant views of their time.

The same goes for fixity of world view. Again, I ask: does Woon think that there could (or did) exist a society in which slavery would not be immoral? If not, then he too has some fixed points in his world view. Note that we must disitinguish this kind of fixity from that of being impervious to new arguments and new knowledge. If we learn some new facts of the world or come across a new, sound, good, argument for why slavery is fine, then we should be willing to change our minds about the moral status of slavery. What is fixed, though, is the wrongness of slavery for all humans and all societies.

Finally, I would say that there are plenty of people who hold extreme world views but are capable of rational discussion. Just consider ethicists like Peter Singer, whom most people would consider to hold ‘extreme’ views with respect to animal rights (amongst other things), but with whom I think most would have to admit it’s more than possible to have a rational discussion. There are also plenty of people with moderate world views but who are incapable of rational discussion, mainly because they lack the ability to use logical principles and evidence to reflect on or defend their stances.

I hope I’ve done enough to show that the four characteristics attributed to ‘extremists’ by Lim and Woon do not, in fact, come in a package. By lumping them together, though, Woon and Lim are able to imply that (for example) those who believe in a universal moral standard is also incapable of reasoned dialogue, and hence disavow any responsibility to engage these people. Similarly, by an implicit suggestion that extreme views must be obviously wrong by virtue of their extremism, they can lump those who believe in universal human rights with those extremists whom most people would agree are obviously wrong, and hence avoid having to actually argue that universal human rights don’t exist.

It should also be clear that using the label ‘extremist’ as a pejorative to describe those who think that their moral standards apply to all of humanity is disingenuous. For it is hardly extremist to think that, for example, child abuse is wrong regardless of the society in which it happens.

That completes points 1 and 2 in my summary of what’s wrong with Woon and Lim’s arguments. What I’ve said has also brushed up against part of point 3. Human rights advocates like MARUAH are making their points from an assumption that universal human rights actually exist. As Siew Kum Hong has pointed out, the fact that Singapore is even a member of the UN implies that we accept the existence of some universal human rights. So were the politicians that had Singapore join the UN extremists? We know that the UN is more often toothless than not, but even if we can’t take its declaration of human rights that seriously, surely the fact that we don’t think of the UN as an extremist organisation suggests that the values in imperfectly tries to follow are not, in fact, extreme? Woon and Lim’s reactions to the notion of universal human rights make it seem as though there has been this horrifying revival of an extremist religion going on since the end of WWII, ever since, in fact, people in many countries decided that it’d be good to have some guidelines about how we should treat other human beings. Without any exceptions for those who happen to find it culturally required to, um, murder people of other ethnicities. Yet, by the way Woon talks about universal human rights (”zealotry”), one would think he was going: OMG!! Who are these people who think no one should ever enslave or torture another human being?? I would like to turn the tables on Woon: going by how he makes the notion of human rights entirely society-dependent, one would be tempted to label him an extreme relativist.

Which brings me to point 4. Woon retreats to relativism to shrug off the validity of universal human rights — rights, he says, differ from society to society. Yet while slamming human rights activists for believing that “there is only one permissible view of human rights”, he still wields the stick of absolute morality when he trumpets the power of obligations (to society) to overrule [presumably individual] rights. He has a particular view of the relationship between rights and obligations that he thinks is permissible, and which does not permit the notion of universal human rights. How does that count as not having “one permissible view of human rights”? If he wants to retreat to relativism, then he cannot use the example of those who insult religions as a paradigm of something that is morally wrong.

In short, Woon and Lim have no shortage of rhetoric but lack a serious critique of universal human rights. Even their ad hominem critique of advocates of universal human rights falls flat. Stop the careless name-calling, define the issue at hand clearly, and define the terms you use clearly. Then we can have some constructive discussion.

P. S. I am aware that this piece glosses over many points of contention in moral philosophy. I apologise. My only excuse is that I never had a formal course in ethics after Aristotle. Nevertheless, I suspect that most philosophers would agree with the main thrust of my criticisms of Woon and Lim.