Buddhism and Human Rights. Edited by Damien V.
Keown, Charles S. Prebish, and Wayne R. Husted. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press,
1998, xxi + 239 pages, ISBN: 0-7007-0954-1, US $40.00.
Reviewed by
Donald K. Swearer
Department of Religion
Swarthmore College
mailto:rseager@hamilton.edu
In October 1995, the Journal of Buddhist Ethics conducted an online conference
on Buddhism and Human Rights. The project was ambitious in both its electronic
format and its subject matter. Human rights is widely addressed in the West by both
ethicists and policy makers, but has received only modest attention from students of
Buddhist ethics, as demonstrated by Damien Keown's "Bibliography on Buddhism and
Human Rights" (Journal of Buddhist Ethics, April 19, 1995). To be sure,
Buddhist spokespersons of international stature such as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh
have spoken out on issues of war and peace, violence and non-violence, but the terminology
of human rights surfaces more as an overtone in Buddhist ethics discussions.
Although the Buddhist feminist critique touches on human rights, it tends to be
gender-focused.
In the last decade the language of human rights has become more prominent in the
discourse of Buddhist ethics. It was an important theme in the Dalai Lama's 1989
Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech; Sulak Sivaraksa and other Buddhist social activists
have made human rights a major issue in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, India and China; and
in 1988, forty years after the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, L. P. N. Perera
published Human Rights and Religions in Sri Lanka: A Commentary on the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. The Journal of Buddhist Ethics' 1995
conference, however, was the first attempt to address the issue of Buddhism and human
rights from various perspectives and in different historical and contemporary
contexts. In this sense the conference was both ground-breaking and
significant.
The volume under review is substantial in size and broad in scope. It brings
under one cover all of the papers prepared for the October online conference. The
essays range from metaethical questions regarding the compatibility or incompatibility of
Western human rights language with Buddhist ethics to reflections on specific situations
such as Tibet and Thailand. Although the essays do not present a consistent Buddhist
perspective on human rights, it is not surprising that while there is disagreement over if
and how the Western concept of human rights can be expressed in an authentically Buddhist
form, there is a broad agreement that Buddhist teachings can and should contribute to
contemporary human rights movements. Despite their differences, each of the
authors brings to his or her study an obvious empathy for Buddhism and its actual or
potential contribution to an ethic of human rights.
In addition to the conference papers, the volume includes Damien Keown's
"Bibliography on Human Rights," the Dalai Lama's 1993 statement on "Human
Rights and Universal Responsibility" delivered at the United Nation's NGO conference
on human rights, and the Declaration of Interdependence that followed the Closing
Statement of the online conference. Comparing this Declaration with the United
Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights opens a window onto the debate over whether
human rights as construed in the modern West are compatible with Buddhist ethics.
From this reviewer's perspective, the essays that best frame the broad issues raised by
the dialogue between Western human rights discourse and the language of Buddhist ethics
are those by Damien V. Keown ("Are There Human Rights in Buddhism?"), Craig K.
Ihara ("Why There Are No Rights in Buddhism: A Reply to Damien Keown"), and Jay
L. Garfield, ("Human Rights and Compassion"). Subsequently, I shall
discuss these three essays in greater detail. The papers by Paul Junger ("Why
the Buddha Has No Rights") and Santipala Stephen Evans ("Buddhist Resignation
and Human Rights") argue for the radical distinctiveness of Buddhist ethics over
against a modern Western understanding of human rights. Junger, who speaks from the
normative position that the concept of human rights is historically contingent while the
teachings of the Buddha are not, finds that certain values embodied in the
Enlightenment-based human rights rhetoric are better served by the notion of 'right' in
the Noble Eightfold Path. Junger argues that ultimately, however, the goal of the
Path, cessation of suffering, entails overcoming clinging, even clinging to rights.
Evans is of the opinion that the major components of the Buddhist worldview, such as
attitudes toward suffering, karma and rebirth, and dependent co-arising, ground a Buddhist
ethic of contingent mutual responsibility that is more inclusive and less oppositional
than the language of human rights. Kenneth Inada's essay, "A Buddhist Response
to the Nature of Human Rights," appeared in Asian Perspectives on Human Rights
edited by Claude E. Welch, Jr. and Virginia A. Leary (1980), and was not one of the online
conference papers. In agreement with Evans, Inada holds that unlike Western human
rights theories from Hobbes and Bentham to Rawls that are grounded in an ontology of
"hard" relationships -- that is, an externalized and atomistic view of human
relationships -- the Buddhist worldview is one of holistic, inclusive mutuality.
Such a worldview, he contends, promotes "soft relationships" governed by such
intangible human traits as patience, humility, tolerance, humaneness, love, and
compassion.
The remaining essays are more specific in nature. Three are country-focused and
two are topical. Soraj Hongladarom provides an insightful comparative analysis of
Thailand's renowned lay Buddhist social activist, Sulak Sivaraksa, and that country's most
respected contemporary scholar-monk, Phra Dhammapidok, in "Buddhism and Human Rights
in the Thoughts of Sulak Sivaraksa and Phra Dhammapidok (Prayudha Prayutto)."
John Powers' largely historical analysis looks at the Chinese disregard for Tibetans'
human rights from the perspective of contrasting cultural values in "Human Rights and
Cultural Values: The Political Values of the Dalai Lama and the People's Republic of
China." Of the topical essays, Charles R. Strain constructs a dialogue between
engaged Buddhism, especially that of Thich Nhat Hanh and Sulak Sivaraksa, and Catholic
social teachings in contrast to the Western debate on human rights defined by Western
liberal individualism, communitarians, and cultural relativists in "Socially Engaged
Buddhism's Contribution to the Transformation of Catholic Social Teachings on Human
Rights." David Bubna-Litic critiques business practices that violate human
rights from the Mahaayaana perspective of interdependence (interbeing) in "Buddhist
Ethics and Business Strategy Making."
Keown's paper, with its brief but useful introduction to discussions of human rights in
Western ethics, provides a good entry point to the volume, especially for readers
unfamiliar with human rights discussions in Western ethics. (Junger presents a
lengthy but somewhat less useful discussion of continental civil law and Anglo-American
common law.) In contrast to Inada, who sees human rights as an extension of human
nature, Keown argues that teleologically human rights and dignity are in accord with an
account of human goodness which sees basic rights and freedoms as related to human
flourishing and self-realization. Furthermore, he observes that although there is no
specific Sanskrit or Pali term for the Western notion of "rights," the concept
of rights is implicit in classical Buddhism in the normative understanding of what is due
among and between individuals. Keown suggests that the Buddhist view of reciprocal
obligations provides a different but related perspective on the questions of
justice. He contends that an ethic of reciprocal duties can be seen as an embryonic
form of rights or as a precondition for rights in the modern Western sense.
Like Keown, Ihara argues that Buddhist ethics is a Dharmic system of role
responsibilities rather than an ethic of rights. In contrast with Keown, however,
Ihara contends that to introduce the Western concept of rights into Buddhism would
significantly transform the nature of Buddhist ethics, and in particular that it would
threaten Buddhism's cooperative, duty-based paradigm. Ihara agrees with Joel
Feinberg ("The Nature and Value of Rights"), that there are numerous
classes of duties that do not correlate specifically with the rights of persons; rights
entail duties but duties do not always entail rights. Ihara argues that the major
flaw in Keown's position is his attempt to reconcile duty and rights; every duty does not
involve a corresponding right. Nevertheless, despite the disjunction between
Buddhist duties and Western rights, Ihara believes Buddhists should engage in contemporary
human rights discussions.
Jay Garfield argues that the essence of Buddhist moral theory is compassion, but that
Buddhist compassion is not necessarily incompatible with human rights. Compassion,
in Garfield's view, brings three important considerations to discussions of the nature of
human rights: that human relations are determined by more than rational, external, and
private domain considerations; that human relationships include rights and duties but also
a broader range of choices; and that compassion entails a dynamic, moral development view
of human nature. While compassion grounds Buddhist ethics (especially Mahaayaana
ethics), human rights builds a framework for extending the reach of natural compassion and
for serving the goods that compassion affords to all persons in society. To
the rhetoric of compassion, on the other hand, the language of rights adds an important
dimension of moral and political criticism. Garfield's theoretical stance represents
what this reviewer takes to be the most constructive contribution Buddhism has to make to
international human rights debates because it allows the possibility of incorporating
distinctive ethical frameworks -- for example, Buddhist compassion and Western liberal
democracy -- into a quest for an enriched and broadened understanding of human rights.
It is illuminating to assess the variation in approach and subject matter represented
by the essays in this volume from the perspective of the dilemma noted in Prospects for
a Common Morality, edited by Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, Jr. (Princeton University
Press, 1993). The editors observed that "recent moral and political thought
seems Janus-faced. We find on the one side a remarkable kind of cross-cultural moral
agreement about human rights.…We find on the other side an apparent loss of
confidence in any such consensus" (p. 3). In this reviewer's opinion, the
variation represented by the essays in Buddhism and Human Rights mirror this
dilemma. While they do not present a consensus, the essays offer a valuable insight into
the range of views that Buddhists and Buddhist scholars bring to the ongoing conversation.