123 School Work

Kishore Mahbubani Can Asians Think and Amartya Sen Humans Rights and Economic Achievements

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  Mahbubani and Sen consider the relevance of human rights in Asian countries whose primary concern is economic development. Although both authors cover a great deal of ground in their articles, in this paper I focus on their discussions of democratic rights (particularly freedom of expression) and the justifications for denying or defending those rights based on their intrinsic value and instrumental role in securing other goods. Both Mahbubani and Sen see some human rights as having intrinsic importance as well as being the best means for achieving other important economic and social goals. But they disagree on the question of whether certain civil and political rights can be similarly justified. Very broadly, Mahbubani denies that freedom of expression has intrinsic value and points out that it very often has damaging consequences, and for these reasons he thinks the state may legitimately curb its citizens' speech in certain ways. Sen maintains that free speech, like every other human right, should be assessed not only in terms of its effectiveness in promoting economic or social well-being but for its place in enabling people to conceptualize their needs and to form their values and priorities. For Sen, freedom of expression can be justified using instrumental arguments but also because it has noninstrumental worth. In what follows, I present Mahbubani's reasons for denying that free speech and other democratic rights can be justified as being universally applicable on either moral or functional grounds, and I use Sen's arguments and my own objections to expose the inadequacy of his position.
  The main targets of Mahbubani's criticism are those who advocate the wholesale export of "Western" democratic values to the rest of the world. Westerners, he argues, are blind to the fact that to some extent what they regard as universal moral principles enshrined in democratic institutions are mere expressions of their culture (Mahbubani, 37)...