ABSTRACT
This essay explores several different senses of "universal" human rights. I also consider, somewhat more briefly, several senses in which it might be held that human rights are "relative." I defend what I call functional, international legal, and overlapping consensus universality. But I argue that what I call anthropological and ontological universality are empirically, philosophically, or politically indefensible. I also emphasize that universal human rights, properly understood, leave considerable space for national, regional, cultural particularity and other forms of diversity and relativity.
