ABSTRACT
The majority of regimes facing criticism in the international community for their human rights violations have, at some point, turned themselves into advocates of cultural relativism. Arguing the universality of human rights is, to such regimes, an act of subservience to Western-centrism. The gulf between cultural relativism and universalism in the conception of human rights shows no signs of closing. What is needed is an approach that upholds the universalist nature of human rights but also reconciles with the historic and cultural particularities of human rights. Herder’s metaphor of human civilization as a community in the form of a “garden” provides us a useful tool. To Herder, the beauty of this garden of human community lies in the fact that the flowers of cultures growing in its midst achieve a state of mutual harmony. Just as cultivating a single flower cannot be viewed separately from the beauty of the garden as a whole, the protection of specific human rights in full awareness of their somewhat relative character and the protection of human rights in the human community as a whole as a matter of universal principle cannot, ultimately, be viewed as separate from one another.
