The Rise of Liberalism and Old Liberalism

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- The New Orientation of Liberalism

- Liberals defend their principles when they assert that they avoid racism, ethnocentrism, orientalism and paternalism as Martha Nussbaum asks about her searching for non-ethnocentric world to find an approach to provide universal ethics and rejects racism (Charusheela 2).

- One of the solutions Martha Nussbaum suggests is that adapting the capabilities approach as Nussbaum describes as the approach that can fit the bill.

- Through this approach, liberals assert the entitlements that consist of things persons can access and ask for their rights and opportunities (2,3). Functionings are the combinations that assert the individual natural rights like have enough food, getting a job and else (3).

- Richard Rorty also defends the idea of natural rights that are independently possessed without any human and social conventions (Gilbert).

- Human rights are related to the “large realm” which means all around the world and definitely the moral and the ethical realm. This morality has the same meaning of rationality which is one of the shared human features (Gilbert 6).

- Rorty defends the idea of human rights when he redefines and reconstruct the aspect of human rights within a philosophical project of modernity which helps in a basic transformation in the theory and practice of human rights. He mixed between rights and morality as part of human suffering (Barreto 1).

- As part of liberal’s solution of their mistakes, Rorty urges liberals to deny the idea of their absolute rationality and truth and accepts others opinions in their dialogue and conversation. He describes this idea by arguing that he stands against “the tyranny of knowledge and its social and dangerous consequences” (Ana Sandoiu).

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IV. The New Dialogue Between Liberals and Postcolonials.

1-The New Conversation between Liberals and postcolonials.

- Martha Nussbaum and Universalism

- Martha Nussbaum’s respond to some postcolonial critics when she explains that giving up universality completely will lead to Nussbaum calls “ethical relativism.” Charusheela claims that Nussbaum adapts Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to modify universalism to concentrate on “cross-cultural conversations” as “non-ethnographic basis for universal judgement” (Charusheela 1).

- Liberalism as a modern intellectual tradition asserts its defense of the rights and freedoms of individuals. Liberals starts new reencountering the postcolonial critiques that consider liberal political subjects as “primitive, backward, or indigenous. They determine the dilemmas and contradictions of their political theory and law (Chandra 135).

- Liberals assert some new matters to deal with like “In what ways can postcolonial law rid itself of its colonial baggage? How can the ideal of universal liberal citizenship overcome paternalistic notions of protection? How might "primitive" subjects become full and equal citizens in postcolonial societies?” (Chandra 135).

- Nussbaum and New Postcolonialism: Certain universal standards should be the main consideration for political purposes which can provide a legal guarantees for all nations. (Charusheela)

- Nussbaum also notes in her book “In Defense of Universal Norms” that “I shall also argue that these norms are legitimately used in making comparisons across nations, asking how well they are doing relatively to one another in promoting human quality of life.” (Charusheela)

- Some poscolonial critics responds to Martha Nussbaum by talking the limitations of capability approach of the universal norms. “postcolonial scholars argue that a certain complex of ideas, variously labelled as liberalism, modernism, essentialism or universalism, are better understood as the self-constituting ideologies of a dominant group than as altruistic, impartial bases for knowledge and judgment.” (Charusheela)

- Martha’s Response “She argues that the universalist project of political liberalism can be salvaged by constructing universals more carefully. To do this, she has developed a modified universalism based on Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach with, she claims, safeguards against the ethnocentric disrespect and paternalism that marked previous forms of universalist thinking.” (Charusheela)

- UNDHR states that all human beings should have freedom and equality in rights like freedom of religion and personal individuality. According to cultural relativism, individuals have personal benefits and one of them that relates to women rights by standing against of what is called female gentile mutilation (Sandra Daniel 1).

- Richard Rorty’s defense of Liberalism

- Richard Rorty also believes that colonialism was wrong when he reviews many colonialist’s aspects of American history: the spread of American slavery, the cruelty and genocide of Native Americans, and the Vietnam War (Malachowski 137).

- Alan Malachowski asserts that Rorty explains his opinion in his book Contingency, Irony and Solidarity that he rejects the “ethnocentrism” as part his reply to Clifford Geertz. Malachowski thinks that Rorty adapts this aspect to defend liberals when he noted that “liberals would rather

die than be ethnocentric” (137).

The modern system of human rights is founded on the concept of universalism that seeks human unity addressing individuals regardless of their race, gender and religion to basic minimal tights. But many critics agree that cultural relativism influences in these universal ideals when the universal human rights standards don’t achieve “the extreme diversity of cultural and religious practices” performed around the worldwide (qtd in Zechenter 319). The demands ask for changing in universal rights to be compatible for local cultural and religious standards.

Rorty believed that we must in practice enjoy our group and we must insist on there if nothing is immune of criticism and we should have to have a task to justify everything. The Western liberals should start from where they are and this means that there are many ideas and views we cannot adopt. We should refuse the views that are made out for us and Rorty named it a New Being who loved to be changed and not to be “persuaded” (Rorty 16).

This universal cultural relativism was one of the international debates of Human Rights. The liberals believed that universal cultural