19 April 2006
Wednesday 19 April 2006 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
On tonight's Night Waves Undercurrents, Isabel Hilton and her guests tackle one of the most troublesome ethical and political dilemmas of our day: are universal rights possible in an unequal world?
Playlist
In the wake of the Danish cartoons row, Ken Livingstone's reluctance to criticise Chinese human rights abuses, and the ongoing fall-out from the invasion of Iraq and the London bombings, the debate between relativists and universalists has never been more heated. Across a wide range of issues - freedom of speech, humanitarian military intervention, forced marriage and many others - former ideological soulmates are splitting against each other and finding new allies. In manifestos, newspapers and in the ever-growing number of internet 'blogs', so-called 'Enlightenment values' - the rule of law, democracy, human rights - are the subject of impassioned debate unimaginable a few years ago.
To try to shed light on why the relativists and the universalists are at each others' throats as never before, Isabel is joined by the prolific cultural critic Ziauddin Sardar, the Times columnist and author Oliver Kamm, along with Professor Kenneth Minogue, the American anthropologist Kit Davies and the philosopher Jonathan Rée.
