Human rights and future people — Possibilities of argumentation

Questions of sustainability will be of crucial importance for the twenty-first century. But do we have to think about questions of responsibilities regarding future people in terms of human rights? And if duties regarding sustainability fall outside the scope of human rights, what would this imply for the moral and political importance of human rights in general? This article investigates conceptually how we should see the relationship between human rights and long-term global ecological challenges. We will discuss how a human rights approach to questions of sustainability would be different from other approaches and what would be required to see those ecological challenges as human rights questions. We will discuss the possibilities for conceptualizing the relationship between human rights and sustainability. And we will briefly draw some conclusions in terms of topics for further debate.     

Shaking Hands with Hitler: The Politics‐Administration Dichotomy and Engagement with Fascism

Researchers have examined the impact of the politics‐administration dichotomy on the practice and theory of public administration within the United States. But the dichotomy also influenced patterns of international engagement by American experts in the 1920s and 1930s. Americans believed that they could set politics aside and collaborate on administrative questions with regimes that did not respect democracy and human rights. This belief was tested after the rise of Adolf Hitler. American experts in public administration engaged with the Nazi regime for three years, ignoring the rising controversy over Nazi policies. The breaking point came in 1936. American experts finally recognized that it was impossible to ignore political questions and became forthright proponents of “democratic administration.” This struggle to define the boundaries of international engagement is relevant today, as specialists in public administration again find themselves in a world in which a shared commitment to democracy and human rights cannot be taken for granted.     

Human Rights,Personal Responsibility,and Human Dignity: What Are Our Moral Duties to Promote the Universal Realization of Human Rights?

According to the orthodox or humanist conception of human rights, individuals have a moral duty to promote the universal realization of human rights. However, advocates of this account express the implications of this duty in extremely vague terms. What does it mean when we say that we must promote human rights satisfaction? Does it mean that we must devote a considerable amount of our time and resources to this task? Does it mean, instead, that we must make occasional donations to charities working to advance human rights realization? In this essay, I argue that this duty can only be constructed as imperfect. This means that it confers agent-relative discretion on us to decide when, how, and to what extent to advance the human rights of others. It also means that it is neither correlative with rights nor enforceable. As I will explain, the main reason for this is that any attempt to construct it as a perfect duty would infringe the dignity of the potential duty bearers and thereby undermine the very values that human rights practice aspires to serve. Finally, I will conclude by providing some guidelines for those who wish to comply with their imperfect duties to improve the situation of those whose human rights are in peril.     

The possibility of secular human rights: Alan gewirth and the principle of generic consistency

This article explores Alan Gewirth’s argument for a secular foundation for the idea 2 of human rights as a possible response to Michael J. Perry’s claim “that the idea of 3 human rights is…ineliminably religious.” I examine Gewirth’s reasoning for constructing 3 a theory, namely that existing theories are fundamentally flawed and leave the idea of human rights without a logically consistent foundation, before considering in detail his claims for the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC). Having looked at his critique of numerous other theories, as well as at his own argument about human action grounding basic rights to freedom and well-being, I then offer a critique of Gewirth’s PGC. Ultimately my conclusion is that Gewrith's 3 theory relies too heavily on the notions, first that we have a meta-desire not to contradict ourselves and, second, that we are unable to find persuasive justifications for our behavior that might allow us to avoid self-contradiction. If one is not troubled by charges of self-contradiction or, as is more often the case, one does not recognize that one’s victim is as much a human being as oneself, Gewirth’s theory 5 V 3 will not seem particularly persuasive. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A28BB025 00003     

Human rights and cultural conflict

Conclusion In speaking of a right in relation to identity formation, I have avoided many important questions, including questions about how properly to understand identity formation itself. Evoking such a right does draw from existing trends, but it remains speculative. Nonetheless, it captures one valuable insight in criticisms of human rights as a Western imposition, namely the insight that an important kind of oppression figures in the imposition of identities. By affirming a human right in relation to identity formation, we can not only confront this kind of oppression but see that it has specific weight in contemporary globalizing politics, economics, and culture. Moreover, we see that human rights can offer a critical relation to that kind of identity assertion and cultural imperialism that has itself employed the language of universal principles. One reason to emphasize this possibility of human rights discourse is to explore how this discourse offers more generally a significant normative perspective for challenging various kinds of oppression and domination today. Emphasizing such possibilities is a way of exploring the respects in which any viable notion of democracy must provide an important place for human rights.     

The rights of (future) humans qua humans

Human rights are rights held “simply in virtue of humanity.” In unpacking this claim, we find that theories of human rights disclose (1) something about what we understand a minimally decent human life to be and (2) who we consider to belong within a community of rights-bearers. In this article, I address two interrelated questions: When and why do future persons have standing as rights-bearing members of a shared moral community? Are the rights held by future generations best expressed in the “greening” of existing rights or in a new distinctly environmental right? I argue that human rights theorists miss an important element of the human qua human if they take ecological embeddedness to be contingently rather than necessarily relevant to human rights. I therefore argue that there are reasons to favor a new distinctly environmental human right.     

Reconciling legal positivism and human rights: Hans Kelsen's argument from relativism

This article examines the conceptual relationship between legal positivism and human rights, challenging the common idea that the two are in tension or that there exists, at most, a contingent relationship between them, whereby legal positivists can only recognize the normative validity of human rights if they happen to be inscribed in positive law. To do this, I focus on the thought and writings of one of the “founding fathers” of modern legal positivism: the Austrian legal theorist and political philosopher Hans Kelsen. In the first part, I show that Kelsen's conception of legal positivism is inextricably tied to — and, indeed, logically stems from — his moral relativism. In the second, I show that this form of relativism is also the philosophical foundation for Kelsen's commitment to democracy and human rights. Finally, in the third part, I examine the specific conception of human rights that results from this relativistic foundation, contrasting it with the “natural law” version that legal positivism excludes.     

Passions and interests revisited: the psychological foundations of economics and politics

Homo Politicus, Homo Oeconomicus. Can these two abstract human types meaningfully be distinguished? Is there a characteristic set of motivations that drive human beings in so far as they are political actors and a different set that drive their economic lives? What are the psychological foundations of economics and politics? The answers to these questions have significant implications both for the study and the practice of economics and politics. If homo politicus is essentially identical to homo oeconomicus, it is safe to generalize from the study of economic behavior to political phenomena. If not, such a procedure will distort our understanding of politics. Similarly, if we design political institutions and public policies assuming that people will behave as they do when they confront economic choices, we may find our intentions thwarted if we have neglected the distinctive motivations characteristic of political action.     

我国警察权力观的反思与重构

警察权力观是人们关于警察权力的认知、评价和情感体验,是人们在对警察权力理解的基础上所形成的意向和决策思想,警察权力观如何在很大程度上制约和影响着警察权力在实践中的运用和行使。受制于传统文化理念、行政体制等因素影响,我国传统警察权力观不可避免或多或少地烙上人治、专制、等级等印迹,严重影响和制约了和谐社会的建设。因而,对其予以反思、梳理和革新,建构符合现代法治要求的,具有人权保护、法律至上、自然正义等新型警察权力理念,就显得非常必要和富有现代价值。     

Defending a cosmopolitanism without illusions. Reply to my critics

This essay engages with several critiques of my project a ‘cosmopolitanism without illusions.’ Who is the subject of rights? What are the objects of rights? Is there a distinction between human and moral rights? Furthermore, what is prior in this cosmopolitan account: democracy or human rights? Do democratic iterations exhaust the meaning of principles of rights? Finally, does the ‘scarf affair’ really signify the return of ‘political theology’ or have not such disputes always accompanied secularization and modernity? I argue that moral rights comprise more than human rights and that non-human beings such as animals can have moral rights claims against us. Democratic iterations and rights complement one another; neither is prior and that although debates about religion and secularization have been endemic to modernity, the return of references to Carl Schmitt’s ‘political theology’ is rather new.     

An African Conception of Human Rights? Comments on the Challenges of Relativism

The belief that human rights are culturally relative has been reinforced by recent attempts to develop more plausible conceptions of human rights whose philosophical foundations are closely aligned with culture-specific ideas about human nature and/or dignity. This paper contests specifically the position that a conception of human rights is culturally relative by way of contesting the claim that there is an African case in point. That is, it contests the claim that there is a unique theory of rights. It analyses three examples of what often passes as African conception of human rights arguing that they have little or nothing to do with human rights, are simply inadequate or are not African in the sense at issue in a cultural relativism. Along the way, it distinguishes between two meanings of the term African contending that to the extent that the practice of prizing the ‘community’ higher than any other value is definitive of African, the idea of African human rights remains suspect.     

Human Rights Enjoyment in Theory and Activism

Despite being a seemingly straightforward moral concept (that all humans have certain rights by virtue of their humanity), human rights is a contested concept in theory and practice. Theorists debate (among other things) the meaning of “rights,” the priority of rights, whether collective rights are universal, the foundations of rights, and whether there are universal human rights at all. These debates are of relatively greater interest to theorists; however, a given meaning of “human rights” implies a corresponding theory of change and through that can be an important guide to the practice of human rights activists and their funders. In practice, any organization can describe their work as “rights based.” This article clarifies the practices of human rights activists and their funders that are consistent with a theory of human rights as (1) universal, (2) interdependent across groups and categories of people, (3) indivisible across issue areas and claims, and (4) measured by the enjoyment of rights.     

Giving Up (on) Rights? The Future of Rights and the Project of Radical Democracy

Debate over the theory of rights has recently reemerged, with a confrontation between postfoundational writings that challenge the very discourse of rights and Habermasians (and others) who insist on the foundational centrality of rights. This article will not enter such a debate directly, but rather will try to take seriously that challenge itself. The article asks what, exactly, is at stake in an argument for or against rights and queries whether this challenge to rights discourse entails giving up on rights as a tool of political leverage. In responding to such questions I indicate a future for rights and rights discourse, one found within the project of radical democracy. I not only insist that we cannot abandon the discourse of rights in contemporary theory and politics, but also go on to suggest that sustaining and reinvigorating the discourse of rights requires a significant displacement of that discourse from the dominant terms of liberalism and toward those of radical democracy.     

Conceiving human rights without ontology

Conclusion In his book, World Poverty and Human Rights, Pogge sets out to articulate an approach to basic justice that is inversal and cosmopolitan. This notion of justice is to be articulated through the language of human rights. Pogge’s arguments about justice, moral universalism and cosmopolitanism are impressive and reward serious study. It is to be hoped. indeed, that many aspects of his argument might be adopted by the elite ruling classes of world politics; they have much to offer in the project of creating a world that is humane for all. The issues that I have raised in the foregoing argument however are central to the integrity of Pogge’s project. I have argued, in sum that it is not possible to advance a program for the expansion of justice and the implementation of human rights in world politics without making an appeal to a specific account of the nature of justice and of human rights. The account that informs Pogge’s argument is that of political liberalism, and this is an account that has much in its favor as a preferred vehicle for justice in world politics. However, this account makes itself vulnerable when it argues for universal principles without acknowledging their partisan and normative base. My argument has been that this issue is at the center of Pogge’s attempt to isolate the conception of human rights he explicates, which he wants to serve as the language for his global ethical universalism, from the ontological affirmations which make that conception of human rights possible, and which of necessity tie human rights to a specific conception of the nature of the good for human persons and groups. The attempt to establish a single, universal criterion of justice, and to express it in the language of human rights, is undermined from within for as long as it fails to engage with ontological concerns.     

Foreign Policy and Human Rights Advocacy: An Exercise in Measurement and Explanation

This article addresses three questions: How can we define and measure what constitutes a foreign policy in human rights? How is it possible to explain both the activism of a state and its ideological orientation in the international promotion of human rights? What is the empirical evidence found when we try to answer these questions in intermediate states? Research done on four cases (Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Africa) suggests a correlation between domestic efforts in the promotion of human rights and international advocacy. It also shows that the greater the power of intermediate states, the greater their activism in human rights. Further, as development grows states show less support for economic, social and cultural rights. Last, the strategic relation with the USA shapes how states vote regarding human rights violators states.     

Kant and the critique of the ethics-first approach to politics

Abstract

Contemporary ‘realists’ attack the Kantian influence on political philosophy. A main charge is that Kantians fail to understand the specificity of politics and neglect to develop a ‘distinctively political thought’ that differs from moral philosophy. Instead, the critics say, Kantians are guilty of an ‘ethics-first approach to politics,’ in which political theory is a mere application of moral principles. But what does this ethics-first approach have to do with Kant himself? Very little. This article shows how Kant’s approach to political theory at a fundamental level includes political institutions, power, and coercion as well as disagreement, security, and coordination problems. In contrast to realists, Kant has a fundamental principle, which can explain why and guide how we ought to approach the political question, namely the norm of equal freedom. Yet, Kant’s theory does not take the form of a moralistic ought addressed to the isolated individual, but concerns a problem that we share as interdependent beings and that requires common institutions. The fruitfulness of the Kantian approach, then, is that it can take the political question seriously without being uncritical of actual politics and power, and that it can be normative without being moralistic.     

Philosophers,Activists, and Radicals: A Story of Human Rights and Other Scandals

Paradoxically, the political success of human rights is often taken to be its philosophical failing. From US interventions to International NGOs to indigenous movements, human rights have found a place in diverse political spaces, while being applied to disparate goals and expressed in a range of practices. This heteronomy is vital to the global appeal of human rights, but for traditional moral and political philosophy it is something of a scandal. This paper is an attempt to understand and theorize human rights on the terrain of the social actors who put them to use, particularly radical activists that have a more critical relationship to human rights. Attempting to avoid the philosophical pathology of demanding that the world reflect our conception of it, we base our reflection on the ambiguous, and potentially un-patterned, texture of human rights practice—taking seriously the idea that human rights express a relationship of power, importantly concerned with its legitimate arrangement and limitation. In both the philosophical literature and human rights activism, there seems to be a consensus on basic rights as undeniable moral principles of political legitimacy. This use of human rights is contrasted with radical social movements that reject this conception of rights as ideological and illegitimate, making specific reference to the Zapatista movement (Chiapas, Mexico) and the Landless Peasant Movement of Brazil (MST, from the Portuguese Movimento dos trabalhadores rurais Sem Terra), which are critical of the human rights discourse, but also make strategic use of the idea and offer alternative articulations of political legitimacy.     

The Honor of Human Rights: Environmental Rights and the Duty of Intergenerational Promise

The idea of human rights either as a moral system or as a set of legal practices does not sit well with the concept of honor. This is true for both ontological reasons and because of some reprehensible misuses of the term in constructs such as “honor killings.” Yet the absence of honor as an argument for human rights comes with a high cost in the defense of human rights generally. As Hobbes made clear in his early theory, rights—and dignity—are grounded in the human capacity to make promises and in the necessity of honoring them. In his view then, honor is an essential feature of human rights and one closely linked to the human capacity for dignity. In this article, I explore how environmental human rights place a renewed emphasis on honor as a requirement for the protection of the rights of future generations. In the process, I explore the general relationship between honor, dignity, and human rights.