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Human rights have a rich life in the world around us. Political rhetoric pays tribute to them, or scorns them. Citizens and activists strive for them. The law enshrines them. And they live inside us too. For many of us, human rights form part of how we understand the world and what must (or must not) be done within it.
The ubiquity of human rights raises questions for the philosopher. If we want to understand these rights, where do we look? As a set of moral norms, it is tempting to think they can be grasped strictly from the armchair, say, by appeal to moral intuition. But what, if anything, can that kind of inquiry tell us about the human rights of contemporary politics, law, and civil society - that is, human rights as we ordinarily know them?
This volume brings together a distinguished, interdisciplinary group of scholars to address philosophical questions raised by the many facets of human rights: moral, legal, political, and historical. Its original chapters, each accompanied by a critical commentary, explore topics including: the purpose and methods of a philosophical theory of human rights; the "Orthodox-Political" debate; the relevance of history to philosophy; the relationship between human rights morality and law; and the value of political critiques of human rights.
List of contents
- Introduction
- I. THE RELEVANCE OF HISTORY
- 1: Martti Koskenniemi: Rights, History, Critique
- 1.1 Doing Without an Original: A Commentary on Martti Koskenniemi
- 2: Samuel Moyn: Human Rights in Heaven
- 2.1 Philosophizing the Real World of Human Rights: A Reply to Samuel Moyn
- 2.2 Genealogies of Human Rights: What's at Stake?
- II. THE ORTHODOX-POLITICAL DEBATE
- 3: Jeremy Waldron: Human Rights: A Critique of the Raz/Rawls Approach
- 3.1 On Waldron's Critique of Raz on Human Rights
- 4: James W. Nickel: Assigning Functions to Human Rights: Methodological Issues in Human Rights Theory
- 4.1 On Being Faithful to the 'Practice': A Response to Nickel
- 5: Andrea Sangiovanni: The Concept of Human Rights: The Broad View
- 5.1 Human Rights in Context: A Comment on Sangiovanni
- III. MORALITY AND LAW
- 6: Allen Buchanan and Gopal Sreenivasan: Taking International Legality Seriously: A Methodology for Human Rights
- 6.1 Instrumentalism and Human Rights: A Response to Buchanan and Sreenivasan
- 7: Mattias Kumm: The Turn to Justification: On the Structure and Domain of Human Rights Practice
- 7.1 Human Rights and Justification: A Reply to Mattias Kumm
- 8: Andreas Føllesdal: Appreciating the Margin of Appreciation
- 8.1 The Margin of Appreciation Revisited: A Response to Føllesdal
- IV. IDEALS AND THEIR LIMITS
- 9: Kimberley Brownlee: Dwelling in Possibility: Ideals, Aspirations, and Human Rights
- 9.1 In What Sense Should Respect for Human Rights Be Attainable? A Response to Brownlee
- 10: Elizabeth Ashford: The Nature of Violations of the Human Right to Subsistence
- 10.1 Remarks on Elizabeth Ashford's "The Nature of Violations of the Human Right to Subsistence"
- V. THE CHALLENGES OF POLITICS
- 11: Pablo Gilabert: Reflections on Human Rights and Power
- 11.1 Reflections on Human Rights and Power: A Commentary
- 12: C.A.J. Coady: The Hazards of Rescue
- 12.1 The Politics of Humanitarian Morality: Reflections on "The Hazards of Rescue"
- VI. INDIVIDUALS, BORDERS, AND GROUPS
- 13: Peter Jones: Human Rights and Collective Self-Determination
- 13.1 Linking Self-Determination and Human Rights: A Comment on Peter Jones
- 14: Alex Levitov and Stephen Macedo: Human Rights, Membership, and Moral Responsibility in an Unjust World: The Case of Immigration Restrictions
- 14.1 The Slippery Slope of Statist Cosmopolitanism: A Response to Levitov and Macedo
About the author
Adam Etinson is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, where he is also Assistant Director of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs (CEPPA). His articles have appeared in a wide range of academic journals, including The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Utilitas, The Journal of Moral Philosophy, Political Theory, and Human Rights Quarterly. He has also written for popular audiences in The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, and Dissent.
Summary
This volume is a collective study of the two leading conceptions of human rights: as natural moral rights that we have simply in virtue of being human, or as rights that play a distinctive role in modern politics. Each chapter is accompanied by a probing commentary; the authors are leading figures from philosophy, law, and political science
Additional text
Those of us whose work is focused on 'applied' human rights in law, politics, or ethics may nevertheless experience a need for fundamental reflection on the 'big' philosophical questions regarding human rights. Such craving can now be satisfied with a single book. With no less than 30 chapters and an unseen concentration of stars of the philosophical and other firmaments, it can also be read as a sample book, introducing readers to different ways of philosophical rights reasoning. The majority of the chapters engage in discussions at a very abstract or general level. While this may be off-putting to the practical-minded, it also guarantees relevance across the entire field of human rights scholarship, regardless of disciplines, jurisdictions and thematic specialisations.
Report
A rich collection of focussed dialogues - a provocative gift for teaching - in which the lively ferment over human rights in recent years is deepened, often by becoming refreshingly interdisciplinary, and exciting new formulations are proposed by a diverse range of leading scholars. Henry Shue, author of Basic Rights (1996)
