Of sweatshops and subsistence: Habermas on human rights

Ethics and Global Politics 2 (3) (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In this paper I argue that the discourse theoretic account of human rights defended by Jürgen Habermas contains a fruitful tension that is obscured by its dominant tendency to identify rights with legal claims. This weakness in Habermas’s account becomes manifest when we examine how sweatshops diminish the secure enjoyment of subsistence, which Habermas himself (in recognition of the UDHR) recognizes as a human right. Discourse theories of human rights are unique in tying the legitimacy of human rights to democratic deliberation and consensus. So construed, their specific meaning and force is the outcome of historical political struggle. However, unlike other legal rights, they possess universal moral validity. In this paper I argue that this tension between the legal and moral aspects of human rights can be resolved if and only if human rights are conceived as moral aspirations and not simply as legal claims. In particular, I shall argue that there are two reasons why human rights must be understood as moral aspirations that function non-juridically: First, the basic human goods to which human rights provide secure access are determinable only in relation to basic human capabilities that are progressively revealed in the course of an indefinite (fully inclusive and universal) process of collective learning; second, the institutional impediments to enjoying human rights are cultural in nature and cannot be remedied by means of legal coercion

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Human Right to Subsistence.Charles Jones - 2013 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 30 (1):57-72.
Subsistence Needs, Human Rights, and Imperfect Duties.Simon Hope - 2013 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 30 (1):88-100.
Natural Rights to Welfare.Siegfried Van Duffel - 2011 - European Journal of Philosophy 21 (4):641-664.
Human rights and human well-being.William Talbott - 2010 - New York: Oxford University Press.
A Defense of Animal Rights.Aysel Dog˘an - 2011 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 24 (5):473-491.
Specifying Rights: the Case of TRIPS.G. Collste - 2011 - Public Health Ethics 4 (1):63-69.

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-08-24

Downloads
79 (#192,824)

6 months
3 (#447,120)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

David Ingram
Loyola University, Chicago

References found in this work

Famine, affluence, and morality.Peter Singer - 1972 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (3):229-243.

Add more references