Abstract

Recent challenges to human rights universality have undermined human rights justifications by consensus. In response, many human rights apologists now appeal to a kind of thin, Enlightenment-backed universalism or moral minimalism as a foundation for human rights universality. In this approach, human rights is a set of universal, trans-traditional principles which, once understood, may then be interpreted for any particular tradition or set of circumstances in the manner of "one-way traffic." ;But insofar as we consider the modern human rights regime as something that arose out of particular historical and cultural conditions and that has, for more than fifty years since that time, only continued to add layers of moral experience and interpretation, it begins to look more like a tradition than a thin universalism. Indeed, this dissertation argues that if we think of human rights as a particular tradition among many other particular traditions, then we will see in its interpretation real "two-way traffic"---a dialectic whereby human rights interprets and is interpreted by other traditions, practices, and circumstances in a kind of productive hermeneutical circle. Human rights has its universality not in rising above all particular traditions, but insofar as it continues to be its own rich tradition, informed by new experiences and interpretations. ;At the heart of this hermeneutical approach is the humanizing interpretation of human rights that has emerged from the truth and reconciliation process of post-settlement South Africa. Here human rights work has had to navigate the paradox of the human condition: that we humans are at once dignified and barbaric. Deconstructing apartheid and constructing a human rights culture have been contained within the same dissonant project, reaping insights for the human rights tradition as a whole. ;Some see in this hermeneutical approach a relativization of universal human rights principles. This dissertation argues the opposite: deeply engaging particular interpretations actually strengthens the human rights tradition against relativist incursions. Indeed, it is when human rights are absolutized as universal principles that transcend all interpretive locations that the human rights tradition is most vulnerable to relativization