Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;This thesis defends the idea that rights are instruments that are valuable because of what they can do rather than because of what they are. Conceiving rights as instruments means that they are not morally basic but are justified on the basis of their ability as social practices to protect important goods. Human rights are therefore rights which articulate, protect and promote intrinsic human goods. Part One argues that neither an adequate description nor a compelling justification for human rights can be provided unless they are conceived as instruments. Part Two argues that such a conception of human rights can be constructed on the basis of the social ethic underlying the writings of Karl Marx. Marx was frequently critical and even dismissive of rights in his work. Some commentators have suggested that his hard-headedness about rights was ultimately based on a soft-headedness about communism. But this interpretation obscures the core of Marx's critique of rights, which was his conviction that rights are human artifacts that must be assessed on the basis of their practical ability to protect and promote human flourishing. Rejecting Marx's beliefs about communism does not entail repudiating his instrumental conception of rights. The social ethic underlying Marx's work was a distinctive form of consequentialism that sought to understand and achieve the social conditions in which individuals could flourish. Reconstructed in a critical and undogmatic way, this consequentialist framework provides compelling justifications for human rights as instruments for the promotion of human goods. Because it requires the continual assessment of human rights in the light of their actual effects on human lives, a conception of human rights incorporating Marxian insights forges a strong and salutory link between human rights theory and practice