In this article I explore the possibilities of experimentation as a non-foundational praxis for introducing novel ways of being into existence. Beginning with a discussion, following Bataille, of the excess of any thought, I argue that any action in the world is necessarily uncertain. Using the insights of Derridean deconstruction combined with Badiousian truth procedure I argue that experimentation offers a means for acting from this uncertain position. Experimentation takes advantage of the play and uncertainty of our understanding of the (...) world as a means of moving towards more progressive political positions. Normal 0 false false false EN-IE X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}. (shrink)

A. Belden Fields invites people to think more deeply about human rights in this book in an attempt to overcome many of the traditional arguments in the human rights literature. He argues that human rights should be reconceptualized in a holistic way to combine philosophical, historical, and empirical-practical dimensions. Human rights are viewed not as a set of universal abstractions but rather as a set of past and ongoing social practices rooted in (...) the claims and struggles of peoples against what they consider to be political, economic, or social domination. By aptly showing how a people’s fight for recognition is often closely tied to rights claims, Fields argues that these connections to identity can help bridge the gulf between universalistic and cultural relativistic arguments in the human rights debate. (shrink)

An illustrative comparison of human rights in 1948 and the contemporary period, attempting to gauge the impact of globalization on changes in the content of human rights (e.g., collective rights, women's rights, right to a healthy environment), major abusers and guarantors of human rights (e.g., state actors, transnational corporations, social movements), and alternative justifications of human rights (e.g., pragmatic agreement, moral intuitionism, overlapping consensus, cross-cultural dialogue).

Marxists should reconsider their usual attitude to universal human rights. On the Jewish Question did not reject the entire French Declaration of 1791. In 1843 Marx and Engels were close to Babouvism, the continuation of French rights. Nor was their view that the 1791 Declaration must be completed by economic and social rights; rather, their criticism concerned the reduction of universal rights to citizen rights because it left the state the final arbiter of justice, (...) denying the ‘voice from below’. The source of human rights cannot be the state or its hegemonic rule of law. The article concludes that a politics of human rights would return justice to individuals and create a counter-hegemony. (shrink)

"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

This article offers an overview of the French political philosopher Claude Lefort's oeuvre, arguing that his work should be read as a normative or even universalist justification of democracy and human rights. The notion of history plays a crucial notion in this enterprise, as Lefort demonstrates that there is an ineluctable 'historical' or 'political' condition of human coexistence, a condition that can only be properly accommodated in a regime of democracy and human rights. This reading (...) of Lefort is contrasted with two other interpretations of his work. The first of these, by Sofia Nasstrom, is shown to overlook the importance of history in Lefort's understanding of democracy. The second, by Bernard Flynn, is shown to overlook the universalist implications of Lefort's theory. (shrink)

The “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and the “Geneva Declaration” by the World Medical Association, both in 1948, were preceded by the foundation of the United Nations in New York (1945), the World Medical Association in London (1946) and the World Health Organization in Geneva (1948). After the end of World War II the community of nations strove to achieve and sustain their primary goals of peace and security, as well as their basic premise, namely the health of (...) human beings. All these associations were well aware of the crimes by medicine, in particular by the accused Nazi physicians at the Nuremberg Doctors Trial (1946/47, sentence: August 1947). During the first conference of the World Medical Association (September 1947) issues of medical ethics played a major role: and a new document was drafted concerning the values of the medical profession. After the catastrophe of the War and the criminal activities of scientists, the late 1940s saw increased scrutiny paid to fundamental questions of human rights and medical ethics, which are still highly relevant for today’s medicine and morality. The article focuses on the development of medical ethics and human rights reflected in the statement of important persons, codes and institutions in the field. (shrink)

This book brings together essays on themes of human rights and legal history, reflecting the long and distinguished career of Brian Simpson as an academic writer and a human rights activist. The collection opens with a biography of Simpson's academic life, noting his major contribution to legal thought, and closes with an account of his career in the United States.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Rights, China, and Cross-Cultural Inquiry:Philosophy, History, and Power PoliticsRandall PeerenboomStephen Angle's Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) is a wonderful book that combines philosophically sophisticated discussions of controversial human-rights issues with a detailed intellectual history of the evolution of human-rights discourse in China over the last several hundred years. I will use Angle's (...) book as a platform for consideration of a number of issues regarding the role of philosophy, history, and power politics in relation to human rights in China and elsewhere.Angle focuses his discussion on two claims: first, that countries have different concepts of human rights, and second, that we ought not demand that countries comply with human-rights concepts different from their own.1 These two claims (or something similar) are central to China's official position on rights and to humanrights debates more generally, including the debate about values in Asia.2Angle's response, in short, is that there are distinctive concepts of human rights in China, and that "there have been both continuities and changes in the ways that rights have been conceptualized over the course of China's rich and distinctive rights discourse" (p. 250). However, the only way a community can unilaterally declare its values and practices immune from the scrutiny of others is through "parochialism," which, according to Angle, cuts off that community from making legitimate demands on others. Rather, he suggests, we "should seek an accommodation of differences with one another in the spirit of toleration, and on that basis engage one another on as many levels as possible" (pp. 250-251).One of the many great strengths of this book is that Angle grounds his responses in an interesting and insightful discussion of contemporary philosophers, assessing along the way the contributions and limits of MacIntrye, Rawls, Dworkin, Raz, Walzer, and especially Brandom, among others, to this cross-cultural inquiry of human rights. It might seem, given this list of luminaries, Angle's own training in Western analytic philosophy, and his position in the philosophy department of an American university, that Western philosophy is driving the debate and dictating the fundamental terms and parameters of the inquiry.3 This, of course, is precisely one of the complaints of non-Westerners such as Liu Huaqiu, who argue that they are being measured by Western standards, that rights are concepts grounded in historically contingent modern Western philosophical traditions, and that the rights movement is biased in favor of secular liberalism, which is at odds with and may preclude states based on religious worldviews and communitarian or collectivist [End Page 283] points of view that do not privilege autonomy, choice, and individual interests to the extent that liberals do.Angle's response is twofold. First, he argues, sensibly enough, that we cannot and need not set aside or escape our traditions and value systems. Cross-cultural inquiry must begin from somewhere. But we must remain open-minded and willing to continue the conversation, at least for a considerable while and in most cases indefinitely, even if in some cases we simultaneously must rely on coercion and repression.4 As discussed below, Angle endorses a limited moral pluralism that tolerates some differences while not providing an excuse for appeasing dictators or turning a blind eye to genocide and other atrocities.Second, Angle is not out simply to measure China by the standards of contemporary Western philosophers. Rather, he wants to show that China has its own distinctive discourse on rights, and that this discourse is multifaceted and constantly evolving. According to Angle, "Chinese rights discourse should be seen as an ongoing creative achievement, rather than a reaction to or misunderstanding of Western ideas and institutions" (p. 2).5 He shows this by providing a detailed intellectual history of Chinese rights discourse, another great strength of the book. His primary focus is on several prominent Neo-Confucians and pre-1949 debates, although he also considers some contemporary debates.6 Angle is clearly successful at demonstrating that Chinese thinkers have advanced a number of different views and that rights discourse over the last century and a half has been... (shrink)

A collection of essays with themes in human rights and legal history, spanning several centuries, containing a tribute to one of the most remarkable jurists of our time. Linked by an historical and contextual approach, these essays add to knowledge of legal history and human rights and provide a reference point for future research.

An interpretative history of human rights in Africa, exploring indigenous rights traditions, anti-slavery, anti-colonialism, post-colonial violations and pro-democracy movements.

Even as human rights provide the most widely shared moral language of our time, they also spark highly contested debates among scholars and policymakers. When should states protect human rights? Does the global war on terror necessitate the violation of some rights? Are food, housing, and health care valid human rights? Debating Human Rights introduces the theory and practice of international human rights by examining fourteen controversies in the field. (...) Daniel Chong presents the major arguments on both sides of each debate, encouraging readers to think critically and form their own opinions. Designed for classroom use, the structure of the book makes it easy for students to become familiar with the major political and legal actors in the global human rights system and to understand the practical challenges of protecting civil, political, social, and economic rights. (shrink)

This timely book by internationally regarded scholar of ethics and social/political philosophy, Michael Boylan, focuses on the history, application and significance of human rights in the West and China. Boylan engages the key current philosophical debates prevalent in human rights discourse today and draws them together to argue for the existence of natural, universal human rights. Arguing against the grain of mainstream philosophical beliefs, Boylan asserts that there is continuity between human rights (...) and natural law and that human beings require basic, essential goods for minimum action. These include food, clean water and sanitation, clothing, shelter and protection from bodily harm, including basic healthcare. The achievement of this goal, Boylan demonstrates, will require significant resource allocation and creative methods of implementation involving public and private institutions. Combining technical argument with four fictional narratives about human rights, the book invites readers to engage with the most important aspects of the discipline. (shrink)

This book manuscript, entitled United Nations Human Rights Ethics: For The Greatest Success of the Greatest Number, critically examines most all major normative ethical theories since Socrates and finds Roman Stoic ethics to be the least deficient. It divides ethical theories into popular ones with little academic support, other popular ones that have had such support, and Kantian ethics standing alone as a philosopher's academic ethical philosophy with limited popular support. It criticizes the appropriation of human (...) class='Hi'>rights by the international law profession to the exclusion of moral philosophy, despite the origin of "human rights" in the moral philosopher Rousseau. It blames the inability of moral philosophers to reach a professional consensus on the elements of normative ethics, not the legal profession. It laments both the failure of human rights education to human beings everywhere as requested by the Universal Declaration and the decline in popular support for human rights in favor of nationalism in current history since 2015. It advocates a way of redirecting human right education to people on the ground rather than mainly to law students. Such education has been overtaken by the Rule of Law movement fighting high crimes crimes against humanity unanticipated by the Universal Declaration. It argues for a way for ethicists to get on the same page in teaching elements in ethics and argues forcefully for a positive method for popular human rights education as well as for human rights-based elementary ethical theory. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Human rights have become an important ideal in current times, yet our age has witnessed more violations of human rights than any previous less enlightened one. This book explores the historical and theoretical dimensions of this paradox. Divided into two parts, the first section offers an alternative history of natural law, in which natural rights are represented as the eternal human struggle to resist opression and to fight for a society in which people are (...) no longer degraded or despised. At the time of their birth in the 18th Century and again in the popular uprisings of the last decade, human rights became the dominant critique of law and society. The radical rhetoric of rights and its apparently endless expansive potential has led to its adoption by governments and individuals alike seeking to justify their actions on moral grounds and has undermined its radical edge. Part Two examines the philosophical logic of rights. The classical critiques of Kant, Burke, Hegel and Marx illuminate traditional aproaches to the concept of human rights. The work of Heidegger, Sartre and psychoanalysis is used to deconstruct the metaphisical essentialism of bothe universalists and cultural relativists. Finally, through a consideration of the ethics of otherness, and with reference to recent human rights violations, it is argued that the end of human rights is to judge law and politics from a moral stand point which both transcends the present and is historically relevant. (shrink)

This book adds impetus to the nexus between human rights, human rights education and material reality. The dissonance between these aspects is of growing concern for most human rights educators in various social contexts. The first part of the book opens up new discourses and presents new ontologies and epistemologies from scholars in human rights, human rights education and human rights literacies to critique and/or justify the understandings of (...) human rights' complex applications. Today's rapidly changing social contexts and new languages attempting to understand ongoing dehumanization and violations, put enormous pressure on higher education, educators, individuals working in social sciences, policy makers and scholars engaged in curricula making. The second part demonstrates how global interactions between citizens from different countries with diverse understandings of human rights (from developed and developing democracies) question the link between human rights and it's in(ex)clusive Western philosophies. Continuing inhumane actions around the globe reflect the failure of human rights law and human rights education in schools, higher education and society at large. The book shows that human rights education is no longer a blueprint for understanding human rights and its universal or contextual values presented for multicomplexial societies. The final chapters argue for new ontologies and epistemologies of human rights, human rights education and human rights literacies to open-up difficult conversations and to give space to dissonant and disruptive discourses. The many opportunities for human rights education and literacies lies in these conversations. (shrink)

After presenting a brief history of the idea of a human right to an adequate environment as it has evolved in the United Nations documents, I assess this approach to our moral responsibility with regard to the environment. I argue that although this rights approach has some substantial weaknesses, these are outweighed by such clear advantages as its action-guiding nature and its political potency.

The luxury-versus-necessity controversy is primarily concerned with the importance of civil and political rights vis-à-vis economic and social rights. The viewpoint of political leaders of many developing and newly industrialized countries, especially China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia is that civil and political rights are luxuries that only rich nations can afford. The United Nations, transnational civil society and the Western advanced countries oppose this viewpoint on normative and empirical grounds. While this controversy is far from (...) over, new challenges of “evidence” and “marketization” are emerging. The first calls for a narrative on the history of civil and political rights in the West in the comparative context of the Industrial Revolution and the East Asian Miracle and China’s economic growth. The effects of the recent financial crisis and insulation of China from the Arab Spring further deepen this challenge. The marketization challenge looks at this controversy from the social exclusion angle. It argues that the basic needs covered by the minimum human rights agenda are becoming luxuries in a real sense for those who do not have the power to purchase these needs from the market. (shrink)

Human rights make a universal claim that has often been suspected of expressing western cultural imperialism. Yet even a mere perusal of the history of human rights in Europe and North America reveals that human rights cannot be characterized as the obvious crystallization of occidental culture as a whole. Instead they were first propounded during the modernity as a response to the normative crises occasioned by Christian religious division in a society of developing pluralism. (...) Human rights formulated the basis for a new social contract between free and equal holders of rights in opposition to religiously motivated civil wars and the accumulation of absolutist dominion.Since pluralism and multi-culturalism in a more closely knit world order has become an inescapable reality, the idea of human rights, understood as the recognition of plurality and differences on the basis of equal freedom, could be the foundation for international orientation. Human rights could provide the foundation for consensus, however, only if the limits of their normative claim are clear. As the ethos of freedom inherent to human rights is oriented toward political-legal standards, it is not intended to replace the plurality of any developed religious or cultural ethos. But as human rights secure political-legal equality of rights to express and develop differing ideas and cultural forms, they do affect internal individual recognition of religious and cultural societies, from which they demand openness toward reform and willingness to communicate. Menschenrechte machen einen universalen Anspruch geltend, der indes oft als Ausdruck eines westlichen Kulturimperialismus verdächtigt wird. Ein Blick auf die Geschichte der Menschenrechte in Europa und Nordamerika zeigt freilich, daß Menschenrechte gerade nicht als selbstverständlicher Ausfluß der abendländischen Kultur im ganzen angesehen werden können. Vielmehr sind sie erst in der Neuzeit aufgekommen, und zwar als Antwort auf die normativen Krisen in der im Gefolge der christlichen Glaubensspaltung pluralistisch werdenden Gesellschaft. Gegen religiös motivierte Bürgerkriege wie gegen die Anmaßung absolutistischer Herrschaft formulieren die Menschenrechte die Grundlage eines neuen Gesellschaftsvertrages zwischen freien und gleichen Rechtsgenossen.Da Pluralismus und Multikulturalismus in der immer stärker vernetzten Weltgesellschaft vielerorts unausweichliche Realität geworden sind, vermag die menschenrechtliche Leitidee, nämlich die Anerkennung von Pluralität und Differenz auf der Basis gleichberechtigter Freiheit, heute auch international zur Orientierung zu dienen. Menschenrechte können indes nur dann konsensstiftend wirken, wenn ihr normativer Anspruch auch in seinen Grenzen deutlich wird: Da sich das menschenrechtliche Freiheitsethos vornehmlich auf politisch-rechtliche Standards richtet, zielt es nicht darauf ab, die Pluralität der gewachsenen religiösen oder kulturellen Ethosformen zu ersetzen. Indem Menschenrechte die gleichberechtigte Äusserung und Entfaltung unterschiedlicher Überzeugungen und Kulturformen politisch-rechtlich sichern, wirken sie freilich auch auf die innere Selbstwahrnehmung religiöser und kultureller Gemeinschaften zurück, denen sie Reformoffenheit und Kommunikationsbereitschaft abverlangen. (shrink)

The introduction introduces the history of the concept of human rights and its philosophical genealogy. It raises questions of the nature of human rights, the grounds of human rights, difference between proposed and actual human rights, and scepticism surrounding the very idea of human rights. In the course of this discussion, it concludes that the diversity of positions on human rights is a sign of the intellectual, cultural, and (...) political fertility of the notion of human rights. The chapter concludes with an overview of the chapters present in the volume. (shrink)

Is the Confucian tradition compatible with the Western understanding of human rights? Are there fundamental human values, regardless of cultural differences, common to all peoples of all nations? At this critical point in Communist China's history, eighteen distinguished scholars address the role of Confucianism in dealing with questions of universal human rights.

The emotions surrounding the question of Kosovo’s future owe their intensity to the long history of human rights abuses in the province. The years 1945–1966 and 1987–1999, in particular, saw harsh repression of local Albanians and a systematic favoring of local Serbs. Since June 1999, the province has been under international supervision, and, in this period, Serbs complain that they have been the victims of repeated acts of violence at the hands of Albanians. This article provides an overview (...) of human rights abuses since 1945 and closes with a brief assessment of the international plan presented by UN mediator Martti Ahtisaari in February 2007. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s most important contribution to political thought may be her well-known and often-cited notion of the "right to have rights." In this incisive and wide-ranging book, Peg Birmingham explores the theoretical and social foundations of Arendt’s philosophy on human rights. Devoting special consideration to questions and issues surrounding Arendt’s ideas of common humanity, human responsibility, and natality, Birmingham formulates a more complex view of how these basic concepts support Arendt’s theory of human rights. (...) Birmingham considers Arendt’s key philosophical works along with her literary writings, especially those on Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka, to reveal the extent of Arendt’s commitment to humanity even as violence, horror, and pessimism overtook Europe during World War II and its aftermath. This current and lively book makes a significant contribution to philosophy, political science, and European intellectual history. (shrink)

When we think of human rights we assume that they are meant to protect people from serious social, legal, and political abuses, and to advance global justice. In _Human Rights and the Care of the Self_, Alexandre Lefebvre turns this assumption on its head, showing how the value of human rights also lies in enabling ethical practices of self-transformation. Drawing on Foucault's notion of 'care of the self', Lefebvre turns to some of the most celebrated (...) authors and activists in the history of human rights–such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Henri Bergson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Charles Malik–to discover a vision of human rights as a tool for individuals to work on, improve, and transform themselves for their own sake. This new perspective allows us to appreciate a crucial dimension of human rights, one that can help us to care for ourselves in light of pressing social and psychological problems, such as loneliness, fear, hatred, patriarchy, meaninglessness, boredom, and indignity. (shrink)

To commemorate the 75 th anniversary of Henri Bergson’s death I present what I believe is his most vital and lasting contribution to political philosophy: his conception of human rights. This article has two goals. The first is to present Bergson’s writings on human rights as clearly and simply as possible, so as to reach the wide audience it deserves. The second is to demonstrate his relevance for contemporary human rights scholarship. To do so, (...) I connect him to recent debates in the history and historiography of human rights. I also highlight his distinctive approach to human rights as furnishing a tool for individuals to work upon and improve themselves. For Bergson, the great promise of human rights is that they simultaneously open new possibilities to care for others and also to care for oneself. (shrink)

The discursive character of human rights prevents a precise summary of historical origin, rationale, or definition outside of the various codifications in religious texts, secular philosophies, founding national documents, and international treaties, charters, conventions, covenants, declarations, and protocols. Regarding the objects of human rights, we can speak of a “foundational five” 1) Personal security 2) Material subsistence 3) Elemental equality 4) Personal Freedom and 5) Recognition as a member of the human community. Despite, or perhaps (...) because of its multivalence, the concept of human rights has been criticized as “foundationalist,” “essentialist,” or “ethnocentric”—its universalism being used as a weapon against itself by critics of cultural imperialism. Even the tolerance discourses so popular in critical theory, however, gain their normative force from the same basic notion of individual or group rights. Notwithstanding these rhetorical abuses, the concept of human rights has proved robust as a doctrine of equality owing to its openness to a pluralism of justifications grounding the basic “goods” agreed as necessary for human development. (shrink)

This Reply offers my answers to Cheshire Calhoun’s, Elizabeth Brake’s, and Monika Betzler’s wonderful contributions to the Criminal Law and Philosophy symposium on Being Sure of Each Other (2020). Their contributions focus respectively on the conceptual and normative foundations of my defence of our human rights to have adequate social inclusion, the harms that might flow from recognising such rights as human rights, and the impact such rights can have on our most intimate relations. (...) My replies aim both to clarify and solidify the argumentative basis for my account and to show that whatever harms and wrongs might dog the recognition of social human rights are nothing compared to the injustices that flow–and have long-flowed–from ignoring or attacking these rights. (shrink)

In the field of bioethics, scholars have begun to consider carefully the impact of structural issues on global population health, including socioeconomic and political factors influencing the disproportionate burden of disease throughout the world. Human rights and social justice are key considerations for both population health and biomedical research. In this paper, I will briefly explore approaches to human rights in bioethics and review guidelines for ethical conduct in international health research, focusing specifically on health research (...) conducted in resource-poor settings. I will demonstrate the potential for addressing human rights considerations in international health research with special attention to the importance of collaborative partnerships, capacity building, and respect for cultural traditions. Strengthening professional knowledge about international research ethics increases awareness of ethical concerns associated with study design and informed consent among researchers working in resource-poor settings. But this is not enough. Technological and financial resources are also necessary to build capacity for local communities to ensure that research results are integrated into existing health systems. Problematic issues surrounding the application of ethical guidelines in resource-poor settings are embedded in social history, cultural context, and the global political economy. Resolving the moral complexities requires a commitment to engaged dialogue and action among investigators, funding agencies, policy makers, governmental institutions, and private industry. (shrink)

"Human dignity" has been enshrined in international agreements and national constitutions as a fundamental human right. The World Medical Association calls on physicians to respect human dignity and to discharge their duties with dignity. And yet human dignity is a term--like love, hope, and justice--that is intuitively grasped but never clearly defined. Some ethicists and bioethicists dismiss it; other thinkers point to its use in the service of particular ideologies. In this book, Michael Barilan offers an (...) urgently needed, nonideological, and thorough conceptual clarification of human dignity and human rights, relating these ideas to current issues in ethics, law, and bioethics. Combining social history, history of ideas, moral theology, applied ethics, and political theory, Barilan tells the story of human dignity as a background moral ethos to human rights. After setting the problem in its scholarly context, he offers a hermeneutics of the formative texts on Imago Dei; provides a philosophical explication of the value of human dignity and of vulnerability; presents a comprehensive theory of human rights from a natural, humanist perspective; explores issues of moral status; and examines the value of responsibility as a link between virtue ethics and human dignity and rights. Barilan accompanies his theoretical claim with numerous practical illustrations, linking his theory to such issues in bioethics as end-of-life care, cloning, abortion, torture, treatment of the mentally incapacitated, the right to health care, the human organ market, disability and notions of difference, and privacy, highlighting many relevant legal aspects in constitutional and humanitarian law. (shrink)

In the following study the author goes back to the beginnings of the Women's Rights movements in order to pose the question on gender equality by approaching it through the prism of language as a powerful tool in human rights battles. This permits her to show the deep interrelation between women's struggle for recognition and some particular women rights, like the "feminization" of professional titles and the implementation of a gender sensitive language. Hence she argues the (...) thesis that even in the most advanced European democracies, where freedom of speech, education, and scientific research seem actually to be legally guaranteed as universal rights, there is still a deep conflict in regard to the use of language and also that we have throughout history backlashes, reproductions of past stereotypes, and a loss of women's rights which were previously acquired. (shrink)

A psychology-informed view of human rights has been taken into account by many scholars while examining the short-term and long-term effects of human rights violations on individuals and communities. In Trauma and Human Rights: Integrating Approaches to Address Human Suffering, for instance, the authors discuss the trauma-informed approach in the context of human rights violations, namely domestic violence, racial and other forms of discrimination, etc. In the paper on Trauma among children (...) and legal implications, the authors advance a trauma-informed approach to human rights. The approach considers the experiences of trauma associated with physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, psychological/emotional abuse, community violence, natural disasters, serious accidents, parental death/grief, medical procedures and conditions, and terrorism. In the case of violations including rape and torture, the paper Torture by means of Rape concerns the psychological suffering of victims of rape, abuse, and torture in light of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. As for the jurisprudence of international human rights bodies, the advancement of a psychology-informed view of human rights is noticeable. Take the example of the Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment on Biopsychosocial factors conducive to torture and ill-treatment. The Report explores the root causes of the current worldwide complacency concerning torture and ill-treatment and recommends the urgent and proactive incorporation of science-based conclusions into ongoing, policy-based global governance reform processes. Further, the report provides that the root cause of the systemic governance failure is attributed to the generic biopsychosocial factors that have shaped human decision-making throughout history, irrespective of national, cultural, religious, or other distinctive influences. Since the two fields are creating a landscape of new concepts and perspectives, one may study this interface broadly under three headings; (a) Psychology in Human Rights. (b) Rights-Based Approach to Psychological Science and Research. (c) Psychology and Human Rights in Law and Policy. (shrink)

There is perhaps no text with a broader impact on our lives than the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights . It is strange, therefore, that historians have paid so little attention to the UDHR. I argue that its potential impact on the study of history is profound. After asking whether the UDHR contains a general view of history, I address the consequences of the UDHR for the rights and duties of historians, and explain how it deals (...) with their subjects of study. I demonstrate that the UDHR is a direct source of five important rights for historians: the rights to free expression and information, to meet and found associations, to intellectual property, to academic freedom, and to silence. It is also an indirect source of three duties for historians: the duties to produce expert knowledge about the past, to disseminate it, and to teach about it. I discuss the limits to, and conflicts among, these rights and duties. The UDHR also has an impact on historians’ subjects of study: I argue that the UDHR applies to the living but not to the dead, and that, consequently, it is a compass for studying recent rather than remote historical injustice. Nevertheless, and although it is itself silent about historians’ core duties to find and tell the truth, the UDHR firmly supports an emerging imprescriptible right to the truth, which in crucial respects is nothing less than a right to history. If the UDHR is a “Magna Carta of all men everywhere,” it surely is one for all historians. (shrink)

All people have human rights and, intuitively, there is a close connection between human rights, needs, and autonomy. The two main theories about the natureand value of human rights often fail to account for this connection. Interest theories, on which rights protect individuals’ important interests, usually fail to capturethe close relationship between human rights and autonomy; autonomy is not constitutive of the interests human rights protect. Will theories, on which (...) human rights protect individuals’ autonomy, cannot explain why the nonautonomous have a human right to meet their needs. This paper argues that it is possible to account for the close connection between human rights, needs, and autonomy if human rights at least protect individuals’ ability to live minimally good lives. It argues that people need whatever will enable them to live such lives and autonomy is partly constitutive of such a life. This argument also has importantimplications for some other key debates in the human rights literature. (shrink)

During the last 20 years, philosophers from different quarters and with very different approaches have begun to theorize human rights in an outpouring of authored and edited books and journal articles. In addition, among policy makers and in the legal arena—the so called workings fields of human rights—there have been noteworthy investigations of human rights that tackle philosophical issues. In this book, Anat Biletzki brings a systematic approach to the multitudinous philosophical analyses of (...) class='Hi'>human rights, offering a cohesive overview and analysis of this diverse but now very active field. She explores both the conceptual and historical treatments of human rights and the roots of its practice and examines its derivation from classical theories of rights all the way to existing uses. The book is "contemporary" in two senses: it investigates the most current human rights issues and it addresses emerging criticism of human rights, now arising in various sectors. A long introduction provides background information on the history of human rights, a synopsis of modern-day documents, and an articulation of basic questions. This is followed by a section on the philosophical groundings of human rights, proceeding from a philosophy of rights, to specific theories of human rights, to the questions of universalism vs. relativism. The third sections focuses on specific philosophical issues in human rights, including cultural relativity, economic rights, women’s rights, group, indigenous, and minority rights, security, and sovereignty and humanitarian intervention. And a final section on critiques of human rights has separate chapters on postmodernism, anti-foundationalism, and human rights discourse and practice. (shrink)

The discussion is based around these issues, history of Human Rights, timeline for Human Rights history, question asked in this regard and enemy and friend of ‘human rights’. Describing the problems and its resolve from logical reasoning perspective; intellectual argumentation based on logical reason of, what is universal human right, democracy and illegal wars in the world by super powers as example America? Attempt to describe the inner construction of a human being-perfection-. (...) Introduction to the concept of infallibility in different parts in the article, purify yourself and being purified. What is it, is it possible for a creation named human to be not fallible, is the idea or practicing it impossible or there is a great sphere of being able to practicing it and reaching the status if one finds guidance for the right way with peace and human rights prevailed in the world. Majority of the thought in the text, based on hadith-tradition- from the Prophet of Islam Peace upon Him and His family Ahl al-Bait Peace upon Them. (shrink)

The discussion is based around these issues, history of Human Rights, timeline for Human Rights history, question asked in this regard and enemy and friend of ‘human rights’. Describing the problems and its resolve from logical reasoning perspective; intellectual argumentation based on logical reason of, what is universal human right, democracy and illegal wars in the world by super powers as example America? Attempt to describe the inner construction of a human being-perfection-. (...) Introduction to the concept of infallibility in different parts in the article, purify yourself and being purified. What is it, is it possible for a creation named human to be not fallible, is the idea or practicing it impossible or there is a great sphere of being able to practicing it and reaching the status if one finds guidance for the right way with peace and human rights prevailed in the world. Majority of the thought in the text, based on hadith-tradition- from the Prophet of Islam Peace upon Him and His family Ahl al-Bait Peace upon Them.Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2015 Vol.6 (1):15-21. (shrink)

A psychology-informed view of human rights has been taken into account by many scholars while examining the short-term and long-term effects of human rights violations on individuals and communities. In Trauma and Human Rights: Integrating Approaches to Address Human Suffering, for instance, the authors discuss the trauma-informed approach in the context of human rights violations, namely domestic violence, racial and other forms of discrimination, etc. In the paper on Trauma among children (...) and legal implications, the authors advance a trauma-informed approach to human rights. The approach considers the experiences of trauma associated with physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, psychological/emotional abuse, community violence, natural disasters, serious accidents, parental death/grief, medical procedures and conditions, and terrorism. In the case of violations including rape and torture, the paper Torture by means of Rape concerns the psychological suffering of victims of rape, abuse, and torture in light of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. -/- As for the jurisprudence of international human rights bodies, the advancement of a psychology-informed view of human rights is noticeable. Take the example of the Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment on Biopsychosocial factors conducive to torture and ill-treatment. The Report explores the root causes of the current worldwide complacency concerning torture and ill-treatment and recommends the urgent and proactive incorporation of science-based conclusions into ongoing, policy-based global governance reform processes. Further, the report provides that the root cause of the systemic governance failure is attributed to the generic biopsychosocial factors that have shaped human decision-making throughout history, irrespective of national, cultural, religious, or other distinctive influences. -/- Since the two fields are creating a landscape of new concepts and perspectives, one may study this interface broadly under three headings; -/- (a) Psychology in Human Rights. (b) Rights-Based Approach to Psychological Science and Research. (c) Psychology and Human Rights in Law and Policy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We provide a brief history of the business and human rights discourse and scholarship, and an overview of the articles included in the special issue.

"Human dignity" has been enshrined in international agreements and national constitutions as a fundamental human right. The World Medical Association calls on physicians to respect human dignity and to discharge their duties with dignity. And yet human dignity is a term--like love, hope, and justice--that is intuitively grasped but never clearly defined. Some ethicists and bioethicists dismiss it; other thinkers point to its use in the service of particular ideologies. In this book, Michael Barilan offers an (...) urgently needed, nonideological, and thorough conceptual clarification of human dignity and human rights, relating these ideas to current issues in ethics, law, and bioethics. Combining social history, history of ideas, moral theology, applied ethics, and political theory, Barilan tells the story of human dignity as a background moral ethos to human rights. After setting the problem in its scholarly context, he offers a hermeneutics of the formative texts on Imago Dei; provides a philosophical explication of the value of human dignity and of vulnerability; presents a comprehensive theory of human rights from a natural, humanist perspective; explores issues of moral status; and examines the value of responsibility as a link between virtue ethics and human dignity and rights. Barilan accompanies his theoretical claim with numerous practical illustrations, linking his theory to such issues in bioethics as end-of-life care, cloning, abortion, torture, treatment of the mentally incapacitated, the right to health care, the human organ market, disability and notions of difference, and privacy, highlighting many relevant legal aspects in constitutional and humanitarian law. (shrink)