Taking the reasons for human rights seriously

Political Theory

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 243-265

  Ci, Jiwei ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG   (Hong Kong)

Author keywords

Agency; Human rights; Ideology; Justice; Reification

Indexed keywords

EID: 16344373591     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591704271988     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. Problems of Moral Philosophy, ed. Thomas Schröder, trans. Rodney Livingston (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 169.
2. Another, perhaps less contentious, way of making the same point is that a human right is poised between a "soft right" and a "hard right." A soft right is a right that is supported by plausible arguments but not backed up with means of enforcement, perhaps not even conceived in terms of enforcement. A hard right, by contrast, is a right that is enforced or implemented by one kind of institutional means or another. Thus understood, a hard right need not be a legal right, strictly speaking, although legal codification is arguably the most dependable way of making a right hard, other things equal. For "alternative legal forms" of human rights implementation, see, for example, Charles Taylor, "Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights," in The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights, ed. Joanne Bauer and Daniel Bell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 129-33.
3. In this connection, I have found Raymond Geuss's analysis of the concept of human rights relevant and helpful. See, especially, his History and Illusion in Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 138-46.
4. See Peter Strawson, Freedom and Resentment (London: Methuen, 1974), chap. 1.
5. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), aphorism 481. For excellent discussion of Nietzsche on this point, see Mark Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 115, 128.
6. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), aphorism 481. For excellent discussion of Nietzsche on this point, see Mark Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 115, 128.
7. This does not mean that we can interpret our experience in terms of agency just as we please. On the contrary, such interpretation is subject to material and social conditions of possibility, for there are conditions under which it is relatively easy to interpret our experience in terms of agency and other conditions under which such interpretation is difficult or even impossible. Further discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this essay.
8. See, for example, Taylor, "Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights."
9. Michael Ignatieff et al., in Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), "Introduction," xviii-xix.
10. This line of argument takes further the suggestion, pursued by Ronald Dworkin and Will Kymlicka, that all plausible political theories, including all plausible justifications for human rights, share the ultimate value of equality even if they do not all invoke it explicitly; see Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2002), 3-4. As I see it, the value of equality in turn must make or imply some appeal to human agency as the deepest consideration. Thus, when Dworkin argues that all persons matter equally, the fuller, or underlying, idea must be that they all matter equally as agents, for only the idea of people mattering equally as agents is sufficient to generate not only his principle of equal importance but also his principle of special responsibility; see Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 5-6.
11. This line of argument takes further the suggestion, pursued by Ronald Dworkin and Will Kymlicka, that all plausible political theories, including all plausible justifications for human rights, share the ultimate value of equality even if they do not all invoke it explicitly; see Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2002), 3-4. As I see it, the value of equality in turn must make or imply some appeal to human agency as the deepest consideration. Thus, when Dworkin argues that all persons matter equally, the fuller, or underlying, idea must be that they all matter equally as agents, for only the idea of people mattering equally as agents is sufficient to generate not only his principle of equal importance but also his principle of special responsibility; see Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 5-6.
12. I borrowed this expression from Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought, 59, and have learned much from Warren's discussion of agency.
13. The distinction between freedom and identification is not a hard and fast one. In every society where agency through freedom is dominant, there also exists to some degree agency through identification: for example, identification with one's community, race, country, and so on. Likewise, in every society in which agency through identification is dominant, there must exist a minimal degree of agency through freedom; that is, attribution of power to oneself, even if this takes place within a framework of identification. Nevertheless, we can distinguish between an individualistic society (agency through freedom) and a collectivistic one (agency through identification) in terms of their respective dominant tendencies.
14. Michael Ignatieff's account of human rights, which treats the basis for human rights as the need to validate and enhance human agency and yet reduces human rights to negative liberties, seems to me a clear example of an implausible account of respect for individual agency or an implausible account of what such respect should mean in terms of human rights. If we take respect for human agency seriously, such respect clearly seems to require action to reduce to a minimum, at least significantly, those adverse effects on each individual's well-being that do not issue from his or her exercise of agency. Ignatieff stops well short of such a requirement. See Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, esp. 55-57.
15. See Geuss, History and Illusion in Politics, 95-96.
16. See also Henry Shue's well-known arguments against the drawing of such a distinction, in Basic Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980).
17. In this sense, the conditions of agency include the conditions of subsistence but not the other way around, just as, say, Nietzsche's concept of the will to power encompasses Schopenhauer's concept of the will to live but not the other way around.
18. I owe the raising of this important question to one of the anonymous reviewers.
19. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 386.
20. Ibid., 478.
21. I b i d.
22. See Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 505-506.
23. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 478.
24. For concerns with the proliferation problem, see Gutmann, "Introduction," in Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, x.
25. On global inequality, I have learned a great deal from the writings of Thomas Pogge, especially his World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002). I believe most of what he has to say can be said as effectively or more so without using the concept of human rights.
26. See Geuss, History and Illusion in Politics, 149.