Reconstructing Human Rights: A Pragmatist and Pluralist Inquiry into Global Ethics
Joe Hoover
Abstract
We live in a human rights world in which talk of rights is everywhere. This world of human rights, however, is often ambiguous, such that we struggle to comprehend it. Reconstructing Human Rights offers an alternative theory of human rights and their place in world politics, focusing on their radical democratizing potential. Traditionally, philosophical accounts of human rights justify them as moral principles of the highest importance that define legitimate political authority, which we must accept as a matter of rational or practical necessity. In turn, this push for authoritative justificat ... More
We live in a human rights world in which talk of rights is everywhere. This world of human rights, however, is often ambiguous, such that we struggle to comprehend it. Reconstructing Human Rights offers an alternative theory of human rights and their place in world politics, focusing on their radical democratizing potential. Traditionally, philosophical accounts of human rights justify them as moral principles of the highest importance that define legitimate political authority, which we must accept as a matter of rational or practical necessity. In turn, this push for authoritative justification generates resistance, as critics see human rights as a totalizing discourse based on problematic Western ideas. The central argument of Reconstructing Human Rights is that we misunderstand human rights if we focus on simply securing or rejecting their authority. Instead we know the promise and potential of human rights by attending to how they allow us to challenge the terms of legitimate authority and political membership. This account of human rights draws on the pragmatist ethics of John Dewey and the agonistic pluralism of William Connolly. In the end, there is no escaping the complexity of our human rights world, but by understanding them as fundamentally contested and plural we can shed light on the ambiguous effects they have and empower ourselves to better judge their value.
Keywords:
human rights,
pragmatism,
pluralism,
agonism,
democracy
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198782803 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198782803.001.0001 |
