Justifying Ethics: Human Rights and Human Nature

Naslovnica
Transaction Publishers - Broj stranica: 154

The idea of human rights is powerful. Deriving in its modern form from the Enlightenment, this doctrine has come to denote individual rights against government oppression, including the right to freedom of thought, religion, speech, assembly, and to a fair system of criminal justice. But even in this basic political sense "human rights" means different things in different historical and cultural contexts and advocacy of such rights has frequently been challenged as subjective. In "Justifying Ethics "Jan Gorecki offers a thoroughgoing critique of the most common attempts to formulate objective standards through appeals to human nature, religion, and reason.

Gorecki opens his inquiry by considering the role of norm-making concepts in the history of ethical thought, how standards of rights were claimed to conform with human nature and reason or have been stipulated by an external authoritative source such as God or social contract. He then shows how such justifications may be discounted on analytical or practical grounds using such instances as divine will, Kantian reason, and the truth value of moral judgments.

With respect to empirically grounded appeals to human nature, Gorecki argues against the notion that the innate plasticity of human behavior and potential for social diversity is sufficient grounds for human rights activity without objective justification. Whatever its difficulties, the search for justification remains essential in enhancing the persuasiveness of ethical action that aims at the moral "contagion" of the people by the human rights experience and the transition from moral acceptance to legal implementation.

Broad in intellectual scope, "Justifying Ethics "draws upon moral and political philosophy, social policy, psychology, history, jurisprudence, and international law to clarify the prerequisites for the success of human rights activity. The book will be of special interest to political theorists, philosophers, sociologists, and human rights activists.

 

Sadržaj

The Power of Human Rights
1
The Problem of Justification
17
Human Nature
25
Universal Needs and Wants
26
Universally Accepted Norms
28
The Function of Ethics
38
Beyond Human Nature
57
Reason
59
From Warsaw to Treblinka 194243
75
Divergent Societies
79
Countercriticism The Human Rights Struggle and the Need for Justification
85
From Moral to Legal Change
92
Conclusion The Importance of Justification
127
Law Positivism and Genocide
128
The Importance of Justification
134
Bibliography
139

The Truth Value of Moral Judgments
62
On the Road to Skepticism?
67
Criticism Human Nature as the Source of Hope
73

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O autoru

Jan Gorecki is professor of sociology at the Universtiy of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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