Ontology, Justice, and Human Rights

Michael Boylan

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139342650.012

7 - Ontology, Justice, and Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014

Michael Boylan

Show author details

Michael Boylan: Affiliation:
Marymount University, Virginia

Book contents

Get access

Summary

As I have argued from the beginning of this book, talk of human rights means something quite different when one believes that human rights are natural as opposed to being conventional. In the first case, human rights would apply to all people on earth from the time (at least) of the appearance of Homo sapiens until they become extinct or until they cease to be essentially rational/emotive creatures who primarily seek to act in order to realize their vision of what is good. As we have seen in Chapters 2 and 3, much of the historical understanding of morality, justice, and some shared community worldview (that is at least consistent with human rights) has been viewed in just this way in Europe and in China (emblematic of the West and the East). This chapter explores this and other ontological issues as they affect my general argument.

Realism and Anti-Realism in Human Rights Discourse

In the second case (human rights as conventional), the currency of human rights will be of much less national and cosmopolitan value. This is because it has lost its necessary universality. Instead, it will depend on social and political forces that will shape and respond to changing conditions within global regions and within countries. And the results may be various – as in the case of women’s rights (for example). Some countries of the world might afford women the same legal rights as men while others do not. If human rights are only conventional, then the picture of human rights is merely one of politics and public relations.

Type: Chapter
Information: Natural Human Rights
A Theory
, pp. 196 - 214

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139342650.012 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boylan, Michael, The Good, The True, and The Beautiful (London: Continum, 2008): ch. 5

Boylan, Michael, Basic Ethics, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2009): ch. 5

Mackie, J. L., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1977)

Boylan, , Basic Ethics, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: 2009): ch. 9

Baier, Annette, “What Emotions Are About,” Philosophical Perspectives 4 (1990):1–29Google Scholar

Baier, Annette, Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995)

Bennett, Jonathan, “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn,” Philosophy 49 (1974): 123–134Google Scholar

Blackburn, Simon, Ruling Passions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Davidson, Donald, “How Is Weakness of Will Possible?” in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980): 21–43

Beauvoir, Simone de, The Second Sex, ed. and trans. Parshley, H. M. (New York: Bantam, 1952)

Elster, Jon, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

Freud, Sigmund, Project for a Scientific Psychology. Vol. 1 of Standard Edition of the Psychological Works, ed. and trans. Strachey, James (London: Hogarth Press, 1895)

Gibbard, Allan, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990)

Greenspan, Patricia, Emotions and Reasons: An Inquiry into Emotional Justification (New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1988)

Greenspan, Patricia, Practical Guilt: Moral Dilemmas, Emotions and Social Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)

Greenspan, Patricia, “Emotional Strategies and Rationality,” Ethics 110 (2000): 469–487Google Scholar

James, William, “What Is an Emotion?” Mind 19 (1884):188–204Google Scholar

Kenny, Anthony, Action, Emotion and Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963)

Nussbaum, Martha, Love’s Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)

Nussbaum, Martha, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994)

Nussbaum, Martha, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Oakley, Justin, Morality and the Emotions (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1992)

Sartre, Jean-Paul, The Emotions: Outline of a Theory, trans. Frechtman, Bernard (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948)

Solomon, Robert, The Passions: The Myth and Nature of Human Emotions (New York: Doubleday, 1984)

Williams, Bernard, “Morality and the Emotions,” in Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973): 207–229

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G. E. M. (New York: Macmillan, 1953)

Wollheim, Richard, On the Emotions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999)

Stevenson, Charles L., Ethics and Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944)

Stevenson, C. L., Facts and Values: Studies in Ethical Analysis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963): 10–31

Blackburn, Simon, Spreading the Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)

Blackburn, Simon, Essays in Quasi-Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)

Gibbard, Alan, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990)

Gibbard, Alan, Thinking How to Live (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008)

Blackburn, Simon, “Anti-Realist Expressivism and Quasi-Realism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, ed. Copp, David (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006): 146–162

Blackburn, Simon, “How to Be an Ethical Antirealist,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 12 (1988): 361–375Google Scholar

Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Steinberg, Eric (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1977 [1748]): 112–115,

Hume, David, “Of The Standard of Taste” [1757], in The Philosophical Works of David Hume (Edinburgh: Black and Tait, 1826): 4–6

Putnam, Hilary, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)

Maslow, Abraham, Toward a Psychology of Being, 2nd ed. (New York: Van Nostrand, 1968)

Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903)

Waldron, Jeremy, “Can Communal Goods Be Human Rights?” in Liberal Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953)

Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)

Kymlicka, Will, “Individual and Community Rights,” in Group Rights, ed. Baker, Judith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994): 25

Raz, Joseph and Margalit, Avishai, “National Self-Determination,” in Ethics in the Public Domain, ed. Raz, Joseph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994): 133–134

Buchanan, Alan, “Liberalism and Group Rights,” in In Harm’s Way: Essays in Honor of Joel Feinberg, ed. Coleman, J. L. and Buchanan, A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 1–15

Taylor, Charles, “The Politics of Recognition,” in his Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Gutman, Amy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994): 32–36

Owen, G. E. L., “Zeno and the Mathematicians,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 58 (1957–1958): 199–222Google Scholar

Thomson, J. F., “Tasks and Super-Tasks,” Analysis 15 (1954): 1–13Google Scholar

Vlastos, Gregory, “A Note on Zeno’s Arrow,” Phronesis 11 (1966): 3–18Google Scholar

Vlastos, Gregory, “Zero’s Race Course,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 4 (1966): 95–108Google Scholar

Watling, James, “The Sum of an Infinite Series,” Analysis 13.2 (1952): 39–46Google Scholar

Mueller, Ian, Philosophy of Mathematics and Deductive Structure in Euclid’s “Elements” (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981): 234

Heath, T. L., “Greek Geometry with Special Reference to Infinitesimals,” Mathematical Gazette 11 (1922–1923): 248–259Google Scholar

Simplicius, , Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, ed. Diets, H., 2 vols. (Berlin: G. Reimeri, 1882, 1895)

Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970)

Putnam, Hilary, “The ‘Corroboration’ of Theories,” from the Library of Living Philosophers, vol. xiv, The Philosophy of Karl Popper, ed. Schilpp, Paul A. (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1974): 221–240

Book contents

7 - Ontology, Justice, and Human Rights

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive