The Idea of Human Rights
Charles R. Beitz
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0199604371
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The international doctrine of human rights is one of the most ambitious parts of the settlement of World War II. Since then, the language of human rights has become the common language of social criticism in global political life. This book is a theoretical examination of the central idea of that language, the idea of a human right. In contrast to more conventional philosophical studies, Charles Beitz takes a practical approach, looking at the history and political practice of human rights for guidance in understanding the central idea. Betiz presents a model of human rights as matters of international concern whose violation by governments can justify international protective and restorative action ranging from intervention to assistance. He proposes a schema for justifying human rights and applies it to several controversial cases--rights against poverty, rights to democracy, and the human rights of women.
Throughout, The Idea of Human Rights attends to some main reasons why people are skeptical about human rights, including the fear that human rights will be used by strong powers to advance their national interests. The book concludes by observing that contemporary human rights practice is vulnerable to several pathologies and argues the need for international collaboration to avoid them.
Stasis: Civil War as a Political Paradigm (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)
Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests (Big Ideas)
States of Violence: War, Capital Punishment, and Letting Die
practice that human rights doctrine does not incorporate any view about the justiWcation of human rights in an independent order of natural rights, in the natural law, or in God’s commands. To repeat Maritain’s characterization of international human rights, they are “practical conclusions which, although justiWed in diVerent ways by diVerent persons, are principles of action with a common ground of similarity for everyone.”11 Human rights are like natural rights in being critical standards whose
do so, and, most fundamentally, the nature and demand ingness of the reasons for action that pertain to these agents. 66 naturalistic theories It is not that naturalistic views lack resources to respond to these ques tions. But the beneWciary centeredness of the view limits what can be said. Thus GriYn, who confronts issues of contribution more directly than Nussbaum, holds that the obligation to help satisfy welfare rights rests on a general obligation (perhaps a natural duty) to help those
government, assistance in the development of legal institutions, perhaps even intervention after civil wars to maintain stability). There may be forms of assistance that can be delivered directly to their intended beneWciaries without reliance on local institutions. And it may be possible to reduce external barriers (for example, by opening foreign markets to trade in local products).16 These possibilities are illustrative. The general point is that it is a mistake to conclude from the fact that
coordinate action and apportion costs, these institutions are not constrained in the same way as individual agents may be (for example, by concerns about competitive disadvantage).24 22 One way to see this is to consider the diYculties in devising a theory of economic growth capable of explaining intercountry diVerences in growth rates in suYciently speciWc terms to guide policy. There is an instructive survey in Rodrik, One Economics, Many Recipes, ch. 1. 23 I am grateful to Thomas Pogge for
composition of the 1948 declaration.8 The human rights movement was set back by the Depression, then revitalized by the onset of World War II, in part because it was believed that the war might have been avoided if there had been eVective inter national mechanisms to identify and sanction violations of human rights in Nazi Germany. In the UK, H. G. Wells began an international campaign advocating inclusion of a declaration of the “rights of man” or an “inter national bill of rights” in the