Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World

Grace Y. Kao

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781589017337
• eBook ISBN: 9781589017603
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

In 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declared that every human being, without “distinction of any kind,” possesses a set of morally authoritative rights and fundamental freedoms that ought to be socially guaranteed. Since that time, human rights have arguably become the cross-cultural moral concept and evaluative tool to measure the performance—and even legitimacy—of domestic regimes. Yet questions remain that challenge their universal validity and theoretical bases.

Some theorists are ”maximalist” in their insistence that human rights must be grounded religiously, while an opposing camp attempts to justify these rights in “minimalist” fashion without any necessary recourse to religion, metaphysics, or essentialism. In Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World, Grace Kao critically examines the strengths and weaknesses of these contending interpretations while also exploring the political liberalism of John Rawls and the Capability Approach as proposed by economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum.

By retrieving insights from a variety of approaches, Kao defends an account of human rights that straddles the minimalist–maximalist divide, one that links human rights to a conception of our common humanity and to the notion that ethical realism gives the most satisfying account of our commitment to the equal moral worth of all human beings.

INDEX

AAA. See American Anthropological Association

Abdel-Nour, Farid, 79

absoluteness: of human rights claims, 9, 166–70

in maximalist approaches, 50, 51, 54

and nonderogable rights, 166

acceptance of equality, 113

Ackerley, Brooke, 106

adaptive preferences, 104, 117, 120–21, 198–99n7

adultery, 94, 195–96n14

affiliation, 106, 124

ahimsa (Buddhist), 90–91

Alkire, Sabina, 199n8

altruism, 162

AMC. See argument from marginal cases

American Anthropological Association (AAA), 2, 17, 173n3

American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (1948), 177n11

American Law Institute, 177n11

Ames, Roger T., 25

Amnesty International, 52, 173n4, 195n14

ancestor worship, 12

Anderson, Elizabeth, 106

animals. See nonhuman animals

An-Na’im, Abdullahi A., 78–79, 83, 90

Antigone (Sophocles), 177n9

apartheid, 86

Aquinas, Thomas (saint), 19

argument from conjecture, 84

argument from marginal cases (AMC), 48, 124, 125

argument from queerness, 164

Aristotle: influence on Nussbaum, 104, 114, 115, 200nn14–16

and natural law, 19, 177n9

and species norm, 116

Arneson, Richard, 199n9

Ashoka (emperor), 89 “Asian values” debates, 27, 175n3, 178n16

Augustine (saint), 19

background culture, 97, 194n6

Bangkok Declaration on Human Rights, 179n1

basic vs. complex capabilities, 125–26

Basque separatist movement, 69

Beitz, Charles, 87, 193n5, 194n9

Belgium, physician-assisted suicide in, 13

Benedict, Ruth, 15

benevolent absolutisms, 60, 73, 188n6

Bentham, Jeremy, 21

Bhagavad Gita, 89

Bible: human rights rooted in, 42, 44–46

in maximalist approaches, 33

moral requirements in, 146

Bloom, Irene, 24

Boas, Franz, 15

bodily health and integrity, 105, 108, 122

Bosnia, humanitarian intervention in, 2

Buchanan, Allen, 70

Buddhism: in consensus-based approach, 83

and human dignity, 37. See also engaged Buddhists

Burma, engaged Buddhists in, 70

Bush, George W., 174n5

Bybee, Jay S., 196n16

Cahill, Lisa, 165

Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI, 1990), 4, 31, 32, 34–35, 179n1...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One Prolegomena to Any Philosophical Defense of Human Rights
• Two The Maximalist Challenge to Human Rights Justification
• Three An Enforcement-Centered Approach to Human Rights, with Special Reference to John Rawls
• Four Consensus-Based Approaches to Human Rights
• Five The Capability Approach to Human Rights
• Six Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World
• Notes
• References
• Index