چکیده:
My intention in this research is to focus on the idea of spiritual crisis in
human rights arena. The topic I shall be discussing concerns a basic set of
issues dealing with the purpose of human rights, their moral foundation and
their ultimate metaphysical ground. Simply put I shall be asking whether
there is something special in human beings which entitles them to rights.
Some arguments such as human agency, dignity and natural law tend to be
quite abstract. It could therefore be tempting to assume that the issue, being
of not much practical importance, is not relevant. But this would be a rush
assumption because determining the foundation of human rights means
determining the very legitimacy of human rights themselves in the
international arena. I will consider Ignatieff’s pragmatic point of view that
can be summed up with a catch phrase: Kwithout the Holocaust no
Declaration, because of the Holocaust, no unconditional faith in the
Declaration eitherL and Stackhouse’s religious one developed in Religion and
Human Rights: a Theological Apologetic. My purpose is to analyse both
Ignatieff’s view, that avoids contentious religious ground for human rights
and offers a secular ground designed with the idea of human agency, and
Max Stackhouse who, instead, defends the idea of a theological ethic as
religious ground for human rights. First of all, through this analysis I aim at
pointing out that while on the one hand the respect for our fellow human
beings needs a reverential attitude and our commitment to protect our
species needs to be sustained by some faith; on the other hand grounding
human rights in religion is extremely dangerous and may imply violent
clashes between different religious faiths. Secondly, I also aim at criticizing
Ignatieff’s view because a defence of human rights as pragmatic instruments
on pragmatic grounds seems to be too weak and human rights regime needs
moral and metaphysical foundations to be universally recognized and
implemented. Thirdly and ultimately, using Rawls’s concept of overlapping
consensus I aim at showing the unecessity to agree upon a Ksingle
foundationL. A single foundation risks to be authoritative, whereas, what a
human rights regime relies on is a plural foundations. If we arrive at
respecting human rights on a plurality of grounds, then we are making them
more broadly acceptable to people. If we publicly defend human rights for a
plurality of reasons, we are rightly proving that there is no KproperL
metaphysical foundation.
A good reason why we do not need to ground human rights in any
particular metaphysics can be that they are already grounded in many
metaphysics and can already derive sustenance from many sources. Hence, it
would be worthwhile and wise to welcome a plurality of nonexclusive claims
concerning the ways in which human rights can legitimately be grounded.
Human agency, human dignity, equal creation are, for instance, some
examples of different foundations that are not mutually exclusive.
خلاصه ماشینی:
First of all, through this analysis I aim at pointing out that while on the one hand the respect for our fellow human beings needs a reverential attitude and our commitment to protect our species needs to be sustained by some faith; on the other hand grounding human rights in religion is extremely dangerous and may imply violent clashes between different religious faiths.
Secondly, I also aim at criticizing Ignatieff’s view because a defence of human rights as pragmatic instruments on pragmatic grounds seems to be too weak and human rights regime needs moral and metaphysical foundations to be universally recognized and implemented.
Against the secular humanism, defined by Ignatieff as an ethics undergrounded in divine or ultimate sanction and based only in human prudence,3 Max Stackhouse, a Princeton theologian, argues that the reason why we have rights is to be found in theology and that what the idea of human rights needs is to be grounded in the concept of God. 4 Substantially, he claims that humanism is inconsistent, dangerous and self-defeating.
I do not even endorse Ignatieff’s view because a defence of human rights as pragmatic instruments on pragmatic grounds seems to be too weak and because I believe that human rights regime also needs moral and metaphysical foundations to be universally recognized and implemented.
Since he extends his theory of Political Liberalism from a single democratic society to the international system, then we can also claim that only if there is a reasonable overlapping consensus among comprehensive doctrines, can the law of people and therefore human rights be justified.