Why is Burke Opposed to
Universal Human Rights?
"Government is a
contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be
provided for by this wisdom."(p. 92) People have rights to the advantages
of civil society. There are no other
rights.
Why does Burke oppose
guarantees of additional rights?
(1) Rights "cannot be
settled upon any abstract rule."(p. 92) Government is "an experimental
science, not to be taught a priori" (p. 92) [Recall the Proof Paradigm.]
(2) Advocates of rights admit
of no compromise. Good government
requires lots of compromises.
(3) Rights are too
simplistic. Good governments are
complex.
Burke vs. Mill
What is the test for a good
government?
"the
solid test of long experience and an increasing public strength and national
prosperity"(p. 90)
"Law itself is only
beneficence acting by a rule."(p. 90)
What kind of view is
this? [Hint: What kind of consequentialist is Burke?]
If Mill and Burke are both rule or social practice consequentialists, why do they
disagree on rights?
Why does Burke oppose
individual rights, including democratic rights?
Is Burke a paternalist?
To his credit, Burke opposed
the British colonial rule in
Why did the French Revolution
degenerate into a Reign of Terror?
Recall what Burke says about the state nature: "Men cannot enjoy the rights of an
uncivil and of a civil state together. . . .
That he may secure some liberty, he makes a
surrender in trust of the whole of it."
Would Locke agree?
Unfortunately, Rousseau, the
father of the French Revolution did agree.
Rousseau's fatal blindspot about individual rights: Rousseau advocated the elimination of all
individual rights in favor of a social identity as part of the General
Will. With no legally recognized
individual rights against the government, individuals could not legally resist
the Reign of Terror.
Why Does Marx Not Endorse
Individual Human Rights?
Marx's criticism of rights to
religious freedom (the political emancipation of religious man) is
representative of his criticism of all human rights theories. "The question of the relation of
political emancipation to religion becomes for us the question of the relation
of political emancipation to human emancipation." (p. 127)
Marx's challenge: Political emancipation is not human
emancipation.
What is political
emancipation? Typically, it is a right
to non-interference in some realm (e.g,
non-interference in the practice of one's religion).
Marx's claim: "The state can be a
Why do
Marx's Objections To The Four Basic Rights Of Man
(1) Rights to liberty are the
rights of "an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself".(p. 131) They are
not based on human association, but on human separation.
(2) Property rights are
rights to self-interest.
(3) Rights to equality are
understood as rights to equal liberty.
(4) Rights to security are
the assurance of egoism.
Marx's alternative: Human emancipation as emancipation from one's
individualistic, egoistic identity. True
emancipation involves becoming a non-egoistic member of a non-egoistic community.
Not religious freedom, but
freedom from religion; not freedom to own property, but freedom from property;
not freedom to engage in business, but freedom from business.
Marx's solution: A revolution more radical than a mere political
revolution that aims at political emancipation.
A social revolution to achieve human emancipation, to
transform egoistic man into communal man, a species-being, not an isolated
monad.
What is a species being?
Why is Marx's political
theory paternalistic?
What happened when twentieth century Marxist regimes eliminated
individual rights in the name of the people as a whole? In Stalin's
How would Sen reply
to Marx's criticism of political emancipation?
What is the History of the Development of Human Rights a
History of?
The Proof Paradigm: Self-Evident Moral Principles
The Moral Discovery
Paradigm: A Largely Bottom-Up, Fallible
Process of Improving Our Moral Principles
Richard Rorty's
Humean Answer (following David Hume): No Self-Evident Truths, No Process of
Discovery, Because Moral Judgment is Based on Sentiment not Reason (where
Reason is understood as the faculty for determining truth and falsehood.
What does Rorty
mean by the claim that human rights foundationalism
is outmoded?
Moral
development as "manipulating" feelings.
Moral
education as a "progress of sentiments".
Truth vs. Sentiment
Rationality vs. Sympathy
Moral Realism: Some moral statements are true.
Humean Moral Anti-Realism:
No moral statements are true, because they are expressions of
sentiment.
Note that the issue is a metaphysical
one. The moral realist need not think
that moral truths are infallible.
If moral reasoning is largely
bottom-up, from particular moral judgments, then the question becomes whether
there are some particular moral judgments that are true from any point of view,
not whether there are any that we are infallible about. Think again of the judgment that the Western
European treatment of the American natives was morally wrong.
RORTY ASSUMES HUME'S
DIVISION BETWEEN REASON AND SENTIMENT IN MORAL JUDGMENT
|
REASON |
SENTIMENT/EMOTION/DESIRE |
|
|
|
|
Provides information to
be used to satisfy one's desires. |
Provides motivation for
action. |
|
Produces purely
descriptive judgments, which are true or false. |
Produces normative and evaluative
judgments, which are neither true or false |
|
Science |
Morality |
An alternative to the Humean view: No strict division between reason and
emotions. The emotions are part of reason
and help us to discern important social truths (Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought).
Two roles for rationality to
play in the theory of human rights: (1)
the ground of human rights = the characteristic possessed by another being in
virtue of which we judge that certain rights should be guaranteed to that
being; (2) the source of human rights judgments = the characteristic(s) in us
that enable us to make judgments concerning who should be guaranteed rights and
what rights they should be guaranteed.
Rorty believes that the sentiment of
sympathy is the source of human rights judgments.
What about their ground?
For Rorty, there is no ground. Instead, sympathy guides human rights
judgments in the sense that our sympathies determine the scope of human rights
judgments. There is no objective basis
for distinguishing how far human rights should extend.
These two different views
of human rights judgments lead to different ways of understanding moral
progress.
MORAL PROGRESS AND
MORAL TRUTH
Rorty's Moral Anti-Realist
View: The Development of Human Rights is
a "Progress of Sentiments."
Talbott's Moral Realist Proposal: Progress in Moral Discovery, Because There are Objective Moral Truths.
Discovery involves Bottom-Up, not Top-Down, Reasoning. Particular moral judgments involve
sentiments, but they are not merely expressions of sentiment. They are attempts to articulate strictly
universal moral truths. Progress depends
on getting closer to the truth.
Puzzle: How can there be moral progress if there is
no moral truth? Do our sympathies define
progress? The Example
of the Cockroach Beings.
The Two Senses of
"Top-Down" and "Bottom-Up"
(1) Reasoning:
In Top-Down reasoning, moral judgments about
particular cases are derived from moral principles.
In Bottom-Up Moral Reasoning, moral principles are
justified by their ability to explain moral judgments about particular cases.
(2) Social Process of Moral Change:
Top-Down: Moral
change comes from those in authority.
Bottom-Up: Moral change
comes from below, from ordinary citizens, who challenge the authorities.
Human Rights as a Discovery
What is the main discovery?
That paternalistic justifications for oppression
are mistaken. All human beings—indeed,
all beings with the relevant cognitive, emotional, and behavioral
capacities—should have rights to develop their own judgment about what is good
for them and to use it.
History of the Bottom-Up Development of a Right
against Paternalistic Interference
Expanding the class of
right-holders (note that all of these changes crucially depended on bottom-up
social movements):
(1) Rights of male,
property-owners.
(2) Elimination of slavery
and extending rights to non-white males.
(3) Women's rights. (Note that the
(4) End of colonialism and
extending rights to indigenous peoples.
(5) Rights to gender and
sexual expression.
(6) Rights of the disabled.
Expanding Rights (Note that
all these developments have occurred in spite of the fact that they contradicted
previously accepted religious and/or governmental authorities):
(1) Rights to religious freedom. The most important right
against paternalism.
(2) Rights to freedom of expression, association, and the
press.
(3) Sen-Nussbaum: rights to development of the central human
capabilities. These are the capabilities
that enable a person to make her own judgments of what is good for her. This would include rights to education and to
non-discrimination.
Extending the scope of rights
against paternalism:
(1) Development of Constitutional rights to birth control,
abortion, and private sexual activity between consenting adults.
(2) A right to refuse medical treatment and to terminate life
support.
(3) A right to assisted suicide in some circumstances? (Example of Dr. Kevorkian as an example of a
bottom-up social movement)
(4)
Metaphysical Immodesty Again: Objectively Universal Particular Moral
Judgments?
The example of the Extra-Terrestrial
colonizers of earth.
The End of
History?
There is no goal or end of
history. There is no guarantee that
history will lead to expanded respect for human rights. What is surprising is that so much progress
has been made and continues to be made.
The process of discovery is Bottom-Up in an epistemic and a social
sense. You are a part of the
process.
What moral blindspots of ours will our descendants be
shocked by?