Common Humanity

4 Key excerpts on "Common Humanity"

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  eBook - ePub

  Global Bioethics

  An introduction

  • Henk ten Have(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  8 Sharing The World Common perspectives

  DOI: 10.4324/9781315648378-8

  International human rights law and cosmopolitan ideals inspired the development of global ethical frameworks. At the same time, global bioethics cannot simply be the application of universal human rights to moral issues and queries. One problem is that views about the content of human rights differ. Some argue that they are primarily negative rights (emphasizing non-interference so that individuals are protected against the state). Civil and political rights are therefore more important than social and economic rights. Others, particularly from the global South, argue that human rights are also positive rights (as entitlements to certain basic goods that need to be provided by the state). This controversy is connected to a minimalistic interpretation of human rights as rights of individuals.1 In this view human rights discourse is the language of individual empowerment; at its core is moral individualism. Its main purpose is to guarantee that individuals are free to choose how to conduct their life. Human rights discourse does not impose one vision of a good human life. On the other hand, minimalism is criticized since separating negative and positive rights seems artificial. If basic conditions for human existence are not provided, civil and political rights cannot be exercised. All human rights are interdependent. The right against torture is as important as the right to subsistence. The recent growing importance of the right to health demonstrates that human rights do not only have an individual dimension but also a dimension of solidarity and collective good. It is therefore important to stress the commonalities of the human condition. Human rights discourse is global because human beings share common needs and vulnerabilities.

  The ideals of cosmopolitanism provide a broader context for the interpretation and application of human rights within global bioethics. Importantly, they connect what pertains to the individual as well as the community. Human beings are embedded in particular communities but are part of a universal community. Individualistic approaches are therefore inadequate. The individual person can only be empowered within a relational context with others. This broader view is especially articulated in non-Western perspectives such as the African worldview of Ubuntu.

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  eBook - ePub

  On Global Justice

  • Mathias Risse(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  However, these may still be rights people have everywhere against their respective governments (and limited in scope to their country) because nowadays just about everybody lives in a state. Let me conclude. This chapter has integrated four themes, distinct enough to be treated separately but intertwined because each contributes its share to an account of Common Humanity as a ground of justice: the institutional stance on development, in part 1 ; the notion of a conception of human rights, in part 2 ; the conception of human rights built around the idea of Common Humanity, in part 3 ; and finally, in part 4, an engagement with Caney’s nonrelationism, to argue that his more expansive understanding of Common Humanity in an account of global justice is implausible. We are now also well prepared for later discussions of human rights in chapters 7, 11, 12, and 13. Those chapters discuss my conception of human rights as membership rights in the global order, which integrates the conception in this chapter (the distinctively human life being one source from which membership rights are derived). We have in any event not exhausted the claims of Common Humanity. Such claims also reenter in part 2, which discusses collective ownership of the earth as a ground of justice. But that theme is not most plausibly understood as a development of the idea of a distinctively human life. For that reason, and because of its far-reaching implications, I discuss collective ownership in a separate part of the book, a discussion to which we turn next.

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  eBook - ePub

  Global Ethics and Global Common Goods

  • Patrick Riordan(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Even if Reus-Smit is correct in his insistence that the concern with rights in international order has a long pedigree and did not begin at mid-twentieth century, it is nonetheless the case that since the ending of the Second World War the recognition of human rights has been a major part of a complete revision of the shared horizon of international relations. This revision is variously labelled a reconceptualization and a transformation of ideas and practice in the relations between global players. Andrew Hurrell (2007; 2010) has drawn attention to this dynamic and listed all its dimensions, stressing the common aspect of its ambitious normative implications. In particular, he notes the expansion of the domain of international law with an increase in density and penetration of rules and attention to implementation. ‘A minimally acceptable order came increasingly to be seen as involving both limits on the freedom of states to resort to war and the creation of international rules that affected the domestic structures and organization of states, invested individuals and groups within states with rights and duties, and sought to embody some notion of a general common good’ (Hurrell, 2010, p. 52). States could not avoid the pressures arising from the new understanding of their role in the international order, even if it would be more convenient or comfortable for them to do so. The former Westphalian idea of sovereignty gradually gave way to a shared view that the legitimacy of states depended on how they treated their own citizens. Hurrell points to the key conceptual change ‘from the idea of the state as sovereign to idea of state as agent – an agent acting both in the interests of its own citizens and on behalf of an international community that is increasingly supposed to embody and reflect shared interests and shared values’ (2010, p. 52). Throughout his commentary on these developments Hurrell draws attention to the dimensions of shared meaning that constitute the horizon of international affairs. He stresses shared values, shared interests, shared normative expectations and shared ideas, and even mentions the notion of a general common good. This might be elaborated further as the object of concern for cooperating partners. The fostering of shared understanding and the maintenance of agreement on basic values and principles and the upholding of human rights would belong among the common goods of collaborating parties.

  However, Hurrell also notes developments in recent years that point to a revival of a Westphalian view in practice, not least because of the shift in the global distribution of economic power. All the more reason for collaborating parties in international relations to make it their common concern that the sharing of values, meanings and standards achieved to date not be diluted. It belongs to the global common good to care about these intellectual, moral and spiritual goods. But Hurrell also notes how the resilience of the Westphalian state system is making the realization of the liberal dream of an international order based on human rights more and more elusive. A number of factors are at play in these dynamics, most noticeably the emphasis on security in the context of combating perceived global terrorism. But the interest in state security is not the only influential factor in the resilience of the nation state: Hurrell points to the prevalence of nationalism as a source of identity and self-understanding, the strengthened economic role of states in the context of globalization, as well as the perception of the balance of power in both regional and global terms in the foreign relations of sovereign states (2010, pp. 67–8). Those who wanted to see a shift from a pluralist world of many states involved in power politics to a solidarist world of trans-national institutions securing human rights must be patient in accepting that the dream will not be realized so soon.

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  Global Democracy and Exclusion

  • Ronald Tinnevelt, Helder De Schutter, Ronald Tinnevelt, Helder De Schutter(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  10 UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS AS A SHARED POLITICAL IDENTITY: IMPOSSIBLE? NECESSARY? SUFFICIENT? ANDREAS FØLLESDAL Human rights scholars may worry about the present popularity of human rights talk. This is not only because of the growing mismatch between strong vocal support for human rights and weak adherence to the same norms on the ground. Another ground for worry is that human rights seem to be regarded as the appropriate solution to more and more problems. Does this popularity come at the expense of intellectual stringency about the proper function—or functions—of human rights? One of several suggested roles for human rights is as part of citizens’ “common political identity” in a stable legitimate political order—be it at the national or regional levels—or even for a future, legitimate global political order. Thus Charles Beitz observes that “[t]o whatever extent contemporary international political life can be said to have a ‘sense of justice,’ its language is the language of human rights” (Beitz 2001, 269). What are we to make of such proposals? Should human rights be part of—or even exhaust —the values or norms that democratic citizens must share, if their democratic institutions are to survive over time? Beitz’s apparently affirmative answer is not obvious; even the thoughtful Jürgen Habermas and David Miller beg to disagree. These disagreements seem to stem from competing views of the role that a common political identity plays. The present reflections address one aspect of this issue—namely, the claim that the requisite common political identity must be unique to members of the political order, to the intended exclusion of outsiders. Hence wariness about human rights in this role, since they by now are so broadly shared—at least nominally. I shall deny this assumption: the function of a common political identity does not require it to be unique to members

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