Abstract
I propose human rights as self-authored through a personality structure of “assertive selfhood.” To that end I identify three features of self-authorship: emergent through collective political action; as a critical stance; and borne by non-idiosyncratic norms. So conceived, human rights require a field of recognition as a social structure supportive of claims to assertive selfhood. I show that the capacity to self-grant depends critically on the participant’s personality structure as well as on the structure of some of the social institutions he or she inhabits. But like any political vision, the project for self-granted human rights has distinct limits, above all with respect to the many inequalities among potential self-authors.
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Notes
A social constructionist approach challenges a number of contemporary authors. For example, an other-worldly notion of “sacredness” forms the core of Perry’s (2007) recent contribution to a long-standing debate about whether human rights require a specifically theological foundation (a debate robust already in the work of John Locke (1632–1704) and John Finnis (born 1940)). Human rights for Perry follow from an inherent and inalienable “sacredness of human beings.” It grounds the moral capacity of all human beings, their moral equality with each other and their moral obligation to one another, including the obligation of human rights. Similar arguments have been advanced by other contemporary authors. Murphy (1988, p. 239) claims that the “liberal theory of rights requires a doctrine of human dignity … that cannot be … detached from a belief in God or at least from a world view that would be properly called religious in some metaphysically profound sense.” Only by resort to the supernatural can Gaita (1991) ground claims that human individuals are ends in themselves, worthy of unconditional respect, with inalienable dignity and rights. According to Hampton (1998, p. 120), the “fundamental wrong done, when the inherent dignity of any human being is not respected—when any human being is violated—is not that our local (‘Eurocentric’) sentiments are offended” (Hampton 1998, p. 120). She articulates human-rights supernaturalism in Perry’s sense: the “fundamental wrong” of human-rights violations is that the “very order of the world—the normative order of the world—is transgressed” (Hampton 1998, p. 120).
Beyond such basic rights might be a right to education, to free choice of employment, and to equal pay for equal work, among other possibilities.
Compare Rancière (2004, pp. 299–300).
A pragmatic notion of human rights is merely one more species of belief with its own foundation, of course. The notion of belief as primarily action-guiding derives from Peirce (1986, p. 21). He asserts for example that “Conviction determines us to act in a particular way.” From Dewey (1981, p. 128) comes the search for valid propositions as an attempt at practical problem-solving: “this is the meaning of truth: processes of change so directed that they achieve an intended consummation.” Equally pragmatic is the spirit of Marx’s (1976, p. 372) eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, the claim that philosophers have always only interpreted the world in various ways but that what matters is to improve it. The pragmatist understanding is distinct from Marx’s in that it dispenses with the self that Marx elsewhere construes metaphysically. Resonant with pragmatism is Marx’s emphasis on human agency.
If a foundationalism universally valid a priori adds nothing to the project for human rights, why not discard it? Support for discarding comes from Hannah Arendt even as she explicitly rejects the pragmatism I promote in her name (as I argue in later pages): “I am rather certain that I am neither a liberal nor a positivist nor a pragmatist” (Arendt 1953, p. 80). Here I draw insights from Arendt that I consider pragmatist rather than postmodern; elsewhere (Gregg 1998) I distinguish pragmatism from postmodernism.
It might only reinforce powerful, liberal democratic states and their organs as the main enforcer and guarantor of rights, which is problematic for so much of the non-liberal, but human-rights-capable world.
That is, a person “in excess” of the usual, proper, or prescribed membership or qualification for membership in political community and communal rights.
Here “human rights movements do not require the adoption of a human rights consciousness by individuals at the grass roots” and “commitment to rights” need not be “deep or long lasting” and may include “quite different levels of commitment to rights” (Merry 2006, p. 215). Movements here need to frame human rights in “images, symbols, narratives, and religious or secular language that resonate with the local community. When a group of batterers is taught not to hit in Hong Kong, this is presented as part of Confucian ideas of marriage” (Merry 2006, p. 220). On framing human rights more generally, see Gregg (2010).
Malaysia practices arbitrary and preventive detention, and abuses migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.
Singapore’s legal framework perpetuates an authoritarian state tightly controlled by the ruling People’s Action Party, which has won all elections since 1959 and is often represented by as many of 82 of the 84 parliamentarians with full voting rights. Singapore law authorizes censorship of content and distribution of print material and films, severe limits on public processions and assemblies, and prolonged detention of suspects without trial. Its penal code mandates caning along with imprisonment for some 30 offenses, including drug and security offenses. Singapore is believed to have one of the world's highest per capita execution rates, although statistics are not made public. Most sentences involve some 20 drug-related offenses for which execution is mandatory.
See Chabal (2002).
This conception need not assume complete consistency or comprehensiveness.
See Thompson (2000, p. 260).
No NGO-movement has ever championed this right, at least no movement comparable to movements advocating other rights.
Simpson (2001, p. 300).
Murray (2004, pp. 271–279).
See, e.g., Parkinson (2007, pp. 103–132).
Maul (2007).
Eckel (2009, p. 479).
M’Baye (1972/73, p. 534).
Eckel (2009, p. 481).
Nor would the unborn.
To be sure, “moral agency is not a single uniform property—different persons exhibit it in different ways” (Meyers 1985, p. 115).
By “capabilities” I refer to Amartya Sen’s “capability approach” (and to Nussbaum’s, which is similar). It offers one conception of the individual overcoming barriers to his or her assertive selfhood. That approach “builds on a general concern with freedoms to achieve (including the capabilities to function)” (Sen 1992, p. 129). Relevant functions may “vary from the most elementary ones, such as being well-nourished, avoiding escapable morbidity and premature mortality, etc., to quite complex and sophisticated achievements, such as having self-respect, being capable of taking part in the life of the community, and so on” (Sen 1992, p. 5).
On this view, self-ownership entails the recognition of others’ self-ownership, and self-ownership means nothing if not a right to self-determination. If one has a right to self-determination in that sense (namely because the individual owns him- or herself), then all persons would seem equally entitled to grant themselves human rights. On this approach, people “need” to own themselves as a condition not only of granting themselves human rights but also of having those rights recognized by others. Self-ownership would be constrained by the Lockean injunction to leave “enough and as good in common” for others: I may grant myself human rights only insofar as my grant does not deprive other persons of their self-granted human rights (Locke 2005, p. 288). Thus the human rights of one person must not render any other self-granting person worse off in terms of possessing recognized human rights.
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Gregg, B. Individuals as authors of human rights: not only addressees. Theor Soc 39, 631–650 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9129-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9129-x