On Human Rights

Griffin, James

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199238781.001.0001

Cited by 789 publications

(42 citation statements)

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“…Secondly, as autonomous beings, persons have prospective projects and goals in their lives that non-persons do not, giving them a greater stake in their future lives. It is important to note that the claim here is not that humans have a greater moral worth than other sentient creatures on the basis of such capacities, a claim which is a familiar feature of traditional liberal theories (Griffin 2008). Rather, the claim is merely that these capacities are relevant to the nature and strength of entitlements.…”

Section: All Individuals Have Morally Relevant Interests and Rightsmentioning

confidence: 85%

‘Humane intervention’: the international protection of animal rights

Cochrane

Cooke

2016

Journal of Global Ethics

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Abstract:This paper explores the international implications of liberal theories which extend justice to sentient animals. In particular, it asks whether they imply that coercive military intervention in a state by external agents to prevent, halt or minimise violations of basic animal rights ('humane intervention') can be justified. In so doing, it employs Simon Caney's theory of humanitarian intervention and applies it to non-human animals. It argues that while humane intervention can be justified in principle, using Caney's assumptions, justifying any particular intervention on behalf of animals is much more difficult -and in present circumstances impossible. If these claims are correct, a number of important conclusions follow. First, all states lack legitimacy because of the horrors that they inflict upon animals. As a result of this, all states are thus prima facie liable to intervention by external agents. To remedy this situation, all states have the responsibility to massively transform their relationship with non-human animals, and to build international institutions to oversee the proper protection of their most basic rights.

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Section: All Individuals Have Morally Relevant Interests and Rightsmentioning

confidence: 85%

‘Humane intervention’: the international protection of animal rights

Cochrane

Cooke

2016

Journal of Global Ethics

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“…Thus, health is not, as we have already concluded, the most important value in life, and people should be allowed to take some risks in order to pursue (at least authentic) quality-of-life goals. 34 So, empowered people might on occasion make (autonomous) unhealthy choices, in order to reach authentic quality-of-life goals, but in general, as we concluded in previous sections, empowered people are good at taking care of their health. 32 But perhaps not for other kinds of social interventions, since (control over) quality of life (on the whole) is more important than (control over) health (even if they are causally interrelated).…”

Section: Empowerment Might Lead To Power Over Othersmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…33 I have the term from Luca Chiapperino (personal communication April 2013). 34 Note that in many cases people should also be allowed to pursue inauthentic goals. However, society should create social foundations for authenticity, as well as those for health, empowerment, and quality of life.…”

Section: Empowerment Might Lead To Power Over Othersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavior Change or Empowerment: On the Ethics of Health-Promotion Goals

Tengland

2013

Health Care Anal

102

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Behavior Change or Empowerment 2 individual's, or population's, quality of life, it is not worth trying to achieve it. Thus, we should only try to promote health if it is expected to lead (directly or indirectly) to increased quality of life, that is, if the specific health increase either constitutes quality of life, or causally contributes to it.2 Most increases in health do, however, contribute to quality of life, even if sometimes only minutely, and some health increases, mainly in (health-related) wellbeing, constitute increases in quality of life [80]. 3But quality-of-life-related health promotion is not all there is to the goals of public health.First of all, most ill health is caused by disease and injury [52; 81-82]. Therefore preventing such states will also be important goals for public health. 4 Second, as will be clear later, since very little is directly done to individuals or populations, health-wise, we also have to consider the 'opportunities' to stay healthy, e.g., promoting those environmental and social factors that contribute to increased or sustained health, especially since public-health work mainly targets the healthy population [20; 23]. Furthermore, the average aggregated health status in a population, and its increase (or decrease), is important, but it is not all that should concern us.It is also of importance how health is distributed in a population [13, p. 41 ff.; 87]. Thus, health inequalities between groups have to be taken into account when evaluating the health status of a population [13, pp. 43-44; 21; 93]. Kinds of interventions and some contemporary health problemsInterventions can be initiated on various levels in society. There are 'top-down' measures, such as fiscal policy, macro environment changes, health campaigns, or legislation, and most 2 There is no room to develop a theory of quality of life here, but a few remarks need to be made. It seems to me that what best explains what makes a life go well for a person (her quality of life) is that her (final) desires are fulfilled. It follows that it is not sufficient that the desires are only believed to be fulfilled (an idea that would permit also false beliefs to contribute to a person's quality of life), which is the case in some happiness theories of quality of life. It also seems plausible that the desires that count most (in evaluating the good life) are the ones that are authentic, i.e., that are autonomous and informed. Brülde, who has argued for the above position [12; see also 72], adds a hedonistic dimension to his theory of quality of life. The best life is one where one's (authentic)desires are fulfilled and one experiences well-being, and does not suffer. I will assume here that this dimension is not necessary, since to experience well-being, and be free from suffering, are (in most cases) covered by a person's (authentic) desires.3 In a public health-context we differentiate between individuals and populations. What might constitute a relevant and important health-promotive activity on the individual level, ...

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“…They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood' (UDHR, article 1). When read and analyzed by European scholars though, the concepts of 'dignity', 'reason' and 'consciousness' have been interpreted as originating from western philosophy, and the term brotherhood has been understood in the light of the French revolution and 'rights' have been seen as deriving from the American declaration of independence (Griffin 2008;Ignatieff 2003). So even if the UDHR contains broad and inclusive concepts that give it a character of abstractness in the sense that there are no outright references to different religious or cultural values in the document, the UDHR has been read by western scholars through a western, liberal approach to its content.…”

Section: The Impasse In Discourse On Human Rightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconciling Universality and Particularity through a Cosmopolitan Outlook on Human Rights

Adami

2012

CCS Journal

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Human rights are today criticized as not compatible with different cultural values and the debate has circulated around Asian values and Islamic values as in dichotomy with human rights as universal ethics (Ignatieff, 2003). The theoretical dichotomy between universality and particularity is questioned pragmatically in this paper through a historical study. The working process of drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1946-48, which included thousands of people, is explored as a cosmopolitan space in which individuals from different cultural contexts met to negotiate human rights through cultural narratives. The process where particular values were negotiated with universal notion on human rights resulted in a common proclamation (UDHR) without a common philosophical or ideological ground. This paper puts forth a thesis that human rights discourse can work as a cosmopolitan space, in which particular value systems meet in processes characterized by conflict and cohesion. Hence human rights can be understood as a master narrative compatible with different conflicting cultural narratives (Gibson & Somers, 1994).

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On Human Rights

Cited by 789 publications

References 0 publications

‘Humane intervention’: the international protection of animal rights

‘Humane intervention’: the international protection of animal rights

Behavior Change or Empowerment: On the Ethics of Health-Promotion Goals

Reconciling Universality and Particularity through a Cosmopolitan Outlook on Human Rights

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