As the first stage of the work at the survey you are to give a list of human rights.

 

It seems undeniable that whatever human rights we support, we have, and certainly should have, reasons for doing so. It is equally clear that to take human rights seriously we must take the reasons for them seriously; that to take the reasons for human rights seriously, whatever those reasons might be, we must develop as wide a range of human rights as such reasons dictate and implement those rights as vigorously as such reasons dictate; and that if we fail to produce a close match between rights and reasons despite our best efforts, we must acknowledge that this is the case and render a proper account of why this has to be the case. This leaves open the question of what the most compelling reasons for human rights are, if such reasons exist. There is little doubt, however, that for any set of such reasons to do justice to the sheer importance of human rights, it must appeal to something deep and comprehensive about human beings as bearers of such rights. My hunch is that any reasonably compelling set of reasons for human rights call for a range of human rights some of which, at least, are extremely difficult to realize given the scarcity of resources and the present politico-economic organization of the world. In other words, if the suggested reasons for human rights are to go deep enough, then the rights they require, at least some of these rights, will be unrealistically demanding, or so I hypothesize. On the other hand, if the proposed human rights are to be realistically capable of implementation, then the chances are that the reasons that more or less exactly match them will lack depth. In both cases, it is assumed that the suggested reasons for human rights are consistent with the proposed rights; that is, there is no gap between the proposed human rights and the reasons given for them. There is, however, a third scenario, one in which the proposed human rights are weaker than the reasons proffered for them, and this makes it possible to have the best of both worlds, as it were - a set of sufficiently deep reasons for human rights combined with a set of feasible human rights. Such would be the case, for example, if the proposed human rights include only negative rights and yet the reasons given for them appeal to human flourishing or even, more modestly, only to human dignity. There is an obvious and important sense in which, in this kind of scenario, the reasons for human rights are not taken seriously. The third scenario can be more precisely described in terms of the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory. Although the human rights discourse does not normally draw this distinction, it tends implicitly to operate at the level of ideal theory in offering reasons for human rights but shifts, without warning, to the level of non-ideal theory as soon as it proceeds to draw up a concrete list of human rights. Insofar as this is the case, the gap between the proposed human rights and the reasons given for them translates into a gap between the real (or non-ideal) and the ideal. What is problematic is that this latter gap goes unacknowledged much as the former does and, as a result, a non-ideal list of rights is presented as if it lived up fully to the ideal reasons offered, as if no gap existed between the real and the ideal. In other words, the universality and privileged status accorded to the non-ideal list of human rights fall short of the ideal reasons on which they depend, and hence any claim to the universality and privileged status of such rights is false and dangerously reifying. In this context, taking the reasons for human rights seriously means being vigilant against confusion of the real and the ideal and against the reification of the real as if it were the ideal. The scenario just sketched - whether in terms of the gap between proposed human rights and reasons given for them or in terms of the gap between the real and the ideal - is, I suggest, characteristic of the human rights discourse today. This is not surprising, for the human rights discourse operates in two worlds at once: the intellectual world of argument and justification and the practical world of policy making and implementation. Insofar as it operates in the intellectual world, the human rights discourse is concerned with the best reasons for human rights; insofar as it operates in the practical world, it is preoccupied with the codification and promotion of feasible human rights. It seems unlikely that the best reasons for human rights can be given full expression in any feasible set of human rights, at least in our present world. One explanation for this state of affairs is, as I have just suggested, that the human rights discourse is in the business of promoting realistic human rights in the real world. This should be taken to imply not that those involved in the human rights discourse are conscious of the gap between rights and reasons, the real and the ideal, but that they are simply unable to do anything about it given the constraints under which they operate; for their ideological biases might blind them to inconsistencies between the human rights they uphold and the reasons they provide for them. I call a bias ideological in the sense that it springs (in part) from the interested perspectives of those involved (or of those with whom they identify), and in the further sense that those involved either are not aware that this is the case or act as if this were not the case, thereby allowing particular perspectives to be represented as universal ones. My claim here, to be fleshed out later, is that much of the human rights discourse is ideological in this twofold sense. What I have said up to this point does not stand or fall with any particular proposal of the most compelling reasons for human rights, and it does not imply that there exists a set of such reasons that all reasonable people must accept. I intend this to apply to much of what I have to say in this essay. When I argue along these lines, I am engaged in what (in the Marxist or Marxist-inspired tradition) is sometimes called ideology critique, a kind of immanent critique, and my concern is to analyze a way of thinking about human rights by showing its internal inconsistencies, relating such inconsistencies to the interested perspectives of the proponents, and explaining how both the inconsistencies and the interested perspectives (partly) responsible for them are hidden from view, even from the view of the proponents. Such ideology critique does not assume that all human rights discourse must (1) be guilty of creating a gap between proposed human rights and reasons given for them, between the real and the ideal, or (2) either uphold unrealistic human rights (if the suggested reasons are to be strong enough) or (3) be content with insufficiently strong reasons (if the proposed human rights are to be realistic enough). It confines itself to critiquing those instances of the human rights discourse of which (1), especially, is the case. In the spirit of a philosophical experiment, I also explore the possibility that indeed all human rights discourse in our present world is confronted with the three options outlined previously and that all instances of the human rights discourse that manage to avoid (2) and (3) will be trapped by (1) and be ideological in the twofold sense described earlier. To this end, I propose my own specific set of reasons for human rights, reasons based on my understanding of the familiar idea of human agency. I claim, first, that agency-based reasons are the most compelling reasons for human rights, and, second, that on any plausible account of respect for human agency, our customary list of human rights - including civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights - falls a long way short, and, more radically, the concept of human rights as such will fall short. If these claims turn out to be valid, they will constitute an extension of my ideology critique of human rights by raising it to a higher level of abstraction so that it covers not only existing instances of the human rights discourse but also the human rights concept as such. However, the attempt at such an extension is distinct from, and more ambitious than, the (immanent) ideology critique proper, for it must be shown rather than assumed that the agency-based reasons for human rights I propose are ones that all plausible accounts of human rights, and hence the concept of human rights as such, must accept if they do not already accept them. Thus, the charge of ideological misrepresentation and reification can apply to the human rights discourse in two distinct senses. It can do so in the fully immanent sense that a particular human rights discourse fails to take its own set of reasons seriously by working out a list of human rights commensurate with it, or else by acknowledging the existence of a gap between rights and reasons, the real and the ideal. Or it can do so in the stronger, though less unquestionably immanent, sense that the human rights concept fails to take seriously the best reasons for human rights (in the shape of agency-based rea- sons) - a set of reasons that render the gap between rights and reasons, the real and the ideal, all the larger and the failure to acknowledge it, along with the resulting reification of non-ideal rights, all the more suspect. Even when I engage in ideology critique in the stronger sense, I am not proposing taking the reasons for human rights seriously as a solution to the deep-seated problems that beset the human rights discourse. Rather, my inquiry into the reasons for human rights and my insistence on taking those reasons seriously will lead me to the thought that if we are to take the reasons for human rights seriously we must be prepared for the possibility that the best or deepest reasons for human rights can undermine the very concept of human rights. This would not mean the abandonment of the most defensible values that inform the human rights discourse or the abandonment of the most worthwhile activities traditionally justified in the name of human rights. What it does mean is that out of the most serious concern for human rights we might need to give up the very concept of human rights, as distinct from the activities associated with it, for failing in principle to make good the deepest reasons that give them their raison d'etre and importance.

In its standard usage, the concept of human rights is poised between that of moral (or "natural") rights and that of legal (or positive) rights. A human right is a moral right that ought to be a legal right - and ought to be so for a particular kind of reason, namely, that the subject of the purported right is a human being - but is not yet (universally) a legal right; hence the need for the human rights discourse: the avowed aim of its promoters is to turn every such moral right into a legal right (universally). Arguments about human rights within the human rights discourse are arguments about which moral rights ought to become legal rights. Various political initiatives launched in the name of human rights are attempts to turn one such argument or another into the legal codification of the set of moral rights it espouses. What I find problematic about the concept of human rights is not the idea that some moral rights ought to be legal rights but the fact that the concept of human rights picks out a subset of moral rights as especially important, and universally so, and therefore especially worthy of legal codification and enforcement. This has the unavoidable, and often unfortunate, implication that other moral rights become less pressing, and universally so, and are not important enough to count as "human rights." There would be no need for the concept of human rights, beyond those of moral and legal rights, if it were not thought that such a special subset of moral rights existed - those rights that human beings ought to enjoy simply by virtue of being human. This is because "human rights," quite unlike "moral rights" and "legal rights," is at once a conceptual category (containing the subset of moral rights that ought to be legal rights, whatever those rights might be) and a substantive category (actually naming x, y, and z as the only moral rights that make up this subset). The concept of human rights is invented to inject a fixed content into what would otherwise be an open category, either moral rights or legal rights, whose very openness would render the concept of human rights, as distinct from the concepts of moral and legal rights, altogether unnecessary. For this reason, it is an intrinsically reifying concept. The question is whether what is thus reified corresponds to anything likewise fixed in the human condition. This in turn raises a question that is not sufficiently revisited in the human rights discourse and indeed often seems to be taken as resolved once and for all; namely, what exactly are human rights for in the first place?

A human right is clearly not an end in itself, and it is not usually a sufficient condition for the set of ends it is designed to help achieve. Its importance lies rather in its being thought a necessary condition for a set of ends, including the most abstract "end" of living one's life in a way that is worthy of a human being. To be sure, human rights need not, perhaps should not merely, be conceived in terms of (necessary) means to (important) ends but instead can be thought of in terms of what human beings qua human beings ought to enjoy or deserve to enjoy. Even so, human rights matter to real people in the real world not (only) because they are among the things individuals ought to enjoy (and enjoying them is a sign of being "respected" even if their lives are otherwise miserable) but because they are important conditions for pursuing the ends individuals value - and for maintaining the very humanity that is reflected in those ends and in the process of pursuing them. Whether a life goes well or badly is a matter of a life as a whole; that is, whether those (permissible) ends that make up a person's life are achieved, not whether his or her rights are respected. Rights constitute only a part of that totality. Yet it does not make sense to think of human rights in terms that fully cover that totality; that is, in terms of rights to the comprehensive satisfaction of ends. In principle, there need be nothing wrong with so conceiving human rights that they fall short of being sufficient conditions for achieving the ends that make them matter. The question is how we should divide this totality so that human rights cover the appropriate portion of it, leaving the rest of it to the influence of other relevant factors. How we answer this question depends, ultimately, on what we think a human being is. This is a huge issue, and the details involved in coming to grips with it are highly complex. But in principle, there is no avoiding, it seems to me, somehow placing the idea of human agency at the center of it all. Whatever else human beings might be, they are, fundamentally, agents - beings with the desire and capacity to act rather than merely be acted on, to form and carry out projects of their own rather than serve as mere instruments of others' purposes. To be more precise, instead of saying that we are agents, it is more appropriate to say that as human beings we comprehend our experience in terms of agency, without which our whole moral and political life as we know it, made possible by such concepts as right and wrong, responsibility, sovereignty, moral worth and guilt, resentment, indignation, and so on, would simply collapse. By means of such concepts we attribute power (causal efficacy and responsibility) to a subject or potential subject. What is fundamentally at stake in power is subjectivity - the formation and maintenance of a self and a sense of self. A self is not given but rather formed by, and in the process of, experiences of power. It is only through willing and acting that a self is able to emerge; a subject that forms intentions, causes things to happen in accord with such intentions, registers such intentions and the effects of carrying them out as emanating from and belonging to a self, and values this self and its activities. Power is always sought as the power of a self or subject, or else it would be a pure waste of energy. Conversely, a self or subject can be formed only through power, through intentional and goal-directed activities, or else it would be nothing more than a potential. Thus, agency is a twofold concept, consisting of the attribution of power and the formation and maintenance of subjectivity. On this view, agency is not a brute fact of human existence, something we can empirically prove but an interpretation of human experience. Its ultimate proof lies in our unavoidable need for the attribution of power and the formation of subjectivity, in the possibility of satisfying this need under appropriate material and political conditions and in the dire consequences of failing to meet this need.

Before we consider the implications of this all too brief account of agency for human rights, we must deal with two major objections to treating agency-based reasons as the single most important set of reasons for human rights. The first objection is that there are other sets of reasons for human rights that seem to work equally well or better and that might be more acceptable in some cultures. It is certainly true that various other ways of justifying human rights are more readily accepted in some cultures - a fact that motivates the search for some kind of international overlapping consensus. But this fact by itself is of no relevance, as we are not concerned here with the empirical appeal of one justification for human rights or another. What matters for our purposes is the philosophical cogency of these other justifications for human rights vis-a-vis the justification in terms of agency. Amy Gutmann writes, "Human rights are more easily defended in some cultures by claims about human dignity, or the respect owed to human beings, or the equal creation of human beings, than by the notion of human agency as a source of value in the world."' Setting aside the empirical appeal of these other arguments for human rights, and setting aside the argument from the equal creation of human beings for its "sectarian" character, I suggest that the arguments from human dignity and from the respect owed to human beings do not go deep enough. More precisely, I suggest that the ideas of human dignity and respect for human beings presuppose some account of what human beings are like such that beings of this kind possess dignity and deserve respect. These ideas are so familiar that it seldom occurs to us to ask about their ground, but once we do, we will, I believe, have to appeal to the idea of human agency and say that human beings possess dignity and deserve respect as agents. Thus, my claim is that all sufficiently deep reasons for human rights either appeal directly to the idea of human agency or rely on ideas that presuppose human agency.

The second objection to treating agency-based reasons as the single most important set of reasons for human rights is a familiar one. There are, or have been, societies in which the idea of agency and of respect for agency does not figure prominently, if at all, in the moral and political culture and yet whose members seem to lead worthwhile and even flourishing lives. These societies, and their members, have a prima facie claim to equal moral standing with those other societies for whom agency is an important moral and political value. In other words, only some cultures resort to such values as freedom and autonomy, values that allow the attribution of agency to the individual, while other cultures, of apparently equal merit, reject such values and do happily without the attribution of agency to the individual. In response to this objection, I adopt the same approach I followed earlier in discussing justifications for human rights that do not appeal directly to agency, and I try to show that the idea of agency is an unavoidable presupposition even in moral and political cultures that ostensibly reject it. Recall that I have presented an account of agency in terms of the attribution of power and the formation of subjectivity. This approach to agency has the advantage of allowing us not to reduce agency to freedom or autonomy. Since the need for agency is an essential feature of human being as such, not just a feature of human being in so-called individualistic societies, we must treat the invocation of freedom as but one strategy for the attribution of power and formation of subjectivity. Call this strategy agency through freedom: what happens here is the attribution of power to oneself and the formation of a corresponding type of subjectivity. The problem with reducing attribution of power to attribution of power to oneself and thereby reducing agency to freedom, is that in some societies, past and present, people generally do not interpret their experience in terms of freedom and do not seem to care much for freedom. Rather, the source of whatever is to be valued, or at least the means of access to it, is some external authority or exemplar with whom they identify, and it is only by means of such identification that they are able to stand in a proper relationship to the right and the good and acquire the motivation to act accordingly. A crucial feature of such identification, however, is that it always goes together with the attribution of power to an external authority or exemplar. Often, the power thus attributed takes the form of truth - truth matters because it confers power - and accordingly, identification with the authority or exemplar takes the form of belief or faith. Whatever form power might take, when one identifies with an authority or exemplar, one simultaneously denies power to oneself and recuperates it, to one degree or another, through identification with the one to whom one has attributed power. Thus, identification does not preclude attribution of power but presupposes it. Indeed, in everything we do that is humanly meaningful we are in one way or another engaged in the attribution of power and the formation or maintenance of subjectivity. Someone must have power: if one does not have power oneself, then one will appropriate power through identification with the one who does. The need for agency, for power organized as subjectivity, is always expressed, however obliquely, in what might appear to be an act of pure identification, and accordingly such an act can be called agency through identification. In agency through identification, although attribution of power is not directly to oneself, it is nevertheless oneself who must undertake such identification. Moreover, given the role of identification in the formation of subjectivity, one must undertake such identification with a significant degree of willingness - one must will such identification. Thus the existence of individual will is presupposed, indeed honored, in the very act of self-denial (it is self-denial, after all), whether such self-denial takes the form of submission to Heaven, faith in God, or belief in objective truth. To hold that identification presupposes agency, that there is a moment of subjectivity to all acts of self-denial, is to insist that the need for agency, for power organized as subjectivity, is an essential feature of human being and that any adequate picture of human existence must take this feature into account, even in forms of life in which people ostensibly deny power to themselves. Thus, the key to understanding so-called collectivistic societies is not to avoid explanations in terms of agency but to see how attributions of power are possible, even if not made through such values as freedom and autonomy, and how subjectivity is possible, even if not formed through attributions of power to oneself. A human society in which no attribution of power and hence no formation of subjectivity ever take place is not a recognizably human society, as distinct from the natural world, and a human being who neither attributes power to himself nor identifies with possessors of power and is therefore unable to become a subject is not a recognizably human being, as distinct from a mere object. This does not mean, however, that identification allows as much room for agency as freedom does. On the contrary, the point of showing agency to be at work in both freedom and identification is in part to allow us to compare freedom and identification in terms of the principal feature they have in common. Thus there is arguably a sense in which agency through freedom affords a more direct experience of agency than agency through identification does. The question then is whether, under conditions maximally free of distorted communication, agency through freedom would be the preferred form of agency, whereas agency through identification is second best, as it were, in that it relies on distorted communication to one degree or another. Clearly, agency through identification presupposes an extremely high degree of respect for the authority or exemplar to whom power (often in the form of truth) is attributed and with whom identification (often in the form of belief or faith) is sought. But what can possibly be the cause of such respect? How is it possible for the respect one person has for another to be so profound that one is willing to forego, without apparent coercion, his or her own direct exercise of agency altogether? Must coercion in fact be present in some form, however covert? Or, in the absence of coercion, is distorted communication, especially regarding the ontological or moral status of the authority or exemplar, a necessary condition for the creation of such respect? It can appear that sometimes people willingly accept a situation in which basic liberties are denied or not even thematized. When this happens, however, it seems to be invariably the result of distorted communication, often carried out in a society more or less closed to outside influence and information. Such distorted communication serves to misrepresent the ontological or moral status of the authority or exemplar vis-a-vis that of ordinary people and thereby make the latter relinquish their own power in favor of identification with those few who are thought to be in unique possession of truth or efficacy. It is a sad comment on human history that suppression of the direct form of individual agency has often succeeded. Yet, the very difficulty of sustaining such suppression and the fact that the success of such suppression depends on the possibility of identification and hence of some expression of agency, however indirect, provide telling proof that the need for agency, and indeed for attribution of power to oneself, constitute an ineradicable part of our humanity. Such criticisms need not apply to agency through identification as such. They can be effectively answered in those situations in which identification is genuinely voluntary and a social arrangement based on identification is underwritten by informed individual consent or endorsement - that is, by agency through freedom. It is an open question, however, whether such situations actually exist or can exist. To the extent that they do or can, agency through identification is compatible with, indeed dependent on, the protection of certain essential individual liberties.

 

1. hunch – предчувствие, догадка

2. to proffer – предлагать

3. to reify – материализовать, превращать в нечто конкретное

4. vigilant – бдительный, неусыпный

5. constraint – принуждённость, стеснение

6. bias – уклон, предубеждение, пристрастие

7. plausible – правдоподобный, вероятный

8. commensurate – соответственный, соразмерный

9. immanent – присущий, постоянный

10. abandonment – отказ, оставление, заброшенность

11. raison d'etre – смысл существования

12. to espouse – поддерживать (идею)

13. intrinsically – существенно

14. efficacy – эффективность, действенность

15. brute – жестокий, бесчеловечный; бессмысленный, неразумный

16. dire – ужасный, страшный; полный, крайний

17. cogency – убедительность, неоспоримость, неопровержимость

18. invocation – призыв, обращение

19. to recuperate – восстанавливать силы

20. to preclude – предотвращать, устранять

21. exemplar – образец, пример для подражания

22. coercion – принуждение, насилие

23. covert – скрытый, завуалированный, тайный

24. to relinquish – сдавать, оставлять, отказываться

25. ineradicable – неискоренимый

 

2. Discussion points.

 

l The author goes deep into the problem of human rights and reasons. What reasons could you propose?

l Differentiate between “human rights”, “moral rights” and “legal rights”.

l What is meant by human agency?

l By itself the "standard" list of human rights, such as freedom of speech and association, freedom of movement, right to due process, and so on, falls a long way short of what is required by any plausible account of respect for individual agency and of society's responsibility for individuals' well-being. In other words, individuals have rights to far fewer things than would be sufficient to leave the outcome of their efforts relatively free of the influence of factors that do not bear the imprint of their agency and for which they are not responsible.