Actualizing Human Rights: Global Inequality, Future People, And Motivation

Description

This book argues that ultimately human rights can be actualized, in two senses. By answering important challenges to them, the real-world relevance of human rights can be brought out; and people worldwide can be motivated as needed for realizing human rights. Taking a perspective from moral and political philosophy, the book focuses on two challenges to human rights that have until now received little attention, but that need to be addressed if human rights are to remain plausible as a global ideal. Firstly, the challenge of global inequality: how, if at all, can one be sincerely committed to human rights in a structurally greatly unequal world that produces widespread inequalities of human rights protection? Secondly, the challenge of future people: how to adequately include future people in human rights, and how to set adequate priorities between the present and the future, especially in times of climate change? The book also asks whether people worldwide can be motivated to do what it takes to realize human rights. Furthermore, it considers the common and prominent challenges of relativism and of the political abuse of human rights. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of human rights, political philosophy, and more broadly political theory, philosophy and the wider social sciences. Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Series Page......Page 3 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright Page......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Table of Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 10 Chapter 1: Introduction: two new challenges to human rights and the question of motivation......Page 12 Part I: Preparing the ground......Page 20 2.1 The book's conception of human rights: human rights and global justice......Page 22 2.2 What are the minimum requirements of global justice?......Page 24 Chapter 3: Common challenges to human rights: the relativist and the political pawns challenge......Page 34 3.1 The relativist challenge......Page 35 3.2 The political pawns challenge......Page 41 3.3 To conclude......Page 45 Part II: Novel challenges to human rights......Page 52 Chapter 4: The challenge of global inequality......Page 54 4.1 A largely state-based world order and equal human rights protection: a tension?......Page 56 4.2 A largely state-based world order and human rights: reconsidering our commitments......Page 58 4.3 Some objections......Page 64 4.4 To conclude......Page 67 Chapter 5: The challenge of future people......Page 74 5.1 Which claims can qualify as human rights claims?......Page 76 5.2 How to prioritize among human rights claims – including between the present and the future......Page 78 5.3 Priority-setting among human rights: uncertainties, and assumptions, concerning future people......Page 87 5.4 To conclude......Page 96 Part III: Getting to realization......Page 106 Chapter 6: The question of motivation: can people be motivated as needed for realizing human rights?......Page 108 6.1 How best to approach the motivational question......Page 110 6.2 What motivates individuals to act in accordance with human rights?......Page 112 6.3 Some objections......Page 116 6.4 To conclude......Page 123 Chapter 7: Conclusion......Page 130 Bibliography......Page 134 Index......Page 140