The Challenge of Human Rights Origin, Development and Significance

by Mahoney, Jack

• ISBN13: 9781405152419
• ISBN10: 1405152419
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-13
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

The Challenge of Human Rights traces the history of human rights theory from classical antiquity through the enlightenment to the modern human rights movement, and analyses the significance of human rights in today's increasingly globalized world. Provides an engaging study of the origin and the philosophical and political development of human rights discourse. Offers an original defence of human rights. Explores the significance of human rights in the context of increasing globalisation. Confronts the major objections to human rights, including the charge of western ethical imperialism and cultural relativism.Argues that human rights logically culminate in an ethical cosmopolitanism to reflect the moral unity of the human race.

Author Biography

Jack Mahoney is Emeritus Professor of Moral and Social Theology in the University of London and is a former Principal of Heythrop College, University of London. He is the author of several books and of many articles on general and applied ethics, including medical ethics, business and professional ethics and theological ethics, and he has lectured and broadcast widely in these subjects at home and abroad.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	viii
1 Human Rights in History	1
The Ancient Classical World	1
The World of the Bible	3
The Medieval World	5
Renaissance and Reformation Thought	7
Hobbes and Rousseau	11
Revolution in England	17
American Independence	21
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man	24
English Resistance to Human Rights	25
German Developments: Kant and Marx	33
2 The Modern Human Rights Movement	42
The Charter of the United Nations Organization	43
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights	46
Continental Developments	53
The 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights	56
Wider Human Rights Developments	59
British Developments	63
Conclusion	64
3 Clarifying Human Rights	71
Some Useful Distinctions	72
Rights and Duties	85
The Proliferation of Rights	91
Individuals-in-Society	98
Selfishness and Social Divisiveness	101
Ethical Imperialism?	104
A Challenge to All Cultures	109
The Strengths of Human Rights	111
4 Establishing Human Rights	119
A Matter of Belief	119
An Essential Requirement	124
The Nature of Persons	127
Intuitionist Approaches	136
Human Dignity	144
"The Wonder of Our Being"	147
Major Opponents	150
Conclusion	155
5 The Globalizing of Human Rights	162
Global Expansion	162
Seeking a Global Ethic	165
Cultural Relativism	166
Global Human Rights	173
Towards Cosmopolitanism	178
The Inadequacies of States	180
"Principled" Cosmopolitanism	184
Human Solidarity	186
Bibliography	191
Index	205