Sources & Extracts

Review this excerpt and then go back to the main thread.

There are many theories of individuals rights. One way to think and talk about the whole range of theories has been proposed by the philosopher Mathias Risse. He writes as follows:

A host of philosophical questions arises about human rights. Why would we hold such rights? Is there a set of features of human beings on which they are based? What ought to be their function in the global order, and does this help define what they are? What rights arise in this way? Who must do what to realize them? Political philosopher Joshua Cohen ... proposes that human rights have three features: they are universal and owed by every political society to everybody; are requirements of political morality whose force does not depend on their expression in enforceable law; and are especially urgent. Any account of human rights must meet these three constraints, as well as two methodological assumptions: fidelity to major human rights documents, so that a substantial range of these rights is accounted for (granting that major human rights documents play a significant role in fixing the meaning of human rights talk); and open-endedness (we can argue in support of additional rights). However, these criteria (which I agree characterize the concept of human rights) do not entail commitments with regard to a range of questions about such rights.

The function of a conception of human rights is to provide a fuller set of answers. A conception of human rights consists of four elements: first, a  list of rights classified as human rights; second, an account of the basis on which individuals have them (an account of what features make individuals rights-holders); third, an account of why that list has that composition, a principle or a process that generates that list; and fourth, an account of who must do what to realize these rights, an account of corresponding obligations. [Mathias Risse, Global Political Philosophy, p. 14]