An Introduction to Political Philosophy: critical
contemplation in the run up to the election.
David Carpenter
University Ethics Adviser
Principal Lecturer in Social and
Political Philosophy
The big rights debate: the
future of human rights
Session 4 April 29th 2015
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publication
s/research/key-issues-for-the-newparliament/security-and-liberty/from-thehuman-rights-act-to-a-bill-of-rights/
Such cases have fed concern that the courts are becoming
more “activist” and involved in dealing with “small p”
political questions that would previously have been
settled by politicians and administrators. Some political
figures have criticised the way in which the courts have
dealt with an increase in public law (judicial review) and
human rights cases. There sometimes appears to be a
tension between the principles of the supremacy of
Parliament and the rule of law, exacerbated by extensive
commentary on the Act. This has resulted in friction in
policy areas such as asylum, immigration and counterterrorism.
While it seems unlikely that the UK would opt out of the
European Convention on Human Rights, if the HRA were
repealed and the Convention rights were no longer
contained in UK law, aggrieved parties might once again
have to take their case to the Strasbourg court for
determination. Moreover, depending on the funding
available (through legal aid or otherwise), parties might
find it less easy to bring rights-related proceedings.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/03/tories-proposal-british-bill-of-rights-incoherent-human-rights-actstrasbourg
Revealed: Blair attack on human rights law
· Letter to Reid demands urgent action
· Police call for end to early jail releases
Ned Temko and Jamie Doward Sunday May 14, 2006 Observer
Tony Blair is planning a radical overhaul of Britain's controversial human rights
legislation after claims that the present laws put the rights of criminals above those
of victims. In a move which brought immediate criticism from human rights' experts,
the Prime Minister wants the government to have the power to override court
rulings. The move comes only days after Blair criticised a senior judge for preventing
the deportation of nine Afghan refugees who hijacked a plane to Britain. Downing
Street said he was determined to find a way around such 'barmy' court rulings. Blair
unveiled his plans in a letter to the new Home Secretary, John Reid, in which he set
out his 'most urgent policy tasks'. Legal experts and civil liberties groups accused
Blair of playing politics with fundamental rights. The Observer has obtained a copy of
the letter, which says it is essential to 'ensure the law-abiding majority can live
without fear'. It adds: 'We will need to look again at whether primary legislation is
needed to address the issue
A Short History of Human Rights
The belief that everyone, by virtue of her or his humanity, is entitled to
certain human rights is fairly new. Its roots, however, lie in earlier tradition
and documents of many cultures; it took the catalyst of World War II to propel
human rights onto the global stage and into the global conscience.
Throughout much of history, people acquired rights and responsibilities
through their membership in a group – a family, indigenous nation, religion,
class, community, or state. Most societies have had traditions similar to the
"golden rule" of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The
Hindu Vedas, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, the Bible, the Quran
(Koran), and the Analects of Confucius are five of the oldest written sources
which address questions of people’s duties, rights, and responsibilities. In
addition, the Inca and Aztec codes of conduct and justice and an Iroquois
Constitution were Native American sources that existed well before the 18th
century. In fact, all societies, whether in oral or written tradition, have had
systems of propriety and justice as well as ways of tending to the health and
welfare of their members.
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/edumat/hreduseries/hereandnow/Part-1/short-history.htm
• Magna Carta (1215)
• Petition of Right (1628)
• US Constitution (1787)
• French Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the
Citizen (1789)
• US Bill of Rights (1791
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
In its preamble and in Article 1, the Declaration
unequivocally proclaims the inherent rights of all human
beings: “Disregard and contempt for human rights have
resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the
conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in
which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and
belief and freedom from fear and want has been
proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common
people...All human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and rights.”
http://www.humanrights.com/what-are-human-rights/brief-history/the-united-nations.html
John Locke (1632–1704)
John Locke (1632–1704) is among the most influential political philosophers of the
modern period. In the Two Treatises of Government, he defended the claim that men
are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally
subject to a monarch. He argued that people have rights, such as the right to life, liberty,
and property, that have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society.
Locke used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for
understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where
people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the
government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives,
liberty, and property. Since governments exist by the consent of the people in order to
protect the rights of the people and promote the public good, governments that fail to
do so can be resisted and replaced with new governments. Locke is thus also important
for his defense of the right of revolution. Locke also defends the principle of majority
rule and the separation of legislative and executive powers. In the Letter Concerning
Toleration, Locke denied that coercion should be used to bring people to (what the ruler
believes is) the true religion and also denied that churches should have any coercive
power over their members. Locke elaborated on these themes in his later political
writings, such as the Second Letter on Toleration and Third Letter on Toleration.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778)
“The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the
whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and under which each
individual, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free
as before. “
“-the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole
community; for, in the first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the
same for all; and, this being so, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to
others”
“-each man in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate
over which he does not acquire the same rights as he yields others over himself, he gains
an equivalent for everything he loses, and an increase in force for the preservation of what
he has.”
Edmund Burke (12 January 1729 – 9 July 1797)
Burke
These metaphysic rights entering into
common life, like the rays of light which
penetrate into a dense medium, are, by the
laws of nature refracted from their straight
line
Mary Wollstonecraft 1759 - 1797
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
Rights: the disagreement with Burke and the extension of the
idea of rights based on reason (those that were arrived at by
abstraction – so despised by Burke) to women and Children
The following video provides a broad summary of MW’s
work including the main elements of her critique of
Burke’s RRF. Briefly, she favours social reform in the
general direction of democracy and growing rights. Along
with other thinkers, she notes and argues in favour of the
perfectibility of man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg5H7y0waXU
Tom Paine: (1737-1809)
Main Themes
• Supporter of universal natural rights
• Supporter of radical change
• Against traditional hierarchies
• The present and the future more important
than the past
Tom Paine
• The Rights of Man (100,000 copies in first 2 years)
• Visited France in 1787/88 and 1789/90
• ‘A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose’
• The debate on France’ – Burke, Paine, Godwin
(anarchism), Wollstonecraft (feminism) – over 100
pamphlets
• Paine – outlawed in 1792, books burnt, effigies burnt,
tried for sedition
James Mill, J.S. Mill & Jeremy Bentham
Bentham, Mill and Utilitarianism
• Bentham - interest not rights (natural rights – ‘nonsense
upon stilts’)
• ‘Rights, is the child of law; from real law come real rights;
but from imaginary laws, from ‘law of nature,’ come
imaginary rights.…Natural rights is simple nonsense;
natural and imprescriptible rights …[is] rhetorical nonsense,
nonsense upon stilts.” (from ‘Anarchical Fallacies’ 1843)
• BBC4 series on Justice – Michael Sandel
http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/seasons/justiceseason/
‘Justice: A Citizen’s Guide to the 21st Century (Bentham, Kant,
Aristotle)
Common Good
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Rousseau
Catholic Bishops’ conference
Bishops’ letter
Communitarians
The common good refers to what belongs to everyone by
virtue of their common humanity. The simple definition
of the common good is ‘the sum total of social conditions
which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to
reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily’. (Catechism
of the Catholic Church, § 1906) Promoting the common good
cannot be pursued by treating each individual separately
and looking for the highest ‘total benefit’, in some kind of
utilitarian addition. Because we are interdependent, the
common good is more like a multiplication sum, where if any
one number is zero then the total is always zero. If anyone is
left out and deprived of what is essential, then the common
good has been betrayed.
Communitarians object to some aspects of individual liberalism
and the free markets associated with it
It might be argued that competing rights claims, greed and selfishness associated
with individual liberalism are a key contributor to ‘broken societies’. Think about
‘broken Britain’. Freedom of speech is often seen as a core right in liberal
democracies – but there is another side to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6IiG2k--dA
There are hints on promoting duties rather than rights, in recent political discourse
(elements of this in the ‘Third Way’ and the ‘Big Society’ as espoused by David
Cameron) – though there is no indication of any departure from the liberal ideals of
free market capitalism. It might be argued that the free market, associated with
liberalism actually undermines our moral obligations within communities - we have
lost our sense of belonging. This can be countered by ideas such as social
responsibility (the antithesis of the rights emphasis). Consider Sandel’s analysis of
the issue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBmCb7nancc
One strand of argument is to challenge the whole idea
that there is a set of universal absolutes to which all
states should comply – these include ideas such as
liberty, priority of individuals, egalitarianism, and justice.
Obviously this argument goes as far as to challenge
any idea of universal human rights. The alternative is to
suggest that values are embedded in communities –
this alternative position can be referred to as
particularism (values belong to particular communities)
or relativism (values are relative to the cultural traditions
of communities.
A bit of theory
• Idealism
Realism
• Empiricism
Rationalism
• A priori
A posteriori
• Universalism
Relativism
Who is my neighbour?
In this section, the bishops outline the principal motivation for the church’s
involvement in wider society.
It explains that Christians believe that human beings are created in the image
of God and states: “But we are not made in isolation. We belong together in a
creation which should be cherished and not simply used and consumed.”
The bishops call for a “trajectory for a new kind of politics”. The letter states
that its aim is to help church members consider how to negotiate “these
dangerous times to build the kind of society which many people say they
want”, something voters may feel is not offered by political parties.
The UK’s political culture
The public feel detached from political life, according to the
letter, and “all political parties struggle to communicate a
convincing vision”.
The bishops argue that it is time to move beyond “retail
politics” and instead focus on the common good – that
includes the participation of more people in developing a
political vision
The role of the state
The bishops write that different communities have different needs –
and may choose different priorities. But they say there is a “chill
factor” when law and regulation intrude too far into everyday life.
The letter demands:
A richer justification for the state, a better account of the purposes
of government, and a more serious way of talking about taxation.
The role of the intermediary institution – for example housing
associations and credit unions – is acknowledged, and the bishops
write how such organisations are overlooked by policymakers, and
so struggle to be influential.