Notes on Charles Beitz, Human Rights as a Common Concern

1
Notes on Charles Beitz, Human Rights as a
Common Concern
Charles Beitz is a Professor of Politics at
Princeton University
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The International Bill of Human Rights

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
• The International Covenant on Civil and Political
  Rights (1966)
• The International Covenant on Social, Economic,
  and Cultural Rights (1966)
• For an overview of these, and other more recent,
  human rights
• documents, consult the following useful website
  Human Rights
• Web (http//www.hrweb.org)

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A Case Study Political Rights

• Consider a hypothetical case. Imagine an
  authoritarian regime in a society in which
  historically the predominant political beliefs
  are not democratic. Citing the Covenant on Civil
  and Political Rights, a modernizing insurgency
  ?ghting for democratic reforms calls upon the
  international community for military and ?nancial
  help. Given the societys cultural history,
  international interference, if successful, would
  produce a result that would be regarded as a
  change for the worse by a signi?cant portion,
  perhaps even a majority, of the society. The
  question is whether this fact argues against
  interference to help the reformers and, if so,
  for what reason (p. 159).

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Two Conceptions of Human Rights

• Beitz begin by distinguishing two conceptions of
  human rights (p.
• 146)
• Nonpartisan or restricted
• Partisan, full, or liberal

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Human Rights as Nonpartisan

• According to one conception, human rights
  represent the common element in a range of views
  about social justice or political legitimacy
  found among the worlds cultures. A variant of
  this position, which is more permissive as to
  what might be counted as a human right but is
  motivated by a similar idea, regards human rights
  as political standards that would be reasonable
  to accept regardless of ones (culturally
  in?uenced) views about social justice or
  political legitimacy. This notion might be
  expressed by saying that human rights strive to
  be nonpartisan, nonparochial, or neutral among
  con?icting political cultures and ideologies (p.
  146)

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Human Rights as Partisan

• The other conception regards human rights as
  distinctive of a particular view or family of
  views about social justice or political
  legitimacy. Although a list of human rights might
  not be a complete description of the requirements
  of social justice for a society, on this
  conception it would be more than the common
  element found among, or acceptable to, otherwise
  divergent views of social justice. That is, human
  rights identify conditions that societys
  institutions should meet if we are to consider
  them legitimate. But because there is no general
  reason to believe that these conditions are
  included in all the views about social justice or
  political legitimacy that exist in the world or
  even among those that have achieved widespread
  acceptance in individual societiesthere is no
  claim that human rights are nonpartisan. On this
  view, in contrast to the ?rst, the advocate of
  human rights takes a stand on controverted
  questions of political theory (p. 146)

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Beitzs Thesis

• In this article Beitz defends a partisan or
  liberal conception of human rights. In
  particular, he argues that the doctrine of human
  rights, regarded for the moment as part of the
  positive law of international society, cannot
  plausibly be considered culturally or politically
  nonpartisan. And . . . this fact, in itself,
  does not count against the doctrine. What is
  distinctive about human rights as a category of
  normative standard is not their supposedly
  symmetrical relationship to the conceptions of
  political justice or legitimacy to be found in
  the worlds cultures but, rather, the role they
  play in international relations. Human rights
  state conditions for political and social
  institutions, the systematic violation of which
  may justify efforts to bring about reform by
  agents external to the society in which the
  violation occurs. This interference-justifying
  role may limit the content of the doctrine, but
  there is no reason to suppose the limitations
  will yield a neutral or nonpartisan view.
  Indeed, it is hard to see how things could be
  otherwise (p. 161)

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Three Claims that Human Rights are not Neutral

• They conflict with traditional Asian values.
• They conflict with traditional Islamic doctrine.
• They oppose the practice of female genital
  mutilation (FGM).

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Genuine Human Rights

• The core or subset of human rights that could
  count as nonpartisan.

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Antipaternalism

• A key reason for endorsing the nonpartisan view
  of human rights is to show that interference to
  protect human rights is not paternalistic.

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An Objection to Antipaternalism

• It fails to distinguish between oppressors and
  victims within a society.

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The Purposes and Limits of Human Rights

• Human rights have a public role in international
  affairs.
• Human rights are common to reasonable persons who
  otherwise hold conflicting reasonable conceptions
  of the good life.

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Three Objections to the Partisan Conception of
Human Rights

• It is excessively pragmatic.
• It is insufficiently realistic.
• It can easily be used as an instrument of
  neocolonial domination.