The Forum > Article Comments > The human rights crisis is about domination, not perception > Comments
The human rights crisis is about domination, not perception : Comments
By Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, published 1/7/2015The main crisis of human rights is not about perceptions, but about its complicity with domination.
- Pages:
-
- Page 1
-
- All
- Pages:
-
- Page 1
-
- All
This assumes that there is some manufactory somewhere, some process or institution that manufactures "human rights", and that can manufacture "more" human rights.
The authors don't say what this is, but of course what people always mean by this kind of talk is the State.
So the authors write a piece on human rights without defining, and assume that they are whatever the State says they are without defining the State or giving any reason.
The problem is that this assumes that human rights are whatever the most powerful and aggressive party in society says they are. This is just the creed that "might is right".
But this is of course the opposite of human rights, the opposite of a rule of just conduct, the opposite of ethics. The reason we need ethics in the first place, is to have some other principle on which social relations can be based, than just that the stronger dictate to the weaker whatever terms they want.
So without defining human rights or the State, all the authors have produced is confused babbling.