scholarly journals Rethinking Human Rights through the Language of Capabilities: An Introduction to Capabilities Approach

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Latika Vashist
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Amartya Sen ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This paper seeks to contrast the language of human rights with capabilities approach conceptualized by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. While capabilities approach is an effective way of comprehending and mplementing the rights guaranteed to people, language of human rights remains the essential pre-requisite for the development and enhancement of people’s capabilities. While both these frameworks for justice operate within the western liberal paradigm, capabilities approach fills in the gaps of modern human rights discourse. The new idea of justice that accords a central place to human dignity mandates that the human rights entrenched in the Constitution be read as capabilities. The desperate vacuum that exists between the promises of law and realities of existence can only be bridged by institutionalizing a blend of rights and capabilities in the pursuit of justice. The paper argues that the language of human rights and that of capabilities ought to supplement and complement each other for true human flourishing

Work, Human Rights, and Human Capabilities

2019 ◽  
pp. 202-217
Author(s):  
Virginia Mantouvalou
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Meaningful Work ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Moral Wrong ◽  
Self Development ◽  
Capabilities Theory

This chapter examines the value of work and the requirements of the content of work against two normative frameworks: first, human rights, and second, human capabilities. Its main question is whether working like a robot should be prohibited. The chapter identifies certain overlaps in the requirements imposed by the two frameworks, such as a duty to create opportunities to work and the prohibition of being forced to work. When it comes to the content of work, both frameworks prohibit workers’ exploitation, and both recognize the value of self-development in the workplace, up to a certain extent. The overlap is justified given that there are connections between human dignity and human flourishing, both values that are also linked to human rights. However, the chapter also suggests that capabilities theory, as a theory of human flourishing, requires the promotion of meaningful work for everyone. This requirement is more demanding than the duties imposed by human rights, which are primarily about identifying and addressing moral wrongs. Whether boring and monotonous jobs should be prohibited as a moral wrong, though, is not specifically addressed within capabilities theory. The lack of specificity as to the duties imposed is a weakness of the capabilities approach.

scholarly journals The contribution of deontological Christian ethics to the contemporary human rights discourse

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Vorster
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Imago Dei ◽  
Deontological Ethics ◽  
Religious Extremism ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This article examines the possible role of a Christian deonto- logical ethics in the contemporary human rights debate. It concludes that a Christian deontological ethics in the Reformed tradition can be positively engaged in the human rights debate when Biblical theological topics are transposed into moral directives applicable to the current human rights concerns, such as religious extremism, femicide, ideologies of intolerance and ecocide. As an example of the applicability of a Christian deon- tological ethics from a reformed perspective, the following Bibli- cal topics are investigated: human dignity on the basis of the “imago dei”, creation and creational integrity, the kingdom of God and forgiveness. Furthermore, the article proposes that other concepts can be added to this list such as the Biblical idea of life, eschatology, covenant and holiness.

Humanitarian Intervention in International and Islamic Law

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-106
Author(s):  
Ermin Sinanovic
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Fundamental Issue ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

In this paper, I look into the moral foundation of humanitarian intervention in international law and its Islamic counterpart. My objective is to identify the traits shared by both sets of laws, and to see if the same or similar justification can be used across cultures to reach the same goal. In other words, one goal is to assess the claims that the basis upon which humanitarian intervention is justified has a universal appeal. Both international and Islamic law justify humanitarian intervention on moral grounds. International law bases its justification upon the human rights discourse. Islamic law provides enough bases for legitimizing humanitarian intervention, and Qur’anic verses, scholarly opinions, and Islamic principles provide a sound background for it. Paramount in this task is the concept of human dignity (karamah al-insan). We found no disagreement on this fundamental issue between the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Islamic law. Human dignity, as understood in international human rights and its Islamic counterpart, thus could form the jus cogens of international law, a common human heritage upon which everybody can agree.

Flourishing and Welfare

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory S. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Value Pluralism ◽  
Amartya Sen ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
A Value ◽  
Consequentialist Theory ◽  
Primary Focus

This chapter argues that the moral end of property is human flourishing, a concept which the author uses in a neo-Aristotelian sense. The bulk of the chapter is devoted to an analysis of the concept of human flourishing. It stresses three points: First, human flourishing, although overlapping at times with the concept of welfare, is fundamentally different from welfare. Second, human flourishing is a value-plural concept, encompassing multiple and incommensurable moral values; hence property has multiple ends. Third, property’s pluralistic moral foundation does not mean that rationality and consistency must be sacrificed when property’s various ends come into conflict. Value pluralism is reconcilable with both rational choice and rule-of-law values such as consistency. The human flourishing theory is a consequentialist theory, but in measuring human flourishing, its primary focus is on capabilities rather than resources, and thus the theory draws upon the capabilities approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.

Labor Rights

2018 ◽  
pp. 229-260
Author(s):  
Pablo Gilabert
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Labor Rights ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Constructive Discussion ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

Human rights discourse invokes entitlements to freely chosen work, to decent working conditions, and to form and join unions. Despite their importance, these rights remain underexplored in the philosophical literature on human rights. This chapter offers a systematic and constructive discussion of them. It surveys the content and current relevance of the labor rights stated in the most important human rights documents. It gives a moral defense of these rights, justifying their support on the basis of important human interests and human dignity. It replies to objections about the importance of work, explains why labor human rights may not exhaust the demands of dignity regarding labor, and arbitrates a common tension between independence and solidarity. To solidaristically empower all persons who can work to access and defend decent working conditions in which their valuable capacities can be developed and exercised is an obligatory response to their human dignity.

Understanding Human Dignity in Human Rights

2018 ◽  
pp. 113-140
Author(s):  
Pablo Gilabert
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Normative Force ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Decent Life ◽  
Positive Duties ◽  
Conceptual Network ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This chapter offers an interpretation of the idea of human dignity that explains how it can play certain valuable roles in human rights discourse. The idea contributes to the articulation of a distinctive set of norms that are universalist and humanist, the justification of specific human rights, the grounding of the great normative force of these rights, the combined generation of both negative and positive duties correlative to them, the explanation of the significance of political struggles against their violation, and the illumination of the arc of humanist justice running from basic requirements mandating people’s access to a decent life to maximal requirements to support people’s access to a flourishing life. The idea of human dignity is articulated through a conceptual network that includes an organic set of more specific ideas. These ideas include status-dignity, condition-dignity, dignitarian norms, the basis of dignity, the circumstances of dignity, and dignitarian virtue.

“We Must Talk about Cologne”: Race, Gender, and Reconfigurations of “Europe”

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 68-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverly Weber
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
New Right ◽  
Public Agency ◽  
European Values ◽  
New Year’S Eve ◽  
Racialized Other ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

The perceived crisis triggered by the current refugee influx highlights the contradiction at the heart of human rights discourse. Modern humanity has been constructed as both European and as universal; the racialized “Other” against whom the “modern human” disturbs this construction by laying claim to human rights from the very heart of Europe. The sexualized violence reported in Cologne on New Year’s Eve fed into racialized fears of refugees and immigrants promoted by groups on the radical right, even as racialized fears returned to mainstream discourses. Critical responses to the racism of the radical right unfortunately also participate in racialized discourses by resorting to “Europe” or “European values.” This analysis suggests the need to consider Europe as a field of power, one in which the contestation over what Europe is or should be results in concrete, racialized disparities in access to social mobility, education, or public agency. A project for racial, gender and economic justice requires the thinking of Europe as an ongoing project of world-making. The call to revisit or reclaim “European” values cannot succeed here. Nor can a response to the new right (or the newly normalized racism of the center) allow the new right to determine the parameters of debates about possibilities for the future.

scholarly journals Identity and dignity within the human rights discourse: An anthropological and praxis approach

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Louw
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Imago Dei ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Practical Theological ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

The theological discourse mostly focuses on the moral and ethical framework for human rights and human dignity. In order to give theological justification to the value and dignity of human beings, most theologians point to the imago Dei as theological starting point for the design of an anthropology on human dignity. Within the paradigmatic framework of democracy, human dignity and human rights have become interchangeable concepts. This article aimed to focus not on ethics but on aesthetics: man as homo aestheticus, as well as the praxis question regarding the quality of human dignity within the network of human relationships. It was argued that human dignity is more fundamental than human rights. Dignity as an anthropological construct should not reside in the first place in the imago Dei and its relationship to Christology and incarnation theology. Human dignity, human rights and human identity are embedded in the basic human quest for meaning (teleology). As such, human dignity should, in a practical theological approach to anthropology, be dealt with from the aesthetic perspective of charisma, thus the option for inhabitational theology. As an anthropological category, human dignity should be viewed from the perspective of pneumatology within the networking framework of a �spiritual humanism�. In this regard, the theology of the Dutch theologian A.A. van Ruler, and especially his seminal 1968 work Ik geloof, should be revisited by a pneumatic anthropology within the parameters of practical theology.

Defending the Significance of Human Dignity

2018 ◽  
pp. 141-160
Author(s):  
Pablo Gilabert
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

Chapter 5 identified the main dimensions of human dignity and some important roles of it in human rights discourse. This chapter addresses the most important charges levelled against the deployment of the idea of human dignity in human rights discourse. They say that the idea is empty, indeterminate, incoherent, politically pernicious, exclusionary, sterile, or redundant. The chapter argues that each of these charges fails. As a result, we can resist the disabling skepticism associated with them. We can learn from these objections to improve our views of human dignity, but we can remain confident about its significance in human rights discourse.

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