Abstract
This article reassess Rorty’s contribution to human rights theory. It addresses two key questions: (1) Does Rorty sustain his claim that there are no morally relevant transcultural facts? (2) Does Rorty’s proposed sentimental education offer an adequate response to contemporary human rights challenges? Although both questions are answered in the negative, it is argued here that Rorty’s focus on suffering, sympathy, and security, offer valuable resources to human rights theorists. The article concludes by considering the idea of a dual approach to human rights, combining Rorty’s emphasis on sentiment with an analysis of patterns of responsibility for the underfulfilment of human rights.
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Notes
Perhaps we should, but that is not Rorty’s argument, nor my concern here.
Indeed, feminists have rightly highlighted the conservatism implicit in the use Rorty makes of a distinction between a public and a private sphere in his arguments about what it is that philosophy can/should do; see for example Fraser (1990).
Geras’ (1995) criticisms of Rorty in the former’s Solidarity in the Conversation of Humankind rather misses this point: Geras highlights the testimony of Nazi-era rescuers of Eurpoean Jews to show that Rorty is mistaken in his claim that universalist ideas like ‘humanity’ or ‘human rights’ have no work to do in persuading us how to act. Because a significant number of rescuers make reference to these sorts of ideas in explaining their actions, Geras argues that Rorty’s thesis is flawed. Certainly Rorty’s empirical claims about rescuers are evidently under-researched, nevertheless, the more interesting claim is that neither individuals nor governments guilty of human rights abuses routinely deny the validity of human rights, what they deny is the humanity of their victims.
It is beyond the scope of this article to attempt such an inquiry, but I pause to note that it is also a difficult task to answer such a question because of the difficulty of isolating variables that have an influence in both formal and informal education.
Of course, there are many contrary examples, such as the example of Germans who sheltered Jews during the Nazi era, at great personal risk. In the majority of cases, I expect that people find it easier to think of others when they themselves are not in immediate danger. Yet the much talked of public spirit of the British people during the Second World War also suggests that a shared insecurity and/or deprivation can inspire solidarity as well. This is a point worthy of further investigation, but I do not pursue it here.
I note that Pogge’s thesis is not as simple as this brief sketch suggests. It is also not uncontroversial; there are a number of unresolved issues in Pogge’s proposal, including the impossibility of escaping from such a negative duty in a globalised world as he understands it. Nevertheless, Pogge’s argument serves as an appropriate corrective to the absence of questions of relations of justice and patterns of responsibility in Rorty’s argument. (For further discussion of problems in Pogge’s thesis, see the Special Issue of Ethics and International Affairs 2005 devoted to his theory of human rights.)
Note that this does not necessarily imply the promotion of ‘environmental human rights’. Indeed, when I claim that human rights theorists, and to a slightly lesser extent, environmental theorists, have not previously sufficiently engaged with the issues raised in one another’s fields, an example of what I have in mind is a tendency to assume that human rights claims and environmental claims would be mutually compatible. This is not necessarily the case, a point I have discussed elsewhere (see Woods 2006).
There is a considerable literature on the ways in which environmental problems lead to human insecurity, and the ways in particular patterns of production and consumption can be said to be responsible for environmental degradation. For further discussion, see, among others, Dobson (2000), Jacobs (1991), Simms (2006).
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Cristina Johnston, the participants of the Association of Legal and Social Philosophy 2008 conference, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.
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Woods, K. Suffering, Sympathy, and (Environmental) Security: Reassessing Rorty’s Contribution to Human Rights Theory. Res Publica 15, 53–66 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-009-9083-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-009-9083-5