A C Grayling: 'The notion of human rights needs to be better
understood'
http://comment.independent.co.uk/podium/article318823.ece
From the British Institute for Human Rights lecture by the Professor of
Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London
Published: 12 October 2005
In human rights documents, such as the United Nations' Universal
Declaration or the European Convention, the rights identified as
universally possessed by human beings just in virtue of their humanity
are very thinly specified. Taken together, the rights specified in such
documents suggest, or more strictly, imply - but with a certain
deliberate vagueness and latitude - a conception of what is minimally
required for individuals to have a chance to live free and flourishing
lives. But this unwritten part of human rights instruments is very
important and needs to be fleshed out in a serious debate about what
talk of human rights implies as to an acceptable picture of a good
human life.
An important example is the question whether the "right to life", which
figures early in all such instruments, implies a right to choose when
and how to die also; another is the question whether the right to
freedom of conscience amounts to a right to be protected from the
forced imposition of religious observance or conformity. A third
concerns the position of women in "traditional" and strongly religious
societies; because human rights instruments do not discriminate on
gender grounds in recognising or attributing rights, it follows that
they give equal protection to women - but in many parts of the world
women suffer deficits of rights, in ways not only harmful to the women
concerned personally, but which also prevent the development of the
societies to which they belong.
AC Grayling
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/b6dd88126c5a8939
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