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(Hopgood reading) Hopgood argues that Western Europe is the primary supporter of the United Nations and international human rights institutions. What is his evidence for this? Are Western European countries losing influence in these organizations? What is the position of the United States?

(Hopgood reading) Hopgood argues that Western Europe is the primary supporter of the United Nations and international human rights institutions. What is his evidence for this? Are Western European countries losing influence in these organizations? What is the position of the United States?

Social Psychology (10th Edition)
Social Psychology (10th Edition)
10th Edition
ISBN:9780134641287
Author:Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers
Publisher:Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers
Chapter1: Introducing Social Psychology
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(Hopgood reading) Hopgood argues that Western Europe is the primary supporter of the United Nations and international human rights institutions. What is his evidence for this? Are Western European countries losing influence in these organizations? What is the position of the United States?
Transcribed Image Text:(Hopgood reading) Hopgood argues that Western Europe is the primary supporter of the United Nations and international human rights institutions. What is his evidence for this? Are Western European countries losing influence in these organizations? What is the position of the United States?
1:59 5G human_rights_on_the_road_to_nowh... 1 of 28 12 Human Rights on the Road to Nowhere Stephen Hopgood For most of recorded human history, people have been concerned about what constitutes freedom, equality, fairness, and justice. In different eras, and different places, these ideas have had radically different answers. Any attempt produce a grand historical account of what constitutes justice, for example, would have to deal with the many ways in which treating people justly has involved killing, torturing, enslaving, ostracizing, or exiling them. Human equality and human freedom were similarly depen- dent on either your identity or on any sins or crimes against gods or the social body for which you were deemed responsible. To talk of human rights as transhistorical phenomena only works, as a result, if we see them as moral (not empirical) claims, arguing that people have always had these rights in principle, whatever the reality. We have not created them; we have simply discovered them. Our forebears were either unenlightened or morally wrong. In this way, talk of empirical human rights cannot draw sustenance from the past except through reverse engineering. Some people historically may have held rights-like ideas, but "human rights" rights that attach to all individuals on account of their simply being human - are one of our era's distinctive ideologies about right, fair and just treatment. They are reflective of a -perhaps the-defining feature of Western-style modernity: the emergence of the idea of rational, auton- omous, self-governing individuals as the primary building blocks of poli- tical and social life and as the fundamental source of moral value. This shift has only happened in a serious way in the last two hundred or so years. Because classic human rights are, in this sense, individual entitle- ments held against each other and against collective authorities, the emphasis in most arguments for rights is on the primacy of personal choice in terms of beliefs, commitments, lifestyle, and identity. This is captured in the idea of rights as trumps: winning cards in the game of life that individuals can play against any attempt to regulate, prohibit, mis- treat, or disadvantage them in the name of broader social or political 283 284 Stephen Hopgood goals, or the interests of other people.' Human rights make us all ends, not means, to paraphrase Kant. They carve out an inviolable and perso- nalized private sphere. As such, they are integrally about a conception of the person who exists in some way prior to her social bonds, morally complete in and of herself. We need society to live in a practical sense, but this necessity is secondary in moral terms. That is, what has priority in a human rights world organized according to the classic conception of human rights are the lives and choices of individual human beings, not the degree to which the doctrines of nations, families, tribes, and gods are brought to life in the lives of those same individuals. Any theory of human rights that does not put this person first - that on principle (not as a lack, or oversight) allows discrimination or curtails personal choice - cannot be said te logic of classical human rights claims either concentually or in their dominant historical
Transcribed Image Text:1:59 5G human_rights_on_the_road_to_nowh... 1 of 28 12 Human Rights on the Road to Nowhere Stephen Hopgood For most of recorded human history, people have been concerned about what constitutes freedom, equality, fairness, and justice. In different eras, and different places, these ideas have had radically different answers. Any attempt produce a grand historical account of what constitutes justice, for example, would have to deal with the many ways in which treating people justly has involved killing, torturing, enslaving, ostracizing, or exiling them. Human equality and human freedom were similarly depen- dent on either your identity or on any sins or crimes against gods or the social body for which you were deemed responsible. To talk of human rights as transhistorical phenomena only works, as a result, if we see them as moral (not empirical) claims, arguing that people have always had these rights in principle, whatever the reality. We have not created them; we have simply discovered them. Our forebears were either unenlightened or morally wrong. In this way, talk of empirical human rights cannot draw sustenance from the past except through reverse engineering. Some people historically may have held rights-like ideas, but "human rights" rights that attach to all individuals on account of their simply being human - are one of our era's distinctive ideologies about right, fair and just treatment. They are reflective of a -perhaps the-defining feature of Western-style modernity: the emergence of the idea of rational, auton- omous, self-governing individuals as the primary building blocks of poli- tical and social life and as the fundamental source of moral value. This shift has only happened in a serious way in the last two hundred or so years. Because classic human rights are, in this sense, individual entitle- ments held against each other and against collective authorities, the emphasis in most arguments for rights is on the primacy of personal choice in terms of beliefs, commitments, lifestyle, and identity. This is captured in the idea of rights as trumps: winning cards in the game of life that individuals can play against any attempt to regulate, prohibit, mis- treat, or disadvantage them in the name of broader social or political 283 284 Stephen Hopgood goals, or the interests of other people.' Human rights make us all ends, not means, to paraphrase Kant. They carve out an inviolable and perso- nalized private sphere. As such, they are integrally about a conception of the person who exists in some way prior to her social bonds, morally complete in and of herself. We need society to live in a practical sense, but this necessity is secondary in moral terms. That is, what has priority in a human rights world organized according to the classic conception of human rights are the lives and choices of individual human beings, not the degree to which the doctrines of nations, families, tribes, and gods are brought to life in the lives of those same individuals. Any theory of human rights that does not put this person first - that on principle (not as a lack, or oversight) allows discrimination or curtails personal choice - cannot be said te logic of classical human rights claims either concentually or in their dominant historical
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