NB! This lecture has been postponed and will start at 15.00.
About the lecture
Suppose two interlocutors disagree about the nature of human rights. One says that they are moral rights possessed by everyone in virtue of their humanity, and the other says they are not moral, but legal rights established through international conventions. What makes this kind of disagreement meaningful? Why isn't this just an instance of a verbal dispute, where the appearance of genuine disagreement is illusory and quickly resolved?
Answering questions like these raises a difficult set of issues in conceptual ethics—namely, about the standards we should use in deciding which concepts to use and when to use them. Prof. Andrea Sangiovanni argues that we should conceive of human rights as a social kind. Disagreement is most meaningful when and because it is about a significant set of social practices that together define and articulate a set of moral standards for political conduct. Disagreement should not center, then, on ordinary usage in a linguistic community, or on whether and which natural rights exist; rather, it should center on human rights as a social phenomenon.
Conceiving of human rights in this way can illuminate what seem like intractable disagreements between Orthodox, Political, and Legal Conceptions of human rights. We should ask: What is human rights talk for before we can answer what human rights exist or what human rights are. Prof. Sangiovanni traces some of the implications of this shift for how to go about justifying and designing systems of human rights.
About the speaker
Professor Andrea Sangiovanni is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London and his main areas of research are in contemporary moral, legal and political philosophy. His current research interests include international justice and the philosophy of international law; human rights and the idea of dignity; the relation between principles and social practices; justice, legitimacy and solidarity in the European Union; ‘Scottish’ constructivism; and moral and social equality. Professor Sangiovanni is currently working on an ERC-funded project on social justice in the European Union, and writing a book entitled The Bounds of Solidarity: International Justice, Reciprocity and the European Union. He recently published the book Humanity without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect and Human Rights (Harvard University Press, 2017) on the idea of moral equality and its importance for human rights.
Practical information
Moderator: Professor Jakob Elster
This lecture will be held at Domus Juridica. Due to limited space, participants will have to register prior to the lecture.