Table Of ContentActualizing Human Rights
This book argues that ultimately human rights can be actualized, in two senses.
By answering important challenges to them, the real-world relevance of human
rights can be brought out; and people worldwide can be motivated as needed for
realizing human rights.
Taking a perspective from moral and political philosophy, the book focuses
on two challenges to human rights that have until now received little attention,
but that need to be addressed if human rights are to remain plausible as a global
ideal. First, the challenge of global inequality: how, if at all, can one be sincerely
committed to human rights in a structurally greatly unequal world that produces
widespread inequalities of human rights protection? Second, the challenge of
future people: how to adequately include future people in human rights and how
to set adequate priorities between the present and the future, especially in times
of climate change? The book also asks whether people worldwide can be motiv
ated to do what it takes to realize human rights. Furthermore, it considers the
common and prominent challenges of relativism and of the political abuse of
human rights.
This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of human rights,
political philosophy and, more broadly, political theory, philosophy and the
wider social sciences.
Jos Philips is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
Routledge Studies in Human Rights
Series Editors:
Mark Gibney
UNC Asheville, USA
Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
and
Bonny Ibhawoh
McMaster University, Canada
The Routledge Studies in Human Rights series publishes high quality and cross-
disciplinary scholarship on topics of key importance in human rights today. In a
world where human rights are both celebrated and contested, this series is com
mitted to creating stronger links between disciplines and exploring new meth
odological and theoretical approaches in human rights research. Aimed towards
both scholars and human rights professionals, the series strives to provide both
critical analysis and policy-oriented research in an accessible form. The series
welcomes work on specific human rights issues as well as on cross-cutting
themes and institutional perspectives.
Human Rights and US Foreign Policy
Prevarications and Evasions
Clair Apodaca
Politics of International Human Rights Law Promotion in
Western Europe
Order versus Justice
Koldo Casla
Extending International Human Rights Protections to
Vulnerable Populations
Raymond A. Smith
Fundamental Rights Challenges in Border Controls and
Expulsion of Irregular Immigrants in the European Union
Complaint Mechanisms and Access to Justice
Edited by Sergio Carrera and Marco Stefan
Why Human Rights Still Matter in Contemporary World Affairs
Edited by Mahmood Monshipouri
Actualizing Human Rights
Global Inequality, Future People, and Motivation
Jos Philips
Actualizing Human Rights
Global Inequality, Future People,
and Motivation
Jos Philips
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Jos Philips
The right of Jos Philips to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by
him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has
been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No
Derivatives 4.0 license.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-82038-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-01156-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
To the musicians
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction: two new challenges to human rights
and the question of motivation 1
PART I
Preparing the ground 9
2 Human rights: a conception 11
2.1 The book’s conception of human rights: human rights
and global justice 11
2.2 What are the minimum requirements of global justice? 13
3 Common challenges to human rights: the relativist
and the political pawns challenge 23
3.1 The relativist challenge 24
3.2 The political pawns challenge 30
3.3 To conclude 34
PART II
Novel challenges to human rights 41
4 The challenge of global inequality 43
4.1 A largely state-based world order and equal human
rights protection: a tension? 45
4.2 A largely state-based world order and human rights:
reconsidering our commitments 47
viii Contents
4.3 Some objections 53
4.4 To conclude 56
5 The challenge of future people 63
5.1 Which claims can qualify as human rights claims? 65
5.2 How to prioritize among human rights claims –
including between the present and the future 67
5.3 Priority-setting among human rights: uncertainties,
and assumptions, concerning future people 76
5.4 To conclude 85
PART III
Getting to realization 95
6 The question of motivation: can people be
motivated as needed for realizing human rights? 97
6.1 How best to approach the motivational question 99
6.2 What motivates individuals to act in accordance with
human rights? 101
6.3 Some objections 105
6.4 To conclude 112
7 Conclusion 119
Bibliography 123
Index 129
Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making. It is impossible to thank everyone
who helped me over the years and stimulated my thoughts, but some people I
want expressly to mention: Mary Biezeman-Roest, Marcus Düwell, Joel Anderson,
Koen Bavelaar, Monika Bobbert, Frans Brom, Rutger Claassen, Marie Göbel,
Carla Kessler, Peter Lawrence, Titia Loenen, Sem de Maagt, Henry Shue, Dick
Timmer and, at Routledge, Sophie Iddamalgoda, Andrew Taylor and the series
editors and anonymous reviewers, as well as Ashleigh Phillips, Amit Prasad and
Paul Martin. Thank you! (Of course, the shortcomings of the present book
remain entirely my own.) I am also grateful to audiences at various places in the
Netherlands and at Heidelberg and Graz, and I want to thank all my colleagues
at Utrecht University, who make the Ethics Institute such a friendly environment
and fertile place to work. Last but not least, I thank my students. Working with
you is always very enriching and enjoyable!
Hopefully, this book can to some extent offer, in the words of Seamus
Heaney, a ‘glimpsed alternative’ – one that, thankfully, at times already has a
foothold in reality.
JP
The Hague, Spring 2020
