Is Purely Practical Agreement Possible? Maritain’s Mexico City Thesis Answers Some MacIntyrian Challenges

2018 ◽  
Vol 92 ◽  
pp. 175-188
Author(s):  
J. W. Schulz ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
The State ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
Jacques Maritain

In 1947, Jacques Maritain argued before the UN that “men mutually opposed in their theoretical conceptions can come to a merely practical agreement regarding a list of human rights.” Maritain justified this thesis using a progressive theory of the natural law which rests on a distinction between the natural law as operative in human nature and the natural law as known and articulated. Drawing on Maritain’s 1951 Man and the State, this essay defends a MacIntyrian reading of Maritain’s thesis and its plausibility against four objections from Ralph McInerny, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre himself.

scholarly journals Human Rights and Human Nature

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-534
Author(s):  
Jean Rhéaume
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Positive Law

At least two important consequences follow from the fact that human rights are based on human nature. First, they exist according to natural law even in cases where positive law does not recognize them. Secondly, they cannot evolve because the nature and purpose of the human being does not change: only their formulation and level of protection in positive law can vary according to the socio-historical context.

Putting Natural Law Principles into Practice

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-57
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
The State ◽  
Philosophical Basis ◽  
The Bible

This chapter cites ancient roots for the principles of human rights and concept of justice, such as Hammurabi's Code, the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle. It mentions Roman thinkers such as Cicero and Seneca who helped to develop commitment to freedom of expression and Mencius and Asoka as non-Western sources for roots of thinking about rights. The chapter illustrates the struggles of dissenting movements in England in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, in which men actively engaged in efforts to uphold their rights. It discusses religious and political sects during the turbulent period in England, such as the Levellers, the Diggers, the Ranters, the Quakers, and the Muggletonians that were preoccupied by their right to be treated fairly and humanely when the state sought to suppress their beliefs. It also analyzes the concept of natural law that provided the main philosophical basis for the rights movements.

scholarly journals The concept of human rights: doctrinal approaches

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 258-264
Author(s):  
Chepulchenko T. О.
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

The article examines the modern concept of human rights as the universally accepted system of views and attitudes about the place and role of human rights in the society and the state. The list of human rights enshrined in these international instruments and the constitutions of many countries, was the result of a long historical development of samples and standards of human life and the entire community. It is emphasized that on the basis of a combination of natural and positivistic concepts of human rights and made possible the consolidation of fundamental freedoms in the constitutions of democratic States. The article focuses on the basic concepts of how to solve the problem of human rights and legal status of the individual which have developed in the history of legal theory and practice of various peoples: liberal (European) concept of human rights, collectivist, Islamic and traditionalist concept. It is emphasized that a decisive influence on the establishment of human rights made on the liberal conception of natural law doctrine, which established the priority of human rights, the new parameters of the relationship between the individual and the government. In the statement of the rights and freedoms of man played an important role in their ideological, doctrinal justification – the doctrine of natural human rights that do not depend on the discretion and arbitrariness of the government, and it is aimed at ensuring the rights defined by nature. Based on this doctrine and on the above mentioned international legal instruments, the new Constitution of Ukraine establishes a number of new rights, which were previously unknown or Constitution of the Soviet Ukraine nor the Ukrainian legislation: the right to life, right to dignity, the right to respect for private and family life, freedom of movement and free choice of residence, right to freedom of thought and speech, free expression of views and beliefs, and so on. Therefore, a new concept of the relationship between the Ukrainian state and the person with priority to the latter is brought to life, since the category of human rights operates solely in relations between man and power. Human rights are the limits of power. They define the sphere of human activity in which the power (the state) cannot interfere and the responsibilities which the state has for the human being. The article also discusses four generations of human rights, it is noted that in the XXI century. we can talk about the formation of the fourth generation of human rights, which is connected with the scientific discoveries in the field of microbiology, medicine, genetics and more. It is this generation that is at the center of intense debate precisely in terms of the naturalness of these phenomena and processes, from the standpoint of morality and worldview of a particular society, as well as based on the content of scientific doctrine. As a conclusion, the author writes that the legally enshrined legal position of a person has as its basis a liberal and natural-law concept, which stipulated as the primary principles freedom and inalienability, inalienability of human rights that belong to it from birth. Reference points are made in the relationship between the state and man - freedom, equality, the rule of law, the universality of human rights. And on these principles, principles, in addition to the actual scope of human rights and obligations, are exercised by these rights and freedoms. Keywords: constitution, concept of human rights, international legal act, human rights, natural law.

scholarly journals Paradoks universalitas HAM Barat di muka cermin Islam perspektif filsafat hukum dan HAM

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 217
Author(s):  
Robby Habiba Abror
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The State ◽  
Rational Approach ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
The West ◽  
Newtonian Physics ◽  
Rational Understanding ◽  
Muslim Intellectuals

this paper aims at examining the paradox of universality of human rights and trying to bring Western concepts of universality in the context of Islam. Human rights birth of natural philosophy which starts from Newtonian physics, then processed in the philosophy of Locke and Rousseau. So the human rights birth is indeed an effort to combat all forms of oppression by men over other men. Human rights is a concept that start with the state of human nature and hence it is universal. The state of nature in Western philosophy that was later named to the nature of Islam. Violation of human rights is a denial of the concept of universality, so that the West and Islam are required to align rational understanding and cultural particularity of the importance of human rights in the name of justice and humanity. This paper uses philosophy of law and human rights perspective as a method based on the thinking of Western philosophers and to compare with Muslim intellectuals such as Al-Jabiri, Hassan Hanafi and Maududi who had been instrumental in laying a rational approach to human rights in the Islamic theoretical framework. This paper produces an important finding that the concepts of human rights raised by Western philosophers actually been explained clearly in the Quran and hadith, so the universality of Western human rights is no longer a problem for, and can do with scientific interconnectivity, (particularity law) Islam.

What we own Before Property: Hugo Grotius and the Suum

Grotiana ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandra Mancilla
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Current Discussion ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Scholarly Attention

At the basis of modern natural law theories, the concept of the suum, i.e. what belongs to the person (in Latin, his, her, its, their own), has received little scholarly attention despite its importance both in explaining and justifying not only the genealogy of property, but also that of morality and war. In this essay I focus on Grotius’s account of the suum and examine what it is, what things it includes, what rights it gives rise to, and how it is extended in the transition from the state of nature to civil society. I then briefly suggest that reviving this concept could help to illuminate the current discussion on the foundations of basic human rights, and to re-evaluate cases where these seem to clash with property rights.

scholarly journals Sources of right to freedom of peaceful assembly

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-23
Author(s):  
М. А. Sambor
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
Special Rules ◽  
The Right

The right to freedom of peaceful assembly is marked by the multifaceted nature of this right for society, the state, groups of individuals and individuals. The right to freedom of peaceful assembly is a manifestation of human nature in communication with other people, society and the state. The unconditional right to freedom of peaceful assembly has a rich history of its formation and development. However, without historical origins it is impossible to form an objective and necessary for the modern man to understand the content of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Based on the above, the purpose of this article is to investigate the sources of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. For the first time in modern domestic science the sources of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly have been explored. In order to understand and form the legal basis and mechanism (algorithm) for exercising the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, it is important to understand the origins of this right and to substantially fill the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Sources of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in their retrospective dimension allow us to approach the understanding of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, taking into account the historical peculiarities of the understanding of this right, conditioned by the historical stages of the development of humanity, statehood and legal ideas about human rights in general and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in particular. Sources of law are not only formalized and materialized rules of law, but also the engine, the driving force in the identification, formulation and only in the further implementation of the rule of law in a certain materialized regulatory document. This aspect of the sources of law cannot be neglected, since in this case the sources of law, including the sources of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, are significantly depleted, and a number of links in the chain of law are lost. Therefore, the nature of the origin of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, which is identified with human nature, is important for the study of the sources of the right to peaceful assembly, and therefore the right to freedom of peaceful assembly is a natural human right that determines its social activity and role in society. In this regard, interest is defined as a natural legal source of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Interest is realized in the form of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, so it reveals the meaning of this right. The source of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly is an integral part of the sources of law as a whole, and therefore the study of the former is inseparable from an understanding of the sources of law. Common formal (material) sources of law are regulations, customs, legal treaties, legal precedents, and legal doctrines, so within the scope of this article, we carefully examine these sources of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. The natural-law component of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly emphasizes the direct dependence of the existence and enjoyment of the right on human rights and its interest in the exercise of this right, so we are convinced that the said source of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly is likely to be on the frontier of the study of legal and other social sciences. Formal legal sources of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, in their turn, are generally in the sphere of sources of law, with those peculiarities that dictate an understanding of the content and peculiarities of the exercise and realization of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. By far, the most widespread source of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and with didactic features of knowing this right in the system of Ukrainian law is a legal act. The Constitution of Ukraine belongs to this type of sources of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly (as its special norms intended to regulate public relations in the exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Ukrainian society, as well as general rules that ensure the ordering of relations and the formation of legal space for the implementation of the said rights), the Civil Code of Ukraine, the Code of Administrative Judiciary of Ukraine, as well as other procedural normative legal acts, which, although they do not contain any special rules, are directed to regulate relations precisely with the exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, but in their general form provide the opportunity to regulate a number of aspects of the exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Another, possibly key, source of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly is a legal treaty, in particular an international legal treaty. It is in such treaties that the world community, humanity, has recognized the right of each person to the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, to freedom of exercise and to the exclusivity of grounds for restricting the exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. Unfortunately, legal precedent in Ukraine only becomes meaningful, and as a source of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly it is characterized, in some places, by contradictory content.

Pre-Modern Ethics, Authoritative Narratives, and the Tribunal

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenifer Booth
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Intensive Care ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
Health Law ◽  
Patient Narratives ◽  
Additional Protection ◽  
Aristotelian Ethics

This chapter applies the modified philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre to mental health law, and in particular to the mental health tribunal. The natural law approach of Thomas Aquinas is used to assist in this. It is argued that, for law to be just in pre-modern terms, it requires that it be assessed as rational together with the care it supports as a single entity. As such, according to a modified version of the Thomistic Aristotelian ethics of MacIntyre, justice would require reconciliation of both doctor and patient narratives regarding care, possibly at the tribunal. It is suggested that psychiatric intensive care, in particular, could benefit from this approach. The approach might be seen as an additional protection to human rights-based considerations. It is also argued that the tribunal can be seen differently, according to the tradition of enquiry.

scholarly journals SUPREMASI KONSTITUSI ADALAH TUJUAN NEGARA

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Suhardjana
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
The State ◽  
Effective System ◽  
The Government ◽  
Working Rules

Contitution or Fundamental norms is the supreme law governing the operation of the working rules of the state as an organization, so that the constitution would give the direction and under the laws and regulation. In the constitution there must be an effective system, regularly to the mechanism or the operations of the government and the main of the constitutions is the existence of restriction of the authority and respect for the human rights, because human rights is human nature that possesses from birth.Keywords: constitution, restriction, human rights

Queries on Natural Law, Human Rights, and Human Nature

1943 ◽  
Vol 40 (19) ◽  
pp. 515
Author(s):  
Herbert W. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law
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