Jeremy Waldron (NYU) publicou em junho o artigo "Human Rights: a critique of the Raz/Rawls approach" no qual critica as concepções "humanitárias" dos direitos humanos - segundo as quais todos temos interesses "humanitários" em respeitá-los. Ao contrátrio, Waldron defende que certos direitos são ditos "humanos" na medida em que se aplicam a todos nós pela humanidade partilhada. Joseph Raz (Columbia) rebateu as críticas de Waldron em artigo disponibilizado na SSRN.
- Waldron: "Human Rights: A Critique of the Raz/Rawls Approach"
This paper examines and criticizes the suggestion that we should interpret the “human” in “human rights” as (i) referring to the appropriate sort of action when certain rights are violated rather than (ii) the (human) universality of certain rights. It considers first a crude version of (i) — the view that human rights are rights in response to whose violation we are prepared to countenance humanitarian intervention; then it considers more cautious and sophisticated versions of (i). It is argued that all versions of (i) distract us with side issues in our thinking about human rights, and sell short both the individualism of rights and the continuity that there is supposed to be between human rights and rights in national law. The paper does not deny that there are difficulties with views of type (ii). But it denies that the positing of views of type (i) gives us reason to abandon the enterprise of trying to sort these difficulties out.
- Raz: "On Waldron's critique of Raz on Human Rights"
Prof. Waldron has recently published a paper criticising the views of Rawls and Raz on human rights. It is pointed out that some supposed criticism are nothing more than observations on conditions that any account of rights must meet, and that Waldron objections to Raz are due to misunderstanding his thesis and its theoretical goal. The short comment tries to clarify that goal.
