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willow
yes yes you are :)
willowJan 25, 2025
Pg. 89 There are all sorts of different forms that the structuration of resistance can take: it can take theological forms, it can take ethnic forms, it can take political forms, it can take class-based forms, and so on. In certain contexts it might be effective and useful to appeal to human rights. After all, ‘human rights’ have no more, but also no less cognitive and normative standing than dreams do. As political theorists, however, it behoves us not just to look at the way demands are actually formatted and expressed, and see whether or not they are rhetorically effective, but to look also at the internal structure of the demands, the specific way that demand is expressed, and the theoretical implications of that form of expression. So we may demand education because education is an important way of our satisfying our interests. Or we say we have a need for it. That is a more perspicuous way of saying something important than by speaking of ‘rights’. By calling it a right you don’t add anything to calling it a satisfaction of a basic need or an important demand or a vital human interest. You not only don’t add anything, rather you say the same thing in a format that has a history and carries with it a historical legacy of additional connotations. That legacy is not necessarily unmitigatedly good. If, on the other hand, you talk about education as being an important thing for people, as being a human need, this way of speaking moves you on constructively to an interesting political discussion. If I say it is an important need that I have an education, then you ask me ‘why is it a need?’, then I will talk about my needs, and this will naturally lead to discussion of other aspects of my life. That’s a political way of formulating the demand. If I say ‘it’s a right’ I’m immediately saying it’s a trump, that is something I don’t discuss, it’s something that’s limited, it’s something that’s rigid and determinate, it’s something to stop the political discussion, it’s i…
this is actually just me plagiarizing Geuss in "Human Rights: A Very Bad Idea". we're both are skeptical/cautious with moral frameworks to start with, think rights-talk is often counter-productive, and in particular it is corrosive to how one conceptualizes their own and others' politics