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Full Description
An interpretation of human rights that centers on the rhetorical—and religious—power of testimony.
Jeremy Bentham described the idea of human rights as "rhetorical nonsense." In Reimagining Human Rights, William O'Neill shows that the rhetorical aspect of human rights is in fact crucial. By examining how victims and their advocates embrace the rhetoric of human rights to tell their stories, he presents an interpretation of human rights "from below," showing what victims of atrocity and advocates do with rights.
Drawing on African writings that center around victims' stories—including Desmond Tutu's on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission—and modern Roman Catholic social teaching, O'Neill reconciles the false dichotomy between the individualistic perspective of the human rights theories of Immanuel Kant, Jürgen Habermas, and John Rawls and local or ethnocentric conceptions of the common good in Alasdair MacIntyre and Richard Rorty. He shows that the testimony of victims leads us to a new conception of the common good, based on rights as narrative grammar—that is, rights are not only a grammar of dissent against atrocity but let new stories be told.
O'Neill shows how the rhetoric of human rights can dismantle old narratives of power and advance new ones, reconstructing victim's claims, often in a religious key, along the way. He then applies this new approach to three areas: race and mass incarceration in the United States, the politics of immigration and refugee policy, and ecological responsibility and our duties to the next generation.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
One: Interpreting Rights
I. A Genealogy of Difference
II. The Rhetoric of Rights
III. Conclusions
Two: Justifying Rights
I. The Interpretation of Ethics: Semantic Recognition
II. The Interpretation of Ethics: Epistemic Recognition
III. The Ethics of Interpretation: Respect
IV. Ethical Reciprocity
V. The Grammar of Rights
VI. Aristotelian Constructivism: Autonomy and Solidarity
V. Conclusions
Three: Rights and Religion
I. The Ethics of Public Discourse
II. Re-enchanting the Public Sphere
III. The Surplus of Religious Meaning: The Theological Virtues
IV. Conclusions: On Forgiveness after Mass Atrocity
Four: Applying Human Rights
I. Comparative Assessments
II. Realizations: Concrete Applications: Race and Mass Incarceration, Migration and Refugee Policy, Ecological
Responsibility
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
