The concept of ‘human dignity’ notoriously evades straightforward definition (Feldman 1999). Article 1 of the UDHR states that ‘all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’. The twin foundations of this universalism are respect for the ‘inherent dignity’ of all humans, and equality. In contrast, a central tenet of contemporary human rights is universalism. The rights-based constitutions of the Enlightenment coexisted alongside the denial of rights to large swathes of the population – notably women, children, slaves, religious and ethnic minorities, and colonised peoples. Yet they do have an impact on the willingness of states to sign and ratify binding Conventions like the CRPD, and on the domestic reception of criticisms from the international human rights community. Few proponents of human rights engage with these critiques, often viewing them more as a ‘matter of faith rather than reason’ (Besson in Moeckli et al. Critical legal academics note concerns about Western moral imperialism (Donnelly 1984), others question whether rights really are ‘a barrier against domination and oppression, or the ideological gloss of an emerging empire?’ (Douzinas 2007: 1). Critics of human rights argue that this form of ‘global governance’ threatens national liberal democracy (Holbrook and Allan 2017) and privileges ‘new forms of “ethical” elite paternalism’ (Chandler 2001: 72). The use of international legal and diplomatic machinery to enforce and monitor human rights marks the end of a ‘virtually unquestioned supremacy of the doctrine of national sovereignty’ (Klug 2000: 96). Within this ‘public morality of world politics’, each person ‘is a subject of global concern’ (Beitz 2009: 1). The preamble to the UDHR describes the ‘equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family’ as ‘the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’. During the twentieth century the abuse of minorities came to be regarded as a threat to peace and stability (Bates in Moeckli et al. Whereas previously rights were legislated at the national level, contemporary human rights are both guaranteed by, and play a role in guaranteeing, a global political order. Kittay and Carlson 2010 Clifford Simplican 2015 Nussbaum 2009 Vorhaus 2005). Critiquing or adapting liberal theory for people with cognitive impairments is now a major intellectual project for contemporary political theory and moral philosophy (e.g. It is underpinned by the often inherently ablest liberal philosophies of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill. This body of rights rests on a fictive liberal subject – law’s ‘classic contractor’ who is ‘morally and legally accountable for his actions because his actions are guided by reason’, standing ‘alone, independently of all other individuals’, and capable of enforcing his own rights (Naffine 2003: 66). Klug (2000: 71–72) describes this ‘libertarian wave’ of rights as primarily concerned with ‘liberty from state tyranny and religious persecution’, constructing the state as ‘always and forever a threat to individual freedom’. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rights became the ideology of revolutionaries, enshrined in the English Bill of Rights (1689), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789), and the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution (1791). There are examples of charters or bills of rights dating back to the ancient world, but our modern understanding of rights (in the West, at least) is closely linked to Renaissance humanism and the Enlightenment ( Nickel 2017). Rights, revolutions and the Enlightenment
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