{"title":"Overlapping consensus view of human rights: a Rawlsian conception","authors":"R. Herr","doi":"10.1017/S1752971922000124","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper advances and defends the overlapping consensus view of human rights (OCV) as a political conception of human rights most consistent with John Rawls's normative account of a realistic utopia at the international level. Although some clues exist in The Law of Peoples to support this view, an innovative reconstruction is called for to complete the picture. This paper aims to offer such a reconstruction, which is predicated on two premises: first, the parties to the international original positions, which include decent nonliberal peoples (DNPs), are reasonable and worthy of liberal toleration; and, second, the protection of human rights proper is a module that can fit into all acceptable comprehensive doctrines at the international level, including societal comprehensive doctrines in DNPs. The first premise has been subjected to vehement liberal critiques and left for dead, and the second premise has not been taken seriously and relatively neglected. This paper defends these premises in turn to justify the OCV as constitutive of Rawls's normative account of a realistic utopia at the international level.","PeriodicalId":46771,"journal":{"name":"International Theory","volume":"15 1","pages":"1 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Theory","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752971922000124","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract This paper advances and defends the overlapping consensus view of human rights (OCV) as a political conception of human rights most consistent with John Rawls's normative account of a realistic utopia at the international level. Although some clues exist in The Law of Peoples to support this view, an innovative reconstruction is called for to complete the picture. This paper aims to offer such a reconstruction, which is predicated on two premises: first, the parties to the international original positions, which include decent nonliberal peoples (DNPs), are reasonable and worthy of liberal toleration; and, second, the protection of human rights proper is a module that can fit into all acceptable comprehensive doctrines at the international level, including societal comprehensive doctrines in DNPs. The first premise has been subjected to vehement liberal critiques and left for dead, and the second premise has not been taken seriously and relatively neglected. This paper defends these premises in turn to justify the OCV as constitutive of Rawls's normative account of a realistic utopia at the international level.
期刊介绍:
Editorial board International Theory (IT) is a peer reviewed journal which promotes theoretical scholarship about the positive, legal, and normative aspects of world politics respectively. IT is open to theory of absolutely all varieties and from all disciplines, provided it addresses problems of politics, broadly defined and pertains to the international. IT welcomes scholarship that uses evidence from the real world to advance theoretical arguments. However, IT is intended as a forum where scholars can develop theoretical arguments in depth without an expectation of extensive empirical analysis. IT’s over-arching goal is to promote communication and engagement across theoretical and disciplinary traditions. IT puts a premium on contributors’ ability to reach as broad an audience as possible, both in the questions they engage and in their accessibility to other approaches. This might be done by addressing problems that can only be understood by combining multiple disciplinary discourses, like institutional design, or practical ethics; or by addressing phenomena that have broad ramifications, like civilizing processes in world politics, or the evolution of environmental norms. IT is also open to work that remains within one scholarly tradition, although in that case authors must make clear the horizon of their arguments in relation to other theoretical approaches.