I'd love it if any interested someone could discuss the views and consequences of their chosen philosopher(s)- possibly combined with their own experience. Preferably with respect to 'contemporary issues' in the area of human rights. Pick any one you like, not necessarily the UK issue.
How can a 'philosophy of human rights' - or a 'philosophy of language' - help us understand or cope with a human rights crisis? What do you consider a 'human rights crisis' ?
Are we more likely to change current structures due to our increasing knowledge, awareness and ability to communicate immediately via twitter, youtube, internet chat. Philosophy Inaction v Public in Action ?
If Derrida is your man, can you explain what/how he would have us think of human rights in 'another configuration...where we think of humans via their productive/performance presence...another structure of knowledge concerning the being human and its relation to the human being' - Yoni.
If you think Derrida is cool, think of his words as spoken by a debutante from Devon called Daphne. She would be laughed outta town.
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Guardian NEWSFLASH: Another change to legislation - to protect the likes of Prince Charles...
So, Charlie has rights, that's good, right?Ministers are planning to amend Freedom of Information legislation to strengthen the ability of the government to veto the publication of documents, in the light of the supreme court’s “black spider” ruling saying some of Prince Charles’s letters to Whitehall departments much be published.
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Background info re human rights and the UK situation:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights-human/
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/may ... ens-speechHuman rights are norms that help to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses. Examples of human rights are the right to freedom of religion, the right to a fair trial when charged with a crime, the right not to be tortured, and the right to engage in political activity. These rights exist in morality and in law at the national and international levels...
The philosophy of human rights addresses questions about the existence, content, nature, universality, justification, and legal status of human rights. The strong claims made on behalf of human rights (for example, that they are universal, or that they exist independently of legal enactment as justified moral norms) frequently provoke skeptical doubts and countering philosophical defences (on these critiques see Waldron 1988 and the entry on rights). Reflection on these doubts and the responses that can be made to them has become a sub-field of political and legal philosophy with a substantial literature (see the Bibliography below)...
The Tory manifesto outlined a clear commitment to scrap the 1998 Human Rights Act and curtail the role of the European court of human rights
It promised to break the link between British courts and the European court of human rights. It promised to limit the use of human rights laws to the most serious cases and it promised to limit their reach to the UK so, for example, British armed forces overseas were not subject to human rights claims.
Yet it gave no indication as to how this partial withdrawal from the jurisdiction of the European convention on human rights might be achieved nor did it take into account the possible reaction from the Council of Europe, which oversees it.