Week 1
4 september 2024
Do You Believe in Human Rights?
Wat meenemen naar het tentamen:
❖ 15 enkelzijdige A4 papiertjes met notities
Er wordt vooral gevraagd naar concepten.
Disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity
➢ Disciplinarity
○ Which is discipline?
Consciousness of the methodology and method of a particular
discipline.
○ What is the difference?
…
➢ Interdisciplinarity
○ …
What is legal discipline? What is law? Is it science?
About rules and their interpretation. Method is the study of legal texts. However,
many variations: socio-legal, philosophical, anthropological, empirical…
Methodology: method and legal theory, for example, what is justice? Answer
depends upon how one sees law (natural law basis or positivism).
Method: study of legal texts (mainly interpretation) but increasingly also empirical
study of law and an openness towards insights from other disciplines (external
perspectives).
Characteristics of law: different legal systems, practitioner vs academic, difficulty in
explaining methodology and method, studies different legal fields separately, for
example, private law, public law.
A Humanities approach to Human Rights
Crucial Humanities disciplines for HR are: 1.History 2.Philosophy
3.Linguistics/Translation 4.Culture Studies 5.Media Studies
1) Everything has a history, including Human Rights, better even: histories
2) Philosophy: do HR have a foundation and does it matter?
3) Linguistics and translation: what is the language of HR that we find
worldwide?
4) What is the influence of culture on HR conceptions? (Dangers: essentializing
culture, forgetting that also the West has cultures)
5) How are HR conceptions …
, What would the following imaginary critics say about Human Rights?
❖ Legal Realist → People don’t have rights because they are human, but
because of law
❖ Revolutionary → HR are the wrong project, we need a breakdown of the
status quo
❖ Relativist → HR are ‘universalist’ ideas imposed on distinct cultures and
societies
❖ Postcolonialist → HR are political tools in the hands of the Core, former
colonizing countries
❖ Nationalist → HR are nothing compared to our national or citizen rights and
globalist meddling
❖ Colonized or stateless person, refugee → without citizen rights, human rights
are useless
❖ Posthumanist/environmentalist → placing the human at the center denies that
humans are an integral part of the (natural) world and privileges them over
animals and plants
❖ Communitarian → they privilege the individual over the community
❖ Conservatives → what about human duties?
What do HR enthusiasts say?
➢ Yes, HR are concepts, but ideas can open up a space for the imagination and
practices
➢ HR are ‘weapons of the weak’ and help people stand up to their governments
➢ HR cover a wide variety of marginalized groups, including women, people with
disabilities, LGBTQ+-communities, indigenous people, children, refugees
➢ HR are embraced by people in societies, cultures and religions across the
world, with few exceptions
➢ HR can be (abused as) imperialist, but they can also help fight imperialism
➢ HR can go together with environmental and animal rights, precisely because
all of these are connected
➢ All rights entail duties, …
➢ …
➢ …
___________________________________________________________________
4 september 2024
Do You Believe in Human Rights?
Wat meenemen naar het tentamen:
❖ 15 enkelzijdige A4 papiertjes met notities
Er wordt vooral gevraagd naar concepten.
Disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity
➢ Disciplinarity
○ Which is discipline?
Consciousness of the methodology and method of a particular
discipline.
○ What is the difference?
…
➢ Interdisciplinarity
○ …
What is legal discipline? What is law? Is it science?
About rules and their interpretation. Method is the study of legal texts. However,
many variations: socio-legal, philosophical, anthropological, empirical…
Methodology: method and legal theory, for example, what is justice? Answer
depends upon how one sees law (natural law basis or positivism).
Method: study of legal texts (mainly interpretation) but increasingly also empirical
study of law and an openness towards insights from other disciplines (external
perspectives).
Characteristics of law: different legal systems, practitioner vs academic, difficulty in
explaining methodology and method, studies different legal fields separately, for
example, private law, public law.
A Humanities approach to Human Rights
Crucial Humanities disciplines for HR are: 1.History 2.Philosophy
3.Linguistics/Translation 4.Culture Studies 5.Media Studies
1) Everything has a history, including Human Rights, better even: histories
2) Philosophy: do HR have a foundation and does it matter?
3) Linguistics and translation: what is the language of HR that we find
worldwide?
4) What is the influence of culture on HR conceptions? (Dangers: essentializing
culture, forgetting that also the West has cultures)
5) How are HR conceptions …
, What would the following imaginary critics say about Human Rights?
❖ Legal Realist → People don’t have rights because they are human, but
because of law
❖ Revolutionary → HR are the wrong project, we need a breakdown of the
status quo
❖ Relativist → HR are ‘universalist’ ideas imposed on distinct cultures and
societies
❖ Postcolonialist → HR are political tools in the hands of the Core, former
colonizing countries
❖ Nationalist → HR are nothing compared to our national or citizen rights and
globalist meddling
❖ Colonized or stateless person, refugee → without citizen rights, human rights
are useless
❖ Posthumanist/environmentalist → placing the human at the center denies that
humans are an integral part of the (natural) world and privileges them over
animals and plants
❖ Communitarian → they privilege the individual over the community
❖ Conservatives → what about human duties?
What do HR enthusiasts say?
➢ Yes, HR are concepts, but ideas can open up a space for the imagination and
practices
➢ HR are ‘weapons of the weak’ and help people stand up to their governments
➢ HR cover a wide variety of marginalized groups, including women, people with
disabilities, LGBTQ+-communities, indigenous people, children, refugees
➢ HR are embraced by people in societies, cultures and religions across the
world, with few exceptions
➢ HR can be (abused as) imperialist, but they can also help fight imperialism
➢ HR can go together with environmental and animal rights, precisely because
all of these are connected
➢ All rights entail duties, …
➢ …
➢ …
___________________________________________________________________
