Postscript: But I Have a Right!

1999 ◽  
pp. 169-186
Author(s):  
Beth J. Singer
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Traditional Concept

This postscript provides answers to the criticisms and questions to the author's previous book, summarizing the features of the theory presented in this volume. In characterizing rights as social institutions rather than as inherent traits of essential human nature, the author rejects the traditional concept of “natural rights.” The author argues that, where a right is operative, every member of the community has both the entitlement and the correlative obligation that make that entitlement a matter of right. Rights and their correlative obligations are social imperatives; they must be mandated by a community's social norms. Therefore, one who does not belong to a community in which a given set of rights-norms is operative would “not have” that right.

Legalism and Humankind

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Frank I. Michelman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Normative Argument

Prescriptive political and moral theories contain ideas about what human beings are like and about what, correspondingly, is good for them. Conceptions of human “nature” and corresponding human good enter into normative argument by way of support and justification. Of course, it is logically open for the ratiocinative traffic to run the other way. Strongly held convictions about the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, of certain social institutions or practices may help condition and shape one's responses to one or another set of propositions about what people are like and what, in consequence, they have reason to value.

Studying Each Other

Trans Kids ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Tey Meadow
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Gender Nonconformity ◽  
Gender Transgression ◽  
Identity Category

The introduction sets the stage for the intricate discussion of a new identity category, the transgender child, and the first generation of families actively facilitating gender nonconformity. In a context of rapidly shifting legal, administrative, and social norms around gender, new possibilities for gendered life are emerging. These possibilities underscore that gender transgression no longer merely incites sanction; now it can also lead others to change social gender assignations. Rather than disrupting the gender order, these new forms of gender underscore gender’s increasing importance to psychic and relational life and its further embedding in the fabric of social institutions.

Introduction: Law as a Means of Exclusion

1996 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-18
Author(s):  
Marie-Andrée Bertrand
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Canadian Journal ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Law And Society ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Social Rules ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
Sharp Focus ◽  
Legislative Agenda

In our call for papers for this special issue of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society on “Law as a factor of exclusion,” we announced that we were seeking contributions on the discriminatory and exclusionary power of legal and non-legal norms and institutions. We also intimated that the use of historical approaches might prove revealing in analyses of statutes and other legislation, especially for their potential to uncover otherwise hidden legislative agenda.The articles in this issue of the Journal meet and surpass our expectations. Each of the authors brings into sharp focus the central issues at stake in the announced theme. While the majority of the contributions take legislation and judicial decisions as their primary material, some are directed to exploring non-legal norms and social rules. Moreover, even in those contributions taking the state law as their object, the authors display a keen awareness of the power of social norms and social institutions; one of these deals specifically with the practices of the legal profession and the legal academy. Nearly all of the authors historicize their subject.

Social Capital and Social Norms Shape Human–Nature Interactions

2016 ◽  
pp. 134-147
Author(s):  
Xiaodong Chen ◽  
Wu Yang ◽  
Vanessa Hull ◽  
Thomas Dietz ◽  
Ken Frank ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Human Nature

Chomsky on State and Democracy

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The State ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Power And Resistance ◽  
The Individual

According to the New York Times, Noam Chomsky is the most important intellectual of our time. He has not only revolutionised the theories of language and the human mind, but his concept of human nature has prompted him to fight for freedom and democracy and led to political analyses which concern the role of the state and the function of democracy (among others). The contributions to this book deal with the most important topics of his political work: human nature and the emergence of social institutions the relationship of the individual to the state and the gist of anarchism human rights and the notion of freedom power and resistance <b>With contributions by</b> Robert Barsky, Željko Bošković, Jean Bricmont, Günther Grewendorf, Georg Meggle, Milan Rai, Tom Roeper, Michael Schiffmann and Juan Uriagereka.

The Turban and the Axe

2020 ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Ian Coller
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
Ancien Régime

This chapter traces the crisis of representation through the October Days: the march of women on Versailles. The march had unleashed a further revolutionary split over the fragmentation of monarchical sovereignty, accompanied by burgeoning anxieties around gender and the patriarchal stability of the ancien régime model. The chapter shows how, in the midst of a mounting political and financial crisis, the court at Versailles tried to promulgate a form of religious tolerance which ended up launching the imaginary “Muslim minority” in France. It was needed as a means of universalizing the notion of “natural rights” to which the monarchy appealed in order to defuse Catholic opposition. Far from a radical or revolutionary notion, this conception of rights inherent in human nature was here set against the rights accorded by citizenship. In doing so, the monarchy opened for a moment a gap between citizenship and Catholicity, and then slammed it shut again.

scholarly journals PROPERTY IN THE MORAL LIFE OF HUMAN BEINGS

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 404-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Bertram
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Complex Society ◽  
Property Concepts

AbstractLiberal egalitarian political philosophers have often argued that private property is a legal convention dependent on the state and that complaints about taxation from entitlement theorists are therefore based on a conceptual mistake. But our capacity to grasp and use property concepts seems too embedded in human nature for this to be correct. This essay argues that many standard arguments that property is constitutively a legal convention fail, but that the opposition between conventionalists and natural rights theorists is outmoded. In doing this, the essay draws on recent literature in evolutionary biology and psychology. Even though modern property in a complex society involves legal conventions, those conventions should be sensitive to our natural dispositions concerning ownership.

scholarly journals The unity of the divine and the human in Christ: The Chalcedonian definition and Paul Tillich’s Spirit Christology

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 400-416
Author(s):  
Alexander L. Chernyavsky ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Paul Tillich ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
Alternative Description ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Spirit Christology ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

The Christological disputes of the 6th–7th centuries (the polemics of Leontius of Byzantium with the Nestorians and Eutychians, and Maximus the Confessor with the monoenergistes/monothelites) showed that the Chalcedonian definition gives rise to a number of problems that cannot be solved within the framework of traditional theology: the unclear ontological status of human nature without a human hypostasis; the inconsistency of the ontological models underlying trinitology and Christology; the need to resort to an artificial interpretation of the gospel testimonies about Christ. However, the Chalcedonian definition is only one possible way to describe the unity of the divine and the human in Christ. The Christology of Paul Tillich is considered as an example of an alternative description in which the above problems do not arise. Tillich’s idea is to replace the traditional concept of the Logos incarnated in man with the concept of the Spirit of God transforming man. According to this view, God does not act on human nature without hypostasis, but on the hypostasis of man through its unifying center. During the earthly life of Christ, this effect occurred only in the hypostasis of Christ as man. And after (and thanks to) the death on the cross and the resurrection of Christ, it extends to all people.

scholarly journals From "The Feminine Mystique" to "Self-Realization"

1970 ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Lebanese American University
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Continuous Change ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Long Time

Social institutions are subject to a movement of flux and reflux because they are essentially related to human nature which remains enveloped with mystery. While scientists succeed to a large extent in unfolding the secrets of nature and submitting it to the service of man, the components of society", including political, moral and economic life, undergo a continuous change. Every system that is worked out, is readily counter·balanced by an opposite system. Theories whicn for a long time enjoyed popularity are sooner or later exposed to severe criticism and rejection.

scholarly journals ¿Derechos humanos como derechos naturales? Posibilidad y origen. Human Rights as Natural Rights? Possibility and Origin

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Manuel Álvarez Chicano
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
Derechos Humanos

La Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos alcanzada por consenso es una justificación condicionada a un acuerdo de voluntades. El presente artículo, desde una perspectiva iusnaturalista, expone una fundamentación objetiva aceptando la existencia de cosas propias del hombre, derechos o iura, que le corresponden por el mero hecho de ser persona. Estos derechos se asientan en una naturaleza humana, entendida como principio intrínseco, inacabado y tendencial; una determinación genérica que permite entender su compatibilidad con la libertad y el cambio incesante del devenir histórico. La raíz de estos derechos se sitúa en una serie de deberes que son de exigido cumplimiento. Y a su vez se fundamentan en el deber-ser de lo bueno en cuanto bueno o —desde una perspectiva distinta— en la verdad de que determinada realidad es buena.The reached-by-consensus Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a justification with the condition of an agreement of wills. The present article, from an iusnaturalist perspective, exposes an objective foundation that accepts the existence of things proper to Man, rights or iura that correspond to him for the mere fact of being person. These rights exist in a human nature, understood as an intrinsic, unfinished, and on-trend principle; a generic determination that allows to understand its compatibility with the freedom and the incessant change of historical occurrences. The root of these rights is located in a series of duties that must be fulfilled and at the same time, they are founded in the must-be good of that which is good or —from a different perspective— in the truth that such reality is good.

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