Category Archives: Human Rights

New Book: Handbook on Human Rights in China

Just published: Handbook on Human Rights in China (Edward Elgar Publishing), edited by Sarah Biddulph (Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, Australia) and Joshua Rosenzweig (East Asia Research Director, Amnesty International). More info here; Table of Contents below.

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Who’s Which? Which What?

My guess, really just a guess, is that the discussion of role ethics or relational ethics might benefit from some direct attention to a couple of fallacies available for commission—one minor, one major.  I don’t know whether they’re actually committed or directly discussed in the literature.  Possible examples of each can be found in Henry Rosemont’s essay “Rights-Bearing Individuals and Role-Bearing Persons” (in Mary Bockover, ed., Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility: Essays Dedicated to Herbert Fingarette, Open Court 1991, pp. 71-101).  I’ll make that my text.  I don’t understand it.

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The Issue is Not the Issue: A Podcast with Hans-Georg Moeller and Dan Sarafinas

Hans-Georg Moeller and Dan Sarafinas discuss contemporary debates on “political correctness” and related moral and social issues. They point to concepts such as virtue speech (“virtue signalling”), civil religion, and the role of critique to better understand their nature.

Episode 1–Virtue Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pg8H-b87Cs;

The phenomenon of virtue speech (“virtue signalling”) has become a central feature in recent outrage movements pervasive throughout the West. Virtue speech, which is implicitly tied to accusations of hate speech, is a form of moralistic discourse setting speech examples that make it difficult to openly discuss elements of our culture without falling into the trap of moralizing.

Episode 2–Civil Religion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EDEuXCPHOQ

Civil religion plays a central role in the virtue speech, or political correctness, discourse. The history of the concept is discussed as well as the structure of the American form of civil religion and how tenets of civil religion are constantly being performed and re-enacted, particularly in current social media outrage movements.

 

Angle to speak at HKBU on Wednesday, Feb 15

I know, all this self-promotion is getting a little embarrassing, but it’s great seeing old friends and meeting new ones. And if you are giving a lecture on a Warp, Weft, and Way topic, anywhere in the world, let me know and I’ll share the news! In any event: I’m lecturing on “Human Rights and Chinese Tradition” at 3:30pm on Wednesday, Feb 5 at Hong Kong Baptist University. It is free and open to the public, though they request registration; details are here.

New Draft Essay on Human Rights and Chinese Tradition

I have recently completed a draft chapter, titled “Human Rights and Chinese Tradition,” for the Handbook on human rights in China being edited by Sarah Biddulph and Joshua Rosenzweig. Anyone interested can take a look; I have uploaded it to my personal archive here. Comments are very welcome!

Colloquium in Shanghai on Chinese and African Philosophy

Chinese and African Philosophy: A Conversation

A colloquium is being organized by Marius Vermaak (Rhodes University, South Africa), Daniel A. Bell (Jiaotong University, the PRC) and Thaddeus Metz (University of Johannesburg, South Africa), and is being supported by the Confucius Institute at Rhodes University (South Africa). To be held 10, 11 and 12 May 2013, and hosted by the Humanities Faculty of Jiaotong University in Shanghai.

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AAUP Questions Yale-Singapore Collaboration

Though this is not explicitly about Chinese or Comparative philosophy, some issues about the clash between Singapore and ideals of Western liberalism arise because of Singapore’s social policies that are authoritarian and, because of that, sometimes coded as Confucian. The AAUP authors below raise questions about the wisdom of collaboration and accommodationism by Yale University with an “authoritarian regime” and argue that what is at stake are “not simply ‘cultural differences’ but whether Yale recognizes universal human rights and the protections for academic staff.”

I’m inclined to say that cultural differences are not so simple and that they might problematize the recognition of “universal human rights.” Not that the existence of cultural differences negates the existence of universal rights, but that they pose an epistemological question about how much confidence, relatively speaking, the West should place in some of the freedoms as being universally owed to people simply in virtue of their humanity. That’s a long, theoretical discussion, in which it helps to specify which purported rights are universal in such a way.

I’m mostly interested here in the practical wisdom of a hardline “all or nothing” approach the AAUP authors seem to be arguing for below. That is, they seem to be arguing that Yale should keep its hands spotlessly clean by staying out of a collaboration altogether if a rather long list of guarantees cannot be met fully at the proposed Yale-NUS campus. (Here is the link to the UNESCO recommendations referenced below.)

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