Human Rights, Categorical Duties: A Dilemma for Instrumentalism

Ariel Zylberman

Utilitas, 2016, vol. 28, issue 4, 368-395

Abstract: Contemporary theorists tend to think that the basic justification of human rights is instrumental, as efficient means for producing the theorist's preferred ultimate value or values. Contemporary theorists also tend to think that human rights have a distinctive normative force, correlating with categorical duties. This article shows that instrumentalist accounts of human rights face a dilemma. The very structure of any instrumentalist account means that such an account faces extraordinary difficulties accommodating categorical duties to respect the human rights of others. If so, one should either reject instrumentalism about human rights or do away with categorical duties. But doing away with categorical duties comes at a high cost. The dilemma, then, should question the prevalent assumption that instrumentalist accounts of human rights can accommodate categorical duties. The dilemma should serve either to sharpen instrumentalist theories or to motivate non-instrumentalism about human rights.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:utilit:v:28:y:2016:i:04:p:368-395_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Utilitas from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().