entertainment, and people often have sex for pleasure rather than procreation.
Overall, even if Finnis is right to argue that there are goods that transcend ‘cultures’
his argument lacks the binding quality necessary to generate a set of actionable,
universal human rights.Cruelty and solidarity (Shklar and Rorty)
What motivated the UDHR and what moves people most strongly to protest against
regimes that violate human rights is revulsion at cruel practices, such as torture.
The difficulty with at least three of the other four theories – Donnelly’s theory may
be the exception – is that they abstract too much. We do not reason our way to
human rights from an abstract standpoint of ‘duty’, but from imaginative
identification with the victims of abuse. As Judith Shklar argues, we ‘put cruelty
first’. That slightly odd formulation – it might imply valuing cruelty – is intended
to convey a sceptical, negative basis for human rights, and to stress that
considerations of cruelty take priority in the articulation of our sense of justice and
injustice.
Cruelty Shklar defines as the ‘willful inflicting of physical pain on a weaker being
in order to cause anguish and fear’. By putting cruelty first, ‘with nothing above it,
and with nothing to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty’ one ‘closes off any appeal to
any order other than that of actuality’ (Shklar, 1984: 8). In understanding human
rights as the political expression of our revulsion towards cruelty we avoid appeal
to human essences, or reason, or a positive set of virtues, all of which carry the
danger of ethnocentrism. Richard Rorty developed this idea in his book
Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (1989). By ‘contingency’ Rorty means opposition
to any idea of human essence, or nature, or any other ideas that supposedly provide
the ‘foundations’ for law, morality and politics. In rejecting philosophical
universalism Rorty recognises the danger that anything will be ‘justifiable’, or, more
accurately, since no beliefs or values have a privileged status there is nothing that
can be said against torture or genocide. To address this charge it is necessary to
consider the other two concepts that appear in the title of Rorty’s book: irony and
solidarity.
Irony is the capacity to recognise that one’s own values may not be ultimate –
that it is always possible to describe the world in another way. To be ironic is to
continue to hold on to one’s beliefs and values and at the same timeacknowledge
the force of other ‘conversations’. Although we cannot provide any philosophical
‘grounding’ for respect or tolerance the ironist will tend to recognise the rights of
others. The ironist does not reason from an abstract standpoint but is capable of
emotional identification; such identification might come through, for example, an
appreciation of literature. Picking up on Shklar’s idea of the ‘actuality’ the ironist
will have special sensitivity to cruelty. Recognising the limitations of one’s own
beliefs, and sensitivity to cruelty, provide hope for an expanding circle of solidarity.
Rorty observes that if you were a Jew in Nazi-occupied Europe your chances of
avoiding deportation were greater if you lived in Denmark or Italy than if you lived
in Belgium (1989: 189). He explains the difference in the following terms:418 Part 4 Contemporary ideas