Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 13:26:56 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [HAB:] Getting to the good? Re: What makes a human right universal? [Ralph]



Ralph,

I like your thoughts a lot. 

R> Whatever Habermas has to say about this, I don't think
the question is best answerable in the way that it is
framed.  

G: I can agree. Knowing how best to frame a question is a
good part of the way to its answer or resolution. Entering
into an activity of questioning via the subject line, my
questioning is transformed reflectively (however
inadequately) as it goes along. 

R> The use of "nature" in the Enlightenment was ahistorical
but also provided a philosophical basis from which to
challenge repressive feudal institutions (products of
history gone awry).  

G: Yes, so metaphysicalist (Enlightenment) warrants may
*stand in* for---or express---valid intuitions. Your point
reminds me that contemporary “human” rights originally
arose as “natural” rights, yet rights that are by nature
*political*, in a history that goes well for the rights
holder (oddly, ‘wry’ isn’t the antonym of ‘awry’). 

R: I would say that rights are a natural entitlement, with
the proviso that they are _potentially_ recognizable (if
not always actually recognized)…

G: I would say that too. SO, I’m struggling with the
“natural” in natural entitlement. The naturalness of the
human right somehow provides the basis for political
demands for recognition. 

R: … and are related to the evolutionary tendency towards
self-actualization, itself related to historical
circumstances in which this potential or tendency becomes
activated.  

G: Exactly. There was an intuition in early modernity that
persons, by nature, *in* their nature, are *supposed* to
self-actualize, and thus *deserve* the circumstances that
evince self-actualization. First as God-given freedom, then
as (perhaps) rite of nature, humans intuit what we now
conceive as evolutionary tendency. 

R> This is not mere historicism (or diachronic relativism),
which would absolutize the prevailing norms of any given
period.  Rather, the very ability to ask your question is
the very proof of the existence of this latent tendency,
now activated. 

G: That’s a very interesting kind of point, paralleling
Habermas’ argumentative tack that questioning reason’s
inherence to action evidences reason (thus not yet giving
credence to a claim against belief that reason is inherent
to action). Your “related to historical circumstances” is
“not mere historicism” because “natural entitlement” IS
somehow (we contemporaries think now) “related
to…evolutionary tendency,” which *counters* absolutization
of normative presence. Habermas might agree that what makes
absolutization of prevailing norms is a concealment (by
power) of the difference between facticity (status quo) and
validity (truly fair basis). The “very proof” of natural
entitlement to self-actualization is in the activity of
questioning itself, apart from content of questioning
(which begins with the child’s incessant “Why?” that may
have as much to do with fascination in questioning than
interest in answers). Questioning causes learning causes
maturation causes capability to see a difference between
status quo and truly fair basis. 

R> So is human right a natural or historical entitlement? 
It is both.

G: Indeed. (in deed!: In the historizing activity of
natural questioning, self-actualization proves itself. 

R>  The minute the question is raised, even hypothetically,
the dynamic of freedom is introduced into the situation. 
Can the question be raised, or need it be raised, under
every conceivable historical circumstance?  This would be
the pivotal question.  Some say modernity (the development
of liberal institutions) uniquely recognizes rights in a
way that never existed previously, but whatever modernity's
unique characteristics and tendency to enunciate rights as
an abstract principle, it is implausible to suggest that
nobody previously ever defended what they considered
explicitly or implicitly to be their rights, or never
rebelled against prevailing norms.  The very nature of such
self-assertion though proves it is one natural tendency, if
not the sole one.  And if one examines the structure of
motivation in all social formations, one could construct an
argument that human emancipation or self-realization is an
inherent tendency of human beings, even sans a historical
telos that guarantees its realization in advance.

G: Well said. Whatever is the nature of human evolutionary
tendencies toward self-realization, intuition of such
nature is signaled in any and all the evidence of rebellion
in history, written and archaeological, while that nature
is *hallmarked* by the *works* of self-realizing
intelligence, be they documents, monuments, or forms of
life, especially (for present concerns) works that advance
our humanity. 

Ralph, I’m delighted that your thoughts tacitly suggest a
hypothesis that I’m working with, which is contrary to
Habermas’ views: that rights serve goods, such that goods
are the basis for insisting upon rights. Your discussion
seems to suggest that the good of self-realization compels
the interest in rights. 

I don’t see how Habermas can tenably object that
self-realization is a primordial good---that there *is* an
accessible trans-cultural “Good” traceable to our shared
nature as intelligently learning beings. Indeed, one
doesn’t have to get grandly evolutionary to argue, as
Philippa Foot does, that there is “natural goodness”
(_Natural Goodness_, Oxford 2001). I’ve recently pushed a
notion of healthfulness as a proximal basis for promoting
the value of well being. Educational psychology is all
about the inherence of human interest in learning by the
healthy person. There’s immense plausibility to thinking of
interest in self-realization as natural. Concordant with
Foot, Paul Bloomfield, in _Moral Reality_ (Oxford 2001),
argues for a “moral realism, developing an ontology for
morality that models the property of being morally good on
the property of being physically healthy” (dust jacket; I
haven’t read the book yet). This kind of interest suggests
a sense of goodness that may indeed generalize to human
nature and warrant claims to human rights. 

Gary





     --- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---