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Jon asked:
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Can human rights be substantiated within a post-structuralist universe?
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============
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Postmodernism developed within the tradition of continental philosophy and with the consequent
disintegration of the self and the identification of distinct language games or narratives as governing
our ethical and political lives, the continental tradition struggles to solve the problems it has raised for
itself. You might be interested in Charles Altieri's book Canons and Consequencesin which he
outlines the problems the postmodernist J-F Lyotard faces in defining justice. If justice cannot be
defined, neither can rights.
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However, Altieri believes that the non-postmodern analytical philosopher John Rawls' account of
justice as the result of a hypothetical initial position which determines basic rights is compatible with
postmodernism since it abstracts from the concept of the self to involve "self and others", and it is
non-historical and non-political. You have probably read Rawls' A Theory of Justiceand know of the
original position, in which the assessment of distributive rules and the principle of basic rights is fixed
by abstraction from oneself and replaced with the consideration of oneself from a subjective and
objective point of view, as a social individual. Reflection on the principles of rights and distribution is
free from political and historical assumptions and the definition provides criteria for upholding rights in
actual life.
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The postmodernist has denied the subject/ object relation, the possibility of truth and determinacy of
language and has difficulty establishing rights if he cannot define them, although Habermas holds that
we even though we cannot abstract from language, we can abstract from norms and culture. By
means of dialogue, rights can be established by consensus, but this collapses into relativism unless it
is understood as ideal consensus. Then the problem arises that a society with an ideal consensus is
a society with no conflict or areas for argument and dialogue comes to an end. This is more
problematic than Rawls' idea of determining very basic principles.
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Rachel Browne
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