Finally done!

Finally completed the blasted human rights research paper. Three months of time to do it came down to writing more than half of it in the last two days. I have truly been spoiled by the no-questions-asked loose deadline policy of Jan Narveson. Too bad Orend will have to read a whole lot of pseudo-philosophy and bad writing churned out over a few hours.

The opening paragraph:

The study of human rights, especially with respect to the idea of universality of rights in the global context, requires an interdisciplinary approach – an analysis not only from a theoretical philosophical perspective but a real world view that takes into consideration the religious, anthropological and also political and economic factors at play. It is with this in mind that I want to examine what it means for human rights to be universal in principle and universally applicable in practice. In theory, starting from a common human origin unencumbered by cultural and other differences, it is easy to argue for universality for all men and women simply on the basis of our common humanity. The question is if this is sufficient to make a case for the universal human rights model or whether the vast anthropological (including historical, social and religious) influence and variety have made humans too diverse and differentiated to be expected adhere to a universal human rights conception.

And the conclusion:

This paper has been an attempt to ground universality of human rights in a necessary minimum universal moral standard irrespective of particular cultural, moral and religious values of a community, while emphasizing the importance and crucial nature of the broader culture-based morality and values systems that influence the majority of people in the world. While in theory a thin, non-ideological and non-foundational justification of the idea of human rights and universality is necessary, in practice the enormous influence that cultural and religious traditions have for their members should not be ignored or merely tolerated, but should instead be utilized towards the promotion of human rights in specific cultural contexts.

Fundamental universal human rights ought to be interpreted locally according to the prevalent religious and cultural context. In situations where there is a clear conflict between a fundamental human right and the dictates of ideology or religion, an intra- and cross-cultural consensus towards reinterpretation of the conflicting ideology in an attempt for reconciliation with the universal model is the preferred approach. As can be seen from the case study of criminal punishments in Islamic legal theory, such a consensus is not impossible.