Taking Rights out of Human Rights*
Taking Rights out of Human Rights*
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从人权中剔除权利*
作者：
J. Tasioulas
詹姆斯·格里芬的新书可以说是《世界人权宣言》开创的人权陶醉时代中出现的最重要的人权哲学沉思。他的出发点是对当代人权话语的“贬低”的一种不讨好的、几乎是麦金太尔式的描绘，根据这种描绘，“人权”一词已经变得“几乎没有标准”（14-15）。无可否认，这些权利的常见特征--我们仅仅因为是人而拥有的权利--仍然流行。但是，我们不再接受在经院自然法概念中赋予这一概念某种额外确定性的神学背景，这主要是因为从中世纪晚期到启蒙运动，对这一概念的形而上学和认识论基础发起了一波又一波的批判。当神学解释被抛弃时，“没有什么东西被放在它的位置上。这个词只剩下很少的标准，
James Griffin’s new book is arguably the most significant philosophical meditation on human rights to emerge in the human rights–intoxicated era inaugurated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His starting point is an unflattering, almost MacIntyrean, portrayal of the “debasement” of contemporary human rights discourse, according to which the term “human right” has become “nearly criterionless” (14–15). Admittedly, the familiar characterization of such rights—rights that we have simply in virtue of being human—retains its currency. But we no longer accept the theological background that conferred some extra determinacy on this notion in scholastic conceptions of natural law, largely because of the successive waves of criticism launched on its metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. And when the theological interpretation was abandoned, “nothing was put in its place. The term was left with so few criteria for