It is the fourth criticism that, he says, "is lethal to the whole idea of a natural or human right" (p. 146). So what is it? I'm not sure, but I'll do my best to make it out. It "is directed at the nature of a 'natural right'." (p. 143) Geuss says that he has "strongly suggested" (he doesn't say where and I don't know, but then I haven't read the whole book, so that's likely to be my fault) that it is "essential to the existence of a set of 'rights' that there be some specifiable and more or less effective mechanism for enforcing them" (p. 143). Presumably this suggestion is based on some kind of conceptual analysis, but Adam Smith's idea of moral rights as rights in a metaphorical sense, and J. S. Mill's idea of rights as "essentials of well-being," suggest a different conception of rights than the one Geuss seems to have in mind. So I don't accept his suggestion.
On p. 144 he writes:
Either there is or there is not a mechanism for enforcing human rights. If there is not, it would seem that calling them 'rights' simply means that we think it would (morally) be a good idea if they were enforced, although, of course, they are not.He doesn't say why it would seem that this is the case. I don't see why someone couldn't think that something was essential for living a good human life, or flourishing, and yet not want to see force used to ensure that everyone gets this something. Perhaps the violence necessary for enforcement would be worse than the violation of the right. But I don't mean to exaggerate my disagreement with Geuss here.
He then discusses the possibility that declarations of rights might somehow become enforced, and says:
The question is not whether this is possible or whether it would be a good thing, but whether such a development is the invention of a new set of positive 'rights' in a new international legal system or the emergence into visibility of a set of natural human rights that already existed. (p. 145)He sees the point of appeal to natural or human rights as being undone if we admit they are "something we made to exist" (p. 145). They are, after all, supposed to be "something we discovered which served as the grounds for judging actual legal rights" (p. 145). This does not fit the idea of moral rights as the imperfect cousin of legal rights, but it does fit one kind of idea of human rights. So let's stick with that conception of rights for now. What could provide such grounds? "The only thing that can serve that purpose seems to be the flickering light of our variable moral beliefs" (p. 145 still). Huh?
Consider some examples: the right to freedom of speech, the right to equal opportunity regardless of race or gender, the right to freedom of religion. To say that such rights exist, according to Geuss, is to say that it would be morally good if the law were used to protect such freedoms and opportunities. Did we make this moral goodness exist? I don't think so. Did we discover it to exist? Perhaps not literally, but yes, I think we did. (Or we realized that it existed, or came to accept its existence, or something like that.) Sometimes our moral beliefs vary because we come to appreciate something more or better than we had before. Why not call this discovery? What else should we call our having come to regard the sexes and races as being morally equal, as requiring (as a matter of right) equal treatment and opportunity? Flickering? Waffling? I don't buy it.
In the end Geuss seems to think that belief in human rights is "only a moral belief" (p. 146). He then adds that people's moral beliefs vary, and that agreement does not guarantee effective action. He concludes that there "are no natural rights" (p. 146). I think this is because of the lack of the enforcement mechanism he thinks is essential to the very idea of a right. If we give up that requirement then his argument seems to be reduced to the observation that a belief in human rights is a moral belief. And I agree with that, but don't see it as a problem.
"In the end Geuss seems to think that belief in human rights is "only a moral belief" (p. 146)"
ReplyDeleteThis strikes me as odd enough that I have to ask what else he thinks they might be. (It's no objection to the idea that there are primes greater than seven that this is only a mathematical belief.)
Is the view he's trying to reject some sort of attempt to get the idea of political rights out of a purely amoral foundation? That's the only thing I can come up with. But even there, I wonder who's actually tried to push this line -- the sharpest morality/politics distinctions I can think of still base politics on things like prudence. Kant thought that a republic could be founded even among a race of devils, but that's because even devils respect practical reasoning enough to use it to satisfy their self-interest.
I think it all has to do with his mechanism idea. Human rights are a moral idea without an enforcement mechanism, hence they aren't rights (according to his idea of what rights have to be). I need to dig more to see how he defends this idea. But I agree, it is strange on the face of it.
ReplyDeletei don't know this text, but at first blush 'only a moral belief' sounds pretty nietzschean.
ReplyDeletein your second to last paragraph, DR, it sounds to me like you had been entertaining geuss's caution about treating rights as discovered rather than created, but then turn to questioning whether we should treat the moral goodness which would help justify rights as either discovered or created. and you go full-on for 'discovered'. but if my sense of the nietzschean air here is at least partially right, geuss would probably not let you opt for 'discovered' so readily?
He seems to rule out the idea that rights are discovered without really considering it at all. And that seems like a mistake to me. But then he isn't really talking about what I have in mind when I defend talk about rights. So maybe my criticisms of him are off target. The index has several references to Nietzsche, so I'll check those out. Thanks for the tip.
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ReplyDeletePresumably he throws in "psychological" to make it clear that he sees the whole idea as having no real appeal at all, only, at best, an illusory one.
ReplyDeleteWhat I take Geuss to be saying, based on my reading of both this book and his other books, is exactly the opposite: that any position in political philosophy that is worth examining at all closely must at least be psychologically appealing if nothing else, because only psychologically appealing positions can affect the thinking of actual human beings in behaviourally significant ways. And politics, which is what political philosophy is supposed to be about, is a form of behaviour.
That a position be psychologically appealing is thus a necessary condition for its being philosophically interesting, but not a sufficient condition. So the fact that a position has little psychological appeal is for Geuss a perfectly serious criticism.
I don't see why someone couldn't think that something was essential for living a good human life, or flourishing, and yet not want to see force used to ensure that everyone gets this something.
But what Geuss says is that rights must be conceivably enforceable, not that they must be actually enforced. Whether someone "wants to see force used" or not is not the question, but whether there exists a force to either use or refrain from using.
But then he isn't really talking about what I have in mind when I defend talk about rights. So maybe my criticisms of him are off target.
I'm quite sure they are, for the reason you give yourself. (That this is my view was probably already clear from the foregoing...)
Is the view he's trying to reject some sort of attempt to get the idea of political rights out of a purely amoral foundation? That's the only thing I can come up with. But even there, I wonder who's actually tried to push this line [...].
ReplyDeleteWell, in a sense his view is that perhaps nobody is trying to push it nowadays - but that the role rights talk has in contemporary political philosophy has its roots in a long superseded historical era in which people tried to push it quite seriously, and which is the only context in which rights talk makes sense. He wants to have rights talk dropped because "the language which is its original home" (PI §116) has died out and it has no real independent use apart from that language, only a "philosophers['] use" (PI §116) in a pejorative sense. (In this, Geuss is of course strongly reminiscent of Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy.")
In the fourth criticism, which this post mostly discusses, Geuss writes: "Earlier historical periods in the West were in a more comfortable position. [...] In some earlier periods it was possible to believe that there were natural rights" (p. 143). But not any longer, it seems to him.
In the book's conclusion (p. 153), Geuss characterises what he's criticised as "the assumption that societies should be organised as modern states conjoined with a commitment to a form of liberalism, democracy as a form of government, and a system of individual human rights". To him, this does not make sense, because the state is both inescapable and its nature is inescapably coercive. The state "will always outrun what liberalism construes as its de jure legitimacy" and "[t]he coercive nature of the state is, thus, a basic obstacle to to any completely harmonious cohabitation with liberalism, at least as long as liberalism remains committed to a principle of voluntariness". This is the main target of his criticisms. And I think "the assumption that societies should, etc., etc." can be attributed to many contemporary political philosophers of a high profile without doing them an injustice. Geuss names some of the names he has in mind himself, both here and in his other books.
(It's no objection to the idea that there are primes greater than seven that this is only a mathematical belief.)
PI §240: "Disputes do not break out (among mathematicians, say) over the question whether a rule has been obeyed or not. People don't come to blows over it, for example." But people do come to blows over the question whether a moral rule has been obeyed or not. This is the difference.
The view of the moral as "merely moral" in this way is not limited to Geuss, but is found in ordinary language. "A moral victory" is a euphemism for a defeat. Well, OK, perhaps this is an overly cynical Geuss-pastiching way of putting it. But a moral victory is not a victory, or else it would be called simply "a victory" instead of "a moral victory".
That a position be psychologically appealing is thus a necessary condition for its being philosophically interesting, but not a sufficient condition. So the fact that a position has little psychological appeal is for Geuss a perfectly serious criticism.
ReplyDeleteThanks. That sounds right.
what Geuss says is that rights must be conceivably enforceable, not that they must be actually enforced.
Yes, but he sees this as essential to the very idea of rights in a way that I think it is not to my idea of rights (which is not only my idea). Rights as essentials of human well-being are, I suppose, theoretically enforceable, but this doesn't seem to belong to their essence. Perhaps more to the point, I think he allows that someone might mean "something that ought to be a legally enforced right" when they talk about moral or human rights. He doesn't regard this as edifying (see p. 145), but I don't see that it's necessarily a bad thing. He might be overly cynical here.
In the end I think my objection to him is that he and I are talking about different things, which is perhaps no objection at all. But he seems not to recognize that rights-talk might be what I (want to) take it to be. And that does seem to be a mistake.