On who decides

Iain Provan considers the grounding for human rights.

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Summary

Iain Provan considers the grounding for human rights.

Transcript

We hear a lot about human rights nowadays, and it’s very good that we do – I thoroughly approve of that. But it is an interesting question where people think those are to be grounded, and who gets to say what they are, and so on. And I think it’s very difficult to see how robust human rights survive when you don’t have an anthropology – when you don’t have a view of human beings – that is similar to the one we’re just talking about, this image-bearing idea. Unless people are innately of a certain nature and being, and because of that they have rights, the question is, who is it that decides whose rights, which rights, under which circumstances?