Tasioulas: Philosophizing the Real World of Human Rights: A Reply to Samuel Moyn

John Tasioulas (Univ. College London - Law) has posted Philosophizing the Real World of Human Rights: A Reply to Samuel Moyn (in Human Rights: Moral or Political?, Adam Etinson ed., forthcoming). Here's the introduction:

The post-World War II human rights phenomenon has in recent years become the focus of an outpouring of academic interest that spills across a number of disciplines – not only law and philosophy, but also history, theology, political science, anthropology, international relations, among others. This is without doubt a positive development, since the major questions to which that phenomenon gives rise are by no means the exclusive preserve of any one academic specialization. However, as Samuel Moyn’s chapter in this volume, written with his customary learning and flair, vividly illustrates, productive cross-disciplinary dialogue on this apparently common subject-matter is not easily achieved. In this reply I will indicate some of the ways in which Moyn mistreats arguments that I advanced in ‘Towards a Philosophy of Human Rights’, the text that is his primary target. My comments are offered with the aim of furthering a broad agenda that I believe we both share, i.e. that the academic study of human rights should critically engage with the discourse and practice of human rights in the real world.