GI7002 - History and Theory of Human Rights (2023/24)
| Module specification | Module approved to run in 2023/24 | ||||||||||
| Module title | History and Theory of Human Rights | ||||||||||
| Module level | Masters (07) | ||||||||||
| Credit rating for module | 20 | ||||||||||
| School | School of Social Sciences and Professions | ||||||||||
| Total study hours | 200 | ||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
| Assessment components |
|
||||||||||
| Running in 2023/24(Please note that module timeslots are subject to change) |
|
Module summary
History and Theory of Human Rights engages contemporary scholarship and debate about the political history and moral and political philosophy of human rights. It therefore now follows Samuel Moyn’s deflation of the philosophy of human rights and demythologization of the history of human rights. Whilst radicalizing Moyn’s project by tracing human rights’ American genealogy, it explores grounds for questioning what he intends as his definitive judgement that human rights are “Not Enough”. In these ways, it provides the MA in Human Rights and International Conflict with its theoretical and potentially practical backbone.
The module aims:
1. to provide a historical and critical introduction to ideas, theories and arguments about human rights;
2. to evaluate political, social, legal and economic institutions and actions by ethical criteria;
3. to explore ethical ideas and to articulate such ideas in the construction of logical argument.
Prior learning requirements
No pre- or co- requisites for the module.
Not available for Study Abroad.
Syllabus
The module traces the modern genealogy of human rights, both politically and philosophically. Its early focus is on the changing relation between human rights and property rights, and on how the two became opposed first over slavery and later over the growth of specifically corporate capitalism. Philosophically, it pays due regard to Kantian argument for rational, moral universalism, as well as for what Rawls calls political liberalism, whilst exploring the most influential attempts to advance beyond Kant by accommodating an ideal of human identity to realities of social, gender and cultural difference. If none has obviously far exceeded Jacques Maritain’s original, theoretical justification of human rights’ internationalization and subsequent, practical admission of an intercultural plurality of such justifications, there is no end of attempts to do so or of postulated perspectives upon human rights’ history. (LO1-4)
Balance of independent study and scheduled teaching activity
Lectures and seminars are supported by Weblearn and recommended reading. Students are encouraged to focus on their essays, to use classes to gain the knowledge and understanding necessary for them to compose their argument and to test facets of that argument, and to gain as much tutorial advice as that composition requires.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this module you should be able to:
1. differentiate and evaluate competing justifications, interpretations and critiques of the idea of human rights;
2. outline and explain the economic, political and intellectual developments that have effected and affected the progress of human rights;
3. identify and evaluate the cultural and political effects of contemporary human rights discourse in the light of that discourse's particular history and institutional universalization;
4. present and defend a logical argument supported by relevant evidence.
Assessment strategy
Assessment is to be of a single essay of 4,500-5,000 words (including scholarly apparatus) answering a question from a set list designed to elicit an argument engaging in depth with the history and theory of human rights, thereby demonstrating one’s understanding of the ideal of human rights, of why and how that idea has developed, and of the extent to which it has been, and might yet be, actualized.