This Just In...The United Nations has Supported Human Exceptionalism--since 1948
According to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law."
Somebody had better tell the bioethicists, transhumanists, deep ecologists, philosophical materialists--and the others who would base rights on criteria other than being a member of the human species--that the word "everyone" means each and every one of us. In other words, the advocated policies of those who would distinguish between human beings who are "persons" and those who are non persons based on capacities would violate one of history's most important human rights documents. And no, you animal liberationists, the word "everybody" does not apply to animals. It is an agreement about the rights to which all and only human beings are due--simply and merely because they are human, e.g., human exceptionalism.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 3:54 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
When you write your book, please explain how transhumanism, deep ecology, animal liberationism, and philosophical materialism is incompatible with the UN statement.
It's not jumping out at me.
Does the same UN document define "everyone" and "person"? That'd be interesting if it did.
Royale: We've been over how transhumanism is eugenic-oriented in thinking. Eugenics is intrinsicly opposed to human exceptionalism because it says that some humans are better than others. Deep ecology things of humans as the vermin species that must have its population reduced to under 1 billion--hardly a believe in exceptionalsism. Moreover, it extols the natural world as the highest value, of which we are the despoilers.
The UN document would never have dreamed of the necessity to make those definitions because, at the time person and human would have been considered synonymous and everyone would have, at the very least, meant every born human being--if not unborn. "Criteria for Humanhood" was only a gleam in Joseph Fletcher's eye at the time.
It would seem to me that for each one of those philosophies or perspectives, they don't necessarily threaten or contradict human exceptionalism.
Rather, the emphasis is on which rights should be allocated to humans.
Or, at least the potential exist. I won't speak for them.
Wesley,
As long as the UN membership includes dictators, we are only fooling ourselves if we think issues of human rights will be addressed. The UN is in drastic need of an overhaul, specifically something like this...
www.UnitedDemocraticNations.org
We need to trust the concept of democracy. Churchill put it best...
"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried."
gary
Gary: Thanks, but the post was not about the UN per se but about how human exceptionalism and human rights are inextricably connected.
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