Human rights and the law: the unbreachable gap between the ethics of justice and the efficacy of law

This paper explores the structure of justice as the condition of ethical, inter-subjective responsibility. Taking a Levinasian perspective, this is a responsibility borne by the individual subject in a pre-foundational, proto-social proximity with the other human subject, which takes precedence over the interests of the self. From this specific post-humanist perspective, human rights are not the restrictive rights of individual self-will, as expressed in our contemporary legal human rights discourse. Rights do not amount to the prioritisation of the so-called politico-legal equality of the individual citizen-subject animated by the universality of the dignity of autonomous, reasoned intentionality. Rather, rights enlivened by proximity invert this discourse and signify, first and foremost, rights for the other, with the ethical burden of responsibility towards the other.

Metadaten
Author:	Joseph A. Indaimo
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-249678
Parent Title (English):	25th IVR World Congress: Law, Science and Technology Frankfurt am Main 15–20 August 2011 ; Paper Series ; 109
Series (Serial Number):	25th IVR World Congress: Law, Science and Technology Frankfurt am Main 15–20 August 2011 ; Paper Series (109)
Publisher:	Goethe-Univ.
Place of publication:	Frankfurt am Main
Document Type:	Conference Proceeding
Language:	English
Year of Completion:	2012
Year of first Publication:	2012
Publishing Institution:	Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:	2012/08/09
Tag:	Levinas; ethics; human rights; identity and being; postmodernity
HeBIS-PPN:	34438263X
Institutes:	Rechtswissenschaft / Rechtswissenschaft
Dewey Decimal Classification:	3 Sozialwissenschaften / 34 Recht / 340 Recht
Sammlungen:	Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):	Deutsches Urheberrecht

Open Access