Responsibility for Human Rights: Contributions from Bernard Lonergan

Abstract

[The moral category of human rights has been in jeopardy since the beginning of the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948) because of an indefiniteness about the complementary category of whose responsibility it is to meet their moral claims. Lonergan's understanding of responsibility is presented here as valuable for supplying this hiatus. Even though he did not directly address the topic of human rights, his understanding of the universal, invariant structures of consciousness, and several of his other ethical insights are analyzed for their value for completing human rights theory.]