Amartya Sen on human rights in The Idea of Justice

Abstract

In section I, I identify several mini-theses embedded in Amartya Sen’s theory of human rights – such theses as (1) that human rights are moral, not legal, rights, (2) that nevertheless they are not rights that are awaiting transformation into legal rights, (3) that an expansive doctrine of human rights can incorporate a broad swath of rights (civil, political, economic, social and cultural) without merely mimicking the catalogues in post-Second World War declarations and covenants, and (4) that not all the obligations generated by human rights are (in Kant’s language) ‘perfect’ obligations.

In section II, I argue that, both because ‘freedom’ has many interpretations and because not all human freedoms, even when they are life-enhancing, are to be protected as human rights, the distinctive features of Sen’s version of a freedom-emphasizing doctrine would be clearer if the preferred interpretation of ‘freedom’ and the particular human freedoms to be protected were more explicitly identified.

While Sen’s doctrine of human rights is a freedom-emphasizing doctrine, its distinctive features – vis-à-vis competing freedom-focused accounts – would be more clearly etched if it were made clearer what the sense is in which it stresses protection of important human freedoms, especially since he concedes that not all freedoms, even when they are life-enhancing for human beings, should be protected as human rights.