Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 3, Page 318-327, March 2022.

This project is, in part, motivated by my contention that one cannot adequately answer the question regarding the proper justification for human rights until one has answered the metaphysical question regarding the fundamental nature of human rights and the ontological question regarding the proper status of human rights. I offer a sustained analysis of metaphysical, ontological, and justificatory questions regarding human rights with the purpose of illustrating the point that theories that fail to engage in such analyses are inadequate. In (...) particular, this essay argues that Michael Ignatieff’s theory of human rights, as articulated in Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, is philosophically inadequate because it fails to connect his justificatory arguments for human rights with metaphysical and ontological conceptions of and arguments for human rights. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer substantial philosophical and pragmatic analyses of slavery, apprenticeships, and segregation in the United States and British West Indies. I do so to illustrate the extent to which American and British philosophy, politics, law, and economics were entwined with the oppression of African-Americans and African-Caribbeans. I argue that, as the institution of slavery collapsed and abolitionists began calling for reparations, judges and politicians ignored the claims of abolitionists and thereby perverted justice. As a result, we now (...) have the debts of slavery, apprenticeships, and segregation to settle. I conclude that as long as we fail to settle these debts we are complicit in allowing their perversions of justice to continue. For this reason, I argue in favor of granting reparations to African-Americans and African-Caribbeans. (shrink)