FROM NATURAL RIGHTS TO HUMAN RIGHTS
an international workshop
Saturday 15, March 2008, 10–17
Venue: Seminar room 136, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Fabianinkatu 24)
The aim of this international workshop is to discuss the late medieval and early modern natural rights tradition, its historical, philosophical and moral psychological background as well as its impact to later development of human rights.
Workshop is open to everyone interested in the topic.
10.00 Opening words
10.15–11.00 Ilse Paakkinen (University of Helsinki): Christine de Pizan’s Concept of Rights: Preliminary Notions
11.00–11.15 Coffee
11.15–12.00 Jussi Varkemaa (University of Helsinki): Individual Right as Power: From Dominion to Agency
Lunch 12.00–13.15
13.15–14.30 John Kilcullen (Macquarie University, Australia): Medieval and Modern Concepts of Rights: Are They Different? Click here to download the whole paper
14.30–15.45 Siegfried van Duffel (State University of Singapore): Natural Rights to Welfare
15.45–17.00 Kari Saastamoinen (University of Helsinki): Locke and Basic Equality
John Kilcullen is Senior Research Fellow in Humanities in the Department of
Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University in Sydney,
Australia. He is the author of Sincerity and Truth: Essays on Arnauld, Bayle, and
Toleration (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1988) and co-editor with A. S. McGrade
and Matthew Kempshall in The Cambridge Translations of Medieval
Philosophical Texts, vol. 2: Ethics and Political Philosophy (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge) and with Chandran Kukathas in Philosophical
Commentary on These Words of the Gospel, Luke 14:23, “Compel Them to Come
In, That my House May Be Full” by Bierre Bayle (Natural Law and
Enlightenment Classics, 2005).
Kilcullen has written several articles on medieval political thought and
theory, e.g., in Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2006); Handbook of
Political Theory (2004) and The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, ed. P. V.
Spade (2000).
Kilcullen has edited and translated especially William of Ockham's
political works: Dialogus, ed. with G. Knysh, V. Leppin, J. Scott and J.
Ballweg (The British Academy publications); A Short Discourse on Tyrannical
Government, ed. with A. S. McGrath (Cambridge Texts in the History of
Political Tought, 1992) and A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other
Writings, ed. with A. S. McGrade (Cambridge Texts in the History of
Political Thought, 1995).
See more on Kilcullen's web pages: http//www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/kilcullen.html
Abstract of the lecture
Medieval and modern concepts of rights: are they different?
To say that there is a moral right to act in a certain way is to say that there is a presumption that such acts are morally right, which implies that others should not blame, punish or deliberately obstruct. A community's recognition of such rights is a way of reducing conflict among its members. Natural or human rights are rights that ought to be recognised in every community. Statements of natural rights are not analytic; they may be self-evident, at least in the sense that everyone can easily see the usefulness of recognising such rights. The concept of a right has not changed since the middle ages and neither have the kinds of justifications given for recognising rights. Medieval moralists clearly recognised the human freedom presupposed by all ethical and legal systems and valued the liberty that consists in not being excessively constrained by legally and socially enforced duties.
In modern times more recognition has been given to the rights of conscience, and this has led to some attempt to formulate duties we have toward conscientious agents whose actions we cannot accept as morally permissible.
Siegfried van Duffel is post-doctoral fellow in Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of Singapore (NUS). He received his Ph.D. from Ghent University Law School, Belgium. After that he was post-doctoral researcher at Ghent University and Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, where he taught ethics and political theory. In NUS he will be working on a book on human rights and cultural differences.
Among his publications are “Sovereignty as a Religious Concept” in The
Monist, vol. 91, issue 1 (2007); “The Dependence of Libertarianism on the
Notion of Sovereignty Rejoinder to Morton” in Critical Review, vol. 18,
issue 4 (2006); “How to Study Human Rights and Culture (Without Becoming a
Relativist) in Philosophy in the Contemporary World, vol. 11, issue 2
(2004); “Libertarian Natural Rights” in Critical Review, vol. 16, issue 4
(2004); “A Plea for Theory in Rethinking Human Rights” in International
Legal Theory, vol. 9, issue 1 (2004); “Individual Rights and Individual
Sovereignty” in Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 12, issue 2 (2004).
Organized by Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and Center for Excellence in Philosophical Psychology, Morality and Politics.
Further information:www.helsinki.fi/collegium/events/natural_rights.htm, virpi.makinen(AT)helsinki.fi