(Hopgood reading) Hopgood argues that Western Europe isthe primary supporter of the United Nations andinternational human rights institutions. What is his evidencefor this? Are Western European countries losing influence inthese organizations? What is the position of the UnitedStates? 1:595Ghuman_rights_on_the_road_to_nowh...1 of 2812Human Rights on the Road to NowhereStephen HopgoodFor most of recorded human history, people have been concerned aboutwhat constitutes freedom, equality, fairness, and justice. In different eras,and different places, these ideas have had radically different answers. Anyattempt produce a grand historical account of what constitutes justice,for example, would have to deal with the many ways in which treatingpeople justly has involved killing, torturing, enslaving, ostracizing, orexiling them. Human equality and human freedom were similarly depen-dent on either your identity or on any sins or crimes against gods or thesocial body for which you were deemed responsible. To talk of humanrights as transhistorical phenomena only works, as a result, if we see themas moral (not empirical) claims, arguing that people have always had theserights in principle, whatever the reality. We have not created them; wehave simply discovered them. Our forebears were either unenlightened ormorally wrong. In this way, talk of empirical human rights cannot drawsustenance from the past except through reverse engineering. Somepeople historically may have held rights-like ideas, but "humanrights" rights that attach to all individuals on account of their simplybeing human - are one of our era's distinctive ideologies about right, fairand just treatment. They are reflective of a -perhaps the-defining featureof Western-style modernity: the emergence of the idea of rational, auton-omous, self-governing individuals as the primary building blocks of poli-tical and social life and as the fundamental source of moral value. Thisshift has only happened in a serious way in the last two hundred or soyears.Because classic human rights are, in this sense, individual entitle-ments held against each other and against collective authorities, theemphasis in most arguments for rights is on the primacy of personalchoice in terms of beliefs, commitments, lifestyle, and identity. This iscaptured in the idea of rights as trumps: winning cards in the game of lifethat individuals can play against any attempt to regulate, prohibit, mis-treat, or disadvantage them in the name of broader social or political283284 Stephen Hopgoodgoals, or the interests of other people.' Human rights make us all ends,not means, to paraphrase Kant. They carve out an inviolable and perso-nalized private sphere. As such, they are integrally about a conception ofthe person who exists in some way prior to her social bonds, morallycomplete in and of herself. We need society to live in a practical sense,but this necessity is secondary in moral terms. That is, what has priorityin a human rights world organized according to the classic conception ofhuman rights are the lives and choices of individual human beings, notthe degree to which the doctrines of nations, families, tribes, and godsare brought to life in the lives of those same individuals. Any theory ofhuman rights that does not put this person first - that on principle (notas a lack, or oversight) allows discrimination or curtails personal choice -cannot be said telogic of classicalhuman rights claims either concentually or in their dominant historical

Question

(Hopgood reading) Hopgood argues that Western Europe isthe primary supporter of the United Nations andinternational human rights institutions. What is his evidencefor this? Are Western European countries losing influence inthese organizations? What is the position of the UnitedStates? 1:595Ghuman_rights_on_the_road_to_nowh...1 of 2812Human Rights on the Road to NowhereStephen HopgoodFor most of recorded human history, people have been concerned aboutwhat constitutes freedom, equality, fairness, and justice. In different eras,and different places, these ideas have had radically different answers. Anyattempt produce a grand historical account of what constitutes justice,for example, would have to deal with the many ways in which treatingpeople justly has involved killing, torturing, enslaving, ostracizing, orexiling them. Human equality and human freedom were similarly depen-dent on either your identity or on any sins or crimes against gods or thesocial body for which you were deemed responsible. To talk of humanrights as transhistorical phenomena only works, as a result, if we see themas moral (not empirical) claims, arguing that people have always had theserights in principle, whatever the reality. We have not created them; wehave simply discovered them. Our forebears were either unenlightened ormorally wrong. In this way, talk of empirical human rights cannot drawsustenance from the past except through reverse engineering. Somepeople historically may have held rights-like ideas, but &#34;humanrights&#34; rights that attach to all individuals on account of their simplybeing human - are one of our era's distinctive ideologies about right, fairand just treatment. They are reflective of a -perhaps the-defining featureof Western-style modernity: the emergence of the idea of rational, auton-omous, self-governing individuals as the primary building blocks of poli-tical and social life and as the fundamental source of moral value. Thisshift has only happened in a serious way in the last two hundred or soyears.Because classic human rights are, in this sense, individual entitle-ments held against each other and against collective authorities, theemphasis in most arguments for rights is on the primacy of personalchoice in terms of beliefs, commitments, lifestyle, and identity. This iscaptured in the idea of rights as trumps: winning cards in the game of lifethat individuals can play against any attempt to regulate, prohibit, mis-treat, or disadvantage them in the name of broader social or political283284 Stephen Hopgoodgoals, or the interests of other people.' Human rights make us all ends,not means, to paraphrase Kant. They carve out an inviolable and perso-nalized private sphere. As such, they are integrally about a conception ofthe person who exists in some way prior to her social bonds, morallycomplete in and of herself. We need society to live in a practical sense,but this necessity is secondary in moral terms. That is, what has priorityin a human rights world organized according to the classic conception ofhuman rights are the lives and choices of individual human beings, notthe degree to which the doctrines of nations, families, tribes, and godsare brought to life in the lives of those same individuals. Any theory ofhuman rights that does not put this person first - that on principle (notas a lack, or oversight) allows discrimination or curtails personal choice -cannot be said telogic of classicalhuman rights claims either concentually or in their dominant historical

Accepted Answer

Dr. Stephen Hopgood is a Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of…

(Hopgood reading) Hopgood argues that Western Europe is the primary supporter of the United Nations and international human rights institutions. What is his evidence for this? Are Western European countries losing influence in these organizations? What is the position of the United States?