Pragmatism, Rights, and Democracy / Beth J. Singer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Singer, Beth J., Author.

drew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Ope, National Endowment for the Humanities/An, Author.

Series:

American philosophy series.

American Philosophy

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human rights.

Pragmatism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 207 pages).

Place of Publication:

LaVergne : Fordham University Press, 2018.

New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Singer Beth J. : Beth J. Singer is Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.Beth J. Singer is Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

Summary:

"Singer's theory of rights, an impressive development of social accounts by pragmatists George Herbert Mead and John Dewey, was developed in Operative Rights (1993). This successor volume includes applications, lectures, replies to critics, and clarifications. For Singer, Dewey, and Mead, rights exist only if they are embedded in the operative practices of a community. People have a right in a community if their claim is acknowledged, and if they would acknowledge similar claims by others. Singer's account contrasts with theories of natural rights, which state that humans have rights by virtue of being human. Singer's account also differs from Kantian attempts to derive rights from the necessary conditions of rationality. While denying that rights exist independently of a community's practices, Singer maintains that rights to personal autonomy and authority ought to exist in all communities. Group rights, an anathema among individualistic theories, are from Singer's pragmatist perspective a valuable institution. Singer's discussion of rights appropriate for minority communities (e.g., the Bosnian Muslims and the Canadian Quebecois) is particularly illuminating. Her book is a model of careful reasoning. General libraries, and certainly academic libraries, should have Singer's Operative Rights. The volume under review is a good addition for research libraries and recommended for graduate students and above."[Singer] examines the views of Rousseau, Mill, and T. H. Green on human rights and those of Dewey and G. H. Mead on the relationship between rights and the democratic process...Recommended."--Choice

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Preface

1. Four Principles of Traditional Theories of Rights

2. An Alternative to the Dominant Tradition

3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Hill Green on Natural Rights

4. The Democratic Solution to Ethnic Pluralism

5. Difference, Otherness, and the Creation of Community

6. Multiculturalism, Identity, and Minority Rights: Will Kymlicka and the Concept of Special Rights

7. Deep Diversity: Charles Taylor and the Politics of Federalism

8. Pragmatism, Rights, and Democracy

9. Reconciling Liberalism and Communitarianism

Postscript

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Title from eBook information screen..

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

0-8232-8527-8

OCLC:

1102725730