‘Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality: On the 30th Anniversary of Rorty’s Oxford Amnesty Lecture’

Abstract

2023 is the 30th anniversary of Richard Rorty’s essay ‘Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality’, first delivered as an Amnesty Lecture at the University of Oxford in 1993. This is one of the most influential and criticised papers on human rights in recent memory. Here Rorty offers a sweeping, devastating critique of foundationalism in human rights theory, and he goes on to suggest sentimentality as an alternative to rationality for grounding human rights. The fact that many contemporary scholars on human rights (Tasioulas; Griffin; Beitz; Buchanan) have all felt the need to respond to Rorty, and refute his approach to human rights, is an indication of the value of Rorty’s contribution to the discourse on human rights. This panel will provide a critical celebration of Rorty’s only written paper on human rights, as well as an analysis of the role of sentimentality in contemporary political philosophy.

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