Ranciere's Question

Throughout the semester, we have read many essays by different philosophers that detail everything about human rights. In his essay Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?, Jacques Ranciere discusses essays written by numerous philosophers that allow him to come to a conclusion about the subject of “Rights of Man”.

Ranciere begins his article by describing life after movements in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; there was a “new landscape of humanity” (1) filled with violence, danger, etc. He states that the “Rights of Man turned out to be the rights of the rightless” (1), because of all the horrible things that were going on in the world. People were being driven away from their homes, their lands and were constantly threatened by forces.

Because of the state of the world at the time, a suspicion arose, which was that the ‘man’ of ‘Rights of Man’ was only an idea because the only real rights were rights of citizens who belonged to communities. Ranciere discusses how Arendt talked about this suspicion in her work Perplexities of the Rights of Man. Ranciere deduces that the “abstract life” talked about in Arendt’s work meant a life away from politics, or a private life. Thus, by critiquing abstract rights, or rights of a person in the private sphere, she was also critiquing democracy.

Ranciere believes it is critical to reset the question “Who is the subject of the Rights of Man?” onto the subject itself, which includes politics. This would in turn set the definition of politics on a different ground. He dismisses Arendt, and says, “The Rights of Man are the rights of those who have not the rights that they have and have the rights that they have not”. Rights of Man cannot be the rights of a single subject that is simultaneously the source and bearer of rights.

Ranciere gives a great example of his statement about the subject of the rights of man. Olympe de Gouges was one of many feminists during the French Revolution. She led a campaign that argued that women were treated equally in both spheres of their life (in the political sphere and their bare life). Women were supposed to only care about and participate in their own private lives. Although women could not vote or be elected because they “did not fit the purity of political life”, they could be sentenced to death, thus bringing them (and their bare life) into the political sphere. These women demonstrated that they were deprived of rights they had, but they were given rights that the Constitution denied them.

None of Us are Human

Butler's Indefinite Detention asks what makes humans unqualified for human rights. She specifically brings up the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. They were denied practically every right, such as the right to legal counsel and even the right to have a trial. How can the U.S. government mandate this? Law was suspended in the name of a national emergency. This suspension allows for a new form of sovereignty to arise.

Governmentality is the way political power manages the population, and has become the main way state power is vitalized. It functions through state and non state institutions. Traditionally, sovereignty is known as providing legitimacy for the rule of law. Butler argues that the emergence of governmentality doesn't necessarily always weaken sovereignty.

"Whereas the suspension of law can clearly be read as a tactic of governmentality, it has to be seen in this context as also making room for the resurgence of sovereignty, and in this way both operations work together" (55). Here, sovereignty means protecting one’s own territory. The detainees in Guantanamo were not considered human. They were people deemed dangerous, dangerous not being a term with specific qualifications. After 9/11, this was based mainly on ethnicity. This ignorance towards particular populations helped support the claims of sovereignty, which in turn advanced it to being accountable to no law. People made assumptions about others with no justification, but nevertheless, after 9/11, the public culture of the United States didn’t trust some groups of people, like Muslims. Vicious or criminal acts weren’t necessary to prove their dangerous nature.

Many of the people in Guantanamo were detained without any evidence against them. Only the high-ranking officials, with a good amount of data supporting their guilt, are allowed trials. What is the worth of those peoples' lives that were not entitled to certain rights guaranteed by laws that have been in the U.S. for a long time, as well as international laws on human rights? They are presumed guilty and denied due process, by a lawless power that indefinitely detained them. Those who determined which detainees were dangerous exercised sovereign power. "Sovereignty extends its power in excess of the law and defies international accords; for if the detention is indefinite, then the lawless exercise of state sovereignty becomes indefinite as well" (64). The U.S government invoked its own sovereignty by attempting to justify the war in Iraq, claiming our self preservation was at stake. Thus, the state was acting in a way not grounded in law, but with other forms of judgment in mind. The government also justifies indefinite detention by comparing the people in Guantanamo Bay to people hospitalized for mental illness. They are detained without any particular criminal charge, but on the basis of the threat that they may pose to themselves and others. This assumes that the detainees lack normal mental functioning. Secretary Rumsfeld explained the detainment on the prisoners by saying if not restrained, they would kill again, and therefore implying that restraint is what keeps them from doing so. They must be killing machines, without cognitive functions, and thus, not human. If they’re not human, they are undeserving of rights reserved for humans.

Department of Defense General Counsel Haynes says that the Guantanamo prisoners pose dangers that can’t be resolved in courts and set right with punishment. Even if they couldn’t be convicted and proved guilty, the captives were held for “a specific reason,” and just because they weren’t tied to a particular crime, doesn’t mean they didn’t need to be there, according to Haynes. If they proved to no longer fit the criteria that brought them in, they would be released. However, this criteria is never specified.

Butler thinks that government policy should follow the established laws, however she recognizes a problem with the law, because it can be changed. In the Geneva convention, universal rights weren’t extended to everyone—only to the imprisoned combatants whose nations were already a part of the convention. The others, who essentially needed help the most, lacked the Geneva protection. Another issue Butler has is that we use a limited cultural frame to understand what is human. We are bias, and often use how we as a nation act as the basis for what constitutes a human. There is not a single definition for “human”. Human rights laws have yet to recognize this. The problem with Guantanamo was that they were asking who should be treated humanely, when they had yet to understand who should be counted as human. She worries that the indefinite detainment of prisoners on Guantanamo will become a model for the way the world acts, making rights not guaranteed. The detainees were held because they were enemies of the U.S. based on the war of terror. However, a war on terror can never end, and based on Haynes’ logic, people therefore can be indefinitely detained. If sovereignty, ie, lawless and illegitimate power, takes place, violence will revitalize and global cooperation on who should be treated humanely. “We have yet to become human, it seems, and now that prospect seems even more radically imperiled, if not, for the time being, indefinitely foreclosed” (100).

Losing their human rights brings people into the condition of savage

For Hannah Arendt the declaration of human rights is a sign of the emancipation of man. The human equality was not sure before God anymore. In the past people were sure of their social and human rights because they were protected by “social, spiritual and religious forces” (291). In addition to that the human rights did not need to be established by a government since because all other laws were supposed to be based on human rights. Arendt gives the example that if a tribal doesn’t respect human rights it didn’t reach the “stage of civilization” (291) yet, and must live under suppression of foreigners. Only an emancipated population is able to follow and respect the rights of a human being. A certain number of people started to realize that their rights were not protected by any government and wanted to establish human rights. Minorities were convinced that losing your national right (as it often happened in European countries) is the same as losing your human right.
Hannah Arendt states that the authors of the human rights were mostly international jurists, lacking political experience, and “professional philanthropists”. These authors made it that no politician believed in the declaration of human rights or incorporated it into their program. In the nineteenth century protectors used the human rights to defend the “unprivileged” (293), suffering because of the industrial revolution. Every being was protected by the civil law of their country and incorporated the human rights into their system by legislations or revolutions. In Arendts’ view it was hard to establish a new bill of human rights since no person knows what their human rights are, they don’t know the difference from rights of the citizen.
Arendt uses minorities as an example and shows that the first loss of their human rights was to lose their homes and not being able to settle down in other countries without restrictions. Arendt continues explaining that when the human rights were first declared they were based on history and later on nature. This would not be valid for the modern times anymore since “the right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity, should be guaranteed by humanity itself” (298). Arendt adds that even a “word government” (298) which protects human rights cannot be efficient because totalitarian like Hitler justify not respecting human rights of certain groups, by doing the best in the populations interest. The author Burke is cited by Arendt explaining that no divine authority or natural law are needed to establish human rights, it is all established through man. Burke uses survivors of concentration camps as examples to show that human beings need to hold on to their nationalities, since this is the sign of being civilized and part of a community. In a community human rights make every person equal, since we are not born equal , but “become equal as member of a group” (301). Arendt also defines a person who loses his human rights as a person losing all his significance. The major danger for Arendt is that a rising amount of people lose their human rights, which threatens “our political life” (302) and bring people into the situation of savage.

Arendt on the issue of human rights.

Throughout our philosophy course, we have challenged the very principles of human nature that educators have vainly taught us, the principles that dictate the nature of human, born equal and have rights to freedom and property. We have discussed that rights are not universal, but rather, before the laws (as discussed in the UNDHR.) It comes to no surprise that in The perplexities of the Rights of Man, once again challenge our previous beliefs.

As Arendt states, the turning point of our history was the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It is by this act that the source of law depends upon Man. (Arendt 290) However, this act lays a complication. As both the American version (American Revolution) and the French version (French Revolution) indicates, that human rights are ““inalienable” irreducible to and undeducible from other rights or laws.” (Arendt 291) And most importantly, human rights are claimed to be universal, regardless of nationality, races, etc. However, there was no authority on such proclamation. As we have seen in the US’s Declaration of Independence, where it is asserted that these truths are “self-evident”, Man is both the mean and the end to himself. It seems to be that “no one seems to be able to define with any assurance what these general human rights, as distinguished from the rights of citizens, really are.” (Arendt 293) This creates problems and debates on the subject of human rights.

Although rights of the citizens are suppose to be a form of the Rights of Man, it is assumed that if these rights of citizens do not reflect this form, the citizen are expected to modify them via various means. (Arendt 293) However, such assumption cannot work for people who do not hold citizenships to any political community. They’re essentially people who are stateless. And to these stateless populations, as Arendt asserts, the Rights of Mans, “supposedly inalienable”, proved to be unenforceable.” (Arendt 293). For that, they suffered two losses, of their homes and of government protection. These losses are usually unrecoverable where we currently live in “One World”, where there is no longer any uncivilized spot on Earth. The result of these losses is the expulsion from humanity together. (Arendt 297)

One might ask, how so? As we have discussed in the UNDHR, human rights are before the law. To these stateless people, no laws exist for them. By deprivation of homes and government protection, it has created a condition of complete rightlessness (Arendt 296). As shown by the examples given, Jewish people during the Nazi regime experienced a series of deprivation of their rights. It is only up to the point that they have been stripped of every right that their right to live is threatened. “The fundamental deprivation of human rights is manifested… in the deprivation of a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective.” (Arendt 296) As Arendt further asserts, “we are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights.” (Arendt 301)

The power of Dogma

It is fascinating that the economical and political system that started as Marx’s and Engels’ ideas, came out to be a reality that changed the course of history and the world as we knew it. In his “On the Jewish question” Marx analyses Bauer’s studies and expresses his views on Jews’ emancipation, capitalism, religion, and politics. Even at the beginning of the essay we can sense anti-Semitic mood when Marx talks about Jews as chosen people in almost an ironic way. And we shall not forget that Marx was of Jewish origin.
Marx’s essay states the issue: Jews are seeking emancipation. And in order to emancipate them they need to be deprived of their religion. But Jews’ religion is their nature, it defines them who they are. Bauer expresses his views as follows; they declare by their separation from the rest of people and it isolates them from non-Jews. Jews obtain a supreme, true nature and it prevails over their human nature. (Marx, 40) Their chemical nationality, Marx explains, is the nationality of trader and financier. (Marx, 51)
But he still tries to provide the grounds for political emancipation through the “division of man into the public person and the private person” (Marx, 35). He states that the reasons why the Jews cannot be fully emancipated is because the state cannot emancipate them. There is a “conflict between the general interest and private interest, the schism between political state and civil society…”, hence the Jews are not to be politically emancipated.
Here, Marx reveals his views on religion that he calls “imperfect politics” and as a result, we have Soviet Union as an atheist state for over 50 years. Marx sees the state as religion itself, that doesn’t need any religious involvement, “the democratic state, the real state, doesn’t need religion for its political consummation.” (Marx, 37) Marx as well as Bauer has a problem with submitting to the authority of scripture, that takes away from the dedication to state. Marx re-states Bauer’s discontent with the German- Christian state, because in that state the religion is an “economic matter”. He says that the political state, “in relation to civil society is just as spiritual as heaven in relation to earth.” (Marx, 34)
He separates state and religion by assigning the state rights and functions that religion has, and proclaims that “it [religion] is no longer the essence of community, but the essence is differentiation” and alienation. (Marx, 35). Which makes sense, because according to the Christian doctrine, in order to be a true follower of Christ, one has to alienate himself from corruptness of the secular world. A Christian is unlike all others, so it is a premise of a form of inequality in the society. As a Hegelian, he agreed on Christianity being a from purely ethical point of view, but on the contrary, he hypothesizes that the existence of religion is existence of defect in making a conclusion that a state should be religion-free in order to govern people.
It gets more interesting, when Marx calls for radical measures to stop Jewish demand for emancipation. He is basically building a foundation for the new communist society- in response to Jews’ desire to be emancipated, he prescribes state’s intervention as a crucial necessity to maintain the state. The state must proclaim its authority through revolution.
In his essay Marx nitpicks the “Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen” and pinpoints the contradictions in it, such as the one of liberty, and private property. He brings examples from it, but doesn’t agree with its core principle of human rights: that we are born free and equal, hence possess birth-given rights. He sees human rights not as a birth-given privileges, but as the “results of culture, and only he can possess them who has merited and earned them.” (Marx, 40)
He criticized any form of social order that contains egoism, and inequality, such as feudalism, and capitalism. He outlines the failures of the feudalist system as, “The man was not liberated from religion, he received religious liberty. He was not liberated from property; he received the liberty to own property. He was not liberated from the egoism of business; he received the liberty to engage in business.” (Marx, 45) Is that bad?
Furthermore, he claims that the real, or “everyday Jew’s” worldly god is money, his nature is egoism, and his cult is huckstering (Marx, 48) He traces presence of capitalism elements in Judaist nature. Marx says that there is something more to this world than chase after money, concern with making more money than your neighbor, and stock exchange. Greed is what defines capitalism, and Marx calls for finding a new social order that will make all men equal. He states that “Judaism could not create a new world.” (Marx, 51) Jews’ economic power and striving in the west seemed to really concern Marx, Judaism meant commerce in Germany, and he traces the symbiosis of commerce with Christian society in the West, he, in fact, states that it [Christianity] has been “re-absorbed into Judaism.” (Marx 52). So according to Marx, the Jews are guilty of “worshiping” a god [money] of practical need and self interest. He blames money with, “abasing all the gods of mankind and changing them into commodities.” And he blames the Jews for overtaking the world with their “religion”, “the god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of this world.” (Marx, 50)
Human beings have always been, are, and will be egoistic, it’s a fact. Adam Smith, for example, turned that trait of human nature into a successful theory of an Invisible Hand, when the economy benefits as a whole as each individual pursues his own interests. Whereas Marx believed that “egoism should be punished as a crime.” (Marx, 43) As well as the existence of classes, there will always be inequalities, but Marx wanted to end it, he complained, that “it is a man as bourgeois and not a man as a citizen who is considered the true and authentic man.” (Marx, 43) The concept of everybody’s equality looks good in theory but not in reality.
Marx quotes Rousseau, trying to prove the supremacy of the state in a citizen’s life. But I think that in the line “part of something greater than himself from which is a sense, he derives his life and his being” (Marx, 46), Rousseau, with his deistic view of religion, referred to God, not the state.
Marx concludes that “the social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism,” that has rooted itself in the heart of commerce, and in the equilibrium of supply and demand in the capitalist society. (Marx, 52)

The Jewish Problem: New Religious Criticisms

To set the stage for the Jewish problem: Bruno Bauer’s “Young Hegelians” represent a period of time in which the Berlin circle was led by the nation’s “most important” character, Bauer (Bauer 127). Hegelianism, a predominant way of reasoning during this time, made way to a community of Hegelians, a group of young intelligent individuals headed by Bauer. Bauer’s leadership role in this ideological group placed him at a position of questioning both the Church and the State (Bauer 127). Hegelians, like Bauer, believed that “Individual self-consciousness discovered itself to be infinite in nature,” ultimately viewing God as the Critic (Bauer 176). The Young Hegelians held the theory to be applicable to any state backed by any religion. All laws were ultimately based on religious tenets. As such, their plan to undermine what they felt was the corrupt and despotic state apparatus was to attack the philosophical basis of religion.

Throughout “The Jewish Problem,” Bauer highlights “liberty, human rights, and emancipation” as the three central freedoms. During this period of time, Jews and Judaism were experiencing new criticisms as privileges of “unchangability, immunity, and irresponsibility” were being granted to the emergence of the religion. (Bauer 188) Jews were excluded from political parties undergoing humanity progression because they were not viewed as advocates of such. According to Bauer, the Christian state instilled prejudices in the hearts of its people, in turn suffering great agony, where as the Jews were not to be affiliated with either of these behaviors (Bauer 188).
The solution being sought for the Jewish problem is complicated. The crossover from the Natural State to the new world marks the fuzzy logic behind the basis of treatment for Jews in the Christian state of newly delegated powers and stereotypes and discrimination. In accordance to class discussion, this conflict cannot not exist without self pride; as this situation illustrates, the pride and nationalism that stems from religious alliances feuding against “the enemy” prevails in the new world. (Bauer 188).

Can the Jewish problem be solved in nations such as France, Spain and Poland where intolerance and oppression weigh heavily upon societal views? Had the Jews remained in Spain, one can only question whether or not they would have aided the nation’s liberation, or whether the nation was solely reliant upon Christianity and the Catholic government (Bauer 191). In terms of Poland, people can easily point fingers at the Jews when delegating a group to blame for the downfall of the nation. Bauer believes “Poland is itself to blame for its fate,” where as historical patterns depict that nations such as these target Judaism for internal problems. (Bauer 191) A common theme that can also be applied to Nazi Germany, although not exemplified in this reading.

In conclusion, the Jewish problem is ultimately tied to the problem of the general public. Discrimination prevents minority groups from being granted civil freedoms from dominant powers. Parallel to the theme of Hegelians enlightenment lies the connection of religion to law. So long as the Jews exist as minorities in Christian states, states backed by religion will oppose Jewish emancipation, thus ridding Jews from liberty and basic human rights. In a perfect Marxist society, the Jews would ultimately rise up in revolt and overthrow the powers that control them. We will have to see Marx’ take on this matter during our next class reading; Stay tuned!

Marx' Response To Bauer

The article “On the Jewish Question” was Karl Marx' reply to counter the claims that Bruno Bauer believes in his article “The Jewish Problem.” Marx immediately wrote his article the same year Bauer published his. In Bauer's article he stated that the Jews will have to relinquish their particular religious faith in order for them to attain their desire for political emancipation.

Marx presented two separate arguments against Bauer’s idea. His first argument states, that “the existence of religion is not at all opposed to the perfection of the state” (31). He takes the case of North America, despite the widespread of religion it does not have a “state religion” and it completely separates the state from any religion. His second argument discusses the connection of political emancipation and human emancipation. Marx claims that for the Jews “to be politically emancipated without emancipating yourselves humanly, the incompleteness and contradiction lies not only in you but in the essence and category of political emancipation” (40). In contrary to Bauer’s demands, Marx believes that political emancipation does not require for the Jews to renounce their religious faith. In relation to this, Marx claims that, “the political elevation of man above religion shares the weaknesses and merits of all such political measures” (33.) From this he tried to make a comparison between the right to private property and the right to one’s own religion and concluded that both are not significant to human emancipation (33).Marx was never clear on the definition of human emancipation, though it can be assumed that it is related to man and his work.