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)
6 comments:
Arendt discusses the "stateless" people of the world, and how those people became apart of this group of people in this section of The Origins of Totalitarianism. She tells of how these people became stateless through a two-step process, the first of these steps is a loss of home and the second is a loss of governmental protection. Later in her work, Arendt discusses "the calamity of rightless people" (295). She says that the fact that these people have been stripped of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - values and rights that are outlined in just about every modern day body of law that protect human rights - are not cause for these people's misfortune and horrible treatment. She further says that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are "formulas which were designed to solve problems within givin communities" (295); however, the actual cause of these people having no rights is that they do not belong to any community at all. Jack reminds us in his blog post that we learned that the UNDHR states that human rights are before the law. By stripping people of laws that are protected by government (ie: the right to private property), and then taking away basic human rights, people become "rightless". Arendt defends this article by reminding her readers that the Nazis stripped the Jews of all their legal rights as citizens - they were seen as "second class citizens" - before they forced them to live in ghettos and concentration camps, which took away their basic human rights.
I think that the key distinction Arendt makes is that Man and People are two different entities. When the People are in position of political relevance/power and Man is outside the People (which is not necessarily so as he can be aligned with the People) he is subject to the “arbitrariness of society” (291) and hence, is in danger. As Jack points out, Arendt notes that there was no world authority to protect Man once he was outside the People. In my view, this is one of the most pertinent and perhaps pragmatic shortcomings of the state of the world at that time which Arendt highlighted in her writing. Once you recognize the problem with DRM, it then becomes a question of how to affect change. How do you prevent the abuse of the rightless/stateless people? Here Arendt points to the trouble in creating such a body as a “World Protector” as countries will resent such a body and view at “encroachment on their sovereignty or even the righless themselves might mistrust such a body (292). Thus Arendt makes vividly clear the plight of the statless Man and the shortcoming of DRM as an abstract document.
I find one thing intriguing about Arendt's arguments and our class discussion. As Arendt states, human rights are suppose to precede civil rights. And that civil rights are suppose to "embody and spell out in the form of tangible laws the eternal Rights of Man" (293) Human rights are supposed to be universal and inalienable. Yet, as we have discussed in our class, the opposite is true, that when people lose their civil right, they lose their human rights. In other words, have civil rights replaced the concept of human rights? In addition, is it correct to infer that as our society becomes more and more modern, we are essentially enlarging the possibility of losing our rights? As we can see that the modernization of our society in general decimates the possibility for dispossessed people to associate and form their new political identification, which in return, gives them human rights.
Arendt argues that when people are stateless they then lose their human rights. I found this interesting because I never looked at situations when people are being oppressed in this manner, and many of them in fact do not have a state of their own. For instance the Palestinians had a state but lost it to Israel. Israel has been taking territory from Palestine for years now, and with that Israel attained the power to allow or deny basic human rights to the Palestinians. Nothing is allowed to enter into the Gaza Strip, not even food, medicine, gas,etc. without the permission of Israel. Israel even controls the amount of electricity and water that is sent into the Strip. This threatens their right to live. If they had their own state then they would not have to face these obstacles in obtaining their basic human rights, which ultimately proves that Arendt's argument that the chance of a stateless people receiving human rights is low.
What I find most interesting about Jack’s entry is that he mentioned Arendt’s emphasis on groupism in society—she tells us that “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). Equality and rights only occur within the context of a group. Without a group, therefore, man is lacking in rights, which, according to Arendt, are fundamental to human existence (294). Arendt’s view is a sharp contrast to that of Rousseau—instead of espousing a political society, he suggests that only outside of society’s “chains” (Rousseau, 68) are we free. To Rousseau, groupism taints our humanity, suggesting that civil society is the reason why our natural sense of pity wanes. While Arendt implies that civil society actualizes our humanity, Rousseau suggests that it replaces our natural humanity with artifices such as wealth, power, and pride.
Post a Comment