David McGrogan - Critical theory and human rights: From compassion to coercion

Critical theory and human rights

Critical theory and contemporary society

Series editors:

David M. Berry, Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Sussex

Darrow Schecter, Professor of Critical Theory and Modern European History, University of Sussex

The Critical Theory and Contemporary Society series aims to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of multi-disciplinary research in explaining the causes of pressing social problems today and in indicating the possible paths towards a libertarian transformation of twenty-first century society. It builds upon some of the main ideas of first generation critical theorists, including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, and Fromm, but it does not aim to provide systematic guides to the work of those thinkers. Rather, each volume focuses on ways of thinking about the political dimensions of a particular topic, which include political economy, law, popular culture, globalisation, feminism, theology, and terrorism. Authors are encouraged to build on the legacy of first-generation Frankfurt School theorists and their influences (Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, and Freud) in a manner that is distinct from, though not necessarily hostile to, the broad lines of second-generation critical theory. The series sets ambitious theoretical standards, aiming to engage and challenge an interdisciplinary readership of students and scholars across political theory, philosophy, sociology, history, media studies, and literary studies.

Previously published by Bloomsbury

Critical theory in the twenty-first century Darrow Schecter

Critical theory and the critique of political economy Werner Bonefeld

Critical theory and contemporary Europe William Outhwaite

Critical theory of legal revolutions Hauke Brunkhorst

Critical theory of libertarian socialism Charles Masquelier

Critical theory and film Fabio Vighi

Critical theory and the digital David Berry

Critical theory and disability Teodor Mladenov

Critical theory and the crisis of contemporary capitalism Heiko Feldner and Fabio Vighi

Previously published by Manchester University Press

Critical theory and demagogic populism Paul K. Jones

Critical theory and epistemology Anastasia Marinopoulou

Critical theory and feeling Simon Mussell

Critical theory and legal autopoiesis Gunther Teubner

Critical theory and sociological theory Darrow Schecter

Critical theory and human rights

From compassion to coercion

David McGrogan

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright David McGrogan 2021

The right of David McGrogan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 3182 9 hardback

First published 2021

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by

Deanta Global Publishing Services

For my girls, M and E, and with thanks to Al Di Meola, Zoltan Kocsis, Ivo Pogorelich, and Glenn Gould for sanity-saving musical accompaniment.

This book would not have come into being were it not for the kindness of the series editors, Darrow Schecter and David Berry. I owe them my thanks for providing the opportunity to write it. The impetus to begin writing would also not have come about save for a period as a Research Fellow at Sussex Law School, and I would like to thank Alex Conte, Elizabeth Craig, and Stephanie Berry for making that possible.

Eric Heinze, Conall Mallory, Adam Ramshaw, Richard Mullender, and Eleni Frantziou all read parts of this book during its formation, and provided invaluable help in doing so. William Ralston, Birju Kotecha, Siobhan McConnell, Jaqueline Smart, James Gray, Helen Rutherford, and other colleagues at Northumbria Law School were perhaps of more hindrance than help in providing relentless friendly distraction, but the process of writing the book would not have been the same without them.

Any idiosyncrasy and eccentricity in the books contents are attributable to me alone as are any errors.

David McGrogan, 2020

Lionel Trilling once called for a moral realism to alert those concerned with social injustice that there was a danger in the moral life that to choose to act did not settle all moral problems, but simply displaced them. The moral passions, as he called them, were wilful and imperious and impatient and their tendency was not to liberate, but to restrict. Some paradox in our natures leads us, as he put it, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on and make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion.

The subject matter of this book is how that paradox finds expression in modern international human rights law and practice. The core of its argument is that the chief concern of the human rights movement has become the deployment of political and economic power through the State, international organisation, and private enterprise in order to improve human well-being. This makes its character increasingly managerial, concerned above all with the technical and programmatic implementation of policies designed to achieve that broad aim. It is a project which is motivated by compassion, or pity, but which gives rise to a vision of an all-knowing and all-encompassing form of governance whose final consequences, if fully realised, would be antithetical to individual freedom properly understood. The way in which the international human rights system has developed, in other words, traces precisely the path which Trilling described. The end result of this is an alienating discourse, about which ordinary rights-holders are, at best, unenthusiastic: a set of reforms, as Orwell once described a movement of a not altogether dissimilar kind, which we, the clever ones, are going to impose upon them, the Lower Orders. This book argues that it should hardly be surprising if this has failed to capture the popular imagination.