Human rights at the “end of nature”

Abstract

Nature has been employed as a moral concept across the millennia. Human rights are beholden to nature as a normative standard, as they developed within a tradition of natural law and natural rights. Should contemporary advocates of human rights continue to deploy the standard of nature at a time when both its physical and metaphysical statuses are increasingly challenged? I argue that the life sciences help us understand human rights in terms of the development of prosocial behavior in our species, and in this respect there remains an important role for nature to play in the advance of human rights. Attention to the status of nature in the modern world’s most important document of human rights, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, illuminates the challenges associated with linking rights to the standard of nature.

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Leslie Paul Thiele

Leslie Paul Thiele is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida. He serves as Director of the Sustainability Studies program and the Center for Adaptive Innovation, Resilience, Ethics and Science (UF CAIRES). His interdisciplinary research and teaching focuses on political thought, sustainability, technology, and the intersection of political philosophy and the natural sciences.