Anti-Essentialism, Relativism, and Human Rights

جهانشمولی و نسبی گرایی حقوق بشر در رویکرد و رویه ی دولت های اسلامی

Respecting the realm of human rights in international law, there are two major approaches: the first approach due to the equal nature and inherent dignity, respect for universal human rights. In contrast, the second approach, emphasizing the differences in religion, ethnicity and culture in codification of human rights, belives in relativism of human rights. In the middle, according to the Isla...

Dogmatism, Pragmatism, Essentialism, Relativism: The Boas/Mason Museum Debate Revisited

Essentialism and Anti-Essentialism in Feminist Philosophy

The heated feminist debates over 'essentialism' of the 1980s and early 1990s have largely died away, yet they raised fundamental questions for feminist moral and political philosophy which have still to be fully explored. Centrally at issue in feminist controversies over essentialism was whether there are any shared characteristics common to all women, which unify them as a group. Many leading ...

Nash, Kate (2002) Human rights for women: an argument for ‘deconstructive equality’ Economy and Society Volume 31 Number 3 Aug

The status of universalism has been much debated by feminists at the end of the twentieth century. Poststructuralist feminism is readily positioned in these debates as antagonistic to normative universalism. It is criticized as such: how is injustice to be judged and condemned if contestation and the openness of ungrounded universalism are the only ideals? This paper is a ‘sub-philosophical’ en...

Towards Enforceable Bans on Illicit Businesses: From Moral Relativism to Human Rights

Many scholars and activists favor banning illicit businesses, especially given that such businesses constitute a large part of the global economy. But these businesses are commonly operated as if they are subject only to the ethical norms their management chooses to recognize, and as a result they sometimes harm innocent people. This can happen in part because there are no effective legal const...