Harvard prof. discusses importance of global human rights

The Humanities Center hosted a lecture by Samuel Moyn, the Jeremiah Smith, Jr. professor of law and history at Harvard University, on Oct. 20 in Gilman Hall. In his lecture, entitled “The Doctor’s Plot: the Origins of the Basic Philosophy of Human Rights,” Moyn argued that Henry Shue, a moral philosopher writing in the 1980s, was the first person to articulate a philosophical defense of global human rights.

Moyn conceded that earlier thinkers such as John Locke or Thomas Paine, had argued for human entitlements, but Shue was the first to apply these concepts on a global scale. Moyn posits that he is the first serious human rights philosopher.

“I’ll acknowledge that philosophers have long since accredited human beings with some basic entitlements as a matter of nature or some other source, that exist in them as a virtue of their humanity,” Moyn said. “But those were arguments about subsistence rights, even if they have a basis in humanity, that accrue amongst fellow citizens in a bounded territorial space.”

Moyn argued that Shue drew on the healer’s ethic  from The Plague, a 1947 novel by Albert Camus, to form his defense.

“Camus’ claim, voiced in the name of various characters in the book, is that if you act more ambitiously than a healer would, you risk too much blood on your own hands,” Moyn said. “A character in the novel says, ‘The logic by which we live says that we cannot stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to someone.’ That’s why healing is such a powerful metaphor to Camus. The point is to do no harm, and in theory, doctors at least avoid that, and if they help, so much the better.”

Moyn explained that Shue brought Camus’ ethical ideas into the human rights movement of the late 1970s.

“[Shue] said that a theory of rights is a theory of a moral minimum in the healer’s sense, or the least that any person should do for every other person the world over. And of course, by extension, every government and every corporation,” Moyn said. “Now, he doesn’t say he’s giving up higher ideals. Instead, in the first page of his book, he says, ‘I’m just not going to talk about those now, because the moral minimum is so urgent.’”

Shue used this theory of a moral minimum to champion global subsistence rights, the right of all people to access adequate standards of living, including food, housing and clothing.

“He did something that remains rather revolutionary, which is to argue not just for so-called first-generation liberties, but also for socio-economic rights as matters of basic entitlement the world over,” Moyn said. “His considered view was that subsistence rights are as important as traditional kinds of rights, like freedom of speech or integrity of body.”

Moyn noted that Shue’s ultimate goal was to provide a theory of human rights that would affect U.S. foreign policy.

“[Shue] and all others were responding to America’s Vietnam violence. And Shue knew he couldn’t set the bar very high. He acknowledged that America, his addressee, might never become the true healer, but he gave a list of recommendations,” Moyn said. “He martialed Camus’s critique of doing harm not against third world states, but against the United States, and asked it to stop its own violence and possibly become a healer.”

Students found that the lecture related back to their own studies. Freshman Cecilia Vorfeld was excited to discover the relevance of the lecture to a medical humanities class she was taking, particularly when Moyn cited Camus’ book which they had read in class.

“I thought the discussion on how [Shue] viewed ethics and dying was really interesting,” Vorfeld said. “We’d actually talked in class about how the role of the doctor and the healer is that you’re fighting a never-ending battle. You’re fighting against nature, and that’s a slightly scary thought. I’m not pre-med, but I can imagine for some people who are, they might think, ‘Oh, that feels almost a bit wrong. What’s the point?’ It’s never going to end.”

Vorfeld also appreciated the interdisciplinary approach Moyn took in applying ethical problems found in medicine to human rights.

“It was interesting how Shue took [the ethical issue] on to human rights and talked about how this is something we still need to deal with,” Vorfeld said. “I had never really thought about that before. He was also a really good speaker, in terms of engaging us all with the material and explaining all the different points of view.”