Compassion with Justice: Harari’s Assault on Human Rights

Abstract

AbstractYuval Noah Harari contends that human rights are an outdated myth. He calls for replacing them with a new global ethic to meet crises as varied as environmental destruction, disruptive technologies, and extreme gaps between rich and poor. Toward that end, he outlines an ethics that exalts compassion and elides justice, an ethics that animates his trilogy: Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. I draw together the key elements in his personal ethics, tracing them to a combination of scientism, postmodernism, and Buddhism. I then argue that he misunderstands human rights, inflates the role of science in moral matters, and fails to reconcile his moral passion with his moral skepticism.