Reviewed by: Human Rights as Social Construction by Benjamin Gregg René Wolfsteller (bio) Benjamin Gregg, Human Rights as Social Construction (Cambridge University Press, 2013), ISBN 9781-1076-1294-5, 272 pages. The evolution of the political theory of human rights for the past twenty years is perhaps best described—by altering a phrase of Charles Taylor1—as a “metaphysical limbo” of legitimation. In the course of this “limbo” scholars from various disciplines have been engaging in a competition to provide a better, more persuasive foundation for the universal legitimacy of human rights, but simultaneously with allegedly less demanding [End Page 492] assumptions. Yet, rather than revealing a universal basis of legitimacy to make human rights more accessible and attractive, many scholarly suggestions have contributed to the construction of new boundaries. Those boundaries have typically been the result of a dubious recycling of rational inequality, whereby some people are considered capable of making use of their reason in a superior way to others,2 and hence are able to lead morally virtuous lives according to human rights norms. For example, such boundaries and limitations of equality were fuelled by arguments that human rights require a theological fundament, like the belief in God and human sacredness.3 In a more interventionist sense, the liberal philosopher John Rawls argued that societies abiding human rights as “part of a reasonable law of peoples” have the duty to subject so-called “outlaw regimes” to the rule of “reasonable and just law” in order to overcome the state of nature.4 In his contribution to the debate, the postmodernist Jean-François Lyotard insisted on the fact that the “right to speak” as “the most fundamental human right” has to be merited by undergoing a certain process of “civilization” to free oneself from “his animal nature.”5 However, the nadir of this competition has been the claim of the communitarian Amitai Etzioni, whereby people “under the influence of … alcohol, drugs, or merely a high dose of mass culture, or those who are mentally handicapped, are blind to even the most shining normative light,” and thus, are the main obstacle to the realization of human rights within liberal democratic societies.6 With his study Human Rights as Social Construction, the political theorist Benjamin Gregg intercedes in the dispute with a conception of human rights that tries to tear down those boundaries, to make human rights more accessible, and to mediate between the numerous diverging approaches in the field. Gregg’s aim is to ground the normative debate over human rights in a “realistic” and “pragmatic” way, and he does so mainly by drawing on sociological and anthropological insights. In fact, his book can be considered the first analysis within the field of political theory of human rights that pays attention to sociological as well as anthropological explanations to such a serious extent. Backed up by this trans-disciplinary lens, Gregg puts a persistent emphasis on the fact that particular local communities of people always socially construct moral norms. Sociologists may find this assertion to be a rather mundane insight. Within normative political philosophy, however, it allows Gregg to emphasize the “political” nature of human rights as a contingent “this-worldly” idea which is up for negotiation, but not necessarily ineffective or dispensable. Once we have come to accept the fact that human beings are the sole authors of social norms on earth, it follows that it is both possible and necessary to create effective behavioral norms for themselves. From that assumption Gregg deduces that [End Page 493] human rights are valid only if people consciously and self-reflexively come to hold human rights norms on an individual level. Moreover, if these norms become entrenched in the social institutions of a community, such as the legal order and public education, they will in turn reinforce the development of individual “human rights personalities.”7 Therefore, he argues that people have to be socialized into a solidarity based on the mutual expectation of granting each other these locally defined human rights. And yet, it would not require a collective identity or the idea of a human nature to bring about a shared human rights consciousness, because in a highly...
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Jan 1, 2024
Alejo José G Sison 
Open Access
