Lena Halldenius

History plays an important role in the philosophy of human rights, more so than in philosophical discussions on related concepts, such as justice. History tends to be used in order to make it credible that there is a tradition of rights as a moral idea, or an ethical ideal, that transcends national boundaries. In the example that I investigate in this chapter, this moral idea is tightly spun around the moral dignity of the human person. There has been a shift in conceptions of human rights during the twentieth century, from ‘politics of the state to the morality of the globe’. Rather than figuring in, or as, constitutional principles of the political life of a polity and the relation between a state and its members, the notion of rights has come to serve as the name of a state- and politics-transcending ethical position on the status of the human person, and the relations between human persons. Given that this move from politics of the state to morality of the globe is a recent one, it goes without saying that trying to ground a state-transcending morality of human rights with the help of early modern history is problematic. Still, philosophers of this kind of morality of human rights are prone to claiming, for their accounts, a long-standing human rights tradition that, frankly, is not there, at least not in that form. One example is James Griffin, whose reliance on what he refers to as a historical notion of human rights is the focus of my critical discussion here. Griffin claims that ‘our’ concept of human rights is a product of eighteenth century Enlightenment thought. If ‘our’ concept of human rights is Griffin’s concept, then his claim is false – as I show. I agree, however, that the eighteenth century is a pivotal moment, but if we wish to understand natural rights in eighteenth century thought, we need to grasp the fact that power over others, and the capacity of those who hold that power to also abuse it, was not a contingent concern, or merely part of the extension of a concept defined prior to, or independently of, any such concern. It was built into the concept itself; it was its very point.

In this article, John Locke's accounts of political liberty and legitimate government are read as expressions of a normative demand for non-arbitrariness. I argue that Locke locates infringements of political liberty in dependence on the arbitrary will of another, whether or not interference or restraint actually takes place. This way Locke is tentatively placed in that tradition of republican thought recently brought to our attention by Pettit, Skinner and others. This reading shifts the focus on legitimacy and identifies the independent moral argument for legitimate government as ruling for the good of the people. Consent is left with a hypothetical role to play

Halldenius argues that we should regard Mary Wollstonecraft as a feminist republican, drawing out the implications of reading her in that way for the meaning and role of freedom in Wollstonecraft’s philosophy. Her republicanism directs our attention to the fact that freedom for Wollstonecraft is conceptualized in terms of independence, importantly in two analytically distinct yet heavily interdependent ways. There is a long philosophical tradition of treating moral freedom as an internal phenomenon, as an aspect of freedom of the will. Wollstonecraft makes this inner freedom politically conditioned. Liberty is independence in relation to others and in relation to the law and institutions of society, but also a kind of inner intellectual independence. Attending to the dynamics between the external and internal aspects of independence is crucial for our understanding of Wollstonecraft’s view of society and morality, but also of her philosophical method, which is to reason through lived experience. What liberty is and requires can only be articulated by “poor men, or philosophers”, as she puts it in A Vindication of the Rights of Men, 1790. Halldenius argues that the “poor man” here represents the philosophical vantage point. The view of the unprivileged, of those with no wealth or titles to lose, constitutes the disinterested, impartial view. Wollstonecraft’s emphasis on the lived experience of unfreedom and subordination as a valid source of knowledge implies that a crucial question regarding freedom and unfreedom is not only what freedom is, but what it is like.

In this article Hobbes's view of the commonwealth, and of law and liberty within it, is discussed from the point of view of social ontology. The artificial character of the commonwealth and the constitutive function of the covenant is put in terms of the institutional world being constructed through collective intentionality, which is performative, self-referential, and collective, and which serves as truth-maker. Hobbes is used here to make the point that it is a mistake to argue, as for example Tuomela has done, that the construction of institutions require a joint commitment: we-attitudes held in the we-mode. Instead, institutions on a `Hobbesian' model are constructed by we- attitudes held in the I-mode. This analysis is used in a discussion of law as an institution and law serving as a constraint on freedom. The constructive character of law means that the idea of law can serve as a constraint even in an area of life where in actual fact is unregulated. In order to assess whether liberty can be said to be infringed when that happens we need to go back to the notion of an external constraint, appreciating that what agents there are, what they can do and the powers they possess are functions of collective attitudes conveying meaning and status

"The introduction of Historical Dictionary of Feminist Philosophy provides a useful overview of the subject, while the chronology runs the gamut from ancient Greek to contemporary feminist philosophers. Dictionary entries cover both the central figures and ideas from the historical tradition of philosophy, as well as ideas and theories from contemporary feminist philosophy, such as epistemology and topics like abortion and sexuality. In addition to including entries on Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Beauvoir, and Daly, relevant aspects of other fields of philosophy, the major concepts, and prevailing interpretations and conjectures are also covered. A comprehensive bibliography allows for further reading."--BOOK JACKET

The scholarship on Mary Wollstonecraft is divided concerning her views on women's role in public life, property rights, and distribution of wealth. Her critique of inequality of wealth is undisputed, but is it a complaint only of inequality or does it strike more forcefully at the institution of property? The argument in this article is that Wollstonecraft's feminism is partly defined by a radical critique of property, intertwined with her conception of rights. Dissociating herself from the conceptualization of rights in terms of self-ownership, she casts economic independence—a necessary political criterion for personal freedom—in terms of fair reward for work, not ownership. Her critique of property moves beyond issues of redistribution to a feminist appraisal of a property structure that turns people into either owners or owned, rights-holders or things acquired. The main characters in Wollstonecraft's last novel—Maria, who is rich but has nothing, and Jemima, who steals as a matter of principle—illustrate the commodification of women in a society where even rights are regarded as possessions