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PHIL507 The Philosophy of Human Rights

10 cp
Prerequisites Nil

The purpose of the unit is to encourage students to become philosophically reflective about the central concepts (such as genocide and crimes against humanity). Humanity has come to understand itself by coming to understand, with some precision and attention to distinctions, the crimes of which it is capable. It therefore matters that we give the right names to those crimes. To encourage students to see that this matters and why it matters is one of the main purposes of this unit. That purpose will not be realised, however, unless students also apply a philosophically critical gaze on fundamental conceptions about the nature of rights, justice and law and on the assumptions and theories of what is means to be human that inform those conceptions.

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