Human Rights Across Cultures: First Paper

Write a paper of approximately 7 pages on either one of the following topics, or a topic of your own choosing. If you would like to write on your own topic, you must have cleared it with me by the end of the day Monday, 10/7/02. The paper is due at 5 p.m. on Friday, 10/11 in a box in the second floor lobby of Russell House.

General Issues

• All papers must begin with a title page on which your name appears. The text of the essay itself should begin on the second page; your name should not appear on this or any subsequent pages, though your WesID may.
• All papers should be typed or word-processed, double-spaced, with 1" margins.
• I expect you to edit your papers carefully before handing them in: you should look not only for problems with content, but also for grammatical errors and typos. It is a very good idea to read your paper out loud, as this will help you to notice stylistic and grammatical problems.
• Any use of another person's ideas, words, or interpretations must be cited. All materials to which you refer should be listed in a Bibliography at the end of your paper; specific references to these texts in the body of the paper should be paranthetic abbreviations in the text. For instance, to refer to The World Made New, my reference would look like this: (Glendon 2001, p. 23). The bibliographic entry should look like this:
  • Glendon, Mary Ann. 2001. A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York: Random House.
• Here is another example, using a quotation. Notice where the period goes -- and that there is no comma or other mark within the quotation marks.
  • Glendon writes that Chang was "a big man with a high-domed forehead" (Glendon 2001, p. 44).
• You are welcome to make use of things said by other students or by me during class or via WebBoard, but make sure to back up whatever you say with textual references, and to cite your sources. For example:
  • Smith, John. 2002. "Comment on 9/10 class." WebBoard Posting, September 12, 2002.

Suggested Paper Topics

• Glendon argues, on p. 177, that the UDHR "is not just a universalization of the eighteenth-century 'rights of man,' but part of a new stage in the history of human rights." On what specific basis does she make this claim? Is she right? Is this significant? Your answer should be detailed -- for example, through including reference to specific differences between the UDHR and the French Declaration.
• Jacques Maritain and the UNESCO philosophers were content, according to Glendon, to agree on rights but not ask about principles (see p. 77). Read Maritain's introduction to the UNESCO collection of essays (get it from me), explain in more detail what this foundationless approach amounts to, and assess.
• Several essays in the Reader discuss the relation between human rights and national interests, generally asserting that human rights further national interests. Is this true? Choose one or more specific arguments and assess. If you like, you might compare this with a contemporary argument to this same conclusion: see In Our Own Best Interest: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), by William F. Schultz, the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA.
• Compare Marx's discussion of human rights, in "On the Jewish Question" (available in many collections of Marx's writings), with the views of one or more Chinese Marxist from the Reader. In addition to Peng Kang and Mao, Tan Mingqian (#15) is another possibility. Additionally, assess their argument(s).
• The anonymous author of "On Rights" (Reader #3) argues that rights and propriety (the Chinese term li, also translatable as "ritual" or "rites") are quite fundamentally opposed to one another. Some contemporary thinkers have argued, though, that viewing "rites as rights" is a promising alternative or supplement to Western rights discourse. (See, for example: Ames, Roger T. “Rites as Rights: The Confucian Alternative.” in Human Rights and the World's Religions. ed. Leroy S. Rouner. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.) Explore and assess the disagreement.