Chapter 5: Is Justice for All Possible?

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Chapter 5 Is Justice for All Possible?
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Introduction

• Is a just society possible?
• What are human rights?
• Common problems
• Racism
• Sexism
• Homophobia
• Terrorism
• Environmental issues

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Universal Human Rights

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by
  UN on Dec. 10, 1948, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt

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Human Rights in the Age of DiscoveryRené
Trujillo

• Moral reflection occurred as Spanish conquered
  the indigenous peoples of the New World
• Human rights and human dignity were major
  subjects of thought for the philosophers of the
  day
• While the Age of Discovery was marked by
  brutality, it forced people to think about human
  rights issues

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United Nations Universal Declaration of Human
Rights

• Attempts to define universal human rights and
  promote observance of them
• Focuses on equality and fair treatment
• Affirms rights to property, nationality, marriage
  and family, religion and thought, peaceable
  assembly, participation in government, social
  security, work, rest, healthy standard of living,
  education, cultural expression
• Everyone is subject to limitations of law in
  order to respect rights and freedoms of others

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Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia

• Distinction between individual and institutional
  racism, sexism, and homophobia
• The institutional form refers to injustice on the
  part of an official agency or various
  organizations

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Aint I a Womanbell hooks

• Author bell hooks is an African American woman
  and influential social critic
• Writes her name in all lowercase to symbolize her
  skepticism about the importance of fame
• Asserts that women have been socialized to think
  of racism solely in terms of racial hatred
  without regard to racial imperialism
• Refutes the idea that all women in America have
  the same social status

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Race MattersCornel West

• The fundamental crisis in black America is
  twofold too much poverty and too little
  self-love.
• Redistributive measures have helped, but have not
  been sufficient for those with greatest need
• The search for black identity is crucial in order
  to achieve racial equality

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Homophobia as a Weapon of SexismSuzanne Pharr

• Patriarchy is the ideology and sexism is the
  system that promotes homophobia
• The weapons of sexism are economics, violence,
  and homophobia
• Homophobia is a weapon of sexism because
  homosexuals threaten a male dominated society

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Homophobia as a Weapon of SexismSuzanne Pharr

• Those who are vulnerable to homophobia suffer
  losses in
• Employment
• Family
• Children
• Heterosexual privilege and protection
• Safety
• Mental health
• Community
• Credibility

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Globalization and Justice

• Two forces of global events
• Disintegration of people due to aganda of
  self-determination
• Integration through telecommunication and
  globalization which the world more interconnected
  and interdependent than ever
• Is a global ethic of justice possible?
• Should there be a one world system of government?

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One World Ethics of GlobalizationPeter Singer

• National leaders must examine how their actions
  affect the rest of the world
• Globalization has occurred through technology,
  the economy, and threat of terrorism
• How should we respond ethically to the idea that
  we live in one world?

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Terrorism and Morality

• Terrorists often justify the use of violence for
  what they believe is a just cause
• There are differing definitions of what is just

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Why Terrorism Is Morally ProblematicBat-Ami Bar
On

• Terrorism produces psychologically and morally
  diminished people
• Argues that terrorism is morally wrong because of
  its cruelty, not because its cause is unjust

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Justice and the Land

• Humans are a part of an ecologically
  interdependent system that places moral
  obligations on them with respect to the land and
  animals

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The Land EthicAldo Leopold

• The land and everything it sustains are a part of
  a community of interdependent parts that must
  cooperate
• The land ethic sees man as a plain member and
  citizen of this community
• Conservation is a state of harmony between men
  and land

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The Land EthicAldo Leopold

• Land as an energy circuit
• Land is not merely soil
• Native plants and animals kept the energy circuit
  open others may or may not
• Man-made changes are of a different order than
  evolutionary changes and have greater effects
  than are intended or foreseen

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Animal Rights

• Do humans have an obligation or duty to animals?
  Why?
• Is it only wrong to harm animals when it is
  against the interest of humans?
• Do animals have any intrinsic or inherent rights?

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The Case for Animal RightsTom Regan

• Goals of Animal Rights movement
• Total abolition of the use of animals in science
• Total dissolution of commercial animal
  agriculture
• Total elimination of commercial and sport hunting
  and trapping

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The Case for Animal RightsTom Regan

• The rights view denies the moral tolerability
  of any and all forms of racial, sexual, or social
  discrimination and denies that we can justify
  good results by evil means that violate
  individual rights
• The rights view should not be limited to humans
• Animals have inherent value because they are also
  experiencing subjects of a life