The Politics Of Humanity

This book is the collaborative response of engaged scholars from diverse countries and disciplines who are disturbed by the contemporary resurgence of anti-democratic movements and regimes throughout the world. These movements have manifest in vitriolic “nationalist” polemics, state-supported violence, and exclusionary anti-immigrant policies, less than a century after the rise and fall and horrific devastations of fascism in the early 20th century.

An elegant and forceful argument that represents the claim to equality as central to the meaning of being human.

John Holmes was the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs from 2007 until 2010. His work took him to some of the most troubled areas of the world: to Sri Lanka, Darfur, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among other places, and exposed him to the harsh realities of humanitarian aid. Frequently he found that the UN's humanitarian programmes in these hotspots were tolerated but consistently undermined and mistrusted by both sides in any conflict, and its efforts to protect civilians and provide humanitarian relief frustrated by people working for purely political ends. Clear-eyed about the realities of development aid, Holmes realised early on that his role was to be a voice to the voiceless. THE POLITICS OF HUMANITY exposes, in often depressing detail, how difficult this job is, as well as analysing and exploring in great depth the wider policy questions of his role.

This book is the first book that looks at both the politics of maintaining the trajectory toward humanity’s final hundred years and the politics of those final hundred years. It is the first book to take up theoretical and practical aspects with respect to both the movement toward and events during these final hundred years. As a result, it is the first book that attempts to provide a more complete picture of the politics of catastrophic human-caused environment change. The fact that the book provides a way into the variety of policy problems that catastrophic human-caused environment change is creating means that it is also important to those in Public Policy. The book also raises a series of philosophical and ethical questions associated with human rights, which are significant to those who study Political Philosophy (and some of those who study Law), international action to mitigate the effects of climate change, the nature of science and the limitations of political institutions.

"Humanism, human rights, and humanitarianism have been dismissed on both the right and the left as sentimental residues of a naïvely moralistic politics that does more harm than good when applied to the real world. But when they are cynically abandoned, as has happened in our increasingly troubled times, the consequences can be dire. In this volume, an international and interdisciplinary array of distinguished scholars breathes new life into these traditions for a world that needs them now more than ever." -Martin Jay, Ehrman Professor of European History Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley "This collected volume is a passionate testimony for defending humanity, justice, and cosmopolitan values in times of multi-level global crisis. It brings together a range of distinguished international scholars addressing burning issues like migration and the political situation in Hong Kong, combined with principled reflections on the social, ethical, and legal foundations of human co-existence with an emphasis on difference, alterity, and vulnerability so urgently needed for a cosmopolitan conception of justice." -Sophie Loidolt, Professor of Philosophy, Chair of Practical Philosophy, Institut für Philosophie, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany This book is the collaborative response of engaged scholars from diverse countries and disciplines who are disturbed by the contemporary resurgence of anti-democratic movements and regimes throughout the world. These movements have brought with them vitriolic "nationalist" polemics, state-supported violence, and exclusionary anti-immigrant policies, less than a century after the rise and fall and horrific devastations of fascism in the early 20th century. Richard A. Cohen is Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Thought at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA. Tito Marci is Dean of Law Faculty and Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Rome, Sapienza, Italy. Luca Scuccimarra is Professor of History of Political Thought and Chair of Department of Political Science at the University of Rome, Sapienza, Italy.

This volume sets out to describe the political and philosophical underpinnings of the idea of human rights by bringing together a collection of original essays by a group of highly distinguished theorists. Recognizing that Western insistence on the universality of the concept of human rights can also function as a diplomatic cover for post-colonial interventions, it insists that the campaign for human rights must take into account the varied social and economic environments in different nation states that affect the ways such demands can be implemented. This campaign is most effective when demonstrating international solidarity with those whose basic rights are jeopardized or denied.

Collection of essays that consider how humanity--as a social, ethical, and political category--is produced through particular governing techniques and in turn gives rise to new forms of government.

If he had been pressed, Macaulay would probably have admitted that there are cases in which human acts and impulses to act occur independently of any idea of an end to be gained by them. If I have a piece of grit in my eye and ask some one to take it out with the corner of his handkerchief, I generally close the eye as soon as the handkerchief comes near, and always feel a strong impulse to do so. Nobody supposes that I close my eye because, after due consideration, I think it my interest to do so.