The Warty Conception of Human Rights

In this article I explain and defend a new conception of human rights, drawing upon Jeremy Waldron’s account of dignity and Richard Rorty’s account of human rights. Following Rorty, I argue for a conception of human rights on which the central question is not “what is human nature?”: but rather “what kind of world should we leave to future generations?” I suggest that we can make progress on this question by developing Waldron's claim that dignity is a conferred status, as opposed to an inherent feature of persons, into the claim that “the human” is a social kind.