Topic: Assignment for August 4
In a recent column, Quezon noted:
"So when someone of a certain age, and most of our leaders and those active in political circles are of a certain age or above, talks about "freedom," or "democracy," refers to "liberty," and tries to refer to "people power" or "checks and balances" as good or bad things, wants to appeal to "nationalism," or uphold "human rights," refers to "martial law," it goes straight over the heads of younger Filipinos. They are familiar with the words, but no longer give those words the meaning, and thus, the power, Filipinos from older generations not only assume, but genuinely feel.
Culture, if it's to survive, has to be consciously transmitted. Once the transmission of culture fails to take place, culture dies. Politics has a culture all its own. The 1960s saw an old political culture fail to renew itself, but refusing to die, either; and what was new, then, is old and just as sterile, today. It's as if you erased an old computer program and replaced with a new one full of viruses. The result is the dysfunctional, and sterile, political culture we see today." Manuel L. Quezon III, PDI 07/30/07
1. Consider the assigned readings (MacKinnon & Rawls) and reflect on how the authors characterize/contextualize state/law in the duiscussion of human rights.
2. Does Human Rights have an ideological/philosophical basis? (According to the authors)
Read:
Crimes of War, Crimes of Peace, Catherine A. MacKinnon
The Law of Peoples, John Rawls
On Human Rights, The Oxford Amnesty Lectures, 1993 Shute, S.; Hurley, S. Eds.
