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On the obvious question

FTLOG Interviews

Nicholas Wolterstorff considers whether or not human rights need grounding.

Transcript

There are philosophers who, I think sort of out of despair of themselves finding an adequate grounding say, well, they’re so well entrenched now that we don’t need an explanation for why human beings have this dignity. But if you think that rights are in fact grounded in worth or dignity or estimability or whatever you want to call it, then I think you just naturally want to answer the next question, raise an answer to the next question: why? I mean if somebody says – take another example, if somebody says, this is a really good piano sonata, many of us, most of us, would want to say, well, what is it about it that makes it good? We’d feel unhappy with the answer, well it’s just good.