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E-book
Author Meister, Robert, 1947-

Title After evil : a politics of human rights / Robert Meister
Published New York : Columbia University Press, ©2011

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Description 1 online resource (x, 526 pages)
Series Columbia studies in political thought/political history
Columbia studies in political thought/political history.
Contents Disavowing evil -- The ideology and ethics of human rights -- Ways of winning -- Living on -- The dialectic of race and place -- "Never again" -- Still the Jewish question? -- Bystanders and victims -- Adverse possession -- States of "emergency" -- Surviving catastrophe -- Justice in time
Summary Mainstream human rights discourse speaks of such evils as the Holocaust, slavery, or apartheid in ways that put them solidly in the past. Its elaborate techniques of'transitional'justice encourage future generations to move forward, but the false assumption of closure enables those who are guilty to elude responsibility. This approach to history, common to late-twentieth-century humanitarianism, doesn't presuppose that evil ends only when justice begins. Rather, it assumes that a time before justice is the moment to put evil in the past. Merging examples from literature and history, Robert Meister confronts the problem of closure and the resolution of historical injustice. He boldly challenges the empty moral logic of'never again'or the theoretical reduction of evil to a cycle of violence and counterviolence that is broken once evil is remembered for what it was. Meister calls out such methods for their deferral of justice and susceptibility to exploitation. Specifically, he spells out the moral logic'never again'in relation to Auschwitz and its evolution into a twenty-first-century doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Human rights.
Human Rights
86.04 philosophy of law.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Freedom & Security -- Civil Rights.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Freedom & Security -- Human Rights.
PHILOSOPHY -- Political.
Human rights
Human rights.
Justice.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780231520959
0231520956
9780231150378
0231150377