In Plato's Republic, he says that a lie leads to "ignorance of the soul," but a noble lie is only an imitation of that ignorance. If this is true, and I believe it is, people subscribing to a noble lie of course know that it doesn't represent truth or reality. Going along with Doctor J's analogy, I think virtually all of society sees the man behind the curtain. In fact, the curtain is transparent. Maybe only some of us openly acknowledge the man behind the curtain and the truth he represents, but that can be said of any other noble lie as well.
My point is, does it's being a noble lie make the UDHR less valuable? I say absolutely not. It isn't hurting anyone to create a standard for improvement. And no one really believes a noble lie, if we accept Plato's definition. We well know about that man behind the curtain.
I agree, and that's the point I tried to make in class. We are all for the most part, aware of the United States' shortcoming in upholding these rights, or as you say we see the man behind the curtain. We as humans are not perfect, therefore we cannot be perfect in upholding all of these rights, but in no way is it wrong to strive for any of them despite how challenging they may be in being accomplished universally.
ReplyDeleteIf you achieve something, it's always been my opinion that you didn't shoot high enough. However, I felt as though in class, as now, we were treating rights as goals rather than rights--which is the only way in which the aforementioned opinion is in any way relevant. The idea that rights violations exist and that there are flaws in the rectification of those violations does not destroy the meaning of the right. By virtue of the fact that we may never actually achieve the universal protection of those rights is no reason to simply abandon the whole process just as it is not the answer to simply abandon the law because it is not always upheld.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, I agree, if we say that the UDHR is only an ideal status and not really attainable, yet! I strongly believe that we need to make all possible effort to reach that goal and uphold the universal truth of this document. Why? If we don't do that, every human rights violator would have the best excuse for his own conscious and if accused in court, as well. He/She could always relate to other violations that happen and use the thought-terminating point that human rights are only ideal.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, I think, we need to increase the supervision and the punishment for human rights violations in order to attain the unattainable.
I agree that the UDHR is something we should all strive to achieve, whether we succeed or not. I think that it is ok that not all the articles will be upheld by every person all the time as long as we are still striving for the ideal because in the process we will improve. In trying to reach the ideal we may achieve some of the articles most of the time or most of the articles some of the time. Human rights violations will decrease if we all strive to achieve this ideal and that would be the best thing for the most amount of people. I do believe, though, that we all need to actively try to uphold the declaration and do more than we are doing now.
ReplyDeleteI agree with James that we are arguing about rights as if they are goals. It's true that all of the rights in the UDHR are not being upheld, but we shouldn't look at them as unattainable. But in a way they are unattainalbe because of society's flaws. There will always be people who fall between the cracks of the system, such as immigrants, who are not qualified or able to receive their rights. But telling a noble lie to the public does not help those who are being deprived of their rights. Instead of ignoring the poblem, changes should be made in society or the government so that everyone has the opportunity to receive their rights.
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