ABSTRACT
In my close examination of Griffin’s account of personhood, I first explain that despite Griffin’s commitment to consider various aspects of human rights practice, the diagnosis of indeterminacy and the articulation of personhood as a remedying notion obtain at the level of ordinary moral reasoning only. This modality of reasoning is necessary and central to the enterprise of human rights theorizing because, in his view, human rights refer to a distinctive moral category. As a result, the role of normative facts and practices is confined to that of a test case. This is particularly the case with the legal and judicial dimensions of human rights practice. I aim to show, however, that such modality is independent of the substantive claim that personhood obtains irrespective of social, political or legal relations (the inherence view). I stress this distinction in order to query whether one could apply Griffin’s practice-independent modality of reasoning to the normative role of human rights independently captured – that is, whether the reconstruction of political or legal practices could inform, but not determine, the nature, structure and content of those rights.
