Overlapping Consensus View of Human Rights: A Rawlsian Conception

This paper advances and defends the overlapping consensus view of human rights as a political conception of human rights most consistent with John Rawls’s normative account of a realistic utopia at the international level. Although some clues exist in The Law of Peoples to support this view, an innovative reconstruction is called for to complete the picture. This paper aims to offer such a reconstruction, which is predicated on two premises: first, the parties to the international original positions, which include decent nonliberal peoples, are reasonable and worthy of liberal toleration; and, second, the protection of human rights proper is a module that can fit into all acceptable comprehensive doctrines at the international level, including societal comprehensive doctrines in decent nonliberal peoples. The first premise has been subjected to vehement liberal critiques and left for dead, and the second premise has not been taken seriously and relatively neglected. This paper defends these premises in turn to justify the overlapping consensus view of human rights as constitutive of Rawls’s normative account of a realistic utopia at the international level.